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#115 Pintastic 24 review

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 47m·analyzed·Apr 19, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Pintastic 24 review covering Eric Stone's Jaws exploit, Elton John gameplay, and tournament awards.

Summary

George and Dr. Dave review Pintastic 24, a pinball tournament and expo event, covering multiple days of gameplay, judging, and interviews. Key segments include an exclusive interview with Eric Stone about his massive Jaws score exploits and subsequent disqualification in the March Madness tournament, gameplay impressions of Jersey Jack Pinball's new Elton John machine, and various tournament award results for antique and classic machines.

Key Claims

  • Eric Stone achieved a 4.1 trillion point score on Jaws through spinning the reel over 3,000 times in a single game, then had the score disqualified by Stern

    high confidence · Eric Stone, exclusive interview segment; hosts confirmed score was removed from March Madness contest

  • Jersey Jack's Elton John machine features approximately 136,000 or 13,000 RGB LEDs (hosts uncertain of exact number)

    medium confidence · George reporting on Jersey Jack Pinball seminar at the event; uncertain about precise LED count

  • Jersey Jack Pinball's Elton John is a Steve Ritchie design

    high confidence · Confirmed during gameplay footage interview with DJ at Project Pinball booth

  • A fire alarm evacuation occurred Friday morning at 10:07 a.m., lasting approximately 15-20 minutes

    high confidence · George's first-hand account of event; fire department attended with hook and ladder truck

  • Jersey Jack claims to complete all code for their games, implying competitors (likely Stern) leave code unfinished

    high confidence · Jack making comparative statements during Jersey Jack Pinball seminar; George confirmed this comparison

  • Colorado team (Walt Wood Pinball) won the March Madness tournament after Eric Stone's Florida team was disqualified

    high confidence · Eric Stone confirmed in interview; stated 'Colorado won'

  • The Jaws 50th Anniversary machine has fishing reel-themed spinner mechanic requiring 45 minutes minimum playtime to access the primary exploit pathway

    high confidence · Eric Stone detailed the bounty system and progression requirements in exclusive interview

  • Labyrinth pinball machine's cartoony background edition has non-functional decoration elements (Dopey Dwarfs, static mouse, non-animated rhino/warthog)

    medium confidence · George's gameplay experience; described as 'a waste of donations'

Notable Quotes

  • “An exploit is something that anybody can go crazy on. So in the end, did they get rid of your score? Of course. Stern got rid of my score.”

    Eric Stone @ early interview segment — Direct confirmation of score disqualification and clarification of what constitutes an exploit vs. extended gameplay progression

  • “We do this and other companies, you know, they just kind of leave it unfinished. They don't complete their code. We complete all our code.”

    Jersey Jack (Jack Danger, implied) @ during Jersey Jack seminar — Competitive claim about code completion quality, suggesting Stern or other manufacturers may not finish code implementation

  • “It's fabulous. It's terrific. It's going to do really well. The light show is incredible on it.”

    DJ/PJ @ Elton John gameplay footage — Enthusiastic endorsement of Elton John machine despite initial skepticism from hosts

  • “I would not go buy this game, but I did enjoy playing the game.”

    George @ Labyrinth discussion — Reflects common sentiment: fun to play at shows but not worth home ownership

  • “You can't beat our meat.”

    George (relaying rejected game slogan) @ Barry O's Barbecue Challenge discussion — Humorous reference to game marketing; hosts view game negatively as donation-driven production

  • “I think I have said it to you and about nine other people, make ten games, charge the crap out of them, give all the donations to the widow, and be done. Move on. This is not anything anybody should be involved in.”

    George @ Barry O's Barbecue Challenge segment — Critical opinion on niche charity/single-dedication games; suggests unsustainability and saturation

  • “George, make it stop. Please, for God's sake, make it stop. I need more beer. I need more beer in my ear.”

    Dr. Dave @ brass band performance segment — Humorous moment reflecting fatigue and sensory overload from extended event attendance

Entities

GeorgepersonDr. DavepersonEric StonepersonJack DangerpersonWalt Wood PinballpersonSteve RitchiepersonKeith ElwinpersonDJ/PJperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball continues tradition of annual pizza seminar at major expos, providing educational content about manufacturing evolution and technical specifications (LED counts, code completion philosophy)

    high · George noted this was his first time attending the seminar; Jack discussed progression from Wizard of Oz issues to Elton John improvements

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Eric Stone's jaws exploit/disqualification generated interest but appears to have been treated as technical/rule issue rather than controversy; hosts' tone was lighthearted despite score removal

    high · Framing as 'exclusive interview' with humorous tone; no community outrage indicated, treated as rule enforcement

  • ?

    product_concern: Charity/single-purpose pinball games (Barry O's Barbecue Challenge) perceived as saturating niche market; hosts express fatigue with format and question sustainability

    high · George: 'make ten games, charge the crap out of them, give all the donations to the widow, and be done. Move on. This is not anything anybody should be involved in.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jersey Jack explicitly positioning code completion as competitive differentiator, claiming competitors leave games 'unfinished' while Jersey Jack 'completes all code'

    high · Jack Danger statement during seminar: 'We do this and other companies, you know, they just kind of leave it unfinished. They don't complete their code. We complete all our code.'

  • ?

    event_signal: Pintastic 24 featured multiple-day event with Thursday night vetting, Friday judging schedule, and game releases from multiple manufacturers (Stern, Jersey Jack, other vendors)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.503

0:30
Thank you. I'm on the night, I'm on the night, I'm on the night Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast My name is George and I'm joined by my broadcast partner Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George.
1:37
Folks, we have a show of shows today. We're going to do a little old business first, if you remember from last podcast. We talked about the March Madness contest with Stern, and we talked a little bit about what happened to Eric Stone. Well, guess what?
1:59
exclusive, we've got an interview with Eric about that very topic. Dave, you got any comments before we run the clip?
2:09
Yeah, Eric was in rare form. Well, actually, Eric was in Eric form, let's say. But, yeah, he was pretty animated, let's say, about it. So it was very interesting. And he had a great take on it. And as you all will see, or Emmy did see already.
2:33
You'll see how this particular interview fits a little bit later in the program. We have some comments about the finals of the Silver Ball Rumble that I think will all be interesting. We'll save that for the end of the show. So without further ado, you got something else? No, I was going to say I got some great stuff about the finals I got some inside info and all kinds of good stuff Technical info and some great commentary about the tournament Ins and outs and that kind of thing We'll leave that to the end because some people like it and other people don't So tune in, we think you'll enjoy it With that said, I'm going to run the clip right now

“I spun the reel over 3,000 times in one game, and that's an exploit. But where, where, Eric? The rest of us can't do that.”

George @ Eric Stone interview — Questioning whether the high-spin reel mechanic constitutes a legitimate exploit or is a design vulnerability

Pintastic 24
event
March Madnessevent
Jaws 50th Anniversarygame
Elton Johngame
Labyrinthgame
Barry O's Barbecue Challengegame
Looney Tunesgame
Texas Chainsaw Massacregame
James Bond Anniversarygame
AC/DC (Pro Vault Edition)game
Project Pinballorganization
Extra Ball Loungelocation
Stern Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Classic Pinball Podcastorganization

high · Event structure detailed across multiple days with specific judging timeline and tournament results discussion

  • $

    market_signal: Jaws 50th Anniversary machine demonstrates mixed market reception: positive gameplay feedback but questioning of theme viability and long-term appeal despite exploit-based score potential

    medium · George: 'It was fun to play' but minimal enduring interest shown; focus on exploit mechanics rather than gameplay longevity

  • ?

    community_signal: Eric Stone's behavior during interview characterized as 'animated' and in 'rare form'; hosts suggested his responses were characteristic but notably intense

    medium · Dave: 'Eric was in rare form. Well, actually, Eric was in Eric form, let's say. But, yeah, he was very animated, let's say, about it.'

  • $

    market_signal: James Bond Anniversary machine's $20,000+ price point generates discomfort despite functional gameplay praise; George hopes for future releases with same footprint but different themes to justify cost

    high · George: 'why are they spending $20,000 on this game? It's a street-level, simple game... I hope that they release that particular footprint with another scene... I still wouldn't spend $20,000 on it'

  • ?

    announcement: Elton John by Jersey Jack Pinball confirmed as recently released/available for play; described as latest game from manufacturer with significant LED implementation

    high · Multiple gameplay segments featuring Elton John; Steve Ritchie designer confirmation; extensive technical specifications discussed

  • ?

    product_strategy: Elton John receives comparative praise over competing light-show heavy games at event; Jersey Jack's implementation framed as 'over the top' versus competition

    high · George: 'his Elton John game, compared to the other ones next to it, his is over the top compared to his competition'

  • ?

    product_concern: Labyrinth machine's premium/higher-tier model features non-functional decorative elements (static Dopey Dwarfs, non-animated mouse, immobile rhino/warthog); George characterized these as 'a waste of donations'

    high · George: 'The higher level one with the cartoony background on it, those Dopey Dwarfs things, that's a waste of donations... the mouse don't move. You know, no smoke out of the nose of that rhino or warthog'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: DJ/PJ's enthusiasm for Elton John machine represents conversion from skepticism (noted before event) to strong endorsement; George observed PJ considering selling Rush game to fund Elton John purchase

    high · George: 'he really fell hard for the Elton John game... he could actually sell that Rush game and put that towards an Elton John because he really fell hard for the Elton John game'

