Thank you very much. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George and I'm joined by my co-host Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. Okay, Dave. Long time coming. Sorry, everyone. You know, stuff gets in the way. Today, we're going to embark on Paragon. Dave, I'm going to ask you, because you're all-knowing, do you know the definition of Paragon? Paragon or virtue meaning pinnacle Something like that We're going to talk about this because it's kind of a weird definition A person or thing regarded as A perfect example of a particular quality Okay sounds good I'm hung up on the particular quality So here's what I thought You're grading beef So that's a particular quality Right? Okay So there could be a paragon of Prime There could be a paragon of Choice There could be a paragon of Kobe This is going to be a good one I know where you're going The whole thing is of a particular quality. It doesn't mean everything's assessed as the same quality. It's like there's stratas. That's the way I read it. You say. You don't care. It doesn't matter. We'll move on. No. Well, for me, Paragon is like when they say Paragon of Virtue, I thought it means like top. Paragon is like ultimate. Like I think Valley, they did a lot of the first game with inline drops, and some other firsts they did in the game. Was it their first wide-body, too? Oh, boy. I didn't do my research on this one like you did. We're not well-researched, are we? I was just going to go into the regular, you know, who's the designer, who did the artwork. Sorry. I'm pretty sure, because I think I remember reading that years ago about this game, and it's like that's why it's called Paragon, because they kind of want to differentiate the Star Wars from other stuff, and it's like a Paragon. I think it also means, when I was a kid looking at Paragon, I always thought it meant like a mythical creature. But I don't think that's the case. I read you the definition I pulled from the Google machine. So whatever that's worth, that's the one I pulled. It's just the particular quality thing was the weird thing that stuck out. Anyway, I'll go with yours. It's fine. Let's go into what we normally do. design. You gave me the correct pronunciation, so I'll see if I can do it correctly. Greg Mayak. Mayak, yes. And this time I won't screw up the artwork name. It is Paul Faris. That one I'll get correct. And we should probably, well, I'm going to say it anyway. I have a really nice print from Joel DeGuzman who did a really nice four-piece. Paragon. Help me, Dave. Centaur. Xenon. Oh, I got that one too, and I should have known that. Anyway, nice print. Great bunch of games. I didn't screw his name up. Oh, very good. And I just, I was correct. I just looked at notes on the IPBD. Paragon first wide from Bally, from this manufacturer. So that's why they went Paragon. That goes to my definition of it. Okay, you want to hear a trademark that they took on with this game? Sure. I think it's a vernacular of the day, supersize. Yeah. So they were referring to their wide bodies as super-sized. The first thing I think of is, like, the gigantic drink from McDonald's or 7-Eleven. Super-sized, you know, that quart-plus of liquid. The 44-ounce of – and why 44-ounce, by the way? Why not 46 or 42 or 38? Why 44? I'd like to know that reason. there. Okay. So, we will stay away from that. Sorry. Sorry. Anyway. So, I gave you the... I'll take people's attention. Yeah, that's not going to happen. So, June 1979, 9,120 units. You sent me an email saying, hey, did you know, well, I read the same thing you did, about the Ohio Players and the Funky Worm. And that is just one very strange song compared to the two hits they had. And you might... Where were you in the disco era? How old were you? Well, you don't have to give exact numbers. Were you a teenager? Or like a single? Disco is what, 78? Is that 78 or 80? What is the range? Mid-teens, 14, 15, 16, somewhere around there. Okay. I was in college, and all the disco boys loved all the disco hits. And I see all the new games coming out, now that you can change the soundtrack, and they go with all that stuff. Anyway. we'll leave that to be where it is but I thought that song Funky Worm which is what is it the Golden Cliffs song if you get all 20 if you get all 20 units you get the whole song you get the whole song the song Bill I'm going to play it afterwards but do you hear the song in there or am I tone deaf There's a worm in the ground, yes there is. That's right, that's right. Six feet down. Six feet down. He only comes around when he's close to getting down. But when he comes out of his hole, he's out something like this. Very loosely. Is this piece that I can kind of see hinting at it? Is it exact? No. I'd say maybe they got the idea for it. And God knows why. There's no Sweet Georgia Brown or whatever that crazy song in Playboy is. It's not that. Yeah. I