Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 161 – Bringin’ It From The Top Rope

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·held·Feb 24, 2021
View original

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Robert Byers discusses Top Rope Pinball streaming with wrestling intros and Texas pinball tournament recovery.

Summary

Slam Tilt Podcast episode featuring Robert Byers, creator of Top Rope Pinball, a wrestling-themed streaming concept where he performs elaborate wrestler intros before and during pinball gameplay. Discussion covers his streaming setup, wrestling gear collection, tournament history (Texas Pinball Champion 2018), COVID-era origins of the stream, local Texas tournament scene recovery post-lockdown, and technical pinball topics including flipper mechanics across manufacturers.

Key Claims

  • Robert Byers won the Texas Pinball Championship in 2018

    high confidence · Robert Byers stated directly: 'in 2018 and Texas Pinball Festival, I was fortunate enough to get in the finals and win.'

  • Top Rope Pinball streaming concept originated during COVID lockdown in Texas (March 2020)

    high confidence · Robert Byers: 'when COVID hit...after about three weeks of that and seeing Don't End in Sight, I'm like, oh, I'm going to stream.'

  • Robert Byers has 7 games at his home for streaming purposes

    high confidence · Robert Byers: 'I've got seven games at the house. I can stream different games.'

  • Buffalo Billiards closed, eliminating a key Austin-area tournament venue

    high confidence · Ron Hallett: 'Buffalo Billiards closed And that was a hit because we got three pinballs locations.'

  • Cidercade Austin opened with approximately 25 pinball games and hosts new The Avengers (LE)

    high confidence · Robert Byers: 'There's a place called Cidercade that opened up here in Austin. It's got about 25 games. And they got a new The Avengers (LE).'

  • Multimorphic P3 complete bundle costs approximately $16,000 for all games and modules

    medium confidence · Robert Byers: 'they posted something at one point. So 16 grand, you could get everything. So you've got all their games, all their side games, all their side stuff.'

  • New York State allowed pinball venues to reopen on March 26, 2021 at 25% capacity (one year into lockdown)

    high confidence · Bruce Nightingale: 'on March 26th will be one year and almost two weeks since a type of business could be allowed to operate in the state of New York. That is fucking ridiculous.'

  • Robert Byers spent $300-400 on wrestler gear and costume accessories

    high confidence · Robert Byers: 'I think I probably spent $300 to $400 on buying stuff. I got all kinds of different colored boas.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I do a full triple h intro where i i got a crown on i come in i've got the jacket i got the championship belt i walk in i'm looking around i got the water bottle. I take the jacket off. I take a big drink. I look both ways, and then I spit water everywhere and blow it towards the camera.”

    Robert Byers @ ~13:00 — Illustrates the over-the-top nature of Top Rope Pinball's entertainment approach and the theatrical commitment to wrestler personas

  • “I probably shouldn't set up the Amazon list. I just let that money fly just all the time, you know. Sponsors and everything.”

    Robert Byers @ ~1:18:30 — Humorous acknowledgment that streaming revenue is negligible; framing streaming as entertainment passion project rather than income source

  • “I've had 45 people on stream as my max during one of my drinking streams, and that was just so much fun having, you know, 10, 15 people chatting, counting out the wrestler, you know, pinfalls.”

    Robert Byers @ ~1:22:00 — Quantifies streaming audience size; indicates drinking/wrestling streams attract larger viewership than standard gameplay

  • “The problem is there's so many established people already that's got their fan base that's hard to get out there and if you don't know what I do and you just see top rope pinball, he does wrestler stuff, some people might not even come check it out”

    Robert Byers @ ~1:24:00 — Commentary on content discoverability challenges in pinball streaming market with established streamers; niche branding as both asset and barrier

  • “The things that spike my stream is basically if I have Bruce on, because, you know, everyone loves Bruce. He's the star.”

    Ron Hallett @ ~1:25:00 — Indicates established podcast/personality recognition drives streaming viewership more than novel content formats

  • “I was not a fan of Lexy Lightspeed Escape From Earth. So maybe if they get some more games that are more exciting, but with limited space for 10 years until my boys are in college, I'm stuck with about seven games.”

    Robert Byers @ ~1:33:00 — Reveals home collector space constraints as limiting factor for Multimorphic P3 adoption; suggests lukewarm reception to earlier P3 titles

Entities

Robert ByerspersonRon HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonColin MacAlpinepersonTop Rope PinballorganizationSlam Tilt PodcastorganizationTexas Pinball FestivaleventBat City Openevent

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Top Rope Pinball uses wrestling entertainment as niche differentiator in saturated pinball streaming market; wrestling intros and personas drive engagement spikes but remain barrier to discovery for non-wrestling audiences

    high · Robert Byers: 'I wanted It's something to draw in people. So now I've got my subset of pinball people and the subset of wrestling people in the pinball.' Multiple quotes about lower baseline viewership (4-10 people) with spikes to 45 during drinking streams

  • ?

    venue_signal: Buffalo Billiards closure eliminated primary Austin-area tournament venue, fragmenting local tournament infrastructure; replacement venue (Cidercade) is all-modern machines, creating design mismatches for tournament organizers preferring mixed-era lineups

    high · Ron Hallett: 'Buffalo Billiards closed...Now, we did get lucky that the Cidercade place opened up...The only difficult thing is that's pretty much all moderns.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Competitive player migration between regions (Steve Bowden moving from Northeast to Texas/Austin); suggests tournament prize pools and venue availability drive player relocation decisions

    medium · Robert Byers: 'we took Bowden from you down here' and discussion of Bowden now dominating Austin tournament scene alongside Colin MacAlpine

  • ?

    product_concern: Multimorphic flipper feel consistently criticized across multiple respondents as inferior to competitors; described as delayed, weak, and mechanically visible/undesirable; affects home collector adoption despite favorable P3 platform economics

    high · Robert Byers: 'I don't like the flipper feel on the games...I don't like seeing the flipper mechs. I don't like the feel. The feel does not feel. It's literally the worst feel in the flippers out of all the companies out there.' Comparison to Chicago Gaming as also problematic

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.346

0:00
Uh, hmm. Are we lost, butthead? Dammit, Beavis, for the bazillionth time, no. Let's go ask that dude over there for, like, some direction for something.
0:17
Tommy, can you help us? We're, like, lost. No way, we just don't know where we are. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Flamphill Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. And everything in the world is getting better. It is? That's what Governor Cuomo says because he's trying to distract everything from him killing so many people. Wow, we're immediately getting political and offensive. Boom, right off the bat. Wow. So, welcome to episode... He was. Guess what? Can I do my intro? Welcome to episode 161. Now, Bruce will go on. Go ahead. First, he's in a firestorm because they realized that he... A little background. ...melted numbers. Governor Cuomo is the governor of New York State. Let's just get that. Yes, he is. Assuming everyone knows this. I mean, we do have... Olini. Okay. Oh, Jesus. He has killed more people than anybody else in coronavirus for the United States. Wow. One governor's now passed him. Congratulations, governor of California. No, California. Oh. And they're actually trying to kick him out. They're actually doing a recall vote on the governor of California, which is nice to see, too. But the governor was found out to have withheld numbers of how many people he's killed with the coronavirus in the beginning.
1:51
So there's a big firestorm in New York. So what does Cuomo do? He says, hey, I'm going to distract you by opening up some stuff now. And finally, in the state of New York, we can play pinball, but not until March 26th, and only at 25% of our original capacity. So on March 26th will be one year and almost two weeks since a type of business could be allowed to operate in the state of New York. That is fucking ridiculous. over one year of people's livelihoods have been ruined by this short-sighted governor.

  • “I don't like the flipper feel on the games. That's the problem. I don't know what about the flippers, and I don't like to see the flipper mechs. I don't like seeing them. I don't like the feel.”

    Robert Byers @ ~1:35:00 — Direct critique of Multimorphic flipper mechanics relative to other manufacturers; suggests this is a known community concern

  • “I hope Deep Root does what they think they're going to do. I hope so. And if they don't, I'm hoping somebody scoops him up...Raza Mueller is going to make sure. I'm going to make sure it happens, brother. If I have to use my own money, it's coming.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~1:28:00 — Indicates community investment in supporting specific competitive players; reference to apparent commitment to backing player sponsorships

  • “He's in San Antonio. It's about an hour and a half drive up to Austin...he came up for all the monthly tournaments. And so I went from trying to beat Colin MacAlpine all the time to beating Steve and Colin.”

    Robert Byers @ ~1:29:00 — Commentary on competitive player migration; suggests Colin MacAlpine and Steve Bowden are Austin's dominant players

  • “Buffalo Pinball as the multi-morphic official streamers, really...they have one, so...Jerry just, he doesn't mind the streams, but I've talked to him about it before, and he doesn't want hours and hours of gameplay in there.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~1:31:00 — Reveals manufacturer/venue politics around streaming; suggests Buffalo Pinball holds exclusive streaming relationship with Multimorphic; reveals manufacturer concern that extended gameplay streams reduce purchase intent

    • Buffalo Billiards
    venue
    Cidercadevenue
    Colin MacAlpineperson
    Steve Bowdenperson
    Multimorphiccompany
    Deep Root Pinballcompany
    Buffalo Pinballorganization
    Phil Grimaldiperson
    Jesse Smithperson
    Garrett Hayesperson
    Jack Dangerperson
    Houdinigame
    The Avengers (LE)game
    Lexy Lightspeed Escape From Earthgame
    Heistgame
    Python Angheloperson
  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic game portfolio perceived as improving over time; early titles (Lexi Lightspeed) poorly received; newer titles (Heist) generating renewed interest, suggesting iterative design improvement

    medium · Robert Byers: 'I was not a fan of Lexi Lightspeed. So maybe if they get some more games that are more exciting...Heist is making me more interested.'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Multimorphic operates streaming relationship strategy where Buffalo Pinball holds preferred/exclusive streaming status; manufacturer explicitly restricts extended gameplay streams to prevent reducing purchase intent

    medium · Robert Byers: 'he doesn't want hours and hours of gameplay in there. And so people watch it and like, okay, well, I've already seen all the things. I don't want to buy a game.'

  • $

    market_signal: Home collector space constraints (7 games maximum for 10 years) limit adoption of modular/expandable platforms like Multimorphic P3; suggests market opportunity for limited-footprint solutions but also ceiling on collector expansion

    medium · Robert Byers: 'with limited space for 10 years until my boys are in college, I'm stuck with about seven games. And then when they're gone, I can probably expand the game room out to about 14, 15 games.'

  • ?

    event_signal: Tournament streaming content attracts significantly larger audiences (100+ concurrent viewers) compared to standard gameplay streams; indicates strong audience hunger for competitive pinball content despite overall niche size

    high · Ron Hallett: 'Fox Cities Pinball...streamed a tournament like two weekends ago...were running over 100 people the whole time.' Robert: 'People are starved for any kind of tournament stream.'

  • ?

    product_concern: High-intensity pinball games (Pirates, Guns N' Roses) generate significant flipper coil heat (200+ degrees), suggesting potential reliability/longevity concerns on modern machines with demanding multiball sequences

    medium · Robert Byers discussing Carl D'Python Anghelo's IE Pinball streams: 'thermal sensors on the flippers...right flipper was just getting well over 200 degrees on a regular basis.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts acknowledge streaming as passion project rather than viable income source; emphasize entertainment value and community building over financial returns; suggests streaming culture in pinball maintains grassroots/hobbyist orientation

    high · Robert Byers: '10 months into the streaming and I've cashed in not yet. So yeah, it's all for the love of it.' Discussion of $100 minimum Twitch threshold with minimal revenue expectations

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: New York State permitted pinball venue reopening on March 26, 2021 at 25% capacity, marking one year into pandemic closures; suggests regulatory uncertainty and delayed recovery timeline for location-based pinball operators

    high · Bruce Nightingale: 'on March 26th will be one year and almost two weeks since a type of business could be allowed to operate in the state of New York.'