    • 3:23
    Okay Eric, ambush time I'm standing here with Eric Stone, and he's going to give me an exclusive. If you've done this with somebody else, I'm not going to be very happy. Okay, what are we doing? I want to hear the real story behind your... How many trillion? On Batman 66 or on Jaws? No, on Jaws. Four trillion. 4.1 trillion. So tell us the... So you have to play the game for at least 30 to 45 minutes, because you've got to beat, you've got to get through all four bounties, okay? And it's hard because you have to spin the wheel to light the bounty, hit the right ramp, then it starts the bounty, and you have to hit X amount of spinner hits, X amount of pop-ups, X amount of switches, X amount of leaps, all this stuff. And then, and then, and then, after that, you have to reel the shark in, spin the reel, and then you get a multi-ball. And you play the multi-ball, you try to reel the shark in, You've got to do that four times in a row. If you do all that four times in a row, then that's where the fun begins. And you get all kinds of points, big points. And when you spin the reel, every time it spins, you get $1 million plus $2 million plus $3 million plus $1 million plus $5 million. I had it up to $2.893 billion to spin. I spun the reel over 3,000 times in one game, and that's an exploit. But where, where, Eric? The rest of us can't do that. Yeah, well, go ahead and change the code. Change the code and you'll be good. And disqualify my scores. Don't worry, we'll do that. Don't worry. Yeah, and take Florida out of the March Madness.
    4:57
    Oh. And then I went on to put $13 trillion on that thing. I told you. Again, this is all on stream on Batcave Pinball, so people can watch this quote exploit that took an hour and a half to do that anybody can do. Because remember, exploits are what anybody can do. Okay? Even you can do them, PJ. You might not be able to do it. I couldn't do it. And so, yeah, so it was a good time. It was one of the funnest games I ever had. I was going crazy, and I spun the reel over 3,000 times. You know me. I just keep repeating the same thing. Wait, wait, wait, wait. So, first of all, you had to make a 45-minute investment to even get close to this exploit. It's not an exploit, but yes. Oh, so, okay. So you have another word for it? If it was an exploit, you'd be able to do it right away. Right? Right. It wouldn't take 45 minutes just to get to it. But the rest of it's not an exploit. An exploit is something that anybody can go crazy on. So in the end, did they get rid of your score? Of course.
    5:58
    Ster got rid of my score. I'm up in the other one. But you dreamed it, and no one can take it away from you. Is that all over? Is it all over? Is there a conclusion? It's all over. Did your state win? No, no. We got disqualified. My score got disqualified, so we're done. Colorado won. Walt Wood, baby. Good friend of mine. It's okay. I like Walt Wood. All right. Awesome. I'll be back. Three minutes. That's gold.
    6:26
    I couldn't get a word in. Oh, surprise. I got my answer. Yeah, you did. All right. Did anybody else get that? No. We got a clue. No.
    6:40
    In three minutes. Yeah, not bad. That's got to be the fastest thing he's ever done. Well, he had to go. He had to put more pinball. He's going to kick some more butt. More pinball shooting. I'm in top and B right now in the Silver Ball Rumble. Or fourth place, anyway. For now. It's early. It's day one.
    7:02
    It's only Thursday night. Exactly. Wait. A couple hours in. It gets better. So, Dave, what did you think of that interview? I thought it was very entertaining and spot on. here here's the thing that i think is most important i happen to pick up a flyer for jaws and that fishing reel theme is a spinner did you know that that's a horizontal spinner or that's what they're calling it okay hit that thing what did he say three thousand times i might have been It's either $300,000 or $3,000, but knowing him, it could be $3,000 because that's the kind of guy he is. Well, he said he built the bonus up to $2.5 billion.
    7:55
    So he started a million, do the math. Yeah, I think every shot was worth, what did he say? Each shot at one point was worth $1 million. He said it goes from $1 million to $2 million. Did he say it goes to $4 or $3? I don't remember. Yeah, $1 or $3 or $4. It doesn't really matter. Something big. It's $300,000 or $3,000.
    8:19
    Yeah, pretty insane. But, you know, like we said, anybody else could do it, just play better. You know, why punish the guy that can do it? They should never have eliminated that. No, no. They shouldn't let it play down. They could have gotten a lot more mileage out of it. But here we are with the exclusive interview you heard from the horse's mouth.
    8:45
    But that was only the beginning of the tournament. Why don't we focus on something else that happened? I believe it happened on Thursday night. Did we not play the latest game from Jersey Jack? We did. And I really didn't hold out a lot of, I don't know, give it a lot of credit when I watched the video on it and this and that. But playing it, man, that is a nice experience playing that game. It has just the light show. And going to see, this is the first time I actually saw the Jersey Jack pizza seminar thing he does every year. The first time I actually said, you know what, I'm actually around. I'm actually having a free couple of moments here in between talking to customers and new customers and everybody else. that would stop me in the hallway there. So I was like, I'm just going to go in here and at least grab a free slice of pizza.
    9:40
    But, no, I stayed for the whole thing, and it was very interesting how he described how they went from Wizard of Oz, which was basically, you know, had a lot of issues with the game. Even he said that. Then they've come a long way and learned a lot from that first game they did. and how many RGB LEDs are in Elton John versus Wizard of Oz, I think, I don't know, I want to say it's thousands of LEDs. I want to say maybe, is it 136,000 LEDs or 13,000 LEDs or something ridiculous. And you can tell because the light show in that game, there's just a lot of stuff going on. You just feel like you're at the concert. You feel like a Elton John concert when you're playing that game. So that was the game we played at the Project Pinball booth. They had a booth there. They were collecting money for their charity. So we played not only games, but we're forgetting the most important part of the story, and we're going to play the clip on that, and we're going to come back in a second.
    10:54
    Okay, so Dave and I are here with DJ at the Project Pinball booth, I guess, and we're going to play the new Elton John.
    11:07
    Now, I hope I can get DJ as worked up as he was about three minutes ago because he had a great game on it.
    11:17
    He's going to get rid of a, what do you have, a Rush LE, right? Rush on three minutes. Rush on three minutes is going to go bye-bye now with Elton John. So, contact us if you want to buy that. I mean, look at the disco ball on the top of the game. This game's got a lot of crap on it. It's got lots of flashy lights, certainly.
    11:34
    Okay, PJ, so why do you like this thing? It's fabulous. It's fabulous? It's terrific. It's going to do really well.
    11:42
    The light show is incredible on it. Oh, look at the figure skater. That's Tiny Dancer. Yeah, whatever. Tiny Dancer. Is that supposed to be something really good? It doesn't do anything, it's not Godzilla. It's just spinning around. Looks like it's pretty good flow. This is a Steve Ritchie game, right? Yeah, he just said yes. Yes it is, yes. I can tell by the right flipper shot. By that look in his eye? No, the right flipper shot to that high ramp thing going on there. That's the Warp 9 ramp, whatever they call it.
    12:21
    That's all right. Boy, that guy can't stay. The other one, please. I'd like to weigh the other one, please. Howling like an alley cat. Oh, that's terrible. Let me shoot the cat.
    12:36
    A little different than the other one. You know? It looks pretty. Oh, yeah. This looks like one of the prettiest games ever made. And so is it. The original. That's a big John. That's a big stream, Jim. It is. It's a big stream. And look at that thing.
    12:56
    James. I know I've bought games cheaper than that popper. I'm not crazy about the popper there. You don't even look at it. Oh, you don't like that for $2,000?
    13:09
    All right. I don't need this popper. No. Oh, but it's playing video. Oh, that's pretty cool. Look at that. Yeah. Oh, I didn't see that. Okay. Yeah, but when you're playing the game, you can't see them. Yeah, but I'm standing there. I don't really care. It's either I watch games or I watch that. You're still standing there. Right, but I'm watching the stream instead of games. What's the better show? It seems to be the lights tighten up. Where did that thing go? Yeah, that's a little... Okay, folks. I'm fine. Let's see how this show goes.
    13:46
    Well, first of all, I don't like that song. Yeah. I hate it. George, you need a diet here to put these together. I hate it.
    13:58
    Want me to say it again? Here we go. George, you're right on the best way to go. Here you go. Put a picture of you.
    14:09
    Yeah, tiny dancer. That looks like he's in a sausage case. I got a free ball for summer, or an extra ball. Yeah, you got one ball. Oh, okay. Thank you, PJ.
    14:26
    Oh, come on. Wow. I don't think we're going to be winning any prizes. If you get a prize for 59th place, I might get it.
    15:08
    You just got a lot of points for something. Something about Elton John in a baseball uniform, that just doesn't go. It's a glittery baseball uniform. I don't care what it is. It's very form-fitting, too. You're going to see that tomorrow night. You're going to see what? Oh, Elton John, yes. You know there's a ball joke in there, but I'm not going to tell you. There is.
    15:39
    Did you see that? I did. I like that. That's cool. I mean, there's more to it than that. I mean, it's like those rampy-rampy in a circle. Wait. The lights don't... Okay. Alright. Let somebody try to do something.
    16:03
    Okay. It's fine. It's all good. I thought we were doing prizes. At least I got a sticker out of it. It's not even a sticker. It's a magnet.
    16:25
    That's a sticker though. That I will pick. You got your favorite black rubber in this game. I love black rubber. I know you do. Why would you want to put clear rubber on it? Why not put black rubber on it? Oh, I don't know. Because there's so much block on this game? Yeah. Great idea.
    16:48
    That was pretty fast. You're right, Dave. Make it move. Maybe Dave has a chance of winning fabulous prizes.
    17:02
    Yeah, so far. Oh, he could win one of these beautiful trophies. That is a cool trophy. The unfortunate part is I don't hear much of the music. I hear a tackling karaoke thing. Oh, Danger Will Robinson. Okay. Oh, that's pretty cool. Look at that thing. That's okay. Okay, so it's got a light show on the ceiling.
    17:53
    Wait, are they going to clap like that? Why the clap like that? Because they drank this. Oh, that helped. Okay, I'm really stuck.
    18:04
    Okay, I can hear that's going. Dave, what did you think about your best friend's enthusiasm for the new game?
    19:06
    Oh, PJ's enthusiasm? He, over the top. I mean, he kind of falls in and out of love. I'd say he falls more in love than out of love. So he still likes his rush game, but he's eyeing it in the corner saying, well, I could actually sell that rush game and put that towards an Elton John because he really fell hard for the Elton John game. I don't think he felt hard for Elton John, which is a good thing, but at least he felt for the game, which is better.
    19:39
    But, yeah, you know what? I tried playing it a couple more times. I think we then went to the free play area, which was open on Thursday night. Not everything, but actually Elton John. So we all played that. I left early. Janice was beat. You know, we had a whole day and, you know, rest up for the next day. She had a lot of stuff going on. So that was my end of my Thursday night. I think you can continue the party on, didn't you, Garth? Oh, yeah. We were trying desperately each night to call an early night, but that wasn't happening. No matter what we did, we were there until at least 1 or 2 a.m. before we got out of there and go home. And then, you know, you need some sleep, so you're not getting back to the next day early. We were getting back the next day like at 3 p.m., 1 p.m., you know, never a.m. so where where i went through the show a little bit earlier in the day can we uh can we move to friday morning and what happened on friday morning at 10 0 7 a.m yeah i'm gonna play another clip folks now i took the lead from our good friend in australia grant and he said george you know Yeah, you could be a man on the street. Well, it was more me being cub reporter and reporting the instance. But we had a fire drill, and I happened to be playing Cactus Canyon. And basically they said, get out. It wasn't, please get out. It was, get out. Did you say, well, let me just finish my game, sir. I need to finish my game. People were trying to do that. And finally, they were just getting so mad, they threw everybody out. And then the firemen came, and then they got mad because everybody was in between from outside and into the building, that space. Oh, no, that's no good. And they threw everybody out. It was monsooning. It was like 30-mile-an-hour winds. It was crazy. Thank God it only lasted for 15 minutes. But the biggest piece was that hour from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. was only for people who had passes. So there was nobody there. You got to play whatever you wanted as much as you wanted. But it cut into it a little bit. But it wasn't bad. And it really never got crowded or really going after that.
    22:11
    Not until later in the day. But, you know, the first couple hours of the show, you could play pretty much whatever you like. Well, the only thing with that is, have any people ever been to high school, elementary school, middle school, where you had a fire drill and they actually brought you outside the building and you had to stand outside and wait? I mean, pretty much. You're making fun of me. I'm guilty. I was standing there doing the clip. You're probably just saying, you know what, no, no, no, that's for kids. We're adults. We can actually hang out here.
    22:45
    Well, we didn't even get seven minutes in, and we already have a fire alarm at fantastic Friday morning, 10.07. I think somebody was smoking in the boys' room.
    23:02
    Well, while we're waiting for the fire department to do their job, I'll burn a couple of minutes and talk about my first experience on Barry O's barbecue challenge. Oh, my God.
    23:16
    Weak one, but I know that can be resolved. The three bumpers up top are very weak. Not bad, but not terrific.
    23:31
    Who never on another podcast talked about meat porn on the back, the back glass with the screen. They were correct. It's kind of weird and cheesy.
    23:44
    I think the homage could have been done a little bit better, but that's just my thoughts while we're waiting for the fire alarm in the fire department to do their job.
    23:56
    Although, you know what, though? I bet you no one smells smoke, so they know that someone just pulled the alarm or some BS. Oh, no, but you should have heard all the theories.
    24:06
    Somebody was vaping in their room. Did you know that vaping can set off the fire alarm? Well, it's not smoke, but it can set off the fire alarm. There you go. Oh, no, was somebody partaking in the bathroom and opened the bathroom up? Yeah, there was all kinds of crap going on. So you'll hear my little take on that. Partaking, I would say, yeah, like in Donkey Kong, how high can you get? There was a lot of, you know, a skunk was running around the show, I think so. Several of them.
    24:42
    So you got there on Friday. I played most of the new games. I guess, first off, do you have anything that happened on Friday that you'd like to talk about? And then I'll come back to some of the games that I played. Correction, George, we got there on Thursday.
    25:02
    No, I know, but we're already on Friday now. Okay, okay. So, yeah. That's important. The fire alarm went off on Friday morning. Right, right, right. Come on, jump in the game. Oh, I'm jumping in the game, but you said I got there Friday, but we got there Thursday. So it was Thursday, or second day, Friday. Okay. So Friday after your – I re-arrived after the fire alarm, so I have no idea. I just heard about that, but I have no idea. What time did it actually go to? What time did you actually get to go back in the show after the fire alarm? It was close to right around 1030-ish. It was like 15 or 20 minutes. It wasn't long. But the fire department came. They had the hook and ladder. You know, they had – they called out the cavalry. Good thing. I mean, you never know. It's going to burn to the ground.
    25:42
    Okay. Well, there was a stern wildfire in attendance, so that could be what the reason was, you know? Oh, boy. Hold on. All right, there we go. Actually, can you hear that this time? Hold on a second. You probably couldn't hear that. Can you hear that? How about this? Yeah, I hear it. Okay, good. I hear birds now. Can you hear this one? Yeah, I hear that, too. Okay, good.
    26:07
    But I hear the birds in the background. Is it nice there? It's breezy. And it is a lot of, I'd say it was really nice blue sky, real clouds, not any of that pseudo-cloud stuff, so that's kind of nice, nice and puffy. Okay. Yeah, we just had two monsoons move through and lots of lightning, so. And the moon's out. Half a moon's out, George.
    26:33
    Okay. It's not moving. It's moving. Do you want to talk about some of the games? Did you, well, first off, did you play anything? other than the Elton John with me. I have a hard time playing any game at any of these shows because I just keep getting pulled in all different directions between I guess the only games we really play most of the time is just for judging aspects and then I was doing helped my friend buy a game so I play tested his game he wanted to buy about a high speed from Eric Bundy and did a little bit of lift the hood up, check it out play it and And, you know, good price. You got a good price on it, so that's good. And he said, yeah, it plays nice, but I can't wait to get, quote, unquote, Davified, he called it. So I'll be hitting that, his high speed down the road. But it does play well, pretty nice. Or Doctored Up. You could do Doctored Up. It could sell something. But he's called it Davified.
    27:31
    Otherwise, what did I play? I played, I didn't play enough, I would say. I definitely did. Well, there's one game we did not play together, but we played.
    27:41
    The James Bond Anniversary. Yeah, I did play a lot of that because I said, you know, when am I going to get to play this game again? So I did spend some time on that game because, you know, hard to find, rare, blah, blah, blah. And actually, I really liked the game. At first I said, why are they spending $20,000 on this game? It's a street-level, simple game. but I still wouldn't spend $20,000 on it but I did like how it shoots. It was fun to play.
    28:14
    Well, I played it for the first time and rolled the game. So I have a fondness for the game. I thought it was pretty good and like everybody, love the game, don't love the price. I'm hoping, and I said this at some point in time over the weekend, I hope that they release that particular footprint with another scene. I don't care if it's James Bond. It could be anything. I thought the play on that was pretty good.
    28:49
    But I played everything else, all the new games. They were – You played like a joust kind of game. I wish we had a chance. We were going to do it, but we just couldn't get together. It was broken. Oh, what? It was broken. I went in there, that was Saturday. We'll come to that in a minute. I'm trying to do a chronology because you and I weren't together all the time, but we did come together a couple of times. So let's kind of move. We're kind of still in Friday, Friday afternoon mode. How's that? All right.
    29:21
    So I played a boatload just because nobody else was playing it. And people are going to say, oh, come on, George. Seriously. I played like six games in a row of Labyrinth. I had to wait for the first game, but there were two of them side by side, and we thought the one was broken, and it wasn't.
    29:41
    I would not go buy this game, but I did enjoy playing the game. The higher level one with the cartoony background on it, those Dopey Muffet things, that's a waste of money.
    29:56
    It comes with that model, but that thing's a waste of money. It does nothing that it should. But the mouse don't move. You know, no smoke out of the nose of that rhino or warthog looking thing, whatever they call it. Never seen the movie, but it was fun. It was a fun game.
    30:15
    So I wish I got to play that. So what did it feel like when you played that game to remind you of any other game that you played?
    30:22
    No, no, it was pretty, it was kind of unique. It's a ramper. I mean, I played well on it. I mean, I thought I did pretty well. I was keeping up with the guy who I played with from Long Island. I think his name was Craig.
    30:37
    He had played a handful of times at an arcade out there, and he was showing me the ropes. And I played it as well as he did. I beat him a couple of times. He beat me a couple of times. So it was fun. You know, I just was like, okay, nobody's here. I might as well keep playing it. I played all the others. They were all in a row. I played Looney Tunes. You didn't play that, did you?
    31:00
    Nope. You didn't miss anything. I thought so. That was probably, I hate to say it. No, I know what it is, George. I'll tell you. You know what it is? Bugs Bunny Birthday Bash Part 2. No, it's got nothing to do with that. I think it's more the company. I'm just not big on their platform. What I'm trying to say, George, it is another failed attempt at doing justice to Bugs Bunny and Lunaturn.