don't know who said, hey, I know Funky Worm for this. Well, I mean, if you were to pick a song by that band, wouldn't you have picked Fire? Fire Something Something Yeah. Or that. Yeah, sure. And it goes with a pair of. I love Roller Coaster. I can't do that one. Roller Coaster. That one. Roller Coaster. Say what? Roller Coaster. You wouldn't pick the funky one. And I am going to play every one of those songs in this broadcast, so you don't have to go search. Very nice of you. I like that. Okay, want to get into the meat and potatoes of this game? Sure. Okay. Fan or not? Go ahead. Four or three flippers? So if you were to choose Would you choose the game to be a four flipper game Or a three flipper game? I'll explain why You already know the reason, we'll get into it I would say Four flipper game Okay, do you want to explain the three flipper version for those who haven't done the really difficult research we did? Sure. You've all heard of the Brazilian bottom. Well, this is called the Italian bottom, and they're two different things. Brazilian bottom, you've got to go to the beach. The Italian bottom, you basically have the two regular flippers down the bottom. On the right side. What? So you're looking at the game, the flippers on the right side of the game, instead of there being two. Yeah, just your two standard two flippers at the bottom. That's it, like any other standard-sized game. None of this funky scissor-flipper-lose-the-ball-between-two-flippers. They didn't like that over in Italy. So they said, no, we don't want to do that. So Valley said, okay, we'll accommodate you. we'll put a post there instead of that flipper. We'll put another wire form there so that you don't lose the ball there. And you can have a regular two-flipper game with one little flipper at the top left like normal. They also didn't like, as part of that, they didn't like how you could lose the ball easily in the beast layer. So they have another hole there a lot harder to lose the ball through there. There is something on their brochure called a save a ball ramp. So what is the save a ball ramp? The save a ball ramp. I think it's the gate above the left flipper so that if you want to trap the ball, you won't lose it up into the beast lair. If you go look at it on IPDB, and it might be somewhere else, there is a picture where that gate is not there. And actually, the post, I believe, for that opening that drains into the out lane is also removed to make it even bigger. Hey, if they're paying, they can have it any way they want. Bollie took the cash and said, just tell us what you want. Oh, sorry, we'll remove a couple of mechs. Oh, that doesn't save us any money. I mean, come on. Yeah, sure. There's one dollar. Okay, you want us to remove that flipper? No problem. No problem. We'll take it right out of here. Wire form, cheap. Flipper, expensive. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I'm outside right now. I borrowed my buddy John's rotisserie. I got an early 70s Godly Kingpin out there that I'm having at it with Magic Racer and doing a little touch-up and then putting a Playful Protector on it. This thing is gorgeous. It was a very low home use only kind of thing. This is PJ's game. No. Well, PJ owns this game. PJ owns this game. I own this game. John owns this game. It's a very popular game. A lot of people own this game. It's a flavor of the week. Okay, anything else we The only thing we didn't talk about Which we usually do is Gameplay How do you play this game? Oh, and you know what You got the My last name is Kexel Quotel Basically And you'll see this in Different kind of circles And that kind of thing Folklore, but they have the tongue sticking out all the time It's a demonic kind of thing, having the tongue like that. Kind of like Miley Cyrus. She does the same kind of shit. Which person has their tongue sticking out? The Valley of the Demons. A little, it's like a demon character. Kind of looks like one of the things on a gargoyle. And as the entrance into the drop tower, it's this little creature has his tongue sticking all the way out. Kind of like Gene Simmons. Not in front of the game, so I'll take your word for it. And the other one, it was like the Wiggler. They took it from Valley, the Wiggler on the right-hand side, a little, you know, dipsy doodle where the ball goes. Waterfall, yeah. Most people don't like that part of the game in Paragon. Yeah, it kind of slows down a little bit. Well, if you have a game set up just right, it's supposed to come down to your lower right flipper, and with the right exact timing, you can nail the inline drop. But you've got to be right place, right time. No, that doesn't. I don't like where I have my game set up. So that, I think, is part of the problem. You have to level it. Yeah, it's just tough to level it. I feel like I'm always picking it up with the lift and then putting it back down again, and