    • 2:31
    So he's killed people, you say. Yeah, he has. I thought Corona was killing people. Well, Corona was killing people, but the problem is he sent these people to nursing homes, and these people at nursing homes were getting killed because it spreads like wildfire through the old people, and they had no choice in the matter because they were trying to free up hospital beds.
    2:56
    Our poor guest is waiting patiently. He is because, you know why? Oh, my God. He's had his own issues the past week. Don't fuck with Texas. Oh. Unless it's fucking freezing out.
    3:10
    Then you can take that whole state over in two days. So who's our guest, Bruce? He is the originator of top rope pinball. Here he is. He is actually one of the – I think he's one-time champion. Is he one-time champion of Texas? Yes. Or maybe twice. He's the Texas pinball champion. I consider him a cool guy. Robert Byers. How you doing, Robert? What the Rob is cooking.
    3:39
    Finally, the Rob has come back to the Slam Tilt Podcast. Hey guys, how are you doing today? Alrighty, sir. How are you? Are you the most electrifying streamer out there? I'm the most electrifying entertainment with the people's elbow. Absolutely.
    4:00
    Oh yeah, we're streaming, what? So I'm taking your stream has a wrestling slant to it. Would that be safe to say? yeah uh yes we do uh wrestler intros before and during uh each show and it's it can get pretty intense and uh over the top wait you mean actual intros so you come into the room as the wrestler correct um let me give you an example um i do a full triple h intro where i i got a crown on i come in i've got the jacket i got the championship belt i walk in i'm looking around i got the water bottle. I take the jacket off. I take a big drink. I look both ways, and then I spit water everywhere and blow it towards the camera. Do you cover the game when you do that? Yes, I have three towels with me at all times. One for the floor, one for the game, and one for the streaming gear. He said spit. He didn't swallow. Oh, good lord.
    5:03
    So, yeah, I do multiple wrestler intros. Some of the more grander ones, of course, are Triple Eight. I do the Beer Can Smash with Stone Cold. I do the Lightning Dark intro with Undertaker. But then I've got all your classics like Hogan and Hurricane and Tax Hall Jen Duggan, Rowdy Roddy Piper. I do Vince McMahon, Shane McMahon. I do so many of them. Macho, Ultimate Warrior. I think I got about 30 gears. I actually just bought, about three weeks ago, I bought a rolling clothes rack so I could put it in the attic and then roll that out so I have all my gear if somebody requests somebody to do it. Nice. Wow. That is some dedication there. Yeah, I think I probably spent $300 to $400 on buying stuff. I got all kinds of different colored boas. I've got, you know, Ric Flair robes. I've got a flare for my arms when you spin around. I grab some cushions off some old couches, and my oldest son has got this bear that's about five foot tall. So sometimes when I do some drinking streams and I get more involved with it, I'll do finishing moves on the bear, like tombstones and pedigrees. And the most epic one I did was I think a week ago Saturday, not this Saturday, but the previous Saturday before all these stores started. Maybe it was a week before that. I was a little bit inebriated, and I actually climbed up on my 60-in-1 cocktail table on my knees, dressed as Macho Man, and dropped an elbow from the cocktail table onto the bear and amazingly didn't break anything. Now, you say inebriated. This is kind of like a thing that you do. Is it like every so many streams or every couple weeks or once a month? Yeah, it's kind of every couple weeks. So I got my kids every other weekend. So the weekends I don't have my kids, it's easier to do stuff like this and stay up later and be louder.
    7:08
    So we basically have a stream with drinks. And I did it once, and it was a big hit. And now we've done four or five. It's not my thing. I don't do that all the time. Most of my streams are not like that. It's more about gameplay. Like I've got to run to the hills a couple times. I'm trying to get to the Kiefer Invitational right now on World Poker Tour. And unfortunately, I'm limited to the games I have here because I'm not willing to carry my gear or go anywhere right now with COVID. But it's a combination of sometimes it's just fun, entertaining. Sometimes there's some drinks involved. Sometimes it's a Carl D'Angelo type of get to this wizard mode, objectives types of streams. Sometimes I'll do tutorials. Like I've done a tutorial on like Genie, something you might not see all the time on strategies. So it's just a mix. You never know what you're going to get. but it's always a fun time and there's always wrestlers involved. And I am more about the entertainment. And so if people come online and request certain wrestlers, I'll give it my best go. Nice. Ron, who is your favorite wrestler that we can request for? Favorite wrestler?
    8:17
    Hmm, that's – I mean, I like The Rock. I like Stone Cold. I'm trying to think of something more obscure, though. My favorite is Macho Man. I hate to say it. Well, yeah, you can't fail Macho Man. Have you seen the Macho Man intro? Have you guys watched the Macho Man? I've seen the Macho Man. Oh, yeah, that's why I was very happy when I saw it. I was like, yeah, what the heck? Yeah, I mean, I got the full beard, mustache, glasses, all the things for that.
    8:42
    So that was pretty good. I want to gear up to do stuff like gold dust, but I don't know about the face paintings and stuff like that. Oh, man. Yeah, that would be, yeah. You'd have to have glitter come down. It would be a mess. I've already, my carpet is already stained. So I've got these, I bought this six pack of turkey feather boas that are colored. So I got pink and red. You know, I got like red and yellow when I do Hogan. And I've got pink and teal and purple when I do like flair or Macho Man or somebody that uses all this flair stuff. Well, one of the drinking streams, when I was spinning the water, doing the water, I got water on the turkey feathers. And then that sat on the floor. And, of course, the dye out of the feathers ran onto the carpet. so I've got a big pink purple stain in the carpet right next to the games it's beautiful my fiance is thrilled to death about it she must love you she's probably upstairs going what the fuck is he doing in that room again have you seen a lot of times I do this I'll post the aftermath of these drinking streams so if you go to Facebook and it's not a page it's a group top rope pinball or you can go to my page TASMO72, T-A-Z-M-O-7-2, and then find the group, I post like these aftermath pictures of the destruction. And sometimes even I'm like, oh my gosh. And then I'll go back and watch the video and take clips for the Pinball Network because they do their clip highlights. And yeah, there's several times I've been 15 to 20 shots in over a five or six hour stream. And I might not remember the last couple hours of it, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I did that, and it was pretty crazy. As long as you don't get naked or something, because then you get kicked off Twitch. Correct. I'm very cautious about changing clothes off camera. Yes. Well, I think you said you're doing it at home now, so is the idea when COVID-19 simmers down that you're actually going to do this on locations? So here's all that. If you want to, I'll take a second to roll back on how this got started. So do you remember the first time I came on to Slam Tilt? You guys were the first podcast I started to listen to Colin McAlpine put me on to you guys. And this was back, you know, three, four whatever years ago. And so I was listening to you guys and then Head to Head come on and Pinball Profile. That was my three main ones I listened to. Well, in 2018 and Texas Pinball Festival, I was fortunate enough to get in the finals and win. But during that, how it started is you guys know Matt Quant from Houston, Houston. But he's a big wrestler guy. And so me and him have always played off of wrestler stuff at just our tournament. And he's the guy that's always going, woo, you know, that Bowen complains about and everybody complains about. It's always in the background of all the big tournaments going, woo, woo, you know, the brick player. And so he was doing that all the time. So I started doing the Triple H chop when I was having a good game and some other wrestler stuff. Well, then when I did that in the biggest, you know, one of the biggest tournament, biggest finals, and everybody saw that, it was, everybody was like, it's either awesome or it's controversial or what is he doing? And you guys, as I expected, were like, that was awesome. You've got to come on the show. And so when COVID hit, that's the fast forward. So when COVID hit, I had just won Texas championship and was going out to the finals in Colorado, which was awesome. But while we were there, that's when all the COVID stuff started happening. So we weren't masked up, but we were all like Purell for days while you were playing the games and eating the pizza they brought in. And then right after that, I flew back, and I think it was like five or six days later when we went into lockdown. So at least Texas went into shelter-in-place orders. So after about three weeks of that and seeing Don't End in Sight, I'm like, oh, I'm going to stream. so I got a computer and I got cameras at 3x the price for what I should have paid for them at the time and I was trying to come up with a theme and I'm like let's just go with the wrestler thing and then I just ran some ideas by my little pinball group here which is you know Colin McAlpine, Garrett Hayes, John Drew, Jason Higgins, Phil Grimaldi, we're all in a you know a chat, Matt Quance is in there, a couple other guys and I threw out some ideas and everybody said yeah top rope's perfect. So that's kind of how it started. Woo! Woo!
    13:16
    So yeah, it started out with just a, the plan was to figure out how to stream, get all the gear in. I've got seven games at the house. I can stream different games. Like stream number three or four after I got going, I started doing the wrestler intros. I'm like, oh, this is a thing. This can be my niche because everybody streams pinball. So I wanted It's something to draw in people. So now I've got my subset of pinball people and the subset of wrestling people in the pinball. So I've got, like, you know, four people that watch the stream. But that's another story. But that's kind of where it started and grew. But the initial plan was to stream at home, figure it out, stream my games, do some challenges, do some things. And then eventually I was going to take my gear down to, like, Buffalo Billiards when we had our monthly tournaments. I was going to set that up on one game, and that game had to be part of the finals. And we usually do a three-games final. So we'd have five machines set up, and that game would be in the middle. And you could pick the first three or the middle three or the last three, whoever gets choice, a game, and just stream that. And also go over to Brad Holiday's house and Colin McAlpine's house and go down to Buffalo Billiards occasionally and set up gear to stream. Of course, here we are a year later, and we still really shouldn't be out at these places just for casual gathering. It wouldn't be too bad with Max just to play pinball, but to set up all that gear. And I did it once. There's a place called Cidercade that opened up here in Austin. It's got about 25 games. And they got a new LE Avengers. So Colin and I went down and set up once. And it took me about a half hour to get set up. So it wasn't too bad. But ultimately, that's the long-term goal is to stream at tournaments and leagues and, you know, friends' places occasionally here and there. Nice. And to our listeners, Robert is a much better player than either me or Bruce, though. You should really watch him. He's actually never played us head-to-head ever. Oh, so Bruce is saying that he could take you, but I won't say that. I have good luck against higher-ranked players, you know, so I'm not bad with that. Does he underestimate you? fuck them up. I could see that.
    15:34
    I've watched you guys play. You guys are more than capable of beating anybody at any time, and that's kind of what I say. I can beat anybody on any given day. It's just, you know, the game to get on. I'm playing them.
    15:47
    The difference is you will get to run to the hills, where I would probably not be able to get to run to the hills, or chief or invitational.
    15:55
    That's the cool side of things, when you can get to that level, but honestly, really not a factor in tournament play, in my opinion. I put up $3 billion on that run to the hills, where in the tournament play, $300 billion may be a great score. So it's just a different level of situation when you're in tournament. So this is Top Rope Pinball. This is on Twitch. I take it I just look for Top Rope Pinball? Yeah, if you pretty much search for Top Rope Pinball, you'll find me. I'm on Twitch at twitch.com slash Top Rope Pinball, Facebook's Top Rope Pinball, Instagram, Top Rope Pinball. You can email me at topropepinball at Yahoo, because I'm old, and, yes, I still use Yahoo.
    16:38
    I like how we said that, right, just to stop any insults. Yeah, it comes every time. Every time I'm on stream and I mention it, you know, the 20-somethings are like, Yahoo, what the hell? They even still have mail? Yes, they do. So as Bruce would say, you know, fuck off, you know. Exactly. So, yeah, you can email me, you know, wrestler requests. I've been thinking about setting up. I'm just going to throw this idea. I thought about this the other day. So each wrestler outfit you can buy online is usually about $40 to $50. They don't have everybody, but they have some people. And what I thought about doing is setting up like an Amazon gift page and say, do you want a wrestler? Go on there, and if you like them, buy it and ship it to me, and I'll wear it on stream. Well, you've got to wait for your tax refund this year. cash it out, and you can be the, what's it called? What was the guy, the million-dollar man? Million-dollar man. Ted DiBiase. I just did Ted yesterday for an intro on World Poker Tour, because what's best to do is Ted DiBiase, the million-dollar man, when you're playing World Poker Tour. Yep, and you have the money. You can show the money and, you know, throw it all around or like that. Yeah. I just remember he was from multiple places, depending on the time of the year. Yes. I think he was – my favorite was Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Nice. Or you can go for Mr. Perfect. See, I get people wanting to do me.