    31:32
    We've gone through this. I want to spend time on it today. But I didn't play the Texas Chainsaw Massacre one because I played the other one, and I'm not into horror. So that was that. No, I'm not into horror either. All those games are ugly to me. I just don't get it. You put that in the living room? I don't think so. Not for me. No thanks. So, you know, that was, oh, here comes another one. I played this early. Oh, and boy. Somebody said be forgiving because it might be the power. But I played Barry O's Barbecue Challenge. Yeah, that sounds great. Was it really good? You want to get one? And I didn't coin the phrase, but meat porn at its best. Did you get meat and all the balls? It's just the whole thing, and I'll say it, I think I've said it to you and about nine other people,
    32:27
    make ten games, charge the crap out of them, give all the money to the widow, and be done. Move on. This is not anything anybody should be involved in. There's a slogan for the game that they rejected. It was, you can't beat our meat. Okay. Go ahead, George. I thought you were going to say burnt. Sorry. So there was that game.
    32:54
    What else? Oh, I have a question for you. Yeah. In the last show, we talked about the Extra Ball Lounge. How much time did you spend in the Extra Ball Lounge? In seconds or minutes? I spent a little bit of time but that's Saturday I'll tell you about that when we get to Saturday I also played Jaws I played both the pro and the premium liked it if more time it would probably be a lot of fun it's what I call typical Stern kudos to Keith Elwin. He did a good job. He did what he was supposed to do. Decent game. Which game? Jaws. Did you play it? I did play some Jaws. I played one game.
    33:58
    I am a fan of the movie. I guess I'm a fan of the movie. The movie inside the movie. The part where they're in the boat talking and all that camaraderie and Captain Quint saying his thing, and I really like that actor and what he does. So it kind of brought back memories of that movie.
    34:18
    But, you know, would I own the game? No. You know, I'd play it again maybe, but it's really – it was funny, speaking of that and Jack, you know, Jersey Jack, when he was doing his thing, And he was kind of definitely throwing some digs at other companies versus his company. He said, you know, we do this and other companies, you know, they just kind of call it in. They don't complete their code. We complete all our code. So, you know, he's talking about there, you know. So he was throwing out a lot of good one-liners about stuff about, you know. And, you know, he's right. You know, his Elton John game, compared to the other ones next to it, his is over the top compared to his competition.
    35:10
    That's pretty much me for Friday. I went to dinner slash happy hour a little early, and I probably should not have. I found you later in the process. Let's just put it that way. You were demanding beer at one point for me. No, that was Saturday. That was Saturday.
    35:33
    You're jumping ahead again. I know. That was so blurred. Dr. Janice said, you're demanding beer. I'm like, well, wait a second, Janice. I was a benevolent guy. I bought them drinks at the bar on Friday. That's true. I wasn't a bad guy. No, no. I just had run out of beer and I was still thirsty. And I was like, okay, come on, Dave. But whatever. We'll get to that in a minute. So yeah, we had the horn band This is probably an appropriate spot to put that Dave and I are sharing a couple of libations Here at Pintastic 2024 And I have to tell you This has got to be one of the best bands I've heard in a long time Don't you agree, Dave? George, make it stop, George Please, for God's sake, make it stop I need more beer. I need more beer in my ear.
    36:31
    Yay! I know who I'm going to call. Not Dr. D. That bit is crap. Oh my God, George. Please make it stop.
    36:53
    Why? We're in the Bradford Chamber. Isn't it fun? My tongue. What do you mean my tongue, Joey? Do you like your ears are bleeding? That's my tongue.
    37:12
    Where are my earplugs? We did the judging Friday afternoon. We got that done. Because Thursday night, we spent a lot of time Thursday night vetting out games to make sure we can kind of get the lion's share done of judging Thursday night because I knew it was going to be a late morning arrival or early afternoon arrival Friday to put these awards on the game. So we did the judging Friday afternoon and got a lot of good games done. I mean, we got a – for Antique, I'm going to give you the rundown of who got what. Yeah, you might as well. Okay. You might as well. So it was King Rex 1970 Rare Valley Adaball that the guy, it was a basket case game he got from somebody. And he just did a nice restoration on it. He did touch up the play field and clear coated it.
    38:05
    Oh, yeah, and this guy, yeah, he was working the show. He was actually a tech. He was actually a volunteer every year. Really nice guy. I don't have his name at the top of my head, but I have it later on. I can probably bring it up. But, yeah, really, real nice restoration, really attention to detail. So that was, I gave that one, even though it was 1970, I gave that one the antique badge because there were no antiques out there. So I gave him the antique because it's over 50 years old, so it qualifies. Then for early 70s EM, I gave that to a really nice Valley Fireball German version that had German writing all on the play field, German writing on the back glass. and the owner told me when I interviewed him, he said that someone who had the game before him put English writing all over all the German stuff. So he had to scrub that all off and re-clean it and everything else to get it back to where it was. But that played really well, looked brand new, so that definitely got the 70s EM thing award, got the blue ribbon for that. And then late 70s, that went to a Paragon. that was actually Scott Richardson's game, I found out later on. He sold it to this other guy. Yeah, I tried to play it. Some pig.
    39:17
    Standing behind him, right? Yeah. Plays his game out. What does he do? Plays another game. I was thinking he put on a four-player game for himself.
    39:28
    No, but, I mean, come on. You know, a little early. What you've got to say at that point is, hey, can we play two players? I just walked away. I'm just like jerk. Maybe he's so focused he didn't see you there. Maybe he just wanted to keep playing. No, it doesn't matter. You always look around. You make sure.
    39:50
    So that was that one. And then I'm glad I waited a little longer to post all the awards because I couldn't really find a good early 80s candidate that would actually win it. I was actually considering going back into the club rooms or the tournament room and give them a tournament game, but I really don't want to give tournament games any awards, you know, if I can't, if I can't help it, unless they really stand out. Because, you know, they're decent players, but they're not really, you know, restored up nice. You know, they're good. Right. Only if I really had an honorable choice. So I did last year. I gave to a rare game he had in there, so that was decent. So I'm glad this guy brought a Flash Gordon.
    40:31
    It was in nice shape. He did a whole repaint on the cabinet thing. a huge fan of it because he used super shiny... You know... It was an okay game. I didn't tell you it was great but it was okay.
    40:49
    Judging by its peers, it was good for what it was. It was good enough for Blue Ribbon. There were a lot of woof-woofs at this show. There was a lot of woof-woofs there. I'll tell you, if I've actually held back Blue Ribbon before, if I can't find one that's actually worthy of it, I'm not going to put it on a game because that looks bad on Maureen and I, so I'm not doing it. I could not find a 60s game worthy of a ribbon, so I did not put a 60s one out there. I think, again, for the second year.
    41:15
    And then late 80s, I gave it actually to Stu. Stu brought a really nice Data East Secret Service that was in gorgeous shape, and he was actually surprised. Ben was surprised, his son Ben, because he's the one that did most of the work on it. It looked good. I played it. No, thank you. Yeah, I mean it's not a it's not a great player
    41:39
    But it plays well for what it was it was clean I don't care for the game period I could have played the best it could have played He did say that game is very similar in playability to high speed high speed is very close to that game Okay in in playability and shots and whatever So I said I can kind of see that And I think that was it That's five, right? Yeah. So we got five out there. And then we got freed up to do other things, and I basically kept getting texts, and I bought a whole bunch of Invisiglass from Butch, you know, Butch's Garage, which is also Bob. He goes to Allentown Show. and I also got some Ivan glass. I'm going to try that out that he brought with me. I bought that from Ivan. He sent it up with Butch or Bob.
    42:31
    Nice guy. I tried out a Star Wars he had for my sister who wanted to buy that, and it played okay, but my sister said, no, I'm not going to spend the money, so we didn't do that.
    42:41
    What did you think of Elton John, the tribute band? I thought they were really good. I thought he really played the part well. He had all the outfits really down. He sounded like him. I mean, I didn't really get to hear the whole concert. I only got to hear several songs here and there. I just can't get pulled away with different stuff. So I never could really stay in one place for too long. Yeah, I thought they were decent.
    43:09
    The entertainment's always good. It seemed to be well-received. I called it a night after that. I had a little too much fun a little too early. But you know who I sat with at the bar?
    43:23
    Frank Reich. Is it Reichmuse? Is that his last name? Who? Excuse me. He works with Todd Tuck. He's a sidekick. Oh, Frank Lloyd Wright. No, I had no idea. I know you have Frank. Yeah, he always says Frank. Yeah, okay. Right. Yeah. I hung with him for a while, and somebody from his crew, Chris, Those guys were a lot of fun.
    43:49
    What else? Oh, did I meet them, too? Those are the guys that were at the bar that we were talking to? No, you met that guy, Paul, who was living in Rehoboth. Oh, Rehoboth, okay. And he was sitting with his two buddies. Now, after you split, and then Frank and somebody else came in, and you were busy with your buddies, and, right, didn't you conclude the evening with a bunch of friends that you've known for 30 or 40 years? Yeah, 40 years. And you came on the grand tour? Yeah, Grand Tour, because they're not really into the whole pinball scene, so I kind of gave them the pinball scene. And they were asking me, they said, okay, like my buddy Craig from, you know, 40 years ago, he said, okay, yeah, show us the whole, show us what we should be playing here. It's a lot of pressure on me. It's like, that's a lot of questioning. You need to play Elton John. I know that. But otherwise, like, okay, what are you into? Like, I don't really know what to guide you to.
    44:38
    So you drag them through the show, and you show them everything, and you keep a bike. I mean, I have my buddy Jim on Saturday, but I'm trying to finish up on Friday night. Is this a good place to finish with Friday night and now we can kind of go into Saturday? One more thing about Friday night. So I did bring him over to – I just saw a Star Trek Next Generation in really nice shape. I said, hey, this looks like a good – let's play this game. So – because I really like the game, and I picked one up for a pretty cheap money. That was a rusty scupper that I've been de-rusting. It's coming out nice for myself. I might sell it on the road, but who knows. So I played this one. It was all done up really well. And I played with them. And, you know, I usually do pretty well in the game. I did okay. And they're just okay players, you know, batting the ball around. But I just had this killer ball where I got, like, what is it, a billion points? I guess, like a billion something. I don't know. But I never really got that high in the game before. And I guess, you know, you can get a lot higher than that. But for me, I didn't play the game much at all. I kept getting multi-ball. I kept getting, you know, I keep destroying the Borg ship over and over again. They were, like, amazed, like, we're not worthy kind of thing. They were like, wow. We had no idea, you know. I was putting on a show. I was putting on a clinic, and I said, any questions afterwards? And they started, you know, laughing.
    46:00
    So good. So that's a good ending for Friday night. So Saturday morning, you're sleeping, and I'm up at the crack of dawn. 9am comes and it's pinball news or whatever the hell they called it. So I'm like, okay, I'll go in. Watch the presentation on the P3 system Multimorphic and their new game. I'll talk about that in a little bit. Princess Bride. One of the programmers sorry, I can't remember your first name. Ocean and then another guy, I think his name was Steve. They were there doing their presentation. interesting and then I don't know if I should play it here or play it a little bit later but I have an interview with Dan Yarrington from Pinball Tycoon Arcade up in Manchester New Hampshire. Yeah the guy with the cowboy hat. The guy with the cowboy hat and I think you will learn after I listen and edit this you'll learn why he has a cowboy hat but if we don't, I guess I'll have to tell you the next show.
    47:13
    Saturday afternoon at Fintastic in lovely downtown Marlborough, Massachusetts. I'm glad to have as a guest this afternoon Dan Yarrington from, well, I'm not sure which company, because there's a couple of them. Sure. Welcome, Dan. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company. Thanks, good to be here, George. So our main company that we started with was Tabletop Tycoon, so we make board games, we publish board games. And then Pinball Tycoon is a new thing that we started relatively recently, in the last couple of years. And most people know us from Tycoon Arcade, which is up in Manchester, New Hampshire. We used to call it Glimmer Hold, and we've changed it to a more memorable name, I suppose, or easier to pronounce in spells, certainly. So it's all just Tycoon. So whether it's Tabletop Tycoon, or making board games, or Pinball Tycoon, or buying, selling, and trading board games, or Tycoon Arcade, you can come play with all the arcade games and pinball machines and everything else. So our Tycoon Arcade, if you go to tycoonarcade.com, you can see previews of our selection there. We have over 100 pinball machines, over 100 arcade games. I think we're about 230, 250 machines. So we have a wide variety of classic games, modern games. So it's a great source for anybody in the southern New Hampshire area. Or if you're visiting Boston, we're maybe 45 minutes to an hour north. So it's worth the trip. My first question is, how did you acquire all the games? Well, with money is usually how we did it. So we started back in during COVID. So we moved to that new office. Our current location is our old offices, actually, for our publishing company. So we were on the second floor of an old mill building. We moved there in the fall of 2020. We had actually sold off our logistics and distribution company back in 2019. That was pre-COVID. And so we had moved in just a nice office. We were like, oh, we just need an office. We don't need a warehouse anymore. This will be great. So we moved into a nice big office space. Obviously, there weren't that many people working in office at that time, so we had four or five people there. We have a big 12,000-square-foot space. Slowly over time, I said, oh, we were kind of, you know, stir-crazy just sitting around in the office. We were doing a lot of work. You know, we were still working all through COVID, thankfully, but we were doing a lot. There weren't that many people around. It was a lot of virtual work. So I was like, hey, I really like arcade games. the only way we could get a little arcade in here. We had a pool table, we had a ping-pong table. I was going to say, the pool and the ping-pong ran out, looking for another diversion. Yeah, and of course we had a big selection. We made board games, so we had a huge selection, 100 board games in our game library that we could play there in the office. So that still exists. But flash forward, and we said there was a little room,
    49:49
    I don't think how big it is, maybe like 20 or 30 feet square. And I was like, oh, this would be kind of cool if we made a little mini arcade in here. It was just a side room. So I got three skee-ball lanes. I got some classic arcade games. I basically went to all the staff, and I was like, if you could have one arcade game, what would it be? We kind of custom-built an arcade game. So did you go out and actually acquire the games? Yep. So we had an operator that was local to us. They were actually moving. And so I knew nothing about arcade games or pinball or anything. I'd played some when I was a kid, but I hadn't really been into it at all. And I just said, like, hey, I really love skee-ball. I love, like, arcade games. I started doing some research on like the best arcade games, the best pinball machines, etc. I had some friends that were really into pinball, so I asked them like, hey, what are the best pinball machines? How are you guys going to do that? Again, just contextually as part of like a little arcade for the staff, just a little selection. So we probably had, I think, 15 pieces of equipment total at that time once we finished that room. And included in that was, I ended up with an Indiana Jones Williams, a Star Trek Next Pin Williams, and then a Guardians of the Galaxy Pro that was one of the newer machines at the time. And so we had those, and I was like, oh, this is great. We have an arcade. We've got some arcade games. We had some multi-cades that had a lot of arcade games on them, so it was pretty easy. We had the Skee-Ball. We had a bunch of different... We had a Fruit Ninja. We had all kinds of crazy stuff. Sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, it was fun. And so we did that for about three months, and we were like, oh, that's kind of fun. And then I was like, you know, I'm going to research this. There's a lot of other cool pinball machines out there, like arcade games and stuff. Somebody got fit. So we slowly, over time, you know, we're just working away. And this is all in the spare time. We were playing a lot of D&D online through Roll20. And so while, when you're not playing live, you don't have a lot of interactions. You're waiting for your turn, you're listening. I don't know anything about that. Oh, sure. D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, a role-playing game. And usually you play around a table together. But you wouldn't play together. But you would be playing on the virtual tabletop. So you'd be playing together, but you'd be on voice chat. So I'd be playing with people all over the world. But we're just sitting there, waiting for your turn. You're listening to what the other characters are saying and stuff. But I had a lot of time to do research. I researched a lot of pinball machines and arcade games and stuff. So now, flash forward, that was beginning of 2022, probably, is when we started building up that arcade. We moved in there at the end of 2020. Might have been the end of 2021. So, again, just bought some stuff. But this is just for your staff. Just for the staff, yes. This is not... Just for the staff. We're getting to the bridge soon. Yes, yes. So then we had that little room, again, 20, 30 feet square, and I was like, oh, well, I have all these other cool pinball machines. I really want to get one of those. So we bought a couple more, and we bought a couple more. We were buying from dealers, distributors, arcades, individual people, and so we bought them from a bunch of different places and just expanded on them. We're like, well, they don't really fit in this room anymore, so maybe we'll just go out the door and round the corner a little bit. There was a line, and we said we could slide this over. Again, we had this pretty large drop of space relative to the number of people. We only have a dozen people in the company. Right, but you're leading the charge here. Oh, sure. The man at the top is leading the charge, and everybody else is falling in line. All right, good boss. It was probably, I don't know, if we did it over two years, it would be like every couple of weeks you get a new pinball machine, and sometimes two or three because there's these new releases coming out. This was all during inflation, of course, so I bought it the absolute worst time. But there's a lot of cool stuff coming out, and we've got a lot of cool things. Well, let's talk about what's here, and we'll get to the end of the set. You have spectacular games in that room. Yeah. I mean... Well, we curated them, so that was what I started to do, is not being in the hobby, but knowing games, board games, right? And I was like, okay, I asked other people who knew, whether it was through just online sites or through just people I know, I was like, so what are your favorite machines and why? And then I looked at those and I said, well, if I want to curate a selection here that's It's going to be really fun for me, fun for the staff. And eventually, as we got our way into this, we started realizing, well, we don't necessarily want to just have, there's a lot of machines to have just for 12 people or whatever it was at the time. And I said, we really should just, like, open it up to the public somehow. So we started doing private events and stuff for birthday parties for the families and friends of the company. And then eventually, as we invested more and more, now imagine a big rectangular office and the whole outside ring is all offices that we work in, and the whole middle is basically an arcade. That's how it developed. So we were building that over time. We've always had a little retail shop. We got into retail and board games way back in the day. So we had a little retail store. We had a prize store. So this is all part-time development