it's not quite right. If you don't have it in the same spot all the time, it makes it, you know, it's just off a little bit, and a little bit is a lot. You're being like Arnold Schwarzenegger I pick things up and put things down I put things up, I put them down I have a couple of questions But you were supposed to come up with a name You don't even remember And that's what's funny about it I got a lot of time I got a lot more time on my hands I see my segment for the magazine thing Well, right But we were supposed to come up with a name I think you were going for the Paul Harvey thing And we just left it at that We said, oh, we'll come up with a name the next segment, but that was out the door in the next 15 seconds after I said it. Right. I think we had some ideas. No, they're just pumped into the next. We're not discussing that. We're already 30-some-odd minutes into this. Anyway, why don't you tell me about your latest publication? Okay, the latest publication is this lady called me. She knows someone over at NBC Boston, and she wanted to do an article on me. And I said, sure, yeah, it sounds good. What's your thing about? And she told me it's a heritage journal from New Robert Englunds. and I said, yeah, it sounds interesting, and she'd like to have me do it. It's called New Robert Englunds History and Heritage Journal, spring issue. And she's a really good public, really good, you know, feel-good piece, you know, with all this stuff going on these days. And I said, yeah, I'd love to. So I thought just a little blurb that she would just do a little something, and she gave me a bunch of questions to answer. So I kind of took my time with it, and I kind of was busy with other things. And she goes, let me get that done. Let me get that. I said, yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it tonight. So I finally get it. And I told her, I emailed her, and I said, hey, I'm kind of writing a novel here. Is that okay? I mean, no, no, no, write as much as you want. This is great. So I wrote a whole bunch of stuff all the questions I fully answered them And come to find out she sent me the final copy and I on the front page I on the front page The whole article on the front page Sure of a Twilight Zone I just finished restoring it from the front page and then my picture is on pages two and four, I think. It's like a four. I mean, I'm on four pages of the journal, the magazine, and I'm on the front page of it as well as a feature. So I was very pleased with that. You're published. Say again? I said you're published. Yes, I'm published. Yes. Yes, I'm published. Yes. I mean, you wrote most of it, so. Yeah, I wrote all of it. She has a question that I answered, so I basically wrote the thing, and she basically did a slight bit of editing, but pretty much it's all me. And so I did her a great favor by, she's like, this is great. I can just, like, print go. Go ahead. You saved her a boatload of time. And she was probably like, oh, my God, I don't have to even do anything to this. This is awesome. That just saved me a lot of time. Thank you, Dave. Oh, yeah. And then she said, hey, you know what, you want a free ad in there too? Sure. So I put my business card in there too. She took a photo of that, put that in there too. So that's kind of nice. So I asked, I might have asked offline, did you ever get a hard copy of this newspaper magazine? She cannot do it yet because of all the junk going on down the road. She will right now. It's all digital format. So that'll be, I don't know, whenever she can. Is that the only episode that they've published? No, I think there's more. I don't know. I think it's a new magazine. So this is the primary, the first issue, or maybe the second or third, I believe. But it's a new thing. It's a new publication. Okay. I'm just asking, hey, ball pub is a good pub. Yeah, I'll take it. It's great. I mean, I pass it all around to people I know and people who've all received, so I'm happy with it. And the thing with this, the Chronicle piece a couple months ago and then the NBC Boston thing, this all just kind of happened. I didn't go out searching this stuff. They found me, which is great. You're hot, man. You're hot. You're on fire, man. Insert Ohio player song here So we talked a little bit about the game And most people are familiar with the game I don't think we have to really go through it that much Left hand side in like drop targets Multiplier in place Get it in the saucer get a free ball up top left hand side it's an incremental by two bonus two four six eight ten up to 20 on the right hand side whether you have it on vary or not vary you're spelling paragon and the thing that nobody likes on the right is the waterfall knock down the targets increase the uh increase the value and run it through the waterfall i missed anything Oh, the spinner. The spinner. Crank the spinner. Increase your bonus. Did I miss