    18:06
    Oh, wow. I'm going to, like, do you and stuff. No, I've got people wanting me to do more modern wrestlers like Bray Wyatt and stuff like that, and I just – I don't watch it that much.
    18:19
    And they walk out with an urn or a cauldron or something, but they don't necessarily do anything like, you know, Undertaker or, you know, there's some wrestlers that just don't do stuff like Randy Orton. I love Randy Orton. He's one of my favorites, but he pretty much walks down like he's the badass and stands in the corner and throws his arms up. That's not exciting on screen. So I've got to pick and choose, you know, somebody that's going to be exciting. I saw Jim Duggan. Yeah, I got that. I got a two-by-four, an American flag. Actually, for Randy Orton, if you can mount a camera like near the ceiling in a corner, then you could do a wide shot. And then you like, or get a drone camera that kind of floats around because it always like, you know, do that. Yeah. Step up on a chair and do the pose. I've tried to do a big show. So I put a camera like down near the ground facing up. So it looks like I'm just towering in over the machine from a perception standpoint. It still doesn't work that good.
    19:22
    I always love that he's like 7'1", but they did that anyway, like they needed to make him look any bigger. Right, right. I just thought that was funny. Oh, Andre, miss him. With this awesome stream, I'm sure you're getting just hundreds of views. You're making millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. Oh, yeah. I mean, like I said, I probably shouldn't set up the Amazon list. I just let that money fly just all the time, you know. Sponsors and everything. You're going to get sponsors like as good as, you know, everyone out there. We make millions of dollars. What kind of car are you driving right now? 86 Volvo or did you move up a little bit now? No, I'm like the final round guys. I drive a Lamborghini Huracan Evo. I'm high flying. Nice. I think you have to get to $100 on Twitch before you can cash in. So I'm 10 months into the streaming and I've cashed in not yet. So yeah, it's all for the love of it. How about you, Ron? We're making millions with Twitch, right? I think I got one cash in, but that was after being on for quite a while. Yeah, and if I cash anything in, that's going right to buy some more wrestler stuff. I mean, there's no way I'm going to cash in enough money over time to even pay for all the gear. It's going to be outdated before I have to, you know, and you just – it's for the entertainment. And it's for the – I've had 45 people on stream as my max during one of my drinking streams, and that was just so much fun having, you know, 10, 15 people chatting, counting out the wrestler, you know, pinfalls. And that was really fun. I had 30 when I did a gameplay reveal on that Avengers LE with Colin. And so I think it will pick up here and there. The problem is there's so many established people already that's got their fan base that's hard to get out there. and if you don't know what I do and you just see top rope pinball, he does wrestler stuff, some people might not even come check it out, but it's a lot more than that. That's just kind of the side fun stuff. It is some serious pinball playing and teaching and I feel like I'm really good about talking about what I'm doing. I'm going to dead bounce this and trap up and hit this ramp and combo this and stack this with that. So it's fairly informative. So I'm looking forward to expanding the number of games I can play once I can travel a little bit more. Yeah, you put a lot of work into it, like it did all the karaoke stuff, and you get like 10 people maybe watching. It's like, was it worth doing all this work? The things that spike my stream is basically if I have Bruce on,
    21:59
    because, you know, everyone loves Bruce. He's the star. So that spikes the viewership. And if we are covering a tournament, like the stomps, they will actually get near like 100 people, especially if we have like the New York State Finals and stuff like that people will actually watch that but that's about it and I think that's the key you know I joined the pinball network a while back and that's been a good group of people they've helped me improve my stream my layout you know things like that which has gone a long way but it really hasn't increased my viewership it's just that grassroots type of thing and some you know like Buffalo Pinball's been streaming for what, seven, eight, nine years. And so, you know, I pick up followers every stream and it's just, it's just slow to go, but it's, it's fun. Like I got my core, I've got three or four core people that are almost always on and just having them on to be excited when we're doing something cool is enough for me. My biggest thing is the more people I have, the more fun it is for everybody. So that's my, my push to, to try to get out there and make more people aware. So come to Top Rope pinball. Nice. Nice. I did see Fox City's pinball. They streamed a tournament like two weekends ago or last weekend. And they were running over 100 people the whole time. And they had not many tournaments live. People are starved for any kind of tournament stream. But nobody likes tournaments. What are we talking about?
    23:28
    So I mean, that was really good. So I'm looking forward to getting back to even just league finals and streaming and maybe get some traction there. We still haven't finished our league from last year. Yeah, we're in the middle. We're in the upstate finals still. Oh gosh, yeah. I know. It's just so far behind. It's not even funny. The one league I was in, the location no longer has pinball, so that pretty much ended that particular league. Buffalo Billiards closed And that was a hit because we got three pinballs locations. But I don't know if you saw the controversy. I mean, it's pinballs by name, but that's all it is. There's pinball there, but they're in relatively disrepair. Most people go there now for the video games and the go-karts and the stuff like that. So they've never been receptive to really hosting or doing tournaments. So it's unfortunate now. And everything was run at Buffalo. Now, we did get lucky that the Cidercade place opened up, and they're very receptive to us doing stuff there. The only difficult thing is that's pretty much all moderns. So we've discussed a little bit about where are we going to have the future Bat City open, because Jesse Smith is still interested in carrying that legacy, even though Buffalo's down, but we've got a Finnegrada location. So to have a location that's got all moderns and no older games is not kind of the tournament we want to run, or at least Colin McAlpine wants to run. He wants a mix of games. So we'll have to figure that out when that time comes around in 2024 or whenever we're able to do stuff again.
    25:11
    Bat City Open is one of the larger Texas tournaments, would you say? Yeah, it's probably number two to TPF, of course. And then the Houston show is growing. Phil Grimaldi is running that over there, and he's pitching that. And then they added in the women's, which is Elizabeth Rone did a side women's tournament, not just a women's finals, but a total women's tournament that was very successful 17 years ago when we were able to meet up and play pinball.
    25:43
    So that's really growing. and that's kind of known as the party show. You know, Teolas came down last time. He's like, oh, my gosh, I'm always going to come to this. And, you know, Teolas, he only wants whoppers and high profile. But he's like, I like this show from the party standpoint. So now that I have no bar now, I'm going to be moving around more. So you'll be seeing me down in Texas. And on the flip side for me, too, is about two years ago I got divorced, unfortunately. But like I said, I would have been married by now, but COVID. And so my fiance is really cool, and she doesn't mind me traveling as much. And I got my boys every other weekend. So that frees me up a little bit more to go on a nice little weekend tournament.
    26:25
    Nice. We'll have to have one up in here. You can come see Ron's place. I was so looking forward to coming up to Silver Ball Saloon and checking out Ron's place. And I think we've talked about this before. Before I got divorced, we were looking at moving up to near Manchester, New Hampshire. Yes. And I had a job offer that I had verbally accepted when all this divorce stuff happened, and so I had to cancel that. But I thought I was going to be up there with y'all. You would have been close to Ron, you know, a couple hours at least. Yeah, and my thought was, you know, well, we took Bowden from you down here, so I'll come up there and replace him and start winning all your stuff up there. Gee, thanks. No, we keep Steve. We love Steve. But, unfortunately, you know, you can have – he can beat you guys now because he always beat us. Oh, yes. Trust me. It was – you know, he came – so he's in San Antonio. It's about an hour and a half drive up to Austin, hour 15 with no traffic. Not too far, but he came up for all the monthly tournaments. And so I went from trying to beat Colin McAlpine all the time to beating Steve and Colin. And so it just, yeah, you can take him back. He's a great guy, but you can take him back. I want my Whoppers back. I know. You know, you have two heavyweights down in there with Collin and, you know, and Vounden, and oh, my God. But I love Collin. Collin is such an easygoing, down-to-earth person. Yeah, he's a good person. You have a lot of good core players down there who are good players and good people. I hope Deep Root does what they think they're going to do. I hope so. And if they don't, I'm hoping somebody scoops him up. I imagine somebody would pick him up. I mean. Raza will happen. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's going to happen. Yeah. Raza Mueller is going to make sure. I'm going to make sure it happens, brother. If I have to use my own money, it's coming. You're going to see the pin bar, dude. 100%. See, the other thing that I was hoping is as I got this stream going, I don't want to be Jack Danger for sure. I don't have the time for that. But, you know, we have Multimorphic P3 here, you know, 10, 15 minutes from my house. And then with Deep Root down in San Antonio I like maybe I can be the preferred game launch streamer for these guys but they just don really see interest in it No they don That the problem And that where you can get free advertising I kind of saw Buffalo Pinball as the multi-morphic official streamers, really. Yeah, because. Yeah, because they have it. They have one, so. Yeah. And Jerry just, he doesn't mind the streams, but I've talked to him about it before, and he doesn't want hours and hours of gameplay in there. And so people watch it and like, okay, well, I've already seen all the things. I don't want to buy a game. And I love that platform as far as what it's available to do. I just haven't pulled the trigger on it. Heist is making me more interested. I was not a fan of Lexi Lightspeed. So maybe if they get some more games that are more exciting, but with limited space for 10 years until my boys are in college, I'm stuck with about seven games. And then when they're gone, I can probably expand the game room out to about 14, 15 games. But until that time, having the idea of having one game that I can have four games in it is intriguing. It's a feeling. I think they posted something at one point. So 16 grand, you could get everything. So you've got all their games, all their side games, all their side stuff. And so if you think about that, if you're getting seven or eight games for $16,000, it's not bad. No, it's not. I don't like the flipper feel on the games. That's the problem. That was my same thing, Bruce, is I don't know what about the flippers, and I don't like to see the flipper mechs.
    30:23
    I don't like seeing them. I don't like the feel. The feel does not feel. It's literally the worst feel in the flippers out of all the companies out there. Hey, have you played like a Houdini? Yes, I was going to say Houdini. I was really going to say Houdini. Actually, I played one of the guys had the local one, and he cranked up the power, and it didn't feel that bad.
    30:51
    It really didn't. I haven't played one that I, when it first came out, like, this is the coolest thing ever, and I can't hit any of the shots. Damn it. I agree. When it first came out, but later on in the code where they made it adjustable, and you're in a home situation, it is better. It's still the shots were terrible, but at least there was strength there. But on the other ones, it feels like it's delayed. It feels more delayed than even Chicago Gaming. Flippers are hard, obviously, to get. Because watching Carl D'Angelo's IE Pinball, he's been doing Guns N' Roses and Pirates, and he's had thermal sensors on the flippers.
    31:31
    Oh, yeah. And the most recent one he did was he was doing Pirates, and his right flipper was just getting well over 200 degrees on a regular basis. He needs to stream in the morning and cook breakfast on the coils. Yeah. Try some bacon while he's playing. To be fair, and I think there's two things. He's playing the two games that have, like, the most multiball possible. I mean, even Pirates, you're in constant multiball. There's so many multiballs. And his style of play is he traps up everything. So you're going to get hotter coils. Yeah. But still, 200 degrees is insane. And then he put the fans on them, and they're fine. Yeah. And I guess Pin Monk is the guy's name, doing the fan kits. So that's his screen name. And from the studies he's done so far, he said, like, 120 degrees is the number. If you keep it under 120, your flippers will remain at, like, full power. As soon as you start going over 120, that's when you start having issues or start getting weaker and weaker. So I'm in the business of water treatment, so I deal with a lot of cooling, cooling exchangers and stuff like that. So I've got some heat guns that I can shoot to monitor temperatures and stuff like that. So that would be interesting to open up the coin door and start shooting some of the coils just to see how hot they are after gameplay. Because I played that World Poker Tour yesterday. I was almost a keeper invitational, and that thing, I was like 90 minutes in. So you've got to imagine those things are on fire.