of this over time. At some point, we clicked. We were like, we're going to make an arcade. Like, we knew that. But we weren't doing it full-time. We were just doing it our spare time. So we were building up to it. So, yeah, we were buying all the best, you know, top 100, so to speak. I built my own custom top 100. And so I actually had to go up inside and look at top 100, and it shows you 291 games. And I'm like, wait a minute. So I went through that and I said, well, which ones do I want and why? Which ones don't I want? And I curated that down. The same thing for arcade games, same thing for video games. We have, you know, big, like, I love the Jurassic Park arcade game. Big cabinet shoes for them. So I wasn't just buying, like, I didn't go to an arcade dealer and say, hey, what are the best performing games? I said, let me go try these games. It was a good excuse to go to a bunch of arcades, go to a bunch of pinball places. So did you go to a lot of local places? Yeah, we were all the time. So there's some places that closed during that time frame as well. But we went to everything from Dave & Buster's to just, you know, barcades and places like that. And I was traveling around still. As COVID kind of declined, we were doing more travel for work. So wherever I was traveling, I would go to a local place. If I was going to Chicago, I'd go to Interion. And they said there's one on every block from what I heard, you know, on the show. Wow. So that's where, you know, we would experience different games. even just now, we went to Texas for TPF, and we went to a little arcade, and I was like, we played NBA Fast Break. I was like, oh, that's kind of cool, they had two linked machines, I was like, that's cool, it's a different experience, it's a variety thing, and it's a different theme, so a lot of people are esteemed, and I was like, the goal for the arcade that we have now, for Typekit Arcade, is that all those people come in, there's their grandfather, and they're with their kids, and their kids, and I have three kids They're now presently 8, 10, and 14, but they were younger, obviously, during this time zone. So we really want a place that's family-friendly. Everybody can come there, and the grandfather can enjoy different games, and the parents can enjoy different games, and the kids can enjoy different games. But you're not going to Chuck E. Cheese and you're just like, oh, we're so bored, there's nothing to do here, we're here for the kids' birthday party. We wanted a more multi-generational arcade. Very, very, very, very smart approach. Well, we'll see. So we're just opening now. We officially got our, just a couple days ago, we got our official special exception approval, which is just a city ordinance thing to officially be approved to change from an office to an arcade. So we've been doing preview events for a while. We had hired up staff. We trained folks up. So now we're getting to a point where we're just expanding our hours starting next week. So we're largely open weekends and evenings. Right now we'll be open as of next week from Fridays from 5 to 9, and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. So most of your activities are for parties and that sort of stuff around the weekends. So that's what we're doing now and we'll see. I always tell people, you vote with your tokens, we're an old fashioned token based arcade and all our sales benefit is for TOTS. So it's pretty simple for us. We're just like, listen, this isn't really a for profit part of our business. This is a kind of sub profit part of our business. You can think of it that way. It has to cover a cost, you have to pay our staff, you have to pay our electricity, you have to pay our rent. Right, right. Expenses have to come out first and all the proceeds go to the charity. And you have to pay for all the machines. And so to keep all the machines up and running, it's not cheap. That's a lot of arts and labor and all that stuff. So that's the goal, but we do a lot of events for like the Boys and Girls Club. We'll do events where you can come in and play for free, you know, if disadvantaged neighborhoods and that sort of thing. And then we just say, hey, you want to have a corporate event? You want to rent out the whole arcade? We've done some of those. But people can also just come in and we have, I think we have packages of tokens. They work from 19 bucks to 99 bucks, depending on how good a deal you want. And everything's just token-based play. Most games are one token, some like, I'll give you an example, pinball terms. say we have a Foo Fighters Pro and a Foo Fighters Premium. It might be one token to play the Pro and two tokens to play the Premium. But we have a Premium on site, and you can play it, as opposed to, oh, well, we don't have that. We have a James Bond 60-epon. Oh, I was going to say, thank you for bringing that, and thank you for having that open to the public. That's a great, that's more my speed. For sure. But, great game. A lot of fun. And so that's what we've tried to get a variety. We don't, you know, we go kind of like 90s and up. We don't really do a lot of older stuff. We are going back and getting some older. That's where the market is. Yep. I'm more dinosaur-y, but there's a market for everything. We have an audience. It's not huge like other podcasts because they're, like you said, more in tune with what you're doing. But that doesn't mean I don't like it, and it doesn't mean I don't support it. Sure. And classic, it's funny, so classic criminal podcasts, right? So the classic is always defined by relative to your generation, right? So it's like, what was classic for you versus all of us? I kind of used, I don't know if it's an industry standard, but 25 years or more older. Like cars. Correct. So that's kind of what we based it on. But we deviate because there are times like this. People want to know, again, podcasting is opinions for the most part. And people want to know, well, what do you think of the latest game? So I took it upon myself to play everything at these shows. And I played The Princess Bride. Again, knowing nothing about that title, but a fun game. Weird Al, same thing. I mean, I'll play everything and I'll give everybody their due.
    59:25
    Especially you. You're doing a charity. But I'm really intrigued about your company because I don't know anything about board games. How long have you been in existence?
    59:35
    There's more to the story. For sure. So, yeah, we've been talking all about the moments, the arcade and stuff. And that's all relatively recent for us. So Tabletop Games, I've been in the industry since 1996. We started our company in 1999. We started in retail. We have five retail locations, just little board game stores. That's what we sold. We sold online and we sold locally, and this was over many years, making a very short story of this summary because it's a long time frame. But then we got into podcasting, actually, back in 2008. We did hundreds of podcasts about board games and interviewing. What was the name of the podcast? All those different names. No, no, not live anymore. We did session impressions. They were like review shows. We'd play the game and tell you about it. We did Game Gab, which was interviews with designers and publishers and stuff. We did Table Talk, which would be more like topics. Something that was unrelated to a game, but like, oh, we're going to this convention. Let's do a table talk about it. So we got into podcasting. That was the early days for podcasting back in the day. We did a lot of dimensions. We did cross-promotion with other local stores. We eventually got into distribution and logistics. We did a ton on Kickstarter. And then eventually we started publishing games. This was back in 2012. This time we started doing that separately. And so then flash forward from there. Local retail had declined as online retail grew. Again, we're making a very quick summer of this. We had sold off our distribution company and logistics company, and we basically just had publishing left. So since then, we've basically just been doing publishing. So we make games. We create games. We make games based on Princess Bride. We make Everdell as our most popular game. I want to talk about that. By the way, if fans want to see our selection, just go to tabletopticoon.com, and you can see all the games that we make. We make, we sell to Amazon, we sell to Target, Barnes & Noble. So you can buy from our website, you can buy through any of those channels that you normally buy from. But that's kind of our core business. We make more games, and we sell them, and we give them. So that's our kind of slogan is we make games, we sell games, and we give games. And that is a virtuous cycle. So I used to get games from Tres Cots when I was a kid, and we grew up with nothing. We had no money. We were on food stamps. We got people would show up at the house, and they would go, oh, wow, here's some gifts. I didn't know what was going on, right? I was, oh, that's great. I was eight or ten. Where did you grow up? Western New York, south of Buffalo, Amherst country. So, right out in the middle of nowhere. But we were very fortunate to have people from Toys for Tots that would bring gifts to us. And so, we used to get games from that. Now, we're obviously, if I'm able to buy, you know, over 100 pinball machines, I am not, you know, handed off anymore. So, we've been fortunate enough to be able to be successful. And now, we can give back. So, if you go to tabletop.com giving, you can actually see our rolling record of what we give. We're a five-star sponsor for Toys for Tots. and we give millions of dollars worth of games over the course of time. I knew there was more to this story. You're a great guest.
    62:17
    How did you get into this? Into board games? Yeah. So, I mean, I just liked board games back in the day. I actually used to do magic events, magic gathering events, and played a lot of D&D and stuff. And I just played board games, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s. Right, 2000 is kind of a turning point for Euro games coming into the U.S. And so we did a lot of, I bought, sold, traded Magic Singles, Pokemon cards, miniatures, flexible miniatures like Mage Knight and stuff like that. These were all tabletop games. And then board games. We started getting into board games more. So when we opened our stores, we wanted to be more of a boutique board game shop that didn't really exist. Where are your stores? So we just have one store right now at the arcade. Oh, that's it. The other ones that sold off or closed? So over time, we had a lot of stores that opened up. This was in the, you know, figure 2003 to 2013, probably about a 10-year span. And we had local stores all around. We had all different stores open and closed. We'd do pop-up stores and test on a market. And what happened, if we look at retrospect, was way back in the day, 99, we sold at 96. We sold online first. That's what we sold. We made our own websites from HPML. eBay didn't exist. Amazon didn't exist. We were just selling. Your marketing background is extraordinary. No, I mean, it is. It's an incredible story. So we were starting direct to people. We became an eBay power seller back in the day when that was a big thing. Again, this is pre-Amazon. And now we obviously sell on Amazon and stuff. But the core element of it is we love games, so we make games. We didn't say we as in sell by life. We have a whole team of people, it's not just us. So we all like to make games and sell games and stuff. And the proceeds from making and selling those games help us to give games to other people who can't necessarily afford to access games. And that, just like it made a difference for me in my life that led me to that career, makes a difference for everybody else. So we extend that giving into pinball in more recent terms here, and that we're donating games to Project Pinball. So we just placed one, I believe it's at the Ronald McDonald House in the Boston Seaport. So we donated a Hot Wheels so that they could place it there. So projectpinball.org, for people who are not familiar, they place pinball machines in children's hospitals, like Children's Miracle Network hospitals, and Ronald McDonald House. So it helps families. So that's something that we can do. We also, all of our sales from the arcade, from our Pinball Tycoon dealer, got a buy-sell trade business for pinball, and from PeopleCup Tycoon, our games business, those all are benefit-choice for shops. And people sometimes ask, like, well, I don't know, how does that, like, how does it translate? Like, if I buy a game, what happens? So we used to have a thing where we said, if you buy a board game from us, we'll donate another game to kids. Not necessarily the same game, because it has to be a different game. No, I understand. And in this case, we eventually realized, we were kind of doing this one-for-one thing for a while, And then every year I would just round up. I would just think, yeah, but we can make more games. Because the cost of a kid's game that you would donate en masse is not as high as a $100 board game or a $60 board game. So we can actually afford to donate more. And so we just did. And then we just realized, well, there's not really a one-for-one that's understating it, but it's also variable. If we sell you a $15 board game, that contributes less money that we can use to give than a $100 board game. So obviously a $100 board game contributes more. So we eventually just had all sales benefit choice and talks. That's what it is. So we've carried that across all of our businesses. And a lot of what we do is for fun, and it's a business. So it's all the boring things. It's marketing, and it's bookkeeping, and it's administrative. No, you have a lot of knowledge. I have a question about your Everdell. Sure. So you did a re-theme of a flash, if I understand correctly. And that's one of your products, Everdell? Yep. So Everdell is our most popular game line. So if you go to tabletop.goo.com or everdellgame.com, you can see, and it's Everdell, so D-E-L-L. A lot of people hear like D-A-L-E, but it's D-E-L-L. And that's a game that we published first back in 2018, and we have many, many products. So what's the next game? Next board game? Well, no, the next game that you're going to take from one of your... Oh, so let me give you the Everdell details first. So we have Mitch and Eric, two local guys, to us. They work on games. They like to restore them, basically. And so they said, hey, we'd love to make an Everdell pinball. That'd be kind of cool. Or just a pinball that was like a board game pinball. They were like, oh, that's kind of cool. I don't know anything about that. So nine months ago or whenever they started working on this project, and we got a whole rethemed 1978 Flash Williams machine. Pretty simple machine, but all rethemed with our artwork and everything for Everdell. It was beautiful looking. Yeah, gorgeous. So Tristan, our graphic designer, did the layout. So the art is done by various illustrators for the game, but we then mapped that onto a pinball cabinet. And then everything about it was custom. It was basically rebuilt from the ground up. So I don't know. We got a bunch of feedback at this show just from fans of Everdell, honestly, that were like, oh, I don't know anything about pinball. Like, can I buy one? And I'm like, I don't think you understand how expensive pinball machines are. Right. And also, like, we made one. So if I was going to sell this one, it'd be really expensive because I'd need to get a lot of money to donate it to kids. And we really just made it for us. Like, we might have it at a booth at a convention or something in the future, which obviously we're debuting it here at Pintas Week, but we also go to board game shows. So we might bring it there and say, hey, here's this cool, like, pinball is, like this is a cool Everdell pinball machine that we made. So yeah, we don't have any real plans to, you know, it's a lot of work to make pinball chains. No, no, no, my partner in crime was
    67:33
    solicited by a company and he's like, well did you contact, you know, and he went through the list and they said yes, and he goes, oh so I'm like B team, huh? He goes, we're trying to find somebody and it's hard. So, you know, as you know, it's a long arduous process. So it would be, you know, we like Like pinball, there's a lot of great companies making lots of great pinball machines. There's no shortage of new pinball machines coming out. So I think, you know, for Everdell, this is kind of a cool curiosity. If we have enough interest, we see this with Everdell in general. You know, we've made blankets. We've made all kinds of, like, merch to go with it. So it's not out of the question. I mean, honestly, the biggest challenge for pinball is we've got to find some way to design it. We've got to find some way to manufacture it. We don't do any of those things. Now's the time to talk about it. You never know. Well, if we want to get it done in three to five years, then now's the time to talk about it, right? There you go. So, the hat. Yep. Stetson or is this all? Oh, no, this is a, what is this particular one? That's a MHP. So, I do have a Stetson. I buy it, but I'm not particularly picky about my hats. So, what's the deal with the hat? Oh, we grew up on a farm out in Amish country, and I used to wear straw hats. So, it's got nothing to do with your company, nothing to do with any game? I mean, we... Nope. It's great. Yeah, I mean, we... I used to wear one in college. You know, during the, I guess, the heyday of, what are those? Yeah, that time frame. Yeah, so no, I mean, I just started, I probably started wearing it. But I have one still. 10 to 15 years ago. I have one. Yeah, I mean. And I love wearing it, but you. It keeps the rain off, it keeps the snow off, it keeps the sun out. I love, but you stick out of a crowd, and that's why. They said, look for the guy in the cowboy hat. And I'm like, well, you stuck out. And that's, of course, where the, you know, I've ordered them hats for different seasons and different, you know, if I'm working out in the yard, I wear a junky old hat because it gets dirty. I do this with my hand and I pick it up, it gets all dirty. So this is what I actually just got. They call that character. Yeah, during TPF, I actually bought this one locally there in Texas because there's not ones I can get my size easily up here.
    69:36
    So at any rate, yeah, it's not a gimmick or anything like that. People always see me at a show and they're like, oh, you must always wear your hat. I'm like, well, I'm not at a show or if I'm outside. but then they'll see me in the office or on a Zoom call or something, and they're like, where's your hat? So I've gotten to the point now where I literally have to have the hat on. It's part of the uniform? And then I have to take it off and be like, okay, well, I don't actually wear it inside. I don't know if I would recognize you without the hat on. So that's very useful if I'm at a show, now that I've been doing this long enough, and tabletop games at least, if I just take my hat off, I'm effectively invisible, so I can just walk around anywhere. Did you ever do radio or voiceover work? just all the podcasts that we talked about. So I do have a background. You have a really good voice. Oh, thank you. I do have a background in theater, so I did theater when we were growing up. We did a lot of Shakespeare. We did traveling Shakespeare. I did college choir for a long time and was in barbershop and stuff. And then we just did, like I said, 300, 400 podcasts. So you get used to it, I guess. We're only over 100. We started doing it as a monthly. Sure, sure. Yeah, we were doing it. It's fun to do. At our peak. and we've since pod faded, as they say, but, you know, at our peak, we were doing four or five episodes a week, and then we had kids, and then we were like, yeah, we're not going to do that. They were mostly short form. We had 20 minutes or something. Still got to edit it. Still have to. Yeah, we did a lot of Audacity and a lot of Levelator and all that sort of stuff, so. So, anything we forgot? Something that... No, nothing I can think of. I mean, we are now open for the Tycoon Arcade, so if you're in the southern New Hampshire area or greater New England and you want to come to an awesome arcade, benefit toys for tots, Just visit tycoonarcade.com. It has all the latest hours there. We are hiring for technicians. So for both Pinball Tycoon, we are starting to buy, sell, and trade machines. So my goal there is to have a really broad selection of really high-quality machines and the broadest variety. I'm making the pinball store that I wanted to exist when I was buying pinballs. And I have this scrape around on Facebook ads and Craigslist and people's websites. Welcome to the hobby. That's how it goes. Yeah, and we have that in the tabletop games industry, too, We're trying to be a little a little less hobby, but you know so eventually pinball tycoon.com will develop to have a real You know full-fledged storefront and real good selection. We'll have a wish list of games We're looking for you know just to buy or trade for We'll have a bunch of games that we can sell you'll have pictures and images of all those games So you can see specifically like we have like right now we have three Indiana Jones Williams So I want to be able to show you like well This is the price difference and then you can like click into it and see oh this is a little quick video of what it looks like this is pictures of that specific machine so everything will have a tycoon number as we call it so it'd be tycoon 251 tycoon 362 it's kind of like a little serial number for us so we can differentiate and know between the hundreds of machines that we have all right did you buy this one or this one and that way you we only really sell locally right now but eventually we'll be shipping and stuff and even people that aren't here they could see what it is versus doing a manual like a lot of what i've done over the years just okay can we get together we'll do a facetime call, we'll walk through it, we'll show it to you. It's just like, it's a very messy process. I'm trying to proceduralize that and really build a great selection of high quality machines. So these aren't going to be the cheapest things in the world. If you want to get a great deal and you don't mind working on machines, that's great. I do not do that. I have hired Chris Lourdes, our director of operations. We have lots of great techs that love to do that stuff. They fix machines. I know like... You play machines, they fix. I buy and play, they fix. And that's where I want to make that store for people that want a Really well built machine obviously it's pinball so it'll need repairs and maintenance over time, but you know it's well shopped I guess versus when people say I've shopped a machine I've learned in buying over a hundred machines that means all different things to different people so So we're aiming to be a little more high-end You know really good quality stuff and really have a broad variety we sold a Mustang the other day And it was the only Mustang that was available It was had like a hundred plays on it And it was in great shape and the guy was like wow this thing's kind of expensive and it's in really nice shape, and I was like, that is my customer. And we'll be selling new in-box stuff as well, so if people just want to get into pinball, first of all, if you've never done it before, come to the arcade, play. If you're local or if you're not local, go to, there's tons of places around that you can play at. Just go to Pinball Map and you can go look around at all the places. And if you get into it and you're fortunate enough to have enough money and space in your house to actually buy a machine, then there's lots of great dealers all over the world that you can do that. If you're in New England, New Hampshire specifically, we have this great, you know, no sales tax thing. So if you drive up to New Hampshire. I miss it. Yeah. And if you drive up to New Hampshire and pick it up from our headquarters, you can certainly take advantage of that. And the benefits of, you know, being able to enjoy that. My wife's favorite pinball is Lord of the Rings. So that's probably the one, actually, that we'll have in our house. Everything else that we have is at the arcade or at the office because we're fortunate enough to have that. So we don't have to keep everything in our house. So, yeah, I think that's pretty much it. I appreciate everybody, you know, Dave and Dave and the crew, Gerard and all the folks, all the volunteers and everybody that put on Pintastic. It's my second time coming, and this is my first round this year of going to the show. It's been all Expo, TPF, et cetera. So I enjoy it, and it's always nice to meet people face-to-face. Appreciate the time. Yeah, thanks for it. Thank you, Dan. Take care.