anything? I think that's about it. Okay. Let's just get down to the meat of it. And I think this is where everybody wants us to go. So you've got the ball coming down on the right-hand side, either through the top or the bottom flipper. What are you doing? Coming down the right-hand side. I do the top flipper, but I know this is my copy, but I've tried to adjust it and more power to it, but it just seems that top right flipper does not have the sweet spot, the narrowest, or I should say wide sweet spot that the lower flipper has on the right. Because the lower flipper, I can nail it all the time. The upper right flipper, it's hard to nail those drops, so you have to get just the right shot. But it is fun to do it, especially fun to go all the way through those drops with the right flipper and upper right flipper and also nailing the saucer with it because it has to be just right. It has to be just in the right spot in that. And that's what, you know, obviously flipper rebuilds and even put a little stronger coil in there to help out. But just the EOS, new EOS, doesn't matter. I don't know. So I'm going to go to my game. What you're saying is if you want a more accurate shot to the inline drop targets, you're using the lower flipper in order to do that because it's got a higher probability. Right. Yes. Okay. Well, I'm going to take the opposite. This is my game. And this is always good. That's why I love doing this. I always try to shoot the inline drop targets with the top flipper. And I agree with you. I can hit that up until number four and sometimes all the way through to the saucer. It depends on the shot. But I can't use that upper flipper with accuracy to go through the spinner. So I use the bottom flipper as an either-or. But it's weird that your game won't allow you to use the top flipper with accuracy to hit the end lines. That's interesting. Yeah, it's more of a skill shot upper right flipper to do. It's harder, so I like doing it because it's a challenge. I'm by far no expert. The game is just, I knew we were doing this show, so I played the game. And we always talk about the sister game of Harlem. That game is far more fun and accommodating. Well, I'm going to lead into my segment, because I tried to buy two pinballs in the last two weeks and came up short. Okay. What did you try to buy? Tell me that. Well, again, I'm going to mention my friend Jack down in New Jersey was under an hour away from a meteor for 600 bucks. Nice. Good deal. Right. I'd give that a fly. Sure. Sure. Nothing. Crickets. Guy was polite enough to email back and say it sold. So that's cool. So here's the other one. It was even closer. It was in Brattleboro, Vermont, a $600 future spa. Now – Yeah, isn't that a good game? Yeah, I'm not big on the art and the theme, but it is a cool game. And for $600 – It's a cool game. It's a fun game. It's especially like a little tournament or something. Oh, yeah. You know me. I would definitely take it in as a project. I've got three other wide bodies. Why not that one? And so, you know, the only one I don't like, and I saw that they're printing these. Maybe you did as well. They're starting to print the Space Invaders playfields. Yeah, I heard about that. But I don't know. The whole digital thing. I don't know. I missed the commentary. I'll be polite. I'm a traditionalist. How's that? You like the original versus the repro, you're saying I like the fact that you're actually Marc Silk screening a play field instead of digitizing it So yes, old school So these are the new process, this one's a new process you're saying From what I understand, and again, correct me if I'm wrong I saw somebody say something about Paragons. I don't know which way they went on those, but they keep saying that they're moving to a digital platform, and the next game up was Space Invaders. So that would be my guess. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't follow it. That's not a game I really like. I just silkscreen is a whole different thing than a wrap I like silkscreen silkscreen is a better product I think some people doesn't bother them much but the OCD level of restoration people they want the best possible you know colors and they want to look like the original as much as they can I know I do give people what they want I mean if people want original and it costs tell them that that what it costs. If they don't care the price and they want inexpensive, then you go to another process. I'm guessing that's the way I look at it. I don't know if that's right or not. Yeah, that's the way the world goes. no you're not even coming and i keep coming back i'm like a glutton for punishment it's like what's that all about there's always the one more i can do it i can play better this game won't control me but in the end if you play 10 games how many are you having that are really great games most of them are less than stellar yeah i guess