    33:04
    Fire. Bruce, Bruce, where are you at? I said fire. I'm here. I'm actually doing something behind the scenes. Ron. Yes. We were talking about how numbers go up when you and me are on. Well, we should have the stew come on against... I have a challenger for the stew. You have a challenger for the stew at level zero. Yep, we'll be level zero. You know the stew is undefeated at level zero.
    33:33
    This one, I think this is going to be very competitive. It's going to be another European player. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I'm actually going to have to get it all situated. We have to go through some COVID stuff to get her over here, but... This player will be able to kick some butt, I think, and take on the stew and defeat the stew once and for all. And this is a European player? Yes. Okay. I have no idea who this is or what you're talking about. I know. Exactly. I know. Just to give you the bet. I love his reaction when he's talking about this stuff.
    34:09
    This person's only been in the U.S. once before. Okay. So this player can play. I've seen this player play, and I saw this player at the Silver Ball Saloon, and so when she saw this do, she was intrigued. Intrigued, okay. Yes, so. You know you're going to have to do something to pay this off, otherwise it just looks really bad. Oh, no, it will be paid off. We'll be doing this. It will be paid off, okay. Yep, and we will be plugging this beforehand, and you will be able to see. It's going to be good. So I'm just teasing it now. This is a tease. Okay. What we'll be doing is probably in March. I think I can get it all the, you know, I can get the visas in and everything like that. That's the hard part. Oh, the visas in. Okay. Yeah. How long was it for you with Stu? Months, right? He's already here. I know, but beforehand.
    34:59
    Well, you know, he seems to be able to come and go at will. I don't know what his deal is. I think he's got something going on. I think he's a diplomat. He could be. Romanian diplomat? I can see that. Yes.
    35:10
    Do you have a phone booth at your house, Ron? Doctor who? Yes, I have a TARDIS here. He just travels around. Yep. But I'm just warning you, Ron, you're going to have to get Stu in competition mode soon again. All right, all right. It's been a while since he beat you. No, well, luckily, you know. And he beat Zach also. Well, the funny thing is he has been defeated, just never at level zero. But he has been defeated. Yeah, well, he doesn't count that. He does. I think he has to because... He said the machines were subpar.
    35:49
    Man, I've never heard that from... I think the number one player in the world would disagree with him. Oh, okay. And the one would disagree with him, I think, too. All right.
    36:01
    But there's something new coming up in Rochester soon. Oh, okay. You totally ruined my train of thought. I was going somewhere, and I just totally lost it now. Thanks, Bruce. But, yes, what's going on in Rochester? We're going to have another pinball place.
    36:16
    Your co-op? Yes, the co-op is in full force. We're going to be signing the lease this week. And the estimated number of pinball machines will probably plus, probably around 40 to 45. Wow. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There will be all eras. There will be EMs all the way up to, I think the newest game we're talking about coming in is possibly going to be eventually Guns N' Roses. Oh. Bruce's favorite game yep so you guys have both played Guns N' Roses yep yes I have not it's pretty good I will have to admit until the flippers start crapping out well then you just get fans get a 10 month fan kit and you'll be all set and Bruce doesn't even like Guns N' Roses and he likes the game that says something there to me yeah the music the music's good and the constant multi-ball all the stuff he bitched about and he's still like nope it's great I still like the game I would have won it if it didn't go up a thousand dollars I'm in the process of saving my extra thousand dollars I gotta spend on it now so Yeah Good job Well before you Or how about some Pac-Man No you gotta go to the old classic The Price is Right Ah, cliffhanger. Nice. I love that. So before you continue with that, Bruce, I think I have to read this mail from the ball bag first. Because otherwise, you're going to tell me that you guys came up with a name. We did, but I saw the email. Okay, so this email is from Eric Russell. Which one? CNY, I believe. Okay, good. First, let me say I'm with Bruce about a simple name being best. Rochester Pinball Co-op or Rochester Pinball Club would be the first things that come to mind for a good simple name. Some other basic names that come to mind. The Pinball Warehouse. The Pinball Reserve. The Pinball Pit. The Pinball Hideaway. Then, of course, you could go for some tongue-in-cheek humor in the title that's going to be more of a private club type of thing. like, oh, God, I can't pronounce it. Pin-it-tentury? Oh, pin-it-tentury or the pin yard or the pin stop.
    38:38
    The Citadel of Pinballs or the multi-ball verse for Rick and Morty fans. Pins Landing or the text watch for Game of Thrones fans. Pin Solo or the pinballerian. Oh, Mandalorian. Pinballerian for Star Wars fans. This one I thought had a really nice ring to it and would be unique, So this would be my final entry. I do think some people would have difficulty with both the spelling and pronunciation of it, though. I can only imagine what Bruce will turn this into when he gets tired.
    39:08
    Oh, God, I can't say it. Pinball, panacea. I think I'm saying it right. Just don't make me say pterodactyl. Pterodactyl. It's the noun, a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases. The panacea for all corporate ills. note a quick google search does does find that there was a piece of artwork called pinball panacea from 2015 but it's not really pinball related so i think the name would be okay and that's from eric thank you so that just had something pop in my head so it's in rod chester right oh god how about big rod pinball All right. We're going simple. I like that.
    39:54
    The name announcement is Rochester Pinball. That's it? That's it. That's so, really? The reason why, we want to make it simple so every person will know what it means. So if they come to it, they're not just going to be like, oh. You know, if we made it a cool name like the Sanctum, literally most people don't know what the Sanctum means in the term of the pinball. We're trying to get people to come in. So we might have a side name eventually, like, you know, we'll have a cute nickname. But right now it's just Rochester Pinball. You just call it the Rod. We're going to the Rod. We're going to the Roch. I got some Roch. I got some Roch Roch. I'm not going there. Oh, no.
    40:43
    That's so bad. But, yes, so we're signing the lease this week, and then we have to do some demolition. Yes. We have to tear down some walls, and then we've got to lay some carpet.
    40:58
    Some carpet. And then we've got to paint, and then we bring in some stuff. 45 games will be on location. And it'll be a flat fee. So it will be an hour charge and then a day charge. Let's see. How many of the games will be yours?
    41:19
    15 so far. So there will be a stern row. Oh, nice. A stern row. How many owners you guys got going into it? Five. Yeah, that's like exactly what the game preserve in Houston was. Five guys got started. Yep. and we've talked about doing it in Austin, but real estate is tough. Oh, it is. It's really tough. But now with the COVID, it's gone down a lot, and for what we got for the square footage, we couldn't find anything better. The location's a little oddball-ish. It's on the second floor of a building, like an office building. The first floor is like the retail stores, and we're on the second floor, so you have to walk a little bit like you would in the Sanctum. But once you get to it, it's going to be a nice little mecca. We're going to have some chairs in there, some seats and couches with the pinball. We're going to also offer repairing pinball machines. Oh. So you can bring your play field or your games in. And actually, the first job I have lined up is going to be a play field swap.
    42:23
    And the second job is a play field swap. And a third job. I have three play field swaps already lined up. I like getting my jobs.
    42:30
    He said swap. Yeah. The good thing about this will be, there's three things. First, I get the games out of the garage. So I will have a garage again, so my wife will be very happy. It will free up space in the house. So the cost of putting something in storage, like if I wanted to put the games in storage, is almost as much as I'm going to be paying for the rent towards this place, without making one red cent.
    42:58
    So the way I look at it is, if I can get the games in this place, they get played a little bit and people enjoy them and we get to make some money. I don't have to pay any storage fees once we start making money. So now it's like free storage. I have a place to work on them. I can even work on my own projects and my space in my house frees up.
    43:20
    So you have the advantage of, sounds like you and maybe some other people are good at teching. That's our biggest challenge when Colin and a couple other guys here, who's going to tech this stuff because we're not techy enough. And so we have this place and we can get somebody to run it, but if the games are always broke, then that ain't going to be good. Between me and Zach, I think we can handle any challenge. Yeah. That's the good thing. Zach is great at EMs. Zach actually builds his own machine. And if we ever had a problem where we couldn't figure it out, which I don't know if we'd ever run into, but if we did, we would figure it out somehow. We'd find somebody to figure it out or to pull the game out, and then we're done. I like that. We had something we just couldn't figure out. We'd figure it out. Yeah. We'd figure it out. We would. Okay. Well, I mean, you know, it's Bruce. He's kind of a big deal. He knows some people. I know some people. I know people.
    44:13
    Speaking of repairs, I hate fucking spooky. Oh, man. Okay. Every time I turn on this machine, it just, it is the quirkiest piece of crap I have ever played. Wow.
    44:27
    Hot take. It's just like one day I'll turn it on, and the house voltage. Here's how anal I am. I actually right now have a voltmeter plugged into my wall outlet. So I just turn on the voltmeter, and I can tell you exactly how much my house voltage is. Right now my house voltage is 19.1 AC volts. But I've been trying to figure out why my Rick and Morty, one day I turn it on, and the flippers feel like total fucking ass monkey shit. Cold. I'm still in the 19.1 volt. Wouldn't you get like 120 volts? 119. Okay. I was about to say, unless you know something. Okay. 119 is good. Okay. 119 is great. But I could turn this Rick and Morty on right now, play a game, and the flippers feel like sluggish shit. The next day I turn it on, with the voltage being even maybe less or more in the house, by like, I'm talking like maybe 0.2 or 0.3 volts.
    45:27
    And the game will play great. And then the next day, pop bumpers will just, like, the switches won't work. Like, it's just like, I have been into this freaking pop bumper.
    45:40
    And then all of a sudden, like, it's just annoying. Like, the pop bumper doesn't even work. And then I go in there and touch it physically with my finger, and it works perfect. But if I throw a ball against it, it works sometimes. It doesn't work some other times. it's just I've never had such a frustrating new and I've had wait a sec I've had Stern Game of Thrones premium where I had the upper play field off that machine five fucking times you should got the pro obviously I should have gotten the pro but my wife didn't like the look of it but I just fucking think it's just annoying yeah the pop-upper thing I think I had an issue with similar, where it's just intermittently strong as hell and then doesn't work. Doesn't do anything. It's just weird. I don't know if it's their programming or their base code.
    46:35
    And the worst thing is I go over to Zach's place and I'll play Alice Cooper, and the flippers on that thing, strong as hell. Do, do, do. I can hit almost any. And it actually has two steep ramps. Left flipper, right flipper, boop, boop, boop. No problem. My game, one day, I can't even hit that left ramp. Next day, it's like Superman.
    47:00
    There seems to be wild inconsistencies between games. Yeah. And I mean just even games of the same title. Yeah. Like the guy down the road has a serial number 340 or 330. Right after mine, plays like a Titanic every time. He has other issues. Wait a minute, it plays like a Titanic which means it plays really good and then the shaker motor goes off and it blows a fuse Wow, the shaker goes off and it literally blows itself up Yeah Well I thought you'd find this funny I saw someone was selling a TNA I think it was on Facebook and they had full paragraphs of stuff It basically said way too much. They literally went through anything bad that ever happened to the game in their descriptions. So was a lifer. Which really wasn't, you know, I'd be like, it's working now. But it's like, this is the 20 different things I had to do to this game. And I felt like, ah, I know how he feels. It wasn't just me. No.
    48:12