    74:49
    Oh, I played a bunch of different games on Saturday. I happened to go into the Extra Ball Lounge, and I found the game that everybody was all pissed off about because it wasn't over in the homebrew section, Happy Gilmore. Did you happen to play that? I tried to play it. I actually walked in there late on Saturday night, I think. Was it Friday? No. No, it was Saturday night, wasn't it? Whatever it was. It was late. Yeah, every night. So some of these late nights, either Friday or Saturday night, went in there. A bunch of people were playing it. It was a big line for it. So it was popular. And I think it was a Brian Soares game because I talked to Brian Soares. Yeah, it is. I talked to him earlier. Actually, I should interview him. He just keeps finding Stern Mustang pinball machines and keeps converting them to all these different games. Oh, is that what that was? Yep, that's a Mustang.
    75:48
    That played very, very nice. And I lit that thing up. I got done, and there were two women sitting there, and they were like, wow. I'm like, oh, okay. I guess I did well. I must have played it. No lie, Dave. I played that thing for like 20 or 25 minutes. That's a ramp game for you. No, but I was having – I'm going to toot my horn because normally I play like crap. But I don't know, man. The pinball gods are shining on me.
    76:17
    Same thing happened a little later on Saturday when I was with my friend Jim. I turned him on to James Bond. I'm like, you know, he's an old coot like me, and he's into all the games that I'm into. And I said, you've got to play this single-level game. Again, I lit that game up, and there were a couple people there, and they're like, wow, great game. I'm like, yeah, enjoy it. It's fun. So I had a couple of those. I was like, this is fun. This is great. Now I get why Eric Stone likes all the attention. and he so uh brian keeps doing these different you know themes for these kind of things and i guess so he's been getting you know i'm again wait a second you gotta wait you gotta tell the people who brian is brian hawkins no brian sores different brian oh brian okay i'm sorry brian's or brains if you think about it a lot of brians or brains because they got some brains on them. What, brains? That's what we're going to call them? Yeah, brains. Brainsores and brains hawkins? Yes. I think they're going to like that, but okay. That's all right. They're brainiacs, you know, and they both do re-themes, and they're both named Brian. So, Brian, he started out, you know, doing re-themes for people and, you know, having some decent money, and he talked to somebody and said, you don't charge nearly enough for what you do. And he started getting people from Hollywood calling him, people from Los Angeles to do special things. And he said, these people aren't even going to play the game. They just want to put it in their living room or something, whatever theme they wanted to have it and have it there and say, look, the crowd. He's the artwork. Yeah. He's the artwork. And so money, no object. So he's, like, charging all kinds of whatever he's charging, but he's getting the dough. And he still has his day job, too. And he's thinking, you know, I really could just quit the day job if I could, if my wife would let me and do the, what's it called, the insurance thing and that kind of deal.
    78:11
    But he has a good clientele. And I kind of said, yep, I know what you're talking about. Once your name gets out there, you get some nice high-end clientele that comes in and you can kind of like set your own life path, which is nice.
    78:26
    Why don't we talk about the other Brian, Brian Hawkins. I interviewed him with his game, you were calling that symbol a carrot? Yes. The V or pointer or whatever you want, upside down V? Yeah. It means, in programming, squared. Right, there you go, so T2 squared. Right. Folks, cool game. He married a pinball machine with the arcade game. He married a pinball machine. Well, he didn't marry it, but he married the two items together in one. There were pictures, if you want to see what it looks like, there were a bunch of pictures on Pinside Pintastic thread. Somebody put, I don't know, probably 50 or 75 pictures out there. His game is one of them. Go take a look.
    79:28
    I'm standing I'm here with Brian Hawkins in front of his Terminator 2. I don't want to call it a hybrid, but that's kind of what it is. It's not only a pinball machine. It's an arcade machine all in one. I call it T2 squared. So it's T2 video, T2 pinball. So T2, T2, or T2 squared. So I set it on T2 squared. So if you were a listener of our last podcast, you heard Dave and I fumble as to what that little up arrow, I think it's called a carrot. Right. Some people use the asterisk. Right. That's a mathematical symbol. Squared. Well, so now you all know. I should have just typed out G2 squared. There you go. It would have been more obvious. So tell us a little bit about your game. A, it's a beautiful looking game. I see it's got a beautiful back box. So tell us what you did. So I'm a big fan of the Terminator game. I'm also a big fan of the Terminator pinball game and arcade game. So a company called Arcade One-Off has been making these fake arcade games. They're slightly smaller than the original, but really cheap. So I had the Terminator 2 version of theirs, which is a shooting game from 1991. Same year the pinball machine came out, and I really liked it. I don't have a lot of room on that basement. I wanted to say that I combined the pinball and that game together. So I basically took the guts of the Terminator arcade game and put them in the pinball back box. So you can play both. Now the video game and the pinball machines, they're not integrated each other gameplay wise. You play the pinball or you play the arcade game. So it's not like you go to the video mode and then the arcade game starts. It's not like that. You play the arcade game or you play the pinball. But they don't know which one is working. So the pinball machine doesn't know that you're playing the arcade game in that sense. So you could be playing the pinball and your buddy could be playing the arcade game on the screen trying to distract you if you wanted to.
    81:33
    I have a button on the coin. Is this new video or is it just an audio? Just audio. Okay. So the coin reject buttons, I have a blue one and a red one. The blue one makes the translate be on, which is the same translate image as the pinball game via the LCD screen. When I hit the red button, there's a slight delay. It activates the slam tilt which basically kills the game. So if you're in the middle of the game, it would stop it, get the balls out, so they're done. And then it goes to the video game mode.
    82:05
    Is that original? What's that? The screen? No, that's not. It's like a color DMV except it's an extra wide version called Pin 2 DMV, but it's the same idea of color DMV. So it's all the same animations, but the screen is kind of enlarged and colorized. Very slick, Wilson. So when I hit that red button, the screen changed to arcade mode. You pull off the light gun, and you can start playing the arcade game.
    82:33
    This arcade game is called Ascending Gun. It uses a camera in the front, and it's looking for that white border. So did you actually have an upright game with all this equipment? aftermarket. The arcade game has a huge force in that era of 90s the boards of giants would not fit. You could use a Raspberry Pi to play all these classic games. So I can actually play all the shooter games I want under like Area 51 and Duck Hunt and Alien. So this could almost become a multi-game. It is a multi-game for the shooters. So all the shooter games I can play. Oh that's That's pretty neat. So I add a little more, like I said, small game room and I don't have room so I'm trying to make the most use of my space. No, two for one. That's pretty good. I mean, it's good that you have all the other arcade games in there as well. Right. So, and then when you're done with the arcade games, you can just hit the blue button, and it switches the LCD screen to display the Translate again. And then you're back to pinball mode. It is... I just keep looking at it. It's such a terrific looking game. If you look at the arcade game the bezel in that I recreated that in the pinball edge of the screen that would be on the LCD So it looks like the arcade game bezel Right So all that design is an arcade game That the arcade game marquee at the top So did you slice that off or is that how that I have a sound bar where the arcade game has its speakers. And it's all kind of ugly and stuff so I wanted to kind of hide it a little more. So I made a marquee that just fit over the sound bar and kind of flipped it in with it. So it's not as distracting. It's really well done. Have you had anybody online, podcast, or Twitch, or any other online forum do your game? There's a Terminator 2 pinball group on Facebook, and some people saw it on that and said, you know, dude, I want to do that. So that's where they could go see this game? I gave them a list of, like, here's the mods if you wanted to do it yourself to pimp it out. But I'm going to do a thread on Pinside about all the stuff I did because I have to get a lot of questions. You need to have somebody come over and do video for you. This is a great game. I'm still not quite done yet. There's still things I want to do. I want to take all the blasters that were in the back box. I don't have room for them now. I want to put them in the marquee so when you're playing the pinball you'll still get the blasters and the key parts. So a couple little things I want to still add. Now is the playfield in this game original? But this is a reproduction playfield from Germany. They just did a run of T2 playfields around Christmas time. Right. And I've had the game about a year and a half, two years. I've been waiting for the playfields to come out and do the whole restoration swap. So I started all this around, you know, two years. So it was a mad rush to get it all done in time for the show. Great job. And you were talking about the precision flippers. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. The more I look at it, it does fit with the game. And I happen to like how it felt. Yeah, if you look at the artwork of the game, these are supposed to be his hands and the parts of his arms. No, the metal work and the openness, it works. And they are, like you were saying to me before we started recording, they are very stiff. And I like that. Some people think they're, they call it precision flippers. Well, that's right. Some people say they're easier to hit after it stops. Some people don't like them because they let it be over. It's personal preference.
    86:14
    It's pinball. I got them because they look cool. Do what you like. That's what I always say. Anything else you want to tell me about the game that our fans should know? When a Steve Rich invested, you're looking for a classic. Oh, he was here. He came twice a day. Yeah, Steve was here. There's like five termiters at the show. So, if you like a simple rule set but still challenging, T2 is a great game. Great sound, Arnold back to a voice in the call-outs. And it's the same call-outs in the arcade game and the pinball. They recorded all of them at the same time because Arnold's a very busy guy. So, a lot of similarities. Some of the arcade game soldiers in the future, one of them was Doug Watson. We did the art on the pinball. He's one of the models in the soldier in there. The guy who coded the arcade game. Did this come out at the same time as the movie or whereabouts? Within a couple months. Both? Both arcade and pinball? I mixed up which one was which. What's the matter? One came out in June and one came out in October, the same year as the movie which came out in the summer.
    87:21
    Yeah, you don't see that much anymore, unfortunately. But the guy who did the coding of the arcade game, George Petro, he's the same guy who did the coding of Pulp Fiction. Oh, okay. The guy who did the music, Chris Branner, he also did the music for the arcade game. So there's a lot of pinball records. Midway did the arcade game, Williams did the pinball, but a lot of the employees of... Cross-fertilization, work on both projects. A lot of science between the two games. So, as I said, and I appreciate it again, Brian, coming on the show, you're going to be here next year. What's in the offering for next year? Have you decided?
    88:05
    You know, my wife wants to take a break, but I'm already thinking about the next project. Blame it on the wife. We all do. Yeah, I've got a re-theme in mind that you'll find out about it next year. Because I don't want to say it, and then if I don't do it, then everyone will say it. So you're going to be a recurring guest? Try to, yeah. Hopefully my voice will be better. I've been talking too much here.
    88:26
    It's very hoarse now. It's hard to talk. You're starting to sound like a presidential candidate. Oh, yeah, yeah.
    88:35
    I don't want that job. No, I didn't mean it that way. I meant the gravelly voice. Yeah, I don't know why anyone would want that job in the first place. No good. Anyway, I appreciate it again. Thank you for coming on, and we'll see you in one year. Sounds good. Thanks.
    88:52
    Hasta la vista, baby. What did you think of Brian Hawkins' game? Did you have a chance to go over and look at it and play it? I looked at it. I did not get to play it, but I was watching other people play it. And, look, very interesting. I didn't quite understand how you can – I guess the two things, a video game and a pinball machine, and I guess they're independent. So I thought maybe you play the pinball machine and then you kind of go up and play the video game. No, both games are independent. You will hear him tell you that it's a space issue. So I don't want to steal all the thunder, but that's kind of the premise behind making it. But think about it. Last year he had the Wizard game. This year he's got, you know, the T2 game. And there were, what, like five or six other ones there because the master of hair, Mr. Ritchie, was there. Did you see that or notice that? Yeah. Actually, he said what he does with his hair, he licks his finger and puts it in the socket and then calls it a day.
    90:00
    He goes into the back box and grabs a couple of lines and gives it all to you. Oh, boy. Yeah. He's a good guy. He can take a joke. Yeah. That's okay.
    90:15
    What else? So I have a couple other things, and we'll go from there. So I saw the whole P3, you know, multimorphic thing with Princess Bride, so I went and played it.
    90:30
    Interesting. Again, not my thing, but played it well. That ball that climbs the wall, is it called the Wall of Insanity? Have you ever, no, you've never seen it? Yeah, well, I didn't. I've seen the movie many times, and I know the scene that they're trying to capture, and that is a big scene in the movie where he's going up this wall. It's a cool mech. I'm telling you. I would love to have that mech in any game.
    90:58
    Call it whatever you want. It's just neat. The way they do it up is they have a target in front of it. You've got to hit the target. Then you've got to do something else. And then you can lock the ball. And then you've got to put it up the middle ramp. And the middle ramp on that game, in my opinion, is very juicy. And there's a reason for it. They want a lot of people to like this game if they're, I'm guessing, you know, they like the movie and that whole thing. So I thought it was well done. I mean, again, not my thing, but well done, well executed. I think the P3 platform has a limited audience, though. I think, you know, as a certain kind of pinball person that likes that platform, but it's limited reach, you know, so hopefully. I'm going to say the same thing I've said a million times. every time I see one of these presentations,
    91:51
    if you have one game, one platform, and multiple games, do you have a rack? You know, where do you put the games?
    92:04
    I guess you've got a rack. I guess you have a rack of things. Do they have a rack? Have you ever seen the rack? I can't remember what they talk about. They should sell a rack, right? You kind of, like, rack it up and put it in there. Otherwise, what are you, putting it on the floor? I don't think that's an accessory, but again. Or maybe you put it under the bed. You put it under the bed like, you know. Like what do they call it? Maybe a real lumpy mattress if you have like. No, what do they call the castaway bed? You kind of can pull them out underneath the bed. The murphy bed, you mean? Yeah, you pull it out. You pull it out of the wall? No, no, no. You got your bed, and then underneath the bed, you can pull out another bed that comes out. So you can have, you know, you've got a little family growing, and you've got Susie, and you've got Johnny, and they get both in the bed next to each other, you know. Okay. What's that called, Maureen? You know, the bed with the bed. A trundle bed. Yeah, a trundle. There you go, a trundle. A trundle. A trundle?
    92:59
    Dave Matrendo bed. There you go. Dave Matrendo bed? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we missed him this year. Okay. We did. Do you have anything else from Saturday afternoon until we get to Funtown Saturday night?
    93:21
    What town are we going to? We're going to Funtown on Saturday night. Oh, yeah, fun and gripping drama Saturday night. Yeah, so before that, anything else we can do? My sister came. Oh, your sister came with your brother-in-law Jeremy, right? Yep, and their daughter. Yep, came around, played some pinball with them a little bit. Hello, the All-Star. I miss you guys.
    93:43
    Yep, they had fun there, played the Star Wars. Jeremy was actually thinking he should have bought the arcade one-up Star Wars that was sitting there next to the high speed, but he didn't grab that. So, I don't know, he might try to get that eventually.
    93:59
    But I think what I might be doing is I said, listen, Jenny, I'm going to be probably getting three games pretty soon that I'm probably not going to keep, but I might be getting a Bride of Pinbaugh, another Xenon, and a Phantom of the Opera.
    94:18
    And my friend Keith, I think, is going to take the two, the Xenon and the Bride of Pinbaugh, and I say, well, Keith, I'll let you have those for a deal to work this thing out because I don't have it in the room, but I will take the Phantom of the Opera because it's a cool game, cool dainty pin. I'll work on it well, and then give it to my sister for a nice low, low price so she'll get into that game for cheaper than she could anywhere else and do some work on it. So we're going to do that. So I had her play Phantom of the Opera. She liked it enough that I think that she's going to go for that. Because Star Wars is a pricey game. It's an okay game. It's not really that great of a day-to-ease pin. I don't think so. Oh, you hooked up the museum. Oh, yeah. A customer of mine down in the Cape, He had three play fields that he said, hey, I just want to, I don't have room for these. I don't need them, and I don't have room for them. He had two nice Tri-Zone, Williams Tri-Zone, 1979 or 78 play fields, and a Coney Island game plan play field, all fully populated that he doesn't need. They're used, but in decent shape, very storable. So you sell them? Well, no, he just wanted to give them away. So he wanted to give them to me. I'm saying, do you want to sell them? No, I'm not going to. No, I could have done that. But I said, no, I don't want to deal with it. So what I did instead is say, you know what, I think there's that museum there, that mechanical museum on Rhode Island. They're always looking for donations. They're a 501c3. There you go. That's a good thing. So I said, you know what, you give it to them. So I'm talking to my customer. His name is Tobin. I said, you know, Tobin, there's one guy, he's got like straggly hair, you know, kind of a hip and dick kind of guy, you know, and you'll see him. But all of a sudden, I'm talking to him. It's like, oh, there he is. He's coming down the hallway. So I hooked him up, and he said, oh, please, I'd love those play fields. So that was great. It was a love connection made right there. Gave him the play fields. And so that was good. Everybody was happy with that one. So that worked out well. Oh, and Tobin brought the – Oh, Tobin brought a Champion Pub to sell. I don't know if he sold it, but that was on the floor. That played pretty well. Oh, I saw that game there, but everybody was always playing it. I didn't get to play it. I hope someone bought it because he wanted to sell it. So I don't know if he – He worked on all his other games. Because I worked on his whole, he has a whole lineup of games I've worked on down the Cape.