although i'll tell you But the way I have my – I just finished restoring a Harlem, as you know. We did a whole show on it, which you probably didn't listen to. You know what weekend this normally is? Yeah, Allentown. Yeah, is that weird? It is weird. It's a beautiful weekend, too. Although, in a way, you'd be stuck inside playing pin when you should be outside like now. So it's not that bad. I'm outside working on pin, so I'm happy with that. Well, you remember me. I don't usually go inside. I'm usually hanging out across the street eating like a pig, but whatever. I was just thinking I saw the commercial for the Kentucky Derby, and I was saying to myself, well, normally it's pretty fun. I could now go into New Jersey to my friend Jack's house and actually bet on the Kentucky Derby, which you never used to be able to do. But because of what's going on, it's like, oh, man. Yeah. Anyway. Are they actually having it? They're not having it, are they? I thought you told me it was being postponed until June. Oh, it is. I thought you said Kentucky Derby. I thought you said that. No, there's no Kentucky Derby either. That's what I'm saying. There's no Allentown. There's no Kentucky Derby. there's no nothing. I mean, yes, it's a nice weekend, but... But there is pinball. There is pinball. I've been busy. Don't stand, don't stand so, don't stand so close to me. Don't stand, don't stand so, don't stand so close to me. Boris Vichon. Have you seen the Quarantopia competition that is out on Matchplay? Someone make it stop. Really? No, I have not, George. Please do tell. I think the woman's name is Laura Fraley. Decided that everyone who is a pinball tournament player and not should have the ability to compete against each other. So she set up this match play event for, I forget how many different machines, a couple hundred different machines, where you can compete against everyone and anyone who cares to on a specific game. Okay. Sounds reasonable so far. Let's use Harlem Globetrotters as an example. Set it up as we've discussed before, you know, alternating spinners, three ball, the saucer up top on random, you know, making it as difficult as you can. No threshold, so it's just a pure three ball game. and once you've completed and you have what you think is a high score take a picture of your face or partial face and the scoreboard behind you and then send it off to MatchPlay to validate so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that I know you weren't very big on the Zoom competition this is I guess sort of a variant of that not a big self it's like a selfie league thing not a big fan of the whole selfie thing not a big fan of Facebook so yeah I mean I don't know it's kind of trendy but no nothing I'd really be interested in doing I like doing the real the real deal in person up close in person I signed up for it thinking that I might compete and then I said to myself I have to reconfigure almost every single one of my games in order to make it competition worthy. You must comply in this day and age of complying, you must comply Well, I mean, to make it all fair, I just... Well, you actually could just basically flip a switch, and so your threshold would be the ability to win free games. Just one switch for that. That's all you need to do, right? Or you could do a bunch of other stuff, too, to make it hard. You've got to make all the hard settings. That's true. Most of my games are set up pretty hard. There's a couple of things that could be changed. But, again, I'm just wondering out loud, did everybody do the same thing? I'm guessing people were attempting to be fair, but who knows? There's no, you're basically self-governing. Taking the back glass off and redoing it. I said, forget it. Done. I think one of my games might be acceptable, but I have all the thresholds in there. So it's like, okay, now I got to go in. I got to take, deprogram that. I just didn't, I threw it in. I said, I'll just watch from afar. Yeah, it's kind of apples to oranges out there. I'd rather still, you know, have people over and, you know, if everybody is all healthy and your gut is good for fending off all kinds of junk out there any other time, then you're fine, good to go, have people over. I have a feeling we're going to be waiting for a little bit, unfortunately. Mm-hmm. Anyway, go deliver your game. that I didn't get you as infuriated as I thought you would be. No, no. I mean, I've seen the selfie league is already out there already, so there's just a variant of that. It's actually bringing it forward more to people that are in their self-imposed exile. Oh, you know But you don't know Where from It hurts to talk It hurts to talk And I can't even breathe I need drugs I need drugs Something to choose from I don't know Should I go to the doctor Or stay right here And watch the tube Like a fool I feel down, down, down The faces and wounds The faces and wounds