    Yeah, see, I hear that. He needs to really step up the quality. I hear that stuff from you guys, who I know that know the ins and outs of all the pinballs, and that's why it makes me nervous to buy anything else but a Stern. I've only bought two new in-box games. I bought Iron Maiden, and I bought a Jurassic Park. And I want to buy a Guns N' Roses, but if that thing, I haven't had any issues with my Sterns. And if you walk into a row of pinballs, you play every Stern, they all feel the same. The flipper feels the same. It's all the same. It's consistent. It just is what it is. and then you just never know what you're going to get when you step into those other manufacturers. And so to spend, you know, $7,000, $8,000, $20,000 or whatever it costs now on new games, it's hard for me to do anything but stern if I'm going to pull the trigger on something. Well, I mean, we go through them. In Chicago gaming, you're probably going to be fine. That stuff's more like feel. Like we said, the flippers don't feel right, but the game works. I haven't heard any issues with those. Yeah, I've played some remakes, and those don't bother me at all. Those play solid. They play solid, but the flippers are a little whacked out. It depends on the title. Yeah, I agree. I played a Monster Bash, and it was fine. Yeah. Monster Bash is better. I think AFM's the worst.
    49:34
    Medieval's okay. I think Monster Bash is pretty darn good. If I was going to get any one of the remakes again, I would get the Monster Bash. Let's see, us top-level players, we just adjust to it, so it's not that big a deal. Nice. But even with that, when you go to, say I was playing an AFM, and then I play my AFM, and then I go to on location they have an AFM. Oh, my God, I am like so far off my shots. It really mentally fucks me up. And then I get so used to that, and then I try to get used to that game, and I play it, and then, oh, next game we're going to play is Terminator 3. Okay. I can, oh my God, what the hell's going on here? I've just lost the shots. So you're saying you need a better mental game. That's what I'm hearing. No, I need a better game that actually plays properly like it should be, like it's earned. But I know what you're saying with the qual, you know, do you take the jump for JJP? Ron has had pretty good luck with this game, except when I play it. Except when I play it. JJPs are fine. You just got to crank the flipper power up immediately. Yep. And hopefully it'll reboot on you. Yeah, it literally rebooted once in its life, and it was on you. And it locked up once on me, too. Yeah, just you. It detected your style of play and knew it was you, so it gave you the finger. Bruce detected. Yep, Bruce detected. It's in the code.
    50:56
    I talked to Ted Estes. He put that in the code. It's a Bruce detection. It detects no trapping and just flailing, and it just assumes it's you. Nice. It monitors speech patterns and picks up bruises until it shuts down when it detects bruises. It uses facial recognition for the camera so it knows it's bruised. Oh, fuck you, Batshore.
    51:20
    Love my dialed in. I know you do. Love it. It's just very frustrating. So luckily, I only own half of the Rick and Morty. Next month, it's going to go back to the person who owns half of it, and I'm going to get back my half of Batman 66, which is a way better game. You and Batman 66.
    51:43
    It's solid. I like it. But I like the theme. I love the theme. That's what's killing me about Avengers. I like the old you know, I'm Wonder Twins, you know, Justice League, you know, Superman, Batman.
    52:01
    I'm not even really into Spider-Man. So all the new Thanos and Black Widow and all that. It just doesn't do anything for me. For me, it does do something, but there's a piece missing in that game. The shots to the playfield, if they actually got good assets from Marvel, as in great sound call-outs and maybe some better animation, I would really enjoy that game more and more. What do you mean? They used the Marvel-appointed voice actors. Yeah, okay. It's like saying, I took a shit, and it's in the bowl, but is it good shit or bad shit?
    52:41
    Okay. What does that mean? It's still shit? It's still shit. Okay. It's still shit. It came out of your bunghole. Exactly. It's still shit. What the hell was that? Are you threatening me? You keep it from my bunghole.
    52:58
    You don't like form of binary. I love the game Ryan C-ish it just doesn't do anything for me with the animations like I'm watching it if I'm watching Zach play or somebody else play because we have a local guy that has a LE it's great until you really watch the game and then you hear some of the stupid call outs the rules are good, confusing that's another problem with getting people into that game It's a deep rule set. I am Iron Man. No, you're not, asshole. No, no. Technology is what made, you know, I'm like, oh, my God, stop with the stupid bad quotes. It really isn't like, you know. Speaking of assets, that's what makes me worried that if Harry Potter ever does happen, that it's going to be so lame, it's going to be like. It's going to be the book. It's going to be the books only or something. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. You're going to get voice actors that phone it in half the time. It's just like, ugh. There's so much data to pull from that, though. You know, can you get some people to do what they did for Jurassic Park and pull the clips and make it better if your game doesn't get shut off or whatever Stern's going to try to do? I was watching Carl's stream playing pirates.
    54:21
    It never occurred to me how little assets they actually had from pirates. Oh, yeah. And they had one guy, I think it was one of the minor characters, who does all the voiceover, all the voice work. I didn't realize it was just him. And I was wondering, like, what happened when that guy showed up for his session? Did they give him a script with, like, 100 pages on it? Because he says a ton of shit. It's just like, here's your script. I'd be like, oh, screw this. I want a raise. I'm going to be here, like, eight hours doing all these call-outs. I wonder if he had, like, a flat show-up charge fee and then per-hour fee after that or something. Because he has so much speech. There's so much they have that guy say.
    55:01
    I just wonder how big the script was for that. See, if they were smart, they'd approach this guy. I know he's a pretty good podcaster, a friend of mine. His name's Ron Hallett. He does a lot of voices. They should approach him and say, we'll give you a free game if you do all the speech call-outs for this. And he would probably say, yes. Arr. Or at least a discount. Arr.
    55:21
    I didn't realize it was just one guy doing all the call-outs until I actually listened to it. Any more criticisms, Bruce? No, no No, not right now Later on we will Oh, later on Is he and his 10 to 1 ratio Crap on stuff versus good stuff Is he following that mantra? I think so He's so negative Well, let's do something positive I had an announcement here that I thought was going to be negative But you turned it into a positive, Bruce and that's there's no more 455 bulbs if you don't know what a 455 bulb is it's the the ones that blink if you bayonet style ones that blink they're used in a lot of the old ems ron posted this to me a couple weeks ago yeah because uh someone posted it to me they tried to buy them from a pinball resource and they didn't have them and it turns out the factory that made them in mexico wherever it is, they're not making them anymore. And Marco no longer has them either. So the only ones you can get are like the LED versions, which... Oh, God, you with the LEDs. The problem with the LED versions is they have a set speed. They blink at a set rate. You can get ones that are slower or faster, but it's not... To be a true blinker, it needs to be random. It needs to be all over the place. That's what makes them do what they do. Bruce, did you corner the market? Did you buy them all? I bought a lot.
    56:53
    I bought ten boxes. But you're saying they're available now. Yeah. Oh, yeah, some places still have them. More money. I actually bought them ten boxes from McMaster Car. This is a big industrial place where they actually sell a ton of industrial parts like bearings and rollers.
    57:13
    They're more made for industrial warehousing. and I looked on there and I'm like, oh, let me type in 455 and boom, it comes up. Oh, okay. Now, the normal box used to be $6 for 10 bulbs of 455s.
    57:29
    Here's a little more. These are $11. Ah. But to get the feel, and here's the funny thing. If you go on eBay right now and look up a 455 bulb which I going to do right now And here what the cost you can see how much it going to cost you You just type in 455 bulb Okay, 455 bulbs. Two bulbs. Not two boxes. Two 455 bulbs, which are the Eco's, which are the ones that all the arcade places sold.
    58:02
    $14.90 for two bulbs. Wow. It also says they sold 14, and this is the last one. Exactly. Oh, my God. So what you really want is the original GE ones. Yeah. You can never find them. I got, like, two boxes, and that's all I got left. I have a box of GEs, one box. I have boxes of GE 63 bulbs and some 93s and a couple other. Luckily, I found them in a warehouse. I was like, how much for all the bulbs? He's like, $5 for the whole thing. I'm like, sold. And they're all GEs. They're like, sold, sold, sold. But, yeah, just, here's a, wait a sec. One box of 455 bulbs, $54.10. Wow. So, wait a sec. I did good for $11 each, didn't I? You did good, Bruce. You're my hero. So, I bought 10 boxes. All right. See, still some good news. McMaster, what's that again for our listeners? McMaster Car. Is that like McMasterCar.com? Yep. McMasterCar. All right. Don't pay $50 for your 455s. No. Go to McMasterCar.
    59:11
    Kelly Meeks. No. Ban this man right now. Ban him. You're going to have to rip the band-aid off at some point. I wouldn't mind if they had random blinking. And surely that's not that hard to program those things to do random instead of a fair Because it's a mechanical thing. That's the problem. Do you know how a 455 bulb works?
    59:37
    They're breaking up and stuff. Tell us how it works, Bruce. What happens is the element heats up. And there's almost like a breaker. The piece of metal that actually, after it heats up, it breaks the current.
    59:52
    So then the element cools down. This piece moves out of the way and then allows electricity voltage to get back through and heat up the element again. And that's why it can actually turn off and on at a certain period. Because what it's doing inside the bulb is actually, it's almost like a heating on-off switch.
    60:10
    So what happens is it heats up. And that's how you get your perfect timing, because it's going by current going into it. And there's a formula for this.
    60:20
    What's law? Ohm's law. It's actually Watt's law. Ohm's law. and that's what actually makes the formula to make this work. And it works great because every four or five light bulb you see like that, they ding, ding, ding, ding, you know. It just takes how long it takes to heat up. It breaks off the current and then does that. So it has to be able to be programmed to an LED. The problem is to sit there and figure it out. Somebody eventually will, but guess what? I don't have to worry about that. No one will because no one cares about it except us. Guess what? 10. I'm holding them right now. The box of 10 of 10. I have 100 bulbs. I'm good. So, Bruce, are you a double E? Double E. Are you an electrical engineer? No, I'm a mechanical engineer. Okay. But I do know electrical engineering. Okay. See, I'm a chemical engineer, and I purposely avoided all electrical engineering classes so I didn't electrocute myself. No, I don't mind.
    61:19
    Last week, I was down at my mother-in-law's, and I had to I was up on the ceiling working on her electric. Doesn't bother me at all. Shocker. I'm going to fake one of those things. Shocker. I was going to go there.
    61:33
    Let's get off the bulbs. Way too much bulb talk. Incandescent bulb is the future. Yeah, it proves his future as he fries himself because it's so hot. Yes. Yeah. Okay. There were lots of code updates.
    61:50
    Yes, there are. Tons of code updates. Guns and Code Updates. That's about all I got. You're good on the list. Well, Guns and Roses had a Code Update. Yes. I think, what, did Avengers have another one? Avengers had a Code Update, yes. What else? I'm sure Led Zeppelin has had a Code Update. Yes, they have had all sorts of three updates in the past two weeks.
    62:10
    Yay! We love Code Updates. Yes, we do. Did you see the picture, Ron, that was just posted to the co-op art group? The co-op? We have a co-op group? Well, it's actually in both groups, but the co-op group and also our group, the podcaster group. Ah, yes. Well, Stern released, I believe, on Instagram. Yes. Originally, they released a clue for the next game. It says, coming soon. Which is very rare for them. And it's got a puzzle that's not assembled. An unassembled puzzle.
    62:44
    So, any ideas? I don't know. What do you think? Well, me and Robert are in a Discord group where this has already been discussed, and I'm on board with what was the answer. Godzilla.
    63:02
    Oh, God. Why is that? Puzzle? The movie's coming out. That's just, to me, makes sense. Well, it's going to be Toho Godzilla. It's not the American one. But it's got one of the puzzle pieces has a piece of his chest or his tail or something like that. They really correlate it with a picture. I'll go with that. I mean, we know it's coming. We know Godzilla is coming because we know they have the license. Not only that, Dwight Sullivan confirmed on top of that. So there you go. What's with Borg trolling everybody with pictures on pictures on pictures? Oh, God, yes. I don't know. What the fuck? I think somebody grabbed his account. His kids are like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, he posted, I think he posted like Gamera or something like that. It's like, oh, that's proof it's Godzilla. It's like, no, that's camera. That's an opposing studio. That's not Godzilla. I would have loved to see Godzilla and Kong with the new movie and have like kind of a mesh between the two or something. That would have been cool. That would be kind of cool. I would agree with that. Godzilla game better have all the other monsters in it. That's all I got to say. No, they couldn't get the rights for them. They're all owned by Toho. It's the same company. I said a joke with you. Yeah, you have a Godzilla machine, and then every mode is a different character. Yep. You know? Going up to King Hedorah would have to be the main villain, the three-headed monster. That's Godzilla's, like, main antagonist. And it better look like Godzilla. Not like the last one they did. Not like the current one. That doesn't look like Godzilla. I'm sorry.