    96:35
    From Junkyard, your favorite, to Theater of Magic, Circus Voltaire, and what else did he have? There was one, Medieval Madness? Yeah, Medieval Madness. Yeah, that was the other one. Yep. So he had, he has a nice little lineup in his basement there down in, I think it's in Brewster. Yeah, Brewster. Brewster, Mass. so do you want to talk about Funtown and get that going right now do a little bit of the setup before we get to sure what I would call the conclusion of a wild exciting drama filled what words am I missing tournament uh grip and drama um where do we start uh well i i can kind of get us to the point of what time the fun began because well but if you have something that will get us there beforehand well let's yeah let's go let's go back to you know you know return with us now to a couple days of yesteryear, when I was Thursday night, I decided to, now is the time to get in these games and qualify. Right, but I already have that clip. You do? That's going to be played, so you're already going to talk about that. That's covered. Okay, good. We covered it. We're at Saturday night now. Okay, good. I remember the end, because I had to, unfortunately, get up very early. But if you can take us before the midnight hour, why don't you talk about when we first started watching and the drama that kind of built up to midnight. So are we talking about Pulp Fiction? The drama at midnight was Pulp Fiction. Yes, Pulp Fiction, yes. That was, to me, that was the intersection. That was when it really got going. Because I think Eric was, at that point, I think Eric was up, correct? He was up three games to one. And forgive me, I don't remember the first four games. I remember one of them. Shadow. Did they play, I think they played Harlem Vogue Trotters. Yeah, that's right. Yes, yes. Harlem and Shadow and Pulp Fiction, yes. No, no, no, but there's two more. Oh, I know there's two more. Pulp was number five.
    99:18
    Pulp was five? Yeah, that was the fifth game, yes. And he played Venom. Okay. Oh, yeah, that's right. They played that game. You're right, Maureen. They played Venom, too? Okay. I think they did. Okay. Yeah, that's right. It doesn't matter. It was at that point when things got concerning. They got a little hairy. So from Harlem Globetrotters, I think Eric took that, right? Didn't he get Harlem Globetrotters and he won that one? Yeah, he did. When they were playing, going into Pulp Fiction, which was their fifth game, he was up three games to one. Yeah.
    99:59
    Yep. And then did they go to Shadow after that one? Nope, they went to Flip-Flop after that. Okay, all right. Okay, so now the action of the Flip-Flop. Do you have to talk about what happened with Pulp Fiction? No, that was wrong. Because I laughed. I'm like, oh, this is going to change. Yeah, all right. So Pulp Fiction, Eric got to the wash your car mode, because he was down by a bunch of points. He was like, I think Jason was up like $4 million or something, and Eric might have had $1 million. And Eric got into this wash your car mode. but all of a sudden his score went up to like 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, like really quick. He got like zooming up, and he got to 3.5 million. It's like, okay, now it's a horse race. Now he's like right within there. And then I think Jason had another ball and got to 5 million. Didn't go too bad. And then so it was time for Eric to do something, and Eric messed up something, and he didn't. There's some kind of rules with the game where you have to do a certain thing, He hit a certain shot to get a payoff, and he didn't know it and didn't remember it. Because, you know, with these modern games, you've got to know the combination lock to do. Right. The combination lock. But before that, didn't Jason Zahler say something about the uppers? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Yes, yes. The uppers? Yes, yes, yes. You're missing a big part of it. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry. Multiple times? Right, right. Yes, multiple. Yes, so three times. So Jason kept trying to do saves, you know, with the flippers, boom, boom, you know. And the right flipper would not sometimes come down quick. It would kind of be laggy. The right flipper would not fall down like it's supposed to. It would be a little laggy. And so he kept, like, stopping the ball, holding the ball in the right foot, and saying, hey, call somebody over. There's a problem with this right flipper. It's sticking. It's sticky. Now, Eric didn't notice it. It didn't really affect Eric, so Eric didn't call it over for that. It played well for him. Eric didn't care. But Eric's used to playing games that are, you know, having some issues. So, you know, he can just deal with it. But Jason said, no, no, no, this is a problem. So, you know, Jim came over. Some of his Jim's techs were looking at it. They were looking at it sideways, opening it up and looking in there and trying to figure it out. And I think they, I don't know, loosened something up and tightened something back in. It's, okay, let's try this. Try it again. No, same thing. Stopped again. They stopped like three times. The third time I was talking to Jason's father, it's like, well, you know what? I don't overstep my bounds. I don't overstep my bounds, but it's like I am a pretty decent tech, and maybe I can lend a hand and a different set of eyes in there. Maybe I can kind of suggest something. But at the same time, I don't want to tell them their business and what to do. So I was kind of like, eh, you know, what should I do? So he's like, you know, maybe I'll just go over there and just kind of look a little bit and just suggest something offhand just to kind of, you know. Right, but this went on for a while. I split. This was right around midnight. And I'm like, oh, man, this is going to take a while because we're only, you know, we're trying to decide game five. And we don't know the outcome yet. Or I did.
    103:09
    You continue. I had to watch it yesterday afternoon, which was Sunday. We're recording on Monday afternoon. On Sunday afternoon, I watched from that point forward.
    103:21
    So what happened? And so I suggested to, it's like, you know, Jim, just a side note here, you can always just, you know, cut the return spring a little bit, make this return spring a little bit stronger to get you out of this really quick, you know, because the other way is to do it. And then he said, oh, well, I'm not sure. Okay, I might do, you know. So then I stepped away. I said, I'm not going to keep, you know, telling him what to do, you know, because it's his game and his party, you know.
    103:48
    So they wound up just replacing the coil sleeve, which is not a bad move. That's a good move to do. even though the game is new.
    103:55
    But the other thing I would have done to it if I was in there, I would have made sure there's enough gap on the flipper. Like you can pull the flipper up and down on the play field. You want to make sure that's not tight down to the play field because that will cause binding. So I would have done that. I would have added more gap to it as well as a new coil sleeve and, you know, and maybe if I really had to, I'd cut the spring. But, you know, that's really the last-ditch effort on that one. So they replaced the coil sleeve. I mean, it seemed to do it good enough that they didn't complain, that Jason didn't complain again. It was working good enough for at least another ball. So that worked out. So you were saying that Eric didn't know the shot. Yeah, Derek didn't know the shot. There was a certain thing. He left some points on the table that he didn't know about or forgot about or something, and he missed out on like a two-million-point thing that would have made him win the game, and he lost the game. So now it was like, I don't know. Three games to two. Yeah. Jason is starting a comeback.
    104:56
    And we said don't count the kid out or whatever we were saying. It's like 19 clips, I think. Don't bet against the kid. Don't bet against the kid, right. He is now the kid. I will say. You'll understand why. If you didn't watch it, you'll understand why in a couple of minutes. So they proceed. So Eric loses. Yep. And Eric said he's the one that's the pick. He gets the pick, and he says, okay, flip-flop. I go, yes, flip-flop. Good. We're going to play some nice EMs now. We're going to play some old school. This is great to have the final seven, to have the final finals, to be on some old school games. This is how real pinball is. It's all about flipper skill. Yeah, so far it's like, okay, game five. Right, right.
    105:47
    It's not a super ramper, but it's a great game. good game. But the thing is though, it comes down to your flipper skills and your nudging ability and dealing with a game that might not be in top A1 condition. And so Eric would have the edge there playing a game that has a couple issues. But Jason has the edge in Jason is very calm. He's like a Jedi knight. He's just cool, calm, collected, very calculated and calm about things And he has the uncanny ability to tap the machine or just kind of bang on the lockdown bar at the exact time you need it to time it to make the ball do what you want it. If it was going to go out somewhere, he bangs that to cause enough vibration in the game to go back where he wants it to go. Eric is more of a muscle it over kind of game. Eric is more like move the game around, muscle it to get it where you want it to go. He'll like shove the game around and move stuff. Jason doesn't really do that typically. He's more like, you know, calculated and mellow. I can tell Eric is getting frustrated. He's getting more and more animated and kind of. He had a couple of bad breaks, too. He did. He did get some bad breaks. He, now, flip-flop, no, no. That's not the game that you keep going up and retrieving the bonus. No, that's bone out. That's the last game. Stop, stop, stop. Okay, sure. Cut that. Right. You got to cut that. Cut that. right so yeah flip-flop was an interesting thing i i know the game i know i've played it it's got those piano key things like uh captain fantastic right they go up and not no not can't no wizard wizard it's like wizard wizard i'm sorry yeah so it has those but also it has an effect that is a lot that basically that valley viking implemented as well as sort of centaur did well the bang back. The bang back. It comes back like a little trampoline, a little trampoline effect that if you do it just right. On the out lane, right? On the out lane. And a lot of times, if you go in the in lane, it'll go out there and you have to kind of like bang it back up. So Jason, a lot of times, it was going to go down. He banged it like three times, bang, up and down, up and down. He did it once. He did it twice when the ball would go down, he'd bang it back up. It would go down again, and he'd bang it up and get it in. And then they did it three times. The crowd went nuts. I mean, the drama, and cut here if you don't want to hear the end, but the drama and the tension is building. Speaking of drama. Everybody got schnickered a couple of times. Speaking of drama and tension, we have a phone call right now. Hello? You sound staticky a little bit. Staticy.
    108:47
    You sound fine. Okay, well, as long as I sound fine, I've got ten minutes before I'm going to get to a gas station, and then we can talk now and then. Okay, sure. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of drama going on if you look at Facebook.
    109:03
    Is it about, we were just talking about flip-flop just now. Is that flip-flop? No, no, no. I don't know. Bowen said something about me touching him one time.
    109:16
    Don't touch me there And I'm like, I didn't touch you at all And he said, I did in the circuit championship And I said, yeah, because I conceded the game And you didn't hear me So I poked him in the shoulder And I said, I concede I don't think that's like a bad thing to do And then he was mad that I was standing close, and I said, Doug made me stay five foot away. I wasn't standing that close to you.
    110:07
    And, you know, the typical things, whatever. Well, this is your idea. He says that I bother so many people with my antics. And I'm like, all right, well. People like your antics. You're very animated. It's part of the whole color commentary, the whole thing. It's good. Hey, Dave? Yes. Let me interject for a second. Yeah, go ahead. Excuse me, Eric. Yeah. It's George.
    110:32
    We were just at the point of Pulp Fiction. I got to go in a little bit. So we've got ten minutes. Can you take us from Pulp Fiction and what happened with the flipper? Dave and I were just talking about flip-flop. Take us through that. And please don't talk about the last game until you conclude with flip-flop and then talk about what happened at the end.
    110:58
    So my biggest problem on Pulp Fiction was that when I ripped the spinner for $2.8 billion, I had the ball on the left flipper. And I didn't realize that if I would have shot the saucer, I would have collected another $2.8 billion. And any load that I would have completed after that, I would have collected a 2.8 million on top of that. So I really lost the tournament because I didn't realize I thought I could keep hitting the spinner until the time went to zero and it was going to give me points. But that's not the case. Apparently, after figuring out the rules a little too late, once the clock starts at 10 seconds, the saucer on the right lights up, and you're supposed to hit that, and that awards you what you already got. So it's kind of like a doubler, and I had no idea. If I hit that saucer, my score jumps to 5.8 million, and, you know, I most likely would have won. Yeah. I did complete one more mode, which would have given me another 2.8 million. That would have put me near 9 million points. So, you know, I'm confident that that would have won the tournament. But I didn't do it. I didn't do it right. I don't care about the flipper. If you guys remember in this 2020, they spent 45 minutes taking a little piece of plastic from the saucer up top. And Josh Sharp actually helped Jim Belsino take the scoop, the saucer from the top.
    112:32
    Underneath, they unscrewed it. They got the piece of plastic out. That took longer than it took on flip-flop. So anybody that knows me, including you, should know that nothing bothers me. I don't care. Exactly. We were just stating that. I don't care if you're talking to me. I don't care if you're whatever you're doing. A malfunction with a flip flop is not going to affect me in the least. And then flip flop, you know, I played one heck of a game. You know, Jason and I played amazing games, just like we did the first two on Harlem and on Meteor. And, you know, he entered me out. And you all put him on flip flop. But it was my tournament to win on Pulp Fiction, and I'd known that rule that I didn't know. Now, of course, there's no guarantee I would have hit the shot, but I did have the ball trapped on the left flipper, and I had 10 seconds to hit the shot. And I've been pretty solid hitting that shot at least 50% of the time. So even if I missed it, I think I would have at least had one more try at it, and I do believe I would have hit it.
    113:43
    With the flip-flop thing, I remember there was some kind of thing. you kind of brought it up to the TD and said, hey, there's not scoring right. Jason got an extra 10,000 points. And so they kind of looked at it, and they looked at it as they know. And then I saw later on one of the guys, the booth guys, they were saying, oh, they're going to check out the thing. And then one of the guys there on the left said, oh, whatever. I was like, what do you mean whatever? If the score is not scoring right, one guy is going to get an extra amount of points. That's a big thing. You've got to look at this stuff, you know. You know, he's the guy that I think early in the day I said put 20 bucks on pump three. But, you know, anyway.
    114:19
    Well, you know, the whole thing is that if it's somebody else, if it was somebody else against me, and they said, oh, you better check our score, you're damn right they would have checked my score. They would have watched every single ball. And that's what should have happened because in Allentown, you remember last year, Molly was giving 10,000 points extra. The games were already over, and someone said, hey, I think it gave Walt Wood 10,000 points extra. And they reviewed both games, the whole video. Of course they would not do that for me. No, never. And, lo and behold, it did give Jason an extra 10,000, because I'm not stupid. 99% of the time, if I say there's a malfunction, there's a malfunction. You don't want to believe me when I say the bonus is skipping? You don't believe me. But then when somebody else says, oh, yeah, oh, it really did do it. Yeah, of course. Because you actually, if you go back and you review this thing, which I did, I watched it over and over again, you can see it. You can see it. I forget which ball was in it, does it, but I definitely saw that thing. Right. So what I was saying is it went from 59,000 to 70,000. But what they were reviewing was 159,000 to 170,000. And I didn't realize at the time. I told them to go back and said, we're not going to go back any more balls than ball four. And I'm thinking, oh, but it happened at $59,000. So I thought to myself, all right, well, maybe I was wrong. You know, the odd event that I was wrong. You know what? You cannot be wrong because you're the guy that would, that star machine at Fun Spot years ago, you freaking would stop the thing from flipping cards and you'd stop it right on the freaking money. You see stuff that other people can't see. Right. But, you know, I did figure also that my score did jump up from 70,000 to 120 pretty quickly. So I figured that, you know what, it probably happened to me.
    116:19
    So it's even, Stephen, so you're having a both of you, you're saying. I watched the video, and I said, oh, look at that. It went from 99 to 109. And guess what? You know how there's a sign of the thing that says the 100,000 light doesn't work? Yeah. Well, it doesn't work if it goes from 99 to 109, because my 100,000 light never came on. So the 100,000 light comes on when it goes from 99 to 100. Again, these are little things that nobody else is going to notice. So Jason did win the game fair and square, and I was the first one to get a hold of him and his dad and everybody else and say, Hey, guess what? You know, my score did the same thing as yours. In fact, I think it did it twice. Right. So, because I do things by the book. Unlike what a lot of people say, you know, somebody said in Texas, oh, this guy's scribble. I don't know who that guy is. He said, oh, if Pinout would have started with points for Eric, he would have seen things. Hey, guess what? It did. And I called the guy over right away and said, oh, look, it gave me X amount of points. Yeah. You know what? I don't cheat. I don't need to cheat. You know what? If I lose, I lose. If I win, I win. If I needed to cheat or pull something, you know, diabolical, I wouldn't be playing pinball. There's other people out there that would cheat and wouldn't mind it at all, but you're not one of those guys.
    117:45
    No, I don't care. I don't care what people say. You know, apparently in the circuit championship, Bowen, I picked Gaines Bond, and I heard Bowen say he was going to go second.
    118:00
    So I started the game, and I started playing and doing well. Next thing you know, Josh Sharp comes up to me and says, Bowen never told me he was going second, so you have to restart the game. Okay? No way. Can I do something like that? No. That is a BS move. He gets mad at me because I shout out into the air, I say into the air, don't miss one shot. Because I missed one shot on Benham, and it drained. And I said to myself, don't miss one shot. I wasn't looking at him. I was nowhere near him. He was nowhere near the game.
    118:39
    But that is like, oh, my God, the worst thing in the world. But you do that with James Bond, waiting to see if I have a bad ball. If I had a bad ball, he goes up there and plays player two. But because I did not have a bad ball, he goes to Josh Roberts and says, oh, I never told you I was going second, so we have to start over by a rule. Oh, you tell me what's worse.
    119:02
    Yeah, I get it. I have a question. I want to end it there. What was the idea behind picking the last game?
    119:12
    Yeah, your last game was picked. What were you thinking when you picked that last game? What were you thinking? It was very controllable. Yep.
    119:21