    64:44
    Yeah. Is this Yo-Keda Kakabel? God, there's an old reference. Hey, lizard, lizard, lizard. Those were the best commercials. The little chihuahua dog. Little chihuahua, yep. That was when Godzilla was with the Matthew Broderick one. Oh, God, that was terrible. Yeah. That was terrible. That's one of my, one of the Godzilla movies, Godzilla Future Wars, when he's fighting all these monsters, they actually have the 1998 Godzilla, in the movie, and he just kicks the shit out of it. I love it.
    65:25
    The Godzilla theme and the monster movies brings me back to when I was a kid. I would go to my dad's house for the weekend, and we would stay up all hours when I was like 14, 15, 16, watching monster movies, you know, the old classics, and karate, you know, karate, the old classic karate movies. It was so much fun. Sounds like we've got an LE buyer right here, sir. I think we do.
    65:49
    Bye-bye-bye. Let's see. What else do I got? There's been a delay with Alien. No, stop it. Go ahead. I set you up. What are you going to say?
    66:04
    Surprise, surprise, surprise. Did they state why there was a delay? We still have to work out some glitches. That's what it says. I was going to go with a copy and paste deep fruit email here. No, don't do that. No, they didn't blame the suppliers. I didn't see that. Yeah, I'm surprised. They should have done that. We cannot get parts. I don't understand. He's, why push, you know, now you've gotten these, the people's money and everything like that. That's right, they got money, yeah. Yeah. And the good thing is, it went to CoinTaker. That's the only good thing for the United States people. but why people have got to stop giving money to these companies who haven't made anything because it's a new company, don't forget it's not the same company as before wink wink, hint hint okay okay, we'll just check that hot bags wow, wow move along, move along nothing to see here No, nothing to see here. I'm sure not the pinball manufacturers are looking for.
    67:18
    I.e. pinball, Carl D'Angelo. Stern actually gave them a Stranger Things to stream. They did. Where's ours, Stern? Yeah, where's ours? No, we're not good enough to get to wizard mode, so. We are. Oh, sure we are.
    67:36
    So he got to the Stranger Things wizard mode, and it was awesome, Bruce. It's a great game. A game that we don't get to get free. We don't get to get free. Okay, so now, okay, so it's because we don't get to get free. If Stern wants to impress me, send me one for free. I'll try it out, and I'll tell you how I like it.
    67:57
    So you want them to send you a free game that you already said you hate? No. Prove me wrong. Prove your opinion wrong? I just did. Stranger Things is great. I love Stranger Things. You need a meme with Bruce and the, you know, this game sucks. Change my mind. Yeah. I need to be sitting at that little table outside. Exactly. I hate stranger things. You just got biased. It would be nasty me in the picture. You know, I have to be sitting at the desk. You are biased against Lonnie Roth. That's what it is. Just any game he's on, you instantly hate. Another problem is Lonnie Roth didn't do any of the programming. All he copied and pasted. That's all he did Hasn't ripped on Ronnie in a while Let's get him going Well after I got that letter from him a couple weeks ago You know Yeah well I told you they weren't ever going to make an ELO pin Because no one would buy that piece of shit That's what he said I almost forgot to ask So if Godzilla is coming up Who do we think the designer is It would have to be Eddie or Borg If you're going in order Yes. Elwin's not going to be ready until probably, I'm thinking August. But Elwin said he already had a game done on the last interview that he did. But, I mean, he's always been, hadn't he been a huge fan of the original Godzilla pin?
    69:24
    Yeah, but maybe the other two who were in before him. Yeah, but that guy's a machine putting out games. I agree, but then you pushed off two of your designers. Well, Eddie was the guy who came in after him, but Borg, I think would be almost, you almost got to consider Borg the longest person there, the most tenured there. Almost got to consider? No, he is the longest tenured there. You'd think he'd have his choice before anyone else. You said Borg is the longest. Yeah. Borg is the longest.
    70:00
    The thing is, only one designer there usually takes longer, and that's Richie. Yeah. Everyone else is pretty much on the same schedule.
    70:09
    So it would be weird if it was Elwynn. I mean, that would be fast. That's all I could say. So, Ron, you're going to buy one if it looks great and have all the... I'd have to play it. I still have to play it. Even if Lonnie Ropp made the rules? That makes no... I have Iron Man. Lonnie Ropp did the rules. I love Iron Man. Some of the rules. Some of the... Oh, God. This is Bruce. It's like anything in the game Bruce likes. It's like, oh, that was so-and-so. If it's something he hates, it was Lonnie. It's so lame. Just stop. It's not lame. It's the truth. Super skill shot. Who made that? You mean the overpowered super skill shot that was put in by Lyman? Yeah. He did that. I love it. Okay.
    70:55
    Good. All right. Let's see. Games you like, games you hate. We've got to do that. We have a guest. Yes, we do. We've got to find out what he likes and what he hates.
    71:05
    I like things. I hate things. So this is going to be probably controversial, but one of the games that I really like, I've been looking for, and I just missed out on the LE, which most people say pros better, is I like Transformers.
    71:24
    Dead Silence. I like the theme. It flows pretty good. If you're a pro. Pro is where you go. I agree that the little shaker right tramp thing is, but, you know, you can play as two different sides that's got different modes. And, yeah, it shoots these flashy shots, but so does everything shoot the flashy shots. I don't know. I just like it. And, honestly, for the price you can get it for right now, I think it's a very valuable game. And then it's a theme for me. It's just, you know, got your little toys up there and just, I don't know. I like the sounds and the background, so that's the game I definitely like.
    72:07
    Now, unfortunately for Ron, the game I wrote down for the game I hate is Iron Man. Wow. Hold on. I think we're having a problem with the call here. You seem to be dropping off.
    72:21
    Oh, man. There's something. Maybe because I haven't had a lot of time on that game and just casual play, I always run into it in tournaments, and I'm like, this game is hard enough. Why do you not have outlane rubbers? Why do you have low ball save times? It's just, I don't mind a brutal game, but it's just, you know, brutality, fatality. You lose, sir. Good day. You better hope it's pump and dump.
    72:48
    That seems more like a tournament setup problem than anything else. Why don't I have the posts in and rubbers on them? I mean, I've played the thing and, you know, first of all, done all the modes and got into the whatever the you start the wizard mode or whatever. When you do it all at once. What is that called? Oh, do or die. Hurry up. Do or die. Yeah. You know, I've got there before. So it's playable. But I just I don't know. Is it the whiplash that shoots at a thousand miles an hour right down the middle? No, that's a war machine. War machine. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Add a ball save on that or something. I don't know. It's just, again, it goes back to my, I'm not a big Iron Man fan, so the theme does nothing for me. The characters don't do anything for me. And then the gameplay is just brutal. Eh.
    73:38
    If I want a brutal game, I'd rather go with Tron than Iron Man. I don't think Tron's brutal. It can be. No. Compared to Iron Man. Well, compared to Iron Man, yeah. I mean. But, I mean, I'd rather play Iron Man than Tron. At least I have shots I can hit each flipper with. Boom, boops. Nice. Okay.
    74:01
    I would like to see, Lyman, if you're listening, which I know you're not, can you add a ball saver to the beginning of Jericho? You know, like you did for, what is it called on, damn it, on Metallica. Crank it up. Hold on. I know how to do this. Keith, you're listening. I know it. Tell Lyman this. because he did it for Crank It Up because it wasn't there originally. No. And it sucked when you started Crank It Up, no balls, and maybe the thing shoots right down the middle or you just shoot one thing and drain and it's over. Yep. Do something like that for Jericho because that happens a lot in Jericho. You get the cool intro, it gives you the ball, you shoot one thing, and dead. It's over.
    74:43
    One of my favorites, I forget what podcast it was on, when Elwin was talking about ball saves and maybe, The Tameh was on as well, but they were talking about they were going to code in where you couldn't turn off the ball saves for certain games. And he was like, suck it sharp or whatever he did. That was so awesome. They made it so they'd turn off the ball saver during like a multi-ball that you had to really work hard to get into. And they thought that was bullshit. So they made it in the code so you can't turn that down. The perfect example of that. So when I went to the NCS finals and ACS finals, one of the games they had there was Iron Maiden. And, you know, I've got that game. I love that game. It was my go to game. But they had the mummy multi ball set up on zero ball safe. So you grind to get to that to be in a safe place to make some shots or something like that. And then it's just over with. And it was it was just not fun at all. It's like if you work that hard to get there. I know you want the game to pay fast. You've already got the outlane post out, no rubbers. If I crank it to a multiball without dying, I should have some protection there to get Roland. That's just my opinion. Come on, Sharps, be fair.
    75:57
    I forgot to mention the first season of ICR, which what does that stand for, by the way? Does anyone know what that stands for?
    76:07
    This is something IPA is doing, where you can play against people online. Yep. There's like seasons. Season one just completed. Yep. Yeah, I don't know. Internet competitive response? I don't know. I'm looking it up. I like that. Internet competitive response. We had a show in with it, though. We're in everything. Our very own Zach finished second to Escher Lefkoff. Yep. It's an IFPA challenge ranking. So wait a minute. I-C-R. The I acronym stands for another acronym. Exactly. Come on. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Season two is starting up. Yeah, but our own Zach, we're in everything. We're in all these podcasts. We help make them. We're good. And in the finals against Esri specifically, you could do it two ways. Either you play the same games, if you have them, or you play different games in the name of judges. Yes. So he specifically, he did the judges and played all EMs. Except for Diamond Lady. I thought they were all EMs. I didn't think, I didn't think Diamond Lady was, I thought that was a semi-final. Oh, maybe it was. Yeah, I think he did all EMs, like brutal EMs for the finals. But you're, the only thing that I have that, you know, you have people judging, and so it's subjective. Subjective is hard. Yeah. Just like making pinball. Yeah, we know that's very, very hard. I said hard. That must be sad. What's next, Mr. Ron? Is it my favorite segment? Would you or would you not buy that? I heard that you have some stuff for us. I do, and so does our guest. Oh, my. Since our guest is here, we will invite him to go first. Okay. Are you sure you want to go that route? Oh, my. Yes, I do. So, everyone, go to eBay. Even though you're driving in your cars, you have no chance to do this. But if you're not, you say that. as a guest, I listen to this show 95% of the time in the car. So when this comes up, I'm like, look at that, look at that. I'm like, fail, fail, fail. Okay, are you ready? I'm ready.
    78:24
    273 011 442 066. I was just like... Ultimate warrior. No, no, you've got to do this. You've got to do this serious. So, Ron, you know, read us through the details and tell us about the pictures. Okay. This is the Ultimate Warrior costume, adult WWE wrestler Halloween fancy dress. Has a long description.
    78:52
    I got some pictures with it, so let's see what you... The glass is off. The muscles look very defined.
    79:00
    The leggings are there. Definitely the leggings are there. Does it come with the anabolic steroids you need? I don't know. Let's look at the description. I don't do really an Ultimate Warrior impersonation, though. You just got to sound like, Our strippers don't watch WWD Ultimate Warrior costume for the warriors that have gone before. For men, it includes a padded muscle chest, shirt, and pants. And I'm going to take that pants, and I'm going to put them in a nosedive. I don't know. I'm losing there. Also included with the Ultimate Warrior are the tasseled armbands, wristbands, knee pads, boot taps, wig, and four makeup sticks. This Ultimate Warrior costume comes in adult sizes, large, medium, and extra large. This Ultimate Warrior costume is an officially licensed WWE costume. Okay, hold on. I got a problem with this already. So Vince McMahon will get some money for this if you buy it. I need it. I have a problem with this. Uh-oh. What's wrong with it? I have a problem with this. Okay, most people who watch WWE and all the other wrestling shows, most, not saying all, most, they're usually a little heavy on the sizes of large medium.
    80:09
    I've been to a ton of live shows. I can truly say I've seen more morbidly overweight people at wrestling shows than any other events I've ever gone to.
    80:20
    Here's the thing. I have to get the extra large, not for the build, but I've got to make sure I've got enough room in the crotch. Oh my! Wow. Oh, my. But, yeah, so that's the first problem with this thing. They give you a size chart. If your waist is 36 or 40, you're extra large. Only 40? Only 40. Oh, yeah, that's going to be a problem. I guess if you're that big, if you're that overweight, then you really can't be the ultimate warrior. Like, I wonder, do they have costumes for, I'm trying to think, like a King Kong Bundy costume? I would think that would allow you to be bigger, I would assume.