    And, you know, I had just got 190-something thousand on it. Right. So I thought, it's controllable, it's an EM, I'm going to do well on it, and, you know. You'd do well on my version of that game. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I didn't do well on it. So, you know, but by that time, I was still. You were getting some bad breaks. No, yeah, but by that time I was still in my own head about the Pulp Fiction. Yeah, yeah, you were kind of beating yourself up. About why did I just, if I just knew to shoot that one shot. Right. But I tell you, I tell you, the way Jason nudges games and games is unlike anything I've ever seen. Exactly. I've seen a lot. I was just saying that to George. I was just saying to George in the audience. I said, Jason is very, he's quiet, he's stealthy, he's very calculated, and he's very calm. and he times things. It's like, boom, hitting that lockdown bar. You're more of a muscle it over kind of guy. He's more of a just light tap kind of thing at the right time, and he's awesome at nudging. He's amazing. Now, I did do some of that on Meteor and on Harald as well. And you know what? I learned it from Jason. And if people want to know why I stand right behind the players, I want to see exactly what they're doing. Yeah, of course. If I'm watching the stream and I'm watching a TV screen, I can't see the nudges he's doing. I can't see exactly. You know, there's a little bit of a delay. I want to see everything. Right. And, you know, Bo has got this big Facebook thread. And like I said, you know, I don't hate the guy, you know, and whether, you know, he probably hates me, but I still respect him. He's a great player. He's a world championship, several-time multi-world champion. And you know what? And he did great tutorials. So, you know, I don't have anything against him, but he wants to call me out, so I'll do the same. Yeah, sure. That's why I stand close to Bowen, and I don't stand too close. I'm not in the periphery. In fact, you know, I was told, make sure you stand five feet away or far enough away, and I kind of counted five feet. I figured, okay, that's pretty good. You're not going to see me in your peripheral vision for five feet. And you know what? If he was upset or anybody else was upset, you tell me right away.
    121:39
    You don't just, oh, well, you know, a few tournaments ago you did this. Right. No, no. And I would never touch Bowen. Never. Are you kidding me? That would be like, I don't know, disturbing a bear. I'd be like, no, I ain't doing that. I try to stay as far away as I can but still see exactly what he's doing. So, again, that's the reason why I do what I do. I watch Jason. I watch what he does. and I'm starting to do what he does, and it showed in the Harlem game and on the Meteor game. I think Bowen just pissed that he lost, you know. Yeah, you don't blame him. Well, I mean, you know what? It is what it is, you know. Hey, don't. I was having a really good day. I was 14-0.
    122:19
    Don't poke your neighbor. You know what? When he beats me, I congratulate him and say, hey, nice job, and then I walk away, and I don't complain and say, well, this was that and that was that and everything was that. You know, I lost. It's me, you know. Like he says, play better. That's what I need to do. Right, right. So, I don't know. I really don't know. You know, I'm sure there's a lot of frustration. There's frustration on my end too sometimes. You know what I mean? So, I try to treat people with respect. And if there's something that I'm doing that I'm not consciously aware of, tell me. You know, I mean, I'm not a mind reader. Yeah, you know what, there's a lot of egos and a lot of drama with Facebook and with Pinball, and some of the characters involved in here, it's like, I don't know, Girls' Walker Room back in high school. Well, I think, who's the character who's making the movie?
    123:20
    Oh, that's the guy from Revere. Yeah, was he there? Yeah. Okay. I think he was. I heard he was. The guy from Revere that's Revere Mass is making a movie. He's been doing it for like a couple years now.
    123:31
    Well, he missed a big opportunity. He did. He was going to do me, but he didn't. So he loses. There's a big story. Oh, is that the guy Tanner?
    123:41
    Who's the guy? Tanner? Banner? Tanner. T-A-N-N-E-R. Tanner Wade, I think is Banner. No, I don't think it's Tanner Wade. Right, George? No? Tanner Wade? I have no idea. I have no idea who it is. I don't think so. This guy's from Massachusetts.
    123:57
    Well, because somebody had said that we talked before about something, and he was filming something, and he wanted an interview, and he came up to me, and we talked for a little while, and he said, yeah, we'll set up a time, and then it never wound up happening. So it might be the same guy. Was it at the show just now? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He seems to only see me in Fantastic, so I'm assuming that. Well, it could be him then. Maybe it's him. Yeah.
    124:23
    So let me ask. No, it wasn't him. Let me look, because he messaged me on Facebook. We've got four minutes. So any final thoughts? Four minutes. We've got more than that. We run out of time. Well, four minutes. On this segment, I've got four minutes. On this segment. And I've got to redo. Go ahead.
    124:41
    Asker Smith. That's who it is. Asker Smith. He's on. Dr. Smith. Oh, dear. John William. Oh, John William. Hello. Anyway.
    124:54
    I'm going to peel too closely. This is how we're going to end. How are we going to end, George? We're going to sign off.
    125:03
    We are. We just got started. I'm going to peel. Hang on. I'm going to peel off. Okay. You're going to continue this discussion with Eric after he gets gas. Okay. And I'll include that as our bonus feature. How's that? All right. That sounds fair. Fair? Cool. How's that, Eric? Fair? So what are we doing? So George is... We're all going to sign off here. We're all going to sign off, but you would... We're going to continue to talk with Dave later on, and I'll use whatever you want out of that as the bonus feature. Yeah, so how much time... Right now, Eric, I've got three minutes in this segment, and then I've got to spool it. How much time do you have left from now until tonight to talk? Well probably another half hour Okay so And then I going to a tournament so I be pretty much So pretty much in about 10 minutes from now I can talk some more We can talk for like another 10 minutes before you go to your tournament At least, yeah. Yeah. So we'll do that. So we're going to sign off here pretty quickly because I've got three minutes left before the coach turns into a pumpkin kind of situation. And then we can reconvene, call back, and so forth and do some more stuff. but right now we got 2.3 minutes alright well go ahead and I guess we'll hang up and text me when you're ready yeah I'll text you when I'm ready sounds good alright sounds good and that was Eric Stone ladies and gentlemen number one world champion along with Jason Zahler who's also number one world champion two world champions going at it head to head like Rocky and Ivan Drago I want to thank Eric. That was... Gold. That was gold, George.
    126:47
    Wow. We've got Facebook wars. We've got podcast wars. We've got drama. And drama sells, George. Drama's the mama. Drama puts asses in seats, George. Yeah. I hope it puts ears to a podcast.
    127:05
    Okay. My name is George. His name is Dave. This is the Classic Pinball Podcast. Don't be afraid. You can contact me at theclassicpinballpodcast, numeral1 at gmail.com. Stay lit and tilted. Can't wait until next year. The story continues. It does.
    127:28
    The story continues, and we're going to be doing some more of this stuff at Allentown Show coming up real soon. So that'll be fun as well. and I can't wait for that and it was a blast doing this one here, especially with Eric calling in it was fantastic spectacular yes, indeed anyway, be good Dave, thank you too George alright, this is the classic home podcast and don't drive like my brother see ya later goodnight Gracie goodnight George
    128:07
    I feel you like it so far I feel you like it so I feel you like it way up And the way you go I feel you like it still I feel you like it down I feel you like the way you go And the way you die Oh, it's hot tonight. Oh, it's so hot tonight.
    128:44
    But where will it be tomorrow? Oh, it's hot tonight. Oh, it's so hot tonight. But where will it be tomorrow?
    129:04
    And we're back with Eric Stone talking about the gripping drama of Pintastic 2024 SoBall Rumble over in Marlborough and our continuing coverage of this tournament.
    129:22
    So, Eric, where were we when we last left off? Well, we can't forget about how I got the yellow card. Yes, the yellow card. Yellow card, yeah. So after ball four, I said, up yours to Bowen Arrow. And apparently that was. Now let me get this. You said up yours to Bowen Arrow, not to Bowen, right? No, no, no.
    129:44
    I know. He was long gone. He left the room at that point. I said up yours to Bowen Arrow. And Jim said, Eric, don't speak like that or something like that. Right. And I turned to him and said, hey, I didn't swear. and then he said, don't talk back to me, I'm giving you a yellow card. And I just kind of shook my head like, well, the night's over. I mean, it's one in the morning, I'm just about done. Right, exactly. And then I turned around and said, well, maybe that'll help me out. Because sometimes if I get a yellow card, it actually helps me out. I don't know why it is, but. Wait, so yellow card means like it's a warning, one more you're out? Or how does that work? Yeah, I mean, it was probably the most famous yellow card I've ever got, saying, up yours, considering I watched other people really shake the game when they lost.
    130:32
    And that was okay and whatnot. But, you know, I was giving the game a lot of shaking as well. And so was Jason. So after I lost the match, I started shaking the game. Yeah, I saw that. I shook it a little bit and it didn't tilt. I shook it a little more and it didn't tilt. Then I shook it a lot and it did tilt, and I thought, wow, what is the threshold? So then I shook it a little bit less, and it did tilt. Then I shook it a little bit more, and it did tilt. And I think in their eyes, they were thinking that I was upset, but I wanted to see, like, what could I have gotten away with? Right, right, exactly. You want to see what the parameters were. It seemed like Jason was really rocking it, and, you know, on one of my balls, I didn't think I really touched it too much and it killed it and I thought where is the line? And I do that when I practice too.
    131:32
    The day sayers and the haters will say oh Eric used his 30 seconds of practice and then he shook the crap out of the game because he wanted to upset the next guy No, I don't care about the next guy. You know what it is though, these guys, that's what they would do because they're projecting on you what they would do because they're slide balls. Like I said, I'm not going to sabotage anybody else. So when I get 30 seconds of practice, the last thing I do, I slowly test the tilt. I shake it a little bit, then a little bit more, then a little bit more, until I get it to tilt so I have a feel for what I have to work with. It has nothing to do with, oh, I'm going to shake it hard to make the tilt bob go crazy so that the next person, you know, these games have earplugs in them anyway. So, come on. I mean, really? Like, is there really an advantage in doing that? Come on. There is because you can just wait on it. I want to wait two minutes for the thing to settle. It's stupid. I know you wouldn't do that. You're a pro. You've been at it forever, you know? Yeah. Well, like I said, when Pulp Fiction tilted on me and all I did was flip the ball, I thought, you've got to be kidding me. You know, here we go again.
    132:39
    And that all stems back to Barracora in Texas. Made two balls out of three. I don't shake the game at all. and the game just miraculously tilts, where I still say there was a short, because I've seen people move the game, didn't even give them that little danger or whatever, whether Barracora has a danger or not, I don't know, but it didn't tilt. Yeah, no, Barracora would have a danger if they had it in software, you said for one, two, or three dangers, yeah. Right, so, I mean, but then when I have two balls, one on each flipper, and I flipped the spinner on the right flipper and it just goes straight to a tilt.
    133:20
    I'm sorry. There was a short in that game. And you should have realized it was ball one when it did it to me. And then it did it on ball three. And it cost me the classics. I lost the classics. So you know what? I'm no stranger to phantom tilts. So I don't know what was going on with the Pulp Fiction. I know I did have two warnings. But you saw how much you could shake that game and not get a warning. Yeah, I saw. I know. I have no idea how a regular flip, during multi-ball, I believe.
    133:47
    I'm not sure if it was during multi-ball or not. But I don't know how a regular flip would have killed a ball fiction. But again, I walk away and I say, well, that was nice. You know, I don't go crazy. I didn't blame anybody for, you know, saying anything or doing that. It's like, well, I guess I got to get by with the next ball, you know, and hope it doesn't happen again. So sometimes when you get these yellow cards, it gets you motivated. It's like, okay, they're going to punch me when I'm down. I'm going to come back up out of this thing and prove that I'm, I don't know, I can make you focus. It makes me focus more. Right. Because now it's like, all right, I can't get upset. I just got to do this thing. And I do this thing. You know what I mean? Right.
    134:30
    So giving me a yellow card actually helps me out. and when I was at Yankton and I was struggling a little bit toward the end and I'm very good friends with Derek Thompson he's a good guy I said something to him and I go that was epic BS and he looked at me and smiled and I said did you hear what I said that was epic BS and he goes I'm going to have to give you a yellow card I said about time dude what am I trying to do and he starts laughing and I said I need a yellow card because I need to relax. And he goes, okay, you got a yellow card, and I wound up winning the X-Pin. Wow. Right, exactly. And the X-Pin is like the next Pimper. It's huge, you know? Wow.
    135:15
    Interesting. It's kind of like Rocky in the movies. Sometimes yellow cards, you know me, negativity for me is actually positivity. When I get down on myself, when I'm very, very negative, that's when I make myself feel like a horrible pinball player, that's when I come back and I just start killing it. Right. I don't know why that is. It doesn't work that way with a lot of people, but it worked that way with me.
    135:40
    Doesn't work for me, but I'm glad it works for you. I was the same way at bowling, exactly the same. I would have to make myself feel like I'm horrible, I'm nothing, you know, and then all of a sudden it's like, okay, now I'm the underdog, and I come back and I just kill it, you know. Yeah. It's weird. It's hard to explain. Yeah. it's a psychology you psych yourself out you psych yourself in depending on why you look at it but you're right yeah that's exactly it interesting yeah it's strange I know it works for you know hey I mean look at my post at InDisc right you know here I am at InDisc I qualified first at the classics by leaps and bounds you know and then I'm out in the first round that makes me feel like a nothing a nobody I was so pissed. Then I go to the main tournament, and the first round I had to play Escher, Haley George, and Andre Basimkov, right? Three world championship players. I almost make it through. I lose in a three-way tiebreaker. And I say, I'm done.
    136:49
    Maybe I really am done. Maybe I'm just getting too old, and I'm just something not clicking right. And I make myself believe that. Like, this might be it. Like, my heyday may be over. And then once I get into that mentality, then all of a sudden I almost win the high stakes, which Dalton is one heck of a player.
    137:12
    You know, I get $78 million on Wheel of Fortune to lose, you know, and then a couple billion on F-14 Tomcat, which wasn't an easy game, and lose that one. And, you know, I come in second place, but it was still good, and it was a good showing. And then I go up to the Nationals. I come in sixth place because who do I lose to? Jason Zoller. I go to Texas and I win the way I won. And then I go to Massachusetts and who do I lose to? Jason Zoller. So I make myself feel, and I actually believed it. I believed like, uh-oh, this may be it. I may be done. Right. At some point, you're going to be. At some point, yeah, because he's got youth in his side. You still have youth on your side, but he's like, he still has youth. You have experience, but he has great experience and he's got youth too. So he has like, you know. Yeah. And so, you know, it's like, wow, did I lose it? Am I done? You know, is this it? And so, you know, part of me actually started to believe, you know, even though I won free play Florida, which was, you know, it's like how soon I forget about my wins when I really do badly in my eyes. You know what I'm saying? Right.
    138:21
    Now here's something very controversial too. I get very hard on myself when I don't come in the top four in a tournament okay and there's a lot of people out there that would love to be in the top four and there's a lot of people that may not have qualified and they say you're getting so bad at yourself you know I didn't even qualify what does that mean for me well I don't say a word because if I don't have anything nice to say I don't say it Right, right. But people have to understand my expectations.
    138:58
    Yeah, you set the bar high for yourself. They don't understand how my mother had always been when I went to school. Why did you get an A in this class? Okay, okay, I got an A. Why did you get two A's? How come you didn't get an extra A here? Nothing was ever good enough. And you know that. Talking to me over the past 25 years. even now I still oh you're not married you don't have a house oh you know this and that and I'm thinking all right I'm not a druggie I'm not in jail I got a career nothing was ever good enough so people don't understand that about my background and when you grow up and your parents constantly say that nothing was ever good enough then that kind of translates into your life So if I don't win, that's not good enough for me. Right, okay. It makes sense. If I don't come to the top four, that's not good enough for me. So when I qualify first in Indy, and I get bombed out in the first round, that's not good enough. You know? Maybe for other people, whatever their expectations are, that's great. But the way I was brought up, and, you know, I know it's not healthy, but it's just how it was. Right. It always was that way. And I got this mentality that if you didn't do it perfectly, it wasn't good enough. I mean, I've had wins where, you know, I was like, man, I should have played so much better. What is wrong with me? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like I won the tournament, yet I'm still being hard on myself because, you know, I still am hard on myself now because I didn't shoot the pulp fiction shot I should have shot. you know what I mean? Right. And it's like, people are like, my God, you played so well. No, I didn't. Did you not watch the last four games? I did play well. I played horribly. I did not play good enough, and I did not win. So I did not play well. You know, I played okay. Now, Harlem and Meteor, yeah, I played really well. You did, yeah. Pinbot, I played okay. Flip-flop, I played well, but, you know what, ball two and ball three weren't that good. Right. And, phone hour, I played like crap. Yeah, I don't know what bow and arrow. I almost thought that he got in your head. I feel like he did. No, no. You know what I should have done? What? I should have done something like pick Viper. You know, pick some oddball game. Yeah. Wow. But see, I'm not like that. I've never been the one to, you know, like, you remember a few years ago when the kid from Chicago, I can't remember what his name is, a good guy.
    141:40
    Maybe I'll think of his name. Sure. we went to a game five which back then it was the best of five and you were there and he picked Gottlieb baseball remember that we didn't go to Chicago I never went to Chicago no no no fantastic oh fantastic okay the guy's name is Josh Henderson from Chicago that sounds familiar and it was a top five it was a top four and I knew that if I got past him I was going to win it all yeah yeah And for game number five, he picks Gottlieb Baseball. You don't remember that? It sounds familiar. Coming back there. That was the year that they had Transporter in there and Pit Bot in there. Yeah. Yep. Okay. And Elvis was in there. X-Men was in there. And he was blowing the games up. But he picked Gottlieb Baseball. Do you know that game?
    142:37
    The other game with the monster drop tires was very top of the game. That one? Oh, no. Two very targets on each side. The outlanes score you 500 points.
    142:46
    And there's three lanes up top that says 3-1-2, meaning triple, single, double. And there's pop-upers up top. That's it. And there's two lanes like volley around the very target. It's only your kind of game. You don't know that game? No. Mr. Classic? No, I don't. I don't know that game. No, but the whole thing is I don't think the strategy to do something like that. I will pick my strongest game. But in this case, what I should have done is I should have picked Viper because, you know what, it kind of would have been a crapshoot. You know what I mean? Yeah. But really, what I should have done is known the complete rules of Pulp Fiction and made that shot, and then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
    143:31
    I'm looking at the game right now, baseball. It was a simple game, not a very fun game it looks like. It looks kind of boring. Not really, yeah. But you want to drain down the outlanes because you get 500 points. And he didn't even have 2,000 points. So all I needed was four outlanes, and I win.
    143:48