    81:03
    Okay, so the question is, for $140, would you or would you not buy that? $140, you know, if I really wanted to be Ultimate Warrior for some kind of event, sure. Yeah. If I was coming on your podcast, if I was going on your stream, yes, I would buy this. Well, and see, we talked about my stream and where I'm going. That's one of the requirements. If you come on stream, you have to pick a character to be. At least for an intro. So I've got a tag team belt. So when we do multiple people, you know, we could have the champion and the tag team champions. It's going to be epic. Yep. All right. I got one more. So hold on. Let me go up top and get back to the things in the search. Go ahead. Okay. 233-656-950-013.
    81:55
    How come I can always find the faults and things that are wrong? Why is that always? You're such a negative person. Oh, God. Andre the Giant inflatable costume, adult cosplay, WWF WWE pro wrestler, wrestling.
    82:09
    What the hell? This is awesome. I mean it. Anybody want to paint it? Wow. Need to look exactly like Andre the Giant? This inflatable costume won't give you the height, but it'll give you the incredible likeness to Andre himself.
    82:24
    Polyester, one size fits most, officially licensed. Our guarantee, if you're not 100% satisfied, you get a full refund.
    82:34
    Okay. The name of the buyer is the seller, Retailer of Awesomeness, with a 98.6 rating, which is not good for the amount of sales he has.
    82:46
    Wow. Farmingdale, New York, I would get this quickly. Yes, you would. It's $90.67. Can we save shipping if you go pick it up? No. then they'll usually pay tax when you pick it up in the same state. No, you'd have to go to their house where they're selling it, and you probably don't want to do that. I mean, is this a costume or just an inflatable thing? You sit inside the whole thing. No, I think it's one of those blow-up where you're inside of it. So it sounds like it's not big enough, and this is why I would not buy that, because if it's really only six foot tall and you're looking out the actual eyes, that's not Andre the Giant. What they need is it needs to be like seven foot five, but you've got like eye holes in the neck that you can see out of. You have to redesign this. Plus, today this looks like Andre the Giant is borderline. Yeah, I would not buy this. Plus, he's heel in this. This is heel Andre the Giant.
    83:39
    So I don't know if you guys can see, like if you scroll down, it says similar sponsored items, and you can see like, I don't know if you guys can see it, but there's like Kane and Mankind and all kinds of stuff.
    83:51
    So that's what I was saying. It's $50 an outfit. So it's a, it's. Prassy. Yep. Prassy. But that's all I got. I figured that would be a cool, would you, would you not buy that from Top Row Pinball? You like to buy one of those things from Mr. Robert. You can definitely hook them up with Top Row Pinball. Yes. That's right, baby. I don't see, I don't see a Dusty Rhodes costume, baby. What's going on here?
    84:17
    No one wants to be the American Dream, baby. We have one now. We do? We have the American Dream. The American dream, Dave Fitts, the American dream of American pinball, baby. He already cheated on his one and only podcast that he wants to go on. Outfit comes with a mouthpiece that makes you have a lisp. Oh, God.
    84:39
    But, yeah, he already cheated. He already went on another podcast. He went on Loser Kid podcast. Yes, he did. I'm like, wait a minute, what's he doing on there? I know. I noticed he talked a lot. I think the Lusikid boys barely got a word in.
    84:58
    Oh, yeah. Love the boys. My favorite Dusty Rhodes thing is he had to have, like, dental work done, so he had, like, Novocaine on the side of his face, so his whole face was, like, all numb. So he immediately went in and did a promo, because the side of his face looked like it didn't move. So, you know, he did a promo like he'd been attacked, and that it caused, like, you know, damage to the side and you have to recover. Like, that's brilliant. Yikes. I love that. The promo's out there somewhere. Now are you ready for the pinball related? Oh, okay, pinball related. All right, I'm ready. Yes. Okay, 193-767-386-587. This I think Ron's going to approve of.
    85:49
    What? 1987 Bell Games Cobra Pinball Machine. Wait a minute, does it have Sylvester Stallone in it? You're the disease, I'm the cure. Wow, it's only $4,000.
    86:06
    Made in Italy, inspired by the movie Cobra with Sylvester Stallone. Wow. See? Wow. Pin is plug and play. It's an exceptional condition, except for having to travel traveling from Italy to Pittsburgh. It is in DC current but plugs easily into a converter. Yes. If you are a Stallone fan this pin is a must Okay so is this picture in there anywhere It on the playfield but not his face
    86:35
    I see a cop, but it's not him. No, I know. I mean, it's a game. If you're going to take pictures with the glass on, at least not have glass that's all scraped and scratched up. Oh, yeah. My last picture is on the flippers. It's like you can see the gouges in the glass. I'm trying to find a decent shot of the play field. I do like the four drop targets in front of the ramp. Oh, so it's not ripped off of something. If they don't brick. Yeah, that's interesting. Gottlieb flipper bats. Yep.
    87:10
    Interesting. I've never seen this game before. That's why I bring out the rarities. And I still haven't seen it because the whole back of the play field I can't see due to the glass being on and no lighting. Correct. And the reflection on the back glass. Good job, guys. That's the way to get a sale of a $4,000 item. But, Bruce, that's good preparation, you know, because I am rare, so. Yeah. Preparation H is my middle name.
    87:38
    So would we or would we not buy that? Fuck no. I can hear. No. Okay. I can get my Transformers Pro for $4,000. Okay. Here we go. 174 576 960 613 Oh, it's another rare game. But wait a minute, it's not rare. I hate when they lie.
    88:06
    Rare! 1980 Stern Sea Witch Pinball Machine. You know, like the sea witches you see at every show. It's super rare that they make thousands of. It's really rare. It's so rare that you're going to pay $5,800 for it. Oh, my gosh. The play field is chewed. For your consideration, is an extremely rare vintage pinball machine for my collection. This listing is for a Stern Sea Witch. As you can see from the pictures, the machine would make for a fun player's machine as it sits or would make for a fun restore candidate if you prefer. Wow. For $5,800. Wow. I don't even want to keep it. Oh, you have to. The play field wear around the upper left flipper is brutal. They made only 2,500 of these, which that's a lot. That's a lot. Let's see. Let me look at the pictures.
    89:03
    The question is, would the pinball princess buy another one of these just to have two? No, not for this price. Not for this price. I know what I sold her mine for, and it was a lot cheaper. I like the gouges by the flippers. They're nice. Oh, major wear. Holy shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah? Yeah.
    89:20
    Well, they did say player's condition. Yeah, player's condition. Now, the only problem is you need player pricing. Pricing. Yeah, that's bad. Oh, come on. Even the sticker around the credit button is falling off. Come on. And the Stern sticker isn't even there. Boo.
    89:36
    No. Sorry. Sorry, East Lansing, Michigan. Although he has 100% positive feedback with 143 items. Next one. Ready? Uh-huh.
    89:50
    174-381-442-865. Wow. All these rare games. How do you keep doing this, Bruce? I am just good at this. This actually is rare. This is rare. This is a, I've only seen like one or two of them. Bally Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom. If you'd like your Dave Christensen artwork on a shitty game, this is for you. You are in. This is only $10,000 from vintagevideogame.arcadia. Does it come with a taxi in the back and two other games? It should because this is pretty bad. Keep on going. Let's go see what's going on with this thing. 100% feedback for this. And they sold 2,808 items. Is that the Austin-powered laser shooter bra on that girl on the playfield? Oh, yeah. It's like a laser beam coming out. Yes. The pinball machine is in excellent, fully working, fully shopped condition. See my standard text below to see what fully shopped means to me. The game plays very well and looks amazing. After installing a new lamp driver board, I changed all bulbs to LEDs. and not the Chinese LEDs. I get only the best from Cointaker. Which gets them from China. I also replace the MPU with a new Alltech to improve reliability and longevity on this rare game. Man, he takes pictures of the back box open and closed and coin door and lifts the game up. Oh, yeah, he has a lot of pictures. But all the pictures of the play field have a glass on. Yeah, and? It's like if you, at least it looks like it to me. It's got a lot of wear. Maybe not. The best is actually the displays.
    91:43
    What's wrong with the displays, Ron? What's wrong with the displays? Well, the one's out gassing. Two. Two? I see player four. And the credit. Oh, the credit, yeah.
    91:56
    Well, you know, that would. That would actually cost you money. That would cost a lot of money if it put the LED replacements in there. I do like how this game has the bonus count, 1 to 9 is the 9 planets above it, that's kind of cool yeah okay, we would not buy this and the back glass has a couple spots in the hole, it's got holes in the $10,000 I mean it's you know, it's got two spinners it does it looks like it might be a fun game Of course, you're never going to buy it for that. Yeah, it's a fun game for $500. Yeah.
    92:35
    Okay, next one. Ready? Next one of how many? Go. Three or four more. Okay, okay. 114683-284624. This better be rare.
    92:55
    Oh, it's... It doesn't say rare, but it is. It's a 1978 Williams Contact pinball machine.
    93:08
    Wide body, LEDs, plays great for only $3,000. The best is the lockdown bar. This is very hard to find Williams wide body pin contact. You rarely see this machine come up for sale because there's not many and it sucks. Is that a wood grain lockdown? bar. Oh, it is? Wait a minute. What the fuck is that? It's like a custom wood grate. It's a wood rail. Wait. It's the pin bar.
    93:42
    Oh my god. It's the wood bar. Could they not get a lockdown bar for it? They probably couldn't find one because it's the rarest one. Super wide body. At least they have rid of the hard edges. Yeah, they won't have the edges. that kill your palm.
    94:01
    Holy shit, that's stupid. I thought you'd love that. It'd be funny if you talk about the play field or anything that, you know, like, oh, the play field's not that, you know, not that bad on this game, you know, because nobody played it when it was. Wrap the piece of wood in, like, aluminum foil and take pictures.
    94:21
    Wow. I'm speechless. That's a new one. Good job. Good job, Bruce. Thank you. See, I thought you liked that one. Yes. Bruce is bringing it from the top rope today. Oh, I am bringing it. Oh, yeah. When we have the big people on, I got to make it, you know, just a little bit more cheap. Well, you know, brother, it's time to go for some more, brother. What do you got for me, dude?
    94:44
    Oh, this is the classic. Here we go. 133. 666. Dun, dun, dun. 287. 633. Wait for it. Oh, God. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. The Addams Family. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Rip. Oh. Dun-dun-dun-dun. Oh, God.
    95:14
    My bum hole hurts very much. Yes, it does. If you think a Jersey Jack CE is just not expensive enough, this is the game for you. I mean, it looks immaculate, but Shooter Lane, take the glass off, people.
    95:31
    Yes, we'll give the price last, but it's a full-end, high-end restoration with all-new clear-coated playfields, new electronic boards, restored cabinet, and tons of mods, because we love mods. I like the ramp staircases. That's not standard, right? No, that is. The red? The red and the blue? Yeah, the standard. Oh, I did not know that. I have never paid that much attention. Because it's actually bright because of the super awesome LEDs in there. Wait a minute. There's tons of mods. Where are they?
    96:06
    I can tell you exactly what they are. I expected to see the dude's fester on the chair. I expected to see that, but he's not. Nope, it's the thing cover. The thing cover is kind of cool. Okay, yeah. The spinner for the, not the spinner, but the library, whatever it's called, the read target. It's all covered. It looks like wood grain. It looks pretty nice. That actually is cool, Nicole. Yeah.
    96:30
    I approve. I don't approve of the pop bumper, like, weird lights they got in there. No, that's like five LEDs in one.
    96:38
    Let's just blind you more. The play field isn't bad. Yes. It's clear-coated, man. No, it's a run. What's the price on this thing? This, Adam's family... Oh, you want to go to the description first? You want to go to the description first? I think I did say. I said that already. New cabinet artwork. New plate. Yeah, that's it. New clear-coated play field. New ramps. Color DMD display. All new electronic boards. Which we don't get to see. There's no... No. So you can have this Addams Family in your home for only $20,000.
    97:11
    $20,000. Da-na-na-na. I want one thing. Da-na-na-na. Sell, sell, sell. I'd rather have the monsters next to it Yes, I would like With the LEDs and the brightness I'm going to give another shout out to Zach Minney is I was blinded by Dwight He didn't do this game I know, but I'm just saying It's a great song So that's a fail on that one also, right guys? Yeah, that's a fail, just like Zach Minney's singing Wow God, he's just got to stop singing Wait, did I, if I sing on your podcast, does that free him up to sing on his podcast? No, he can do it whenever he wants on his podcast. No, but he had to sing that if someone requested him to sing. Correct. So if Robert requests him to sing, then he's going to have to sing when he comes back. But you have to pick a song. Okay, hang on. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I like big butts and I cannot lie. You other brothers can't deny.