    I can't believe you don't remember that match. You were sitting right behind me. No. I played Jerry Bernard right after that on Pinbot and then Transporter, and then I won on Bobby Orr's Power Play. This must have been one of the first couple years of Pintastic. It must have been way back when. It was 2018. Okay. So anyway, the whole point of the story is I'm not the kind of person that will try to pick a game that is, you know, maybe more luck than skill. I mean, Viper may not be more luck than skill. But if neither one of you have really played it much, then I think there's a lot more luck involved. What do you think of that Stars game? Because Bowman picked Stars like that. I think he kind of picked it as a wild card just to kind of throw some chaos in the mix or what?
    144:38
    Picking stars. Yeah, I mean, I like how that star is played. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, just light the spinner up and hit the spinner. But you were kind of going, were you going for the stars or going for the spinner?
    144:49
    I usually go, I try to get like two or three stars to fill the spinner value up. Yeah. And then go for the spinner.
    144:56
    But I was, you know, I go for the left spinner if the ball is on the right flipper. And, you know, the way the match ended was the ball got stuck at the very top of the left spinner. where that little gate is. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm not stupid. I'm not going to try to shake the gate. And I raised my hand, and that was it. Bowen conceded because he knew that with my 5,000 bonus points. You had it. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I was going to win with 230 points. I was telling the audience, too. I was saying, nope, he's got it. He's got it. Leave it alone. He has it right now. With bonus points, he has it. I was talking to someone. Yeah. You had some fans in the audience, too. There were some fans behind you, you know. Yeah. I just, you know, the usual thing. Well, you and your wife and P.J. And some other people in the audience was also behind you, too. There's other people there as well. Yeah, and, you know, I do have to say that it's nice that Fun Spot's turning around, you know. Yeah, it is. I'm glad to see it. They're actually investing in pinball again. It's great. It's nice that I have a lot of good things to say.
    145:58
    Paul Blotten's son, Dave, is a very nice guy, very soft-spoken. Yeah, I need to introduce him. I'd like to talk to him. You know, I'd like to talk to him. He loves pinball. He's got, you know, they've got several sterns up at Fun Spot now. They even have some old EMs that are new to Fun Spot. Wow. Old 80s games that are new. And he's really embracing pinball tournaments now. It's like night and day from you knowing what I dealt with when I was a lot younger. Right, right. And so, you know, I encourage a lot of people in the New England area to go up there and check it out, because if you remember even two years ago versus now, I mean, it's like sunlight and moonlight. Right. Night and day, you know what I'm saying? Did you say bud light and moonlight or sunlight?
    146:53
    No, no, it's not like bud light. It used to be like bud light. Right. It never used to be like bud light. Well, there was a furry convention, and they let them go out, and they put them on a leash. Yeah, you know, I've heard about this furry stuff. I don't know what it is. I guess people dress up as stuffed animals or something like that, and it turns them on. Yeah, it turns them on as stuffed animals. I mean, I've got some weird things that I'm not going to say on the podcast that you don't know about. When I used to come over to your house, 20-something years ago, but basically it's just to make you laugh. Right. It was all good fun. Nobody got hurt. Yeah, between that and P.J.'s escapades, you know. Right. But we all had a great time. Sure. It was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. But no, I mean, you know, Fantastic, it's my favorite show because, you know, it's New England. It's where I grew up. It's, you know, a lot of people know me up there. I love doing the seminar. And contrary to what he thinks, I really do like Jim. I respect him for what he's done for the sanctum. I mean, that's really cool. I know how hard it is to put on, you know, to have a building with a ton of pinballs, maintain them, try to get enough money to keep it going. That's what we're doing at the asylum right now. Right. And so I do have a lot of respect for him. Well, are you in Jim's square? Are you in Jim's square? Does he kind of think you're not square or what? No, I think so. You know, he knows that sometimes we don't see eye to eye. But, you know, I do like the guy, you know. Yeah. and he does have such a passion for putting on a great pinball tournament. He does. He really does. He does a lot of good work, yeah. A lot of people say, well, it's the best of seven, you know, it goes late. But you know what? You don't need pinball tournaments to go late. Yeah, of course. You know, Texas Pinball Festival didn't end until after. It was like 115 to 130, whatever time it was. I mean, it is what it is. Right. He's doing it so that, you know, so that it stays on the circuit. Right. And, you know, that's actually a pretty smart thing for Jim to do. Yeah. Because if you look at Allentown, now all of a sudden Allentown is gone off the circuit. Yeah, how'd that happen?
    149:07
    Because they didn't have enough whopper points. Because it's a one-day event. It's a one-day qualifying. So it's not worth anything. Oh. and I hate to say it but OBX which is a great great tournament the Outer Banks of North Carolina it's like our point boxes at the asylum this year it's going to be held August 24th, whatever that weekend is at a one price and you qualify all you want, there's no pump and dump you pay like $60, $70, $80 and you get to play all weekend you don't have to do anything you know what I mean? And OBX pays back 100% of the money that they bring in. So the prize pool is very similar to Pintastic, but it's a fixed entry. You know what I'm saying?
    150:02
    And there was only 115 people there last year, and first prize was like $2,400. bucks. You know, and Pintastic, there was 225 people, and first prize was $25.86 or whatever it was. But again, not everybody's going to be spending $80 or $100. So, you know, it's very fair. You know, Pintastic's very fair. And I see why they extended to Thursday night, because I think if you have 19 hours of qualifying, you get X amount of extra percent TGP, they call it, for people that don't understand. And if you have a best of seven versus a best of five, you also get extra TGP. Oh, no wonder. I don't think, let me look, I don't think they've posted the results yet.
    150:52
    Jim's usually pretty good at getting everything in fast. Let's see here. Not yet. But, you know, in the coming days, you know, they'll get the tournament in.
    151:13
    But either way, you know, tournaments have to do what they can in order to make sure they don't drop off the circuit. You know what I'm saying? Yep. And I worry about Free Play Florida because the amount of points I got for winning that versus the amount of points Allentown was worth, Free Play Florida wasn't many more points. The bottom five every year drop off.
    151:47
    I really have a strong feeling that Free Play Florida is my home. It's my backyard. I won it three times in a row and four times out of the five times I've gone. And I love the guys at the Pinball Lounge.
    152:00
    And, you know, those are the guys that run the state tournament. They run Freeplay Florida. Dan Spoler from Project Pinball used to run Freeplay Florida until COVID hit. And now, and you met him, you know, Project Pinball, the charity, the pinballs in the Children's Hospital, you know, one of my favorite charities out there. So, you know, if Freeplay Florida doesn't get more points than last year, they may be off the circuit too. So I would have gone to Allentown because I could have taken Saturday night off of work and actually taken a late Saturday night flight out of Newark because Allentown ends early. Remember, it ends at like 6 at night. Or no, 4 at night. 4 or 5. I mean, it's way early. So because it's not a circuit event, I'm not going to take that day off because I need to take it off to do another circuit event. So they might not have any really heavy hitters on this time around at their show, you think, for the tournament, you think? Jason's gone. Well, the usual suspects will be there. Jason's gone. I mean, you know.
    153:06
    Jason's going to go? Jason's going to be there? Levy, Greg, all the New York guys that I love, you know, they'll be there. Yeah. Jason Zoller may or may not be there, but he's not going to make it a point to go. If he's got schoolwork and final exams, why would he go if it's not a circuit event? You know what I'm saying? What's he going to school for, by the way? Do you know?
    153:28
    I totally forgot. Okay. I don't know if it's engineering or marketing or something. I'm not really sure. Maybe business and marketing, I want to say. So you think Allentown will try to get on the thing next time to kind of do something different to get back on the thing? Because maybe they keep changing the rules, huh? Yeah, they would have to change the rules if they're not doing it.
    153:52
    So Allentown, see, the show ends on Saturday. Yeah. And it starts on Friday. Right. So the only way they'd be able to do it is if they extended it one more day, whether they start a day early or end a day late. But again, that doesn't have to do with Levy or Greg. That has to do with the Allentown show itself. I get a way they can do it. They should start at someone's high-end collection, someone's house the night before or something, and then continue it at the show. I don't think that's legal. Oh, okay. I think that would consist of two separate tournaments if you did it that way. So you can't really...
    154:39
    Well, I know this time around they did B division. They actually took the B players and put them into a club room for the finals. You know why? Why?
    154:49
    Because your B division standings are already set. You're only playing for money. So if you finish in 28th place and then you win the B division, you still are in 28th place. You see what I'm saying? Okay.
    155:09
    It's not like they take the top 24 for A, and then say they take the next 8 for B. So 25 to 32. If you're the 32nd player, then you're in the B division finals. If you win the B division, that doesn't mean you get to take 25th place. It doesn't work that way. You still take 32nd place, but you take first at the B Division at whatever money is involved. So once the qualifying is over for the B Division, you could be playing a pinball machine on the street. It doesn't matter because the standings aren't going to change. You're only playing for money. That's like if you and me and a couple other people just go somewhere and play dollar games. Do you see what I mean? Okay, I see what you're saying. It's already been settled. Now we're going for money later. It's already been settled. Now, that's why if you saw the third and fourth match between Bowen and Raymond Davidson, they agreed to split the money. Right. I saw that. Okay? Yep. So technically you would do like a best out of five.
    156:11
    But since they split the money, what's the point of doing a best out of five? All we're trying to do now is figure out third and fourth place. So basically they played one game. The fastest game there probably stars. Right. and that determined that Bowen won third place.
    156:32
    Again, it's not really part of the tournament. It's almost like a tiebreaker type thing. You know what I'm saying? Okay, yeah. Okay, now you're tied for third now, but because we've got four trophies, four different money amounts, we need an established third and an established fourth. So how are you going to do it? Are we going to play the five games, or do you want to split the money and we'll just play one game? and they decide to split the money and play one game. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, so that's what they want to do.
    157:04
    Interesting. I know after having the stars there, I need to set my stars up again. I haven't set my stars up in a long time. It's a great game.
    157:12
    Oh, yeah, definitely. I like stars. Yeah. So over to bow and arrow, the final game. So I think you got some bad breaks. He'd like that left outlay on you. And somehow Jason seemed to freaking bring that back from the dead, resurrect that ball from that lane several times by just bumping it just right and bringing it back in.
    157:37
    Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence. I think that he knew exactly what to do, and I didn't.
    157:46
    You know what I'm saying? He knew exactly what to do to get that ball out of there. But you both had the same amount of time in that game. and you guys both play that game during the weekend?
    157:57
    Yeah, but I can't time those hard nudges and the multiple nudges in a row like he does. Like I said, that's one thing he's got me on. Yeah, he does that really well. Actually, I want to learn from that. I want to try that and put that in my toolbox. I'd like to try that. Tell me about it.
    158:17
    Yeah. So, you know, it's tough. it's tough to do but you know I've learned a few tricks from him and it is what it is you know yeah I'd like to at some point I've put up to Jim in the past but I think he just wants his own games in the lineup there like I'd like to bring you know one of mine and put in the lineup sometime for some different you know but I don't know I think he likes his own stuff there. That way he can control it all instead of having someone else's stuff in the lineup, you know.
    158:57
    Right. I mean, I even talked to – who's the – I forget the guy's name, especially, who runs the – who does the video. I forget the guy's name. Is it Mark? Mark. Mark, yeah. Yeah, he's really good. Yeah, a good guy. Patanud, Mark Patanud, that's his name? Yep. Yeah.
    159:13
    Yeah, I mean, I'd like to – you know, if I could have somebody, like, you know, partner up and run the tournament and do the video and that kind of thing, and I can just basically – I'll supply the games and get my piece out of it. If I could just do a game supply thing and other people can kind of run it and do that kind of thing and have that piece of it, I'd consider doing something like that. But to do it all, that's such a steep learning curve. These guys already have it down what they do, you know. Oh, yeah, he does it well, and they pay it pretty well too, so. Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, if I could have someone like that that actually knows how to do, you know, the payment system and run the tournament and all that kind of stuff and I could just be the game supplier and with a little bit of extra maybe in some little tech thing and maybe a little commentary thing and do a little piece of my stuff that I know how to do and do it well, I'd partner up with somebody and do something like that.
    160:04
    Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, see what happens in the future. Yeah. They said the top eight qualifiers finished the finals in the exact order that they qualified in.
    160:22
    And I believe 9 through 16 went out in the same order they qualified, except maybe one. There might have been one different. Or I should say 9 through 24.
    160:34
    Isn't that crazy? It's crazy. Wow. Yeah. What are the odds? I know. I know Eric Getty's local guy from Peabody, he was happy. You know, he won B. He was happy. I think it was over. I think they played B division finals at the Western Pinball, Western Mass Pinball. Because I guess he's gone there many times before. He knows the games. He's like, I was so happy to play those games. He freaking, you know, knew what to do. He was familiar. So that helped him. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
    161:09
    Helped a lot. so well that's cool any further thoughts on attorney that kind of thing I definitely want to go and I don't really use Facebook at all because it's a lot of gripping a lot of drama but it sounds like there's some fun drama to watch over there I mean you know it's tough for me you know I try to just do my own thing and not to bother anybody but I wind up bothering people so I always say you're never going to make everybody happy obviously I have, you know, 10 times more fans than I do people that don't like me, which is good. That's good, yeah. I don't know, I mean, by all the people that come up to me and say hi, and I want to do this interview, and hey, I missed you, and let's get a picture together, let's do this, let's do that, let's play a pinball game, I get a lot more of that than I do anybody complaining, you know, about me and whatnot, so. Yeah, typically you don't get anybody coming up to you in person is saying, yeah, I don't like you because you get more armchair quarterback. You get more like keyboard warrior. You know what's all? I'd rather people come up to me and say, hey, listen, I don't like that you did this because I'm not conscious if I do that. You know what I'm saying? Right. Like about this grunt thing, I have no idea what they're talking about. Now, I know, you know, I have asthma and I clear my throat a lot. Like that. Yeah. I don't know if they mistake that for me grunting because it's not. Like, why would I just grunt out of the blue. Yeah, it's not yet. You have asthma and you clear your throat. So they're trying to... Yeah, I don't know. I mean, people will pick... They will pick on you about anything. Tell me a bunch of bullies. Sounds like a bunch of bullies today. Yeah, well, you know, it is what it is.
    162:51
    Bullies are actually cowards, though. Really. Bullies are cowards. And a couple people on Facebook have said about me repeating the same shot on Jaws that that's something that someone with autism or Asperger's would be doing. So it's like, all right, are you trying to say that that's what I have? And are you trying to put down someone that even, not that you have it, but that you have it, that's a problem? Exactly, yeah. You're making fun of handicapped people in general? What are you doing? Why are you trying to figure out an excuse as to why I can repeat the same shot 100, 200 times in a game, spin the reel on Jaws 3,000 times? Sounds a bit mean-spirited. I'm determined. Right, yeah. I blow a game up, and I'm determined to get my score disqualified.
    163:39
    Right, obviously. Yeah. You know, it's people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, is what it comes down to, you know. Like I said, I don't really care what other people do.
    163:53
    I try to live a decent life. Yeah. Try to live somewhat of a godly life. Right. And, you know, I know a lot of people get upset that I pray and that I thank God, but you know what? That's on them. I'll never stop. No, you shouldn't stop. If they want to, you know, worship the enemy of this world, go ahead. You guys go do it. But otherwise, you know, as for me and my house, I'm going to serve God. So, you know, I get it. Yep. That's exactly right. I think that's a good place to finish right there. It is. I think so. Perfect.
    164:23
    Exactly, man. Well, great. It's great talking about tournament and all things pinball as always, Eric. And let's do this again. We've got the World Championships coming up in June at Jim Belcino's place in California. That'll be the next big tournament, and that's about it, you know. Not much going on after that.
    164:45
    Okay. Cool. So I don't know what our paths will cross again, but as usual, it's always a pleasure. Yeah, same here. I can't wait to watch you next in the next tournament on Twitch at the very least, you know. Well, you know, you'd be able to watch tonight because Batcave Pinball, we have our fun little tournament tonight at a place called Replay Museum.
    165:07
    And that starts at about five minutes. And so if you go to Batcave Pinball on Twitch, you'll be able to see me and a bunch of Tampa people playing. All right. I'll definitely check it out.
    165:17
    Yeah. What's your name on there? Dr. Dave? Dr. Dave. Or it could be Pinball Doctor or Dr. Dave. Or Dr. Dave's Pinball Restorations, typically. You know, one of those. Well, get on there and say hello, and I'll try to sit down on the stream as well so I can see. Yeah, yeah, we'll do. Any classic stuff? We're all rampers? Or what do we got? Anything? Yeah, there's not many classic. They have Aztec and they have Butterfly, but most of the stuff is like 90s or, you know, 2000s. So you're going to be there all day on ball one for like about two hours? No, no, no, no. They really dump the games down, dude. Okay. They've lowered the flippers, I think, on some of the stirbs.
    165:58
    The tilts are tight. The rubbers are off. The ball saves are nonexistent. Mandalorian's on a possible mode. What do you think about putting lightning flippers in these games to make them harder? Do you like lightning flippers for a thing or no? I don't really care. Okay. It's tough to play a game of lightning flippers, I find. It doesn't bother me at all. Oh, okay. You know?
    166:21
    I mean, the Eggman had them, and I wound up winning that tournament. Wow. Nice. Way to adapt. Way to adapt, man. The way I look at it is it's not – it may hurt me 0.1%, but it's going to hurt the other players 20%, 30%, 40%. Right. Exactly. So it doesn't really do much when you dump the games down for me. Remember, I'm used to how Fun Spot used to be. They used to play in broken crap, I know.
    166:48
    Flippers didn't make ramps. This shot didn't work, and I improvised to still get high scores and world records. You were there. I know. I couldn't believe it. It's like this man cannot be stopped.
    166:58
    25 years ago. Yeah, amazing. I think that helps with me playing on games that are, quote, bastardized, you know? Yeah.
    167:08
    All right, I've got to run. The tournament's going to start in a couple minutes. All right. On that note, to the Batcave. Amen. All right, amen, man. God bless. All right, bye. Okay, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hot Flash, don't bet against the kid. Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave!
    167:26
    Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Right? George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. This joker's not only stupid, he's a moron. Besides, I heard that. Thanks for the compliment. Hasta la vista, baby.