    98:15
    Here goes Zach. Oh, God. Sing it. Oh, God. I know Creasel's going to lose it if he sings that. No, well, it can't be on one that Creasel's on. He'll have to be the guest episode or whatever. Yes. I got my mind set on you. Remember when he was trying to sing that to you? I'm not set on you. Oh, that was bad. I got my new mic now. I didn't mention that. I'm on a different mic here. I can sing more.
    98:42
    You ready for the next one? I'm ready. 224-158-989-551. Stern Pinball Alley. The description is funny. Stern Pinball Machine Alley Man Cave Arcade Room Free Shipping. That is the entire description. Jesus.
    99:07
    Free shipping anywhere in the world for this price. This is $4,600. Jeez. And look at the seller. They sell 373 items. They have 75% positive feedback. That is by far the worst I have ever seen. So buyer beware. That is a buyer beware type of feedback. They're in Quebec, Canada. Eh? Yeah, eh. Because this is Canadian, right? Oh, Canada, our home and native land. I miss hockey. I have it in a garage. I can just play it any time I want. I can set the national anthem. The hockey thing? Yes. It looks like he took it just from IPDB. He just copied and pasted it. What, the pick? Yeah, the description. The description, yeah. Literally, that's what it is. Free shipping to a terminal nearest for you to pick up to Continental USA or Canada. It doesn't really say anything about the game. He doesn't have the glass off, Ron, so that's a good thing. Oh, he doesn't. Well, let me see. let's see, the back glass is in a typical alley condition, which is bad. Bad, bottom bad.
    100:18
    Playfield. Playfield, usually the bottom is beat the hell up. Yeah, this is not bad. But the upper playfield part is bad. So that tells me somebody's played a lot of games of this poorly, because they plunge, and then they lose the ball.
    100:35
    Because in between the pop numbers is bad, and the rope-a-dope loop is bad. Rope-a-dope. It does have the original, some original drop targets on there. And the cabinet is just marked and nicked and all over the place. That's a stern cabinet.
    100:52
    Coin doors are, I tell you. Yeah. That is just, I've never seen a feedback that low. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. You can't trust them. Oh, man. That's a fan bunch of our listeners.
    101:05
    No. You have to read the, did you read the email? We'll get to the email in a few minutes, but yes, you'll see. Okay. So we just had a restored one down here sell for like two grand. Wow. $22.50. I mean, the guy fixed it up. It was really nice. It had a great, I mean, it was. Why didn't you buy it?
    101:24
    Yeah. I've only got room for seven games, so look at my face. You can hold up any time and you can put anything. No, you always got room. Put them under games. Games under games. Exactly. Games under games. Yeah. That's how I started learning. Okay. Two more. Oh, two more. Then we can get to the mail. All right. What do you got? We can get to the mail, Ball Bag. Now, I have a question. I'm going to give you a choice. Uh-oh. Okay.
    101:47
    I'm just going to do them both. Don't fuck it. Okay. One, two, three. Here's your choice. There's no choice. No choice. One, two, three. 717.
    101:58
    375. 388. Why were you doing tequila there, too? That was weird. Was Pee-wee Herman coming out? I was going to get on the bar and start doing my PC. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Do I get my platform shoes?
    102:15
    Stranger Things Pro, pinball machine by Stern. Hey, watch this. So far that night, I'm ready to get in bed. Deep in the heart of Texas.
    102:26
    Where's your Pee-wee shout-out? I'm in the movie theater. Oh, no. I'm doing something. No, it's in the album.
    102:35
    Let's see. It's a Stranger Things Pro that costs more than it would new from Stern. Mm-hmm. So why would I get that? Well, no, no. You'll have to read the description. Oh, let me read the description. Okay.
    102:50
    Stranger Things Pro. This machine is new. Okay. Shipped in Stern Factory box. Purchased just prior to COVID. Never put on location. Okay.
    103:01
    What's wrong with that? Well, at first, as you said. But the second problem I have is if you never put it on location, why is there a sticker on the coin door?
    103:13
    It's like their company name. Like they put their company name sticker on it. That's it? That's your – come on. Yeah. Why would you do that if it never went on location? How come I can't zoom in on any of the pictures? Yeah, that was the scary part, though. Okay. So their pictures are taken with a flip phone. Yeah. I don't know. And it's more than if you just got one from the distributor. I'm doing boxes listed at $61.99. So you save $200 for who knows what you're going to get. Nope. Yep. Okay, Ron, now. Fail. This is the rarest one.
    103:53
    Rarest one. Oh, God. Okay. So this is going to be $50,000. Okay. 293-621-018-392. Metal Man. Wow. 1992's super rare collectible pinball machine, fully working. Grail. I'm sure someone's Grail. And it can be yours for $77.50. It's got a tic-tac-toe board.
    104:24
    I know. Keith Elwin thought he made this proper, but, you know. This thing looks cherry, though. Oh, was that the Pinball Museum in Denver, Colorado?
    104:36
    I wish there was better play field shots. Not shots, but pictures. Yeah, another play field. It's got tic-tac-toe. It's got a weird flipper bats, those European games.
    104:49
    Wow, they chromed out the legs. It looks like some exposed chrome legs. Wow, that looks... Wait a minute, that's the only picture of the play field?
    105:00
    No, there's three or four. Yeah, but there's no close-up. Yeah, but they're from the angle. You can't see anything, and the glass is hot. Yeah, it's bad. No, fuck that. Just take the glass off. It's real. It's a real game. Yeah, but you have $7,000 for it. Take the damn glass off. No, you'll get dust inside the play field if you take the glass off.
    105:19
    I mean, I'm not even going to ask you to look inside the game, which you should for $7,000, But, I mean, holy crap. What's the description say? Okay, it said that's shipping by Beltman. Yeah, I guess it's not Michelle What's-Her-Face anymore. It has some other woman's name. That's all it says, though. It doesn't really have. It's just Metal Man Ender, which I believe is the manufacturer. Isn't it a full name, though? Ender something.
    105:45
    1992 super rare collectible pinball machine fully working grail. Okay. No. Man, we wouldn't buy anything today. No. eBay sucks. It fits in well with my stream. We wouldn't buy anything and nobody watches my stream.
    106:04
    You could be metal man. Well, you had Mick Foley advertise for your stream. Yeah, that was fun. That wasn't all script. He just kind of did that. The whole Who Tommy thing, that was all him. I gave him very little information, and he just ran with it. It was pretty cool. For those who are wondering what we're talking about, It's the, what's the name of the service again?
    106:27
    Cameo. So you can basically paste the libraries to SpaceJet. See, you need to edit that in. It's only 45 seconds. So, Ron, edit that in here. He won't do it.
    106:39
    Hello, this is a hardcore legend, Mick Foley, the man who defeated Dwayne The Rock Johnson twice to become WWE champion, Stone Cold Steve Austin, once making me a three-time WWE champion, here to tell you about Top Rope Pinball. This is done by Robert Byers, a top-ranked pinballer. It's a Twitch stream for pinball playing in which Robert does different wrestler intros before and during each show. He is a top-ranked pinballer. I think I mentioned that. And he does streams for gameplay, strategies, and fun. He's a pinball wizard. There has to be a twist. That pinball wizard, he's got such a supple wrist. How do you think he does it? I don't know. Check out Top Row Pinball. Find out for yourself. And have a nice day.
    107:24
    That was Mick Foley right there. Yep. Woo-hoo! I know The Undertaker was charging like $1,000. Woo! Yeah, Flair was charging like $500 and some different things. Woo! So, it's interesting. Undertaker lives in the neighborhood about 20 minutes from me. So, I'm just going to drive up to his house and stop him and say, Hey, dude, you need to give me a cameo real quick. He will tombstone high drive you. Keep on speaking. I'll just use this. It's like, where are you, Patrick? He probably tombstone me on the pavement.
    107:56
    Rest in peace. And then lightning will hit you and stuff will happen. Yeah, all the things, yeah. Okay, ready for the ball bag?
    108:05
    There you go. I just kept this little thing in here. I got a notification. Yes, you did. Hi there. Congratulations. The Slam Tilt Podcast is now ranked 181 on the Apple Podcast Game chart in Australia.
    108:21
    Australia, mate. We're in the top 200. I looked in the top 100. There's not one pinball podcast in the top 100, so we're in the top 81. See, right now I'm on fries, but next week I'll be on shakes. And eventually, I'll be assistant manager. And that's when the big buckets start rolling in.
    108:44
    I'm glad you guys know what that's from. Oh, I know exactly what it is. 181 out of like 200 probably Yeah But yes we are popular In Australia mate Next email is from Glenn Hi Glenn gets around he's been on several podcasts I've seen Bruce and Juan No Ron Your name is Juan Valdez now Si senor It's the Ted Cruz Cancun edition Bruce and Juan Yes, he should be coming back right now. Oh, wait, he had to come back sooner. I'm sorry. You left this log there.
    109:28
    Bruce and Ron, after watching Mike's video, I realized that not only did Mike believe the only strategy is to go for lit spinners. Oh, the first part, I'm sorry. Here's a link to Mike Dimas' TX Sector Gameplay and Rules tutorial. So after watching Mike's video, I realized that not only did Mike believe the only strategy is to go for lit spinners, but I've heard you guys also speak of the same. And there's nothing else worth going for. I say nay. There is also a mega level hurry up multiplier. Once you get your level seven and higher, it trumps any other shot in the game. You would need to knock the single drop target down in front of the ramp to activate the mega level multiplier hurry up. That sounds like I should do that as a wrestler. The mega level multiplier hurry up, dude. Then collect it at the teleport shot. I believe you can get one million points if your level is maxed out, dude, and you hit it at 10x value. Also, if you get in the multi ball, if extra ball's off, you can collect a quick 500k at a lot dead end shot. At a lot dead end shot. What you gonna do, brother? Brother, what are you going to do with a spinner spin on you, brother? Love your show, and I can't wait to get to see you guys. Stop interrupting me. Love your show, and I can't wait to see you guys at a show someday. Poor man's pinball tribe members, number seven, Glenn. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Glenn, but it could be a death shot. Sometimes you hit that drop target, and it can ricochet. Oh, be a man. Like, you care about death. You just flail at everything. But the thing is, there's an easy shot to be hit. It's those spinners. It's all about the tournaments with you guys. Don't you want to have any fun?
    111:15
    No, at one point, I want to win. Okay. Use the spinner for days. That's fine. That's all it is. The game is really that. If you want to be not – okay, if you're in a tournament and your competitor is just hitting spinners, what am I going to do? I'm going to either hit the spinner to keep up with him or try something more difficult and maybe score points.
    111:40
    I'm going to score points the easy way. Hit the spinner. All right. I'm sorry. That's the way I feel.
    111:48
    The Bruce has spoken. That guy, Glenn, watched one of my streams, and he's like, yeah, I got to do you some intro music, and he was on live the other day. So he can sing and play. I guess he's really good. I guess he's – I don't know if he's new in it. I didn't know him, but he seems like a cool guy. Glenn's been sending us mail for a long time. Yeah, he found me on one of my drinking streams and was just eating up when I was doing the rest of my stuff. And he's like, man, we've got to hook up so I can write you some music and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I need to touch base with the guy. Seems cool. Maybe you can do a rap album like Macho Man. Yeah, there you go.
    112:28
    That's all I got. That's all? That's all. It's only been two and a half hours, Bruce. Yeah. It's going to be long. Good. Lord, you're killing me. Where can we find Top Rope Pinball and plug yourself mercifully? Mercifully? No, mercilessly. Mercifully. I like the Bruce-ism intro. Yeah. You keep on interrupting stuff with wrong stuff, Ron. Oh, where can you find me? Here's where you can.
    112:59
    because that's the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so. You can find me on Twitch at Top Rope Pinball, their Facebook page, email, just about any Instagram. I've got a Discord channel. So you can pretty much search Top Rope Pinball and all of those places, and you can find me. Go ahead on Twitch, and if you just follow me in notifications, I don't really carry a schedule. So sometimes I'm Saturdays, Sundays at 10 in the morning. Sometimes I'm 7 at night. It just depends on the mood I'm in and what's going on with life when I stream. So follow me and share me out there and come say hi sometime. And I can't wait to hang out with you again at the next show, Robert. Yes, that'll be a great time. Great time for sure. Good time will be had by all. Yes, good times hand by all. Yes, it will, baby. This is the American dream right here. And I'm telling you, we are the Slamtail Podcast, baby. This has been episode 161. If you want to contact us, you can contact us at SlamtailPodcast at gmail.com, baby. And that's the most I could do there.
    114:09
    So our website, SlamtailPodcast.com. Hi, Steve. Hi, Zach. Yeah, all our links are in the top right corner. And you can also catch me on my other podcast, the Silver Ball Chronicles, to be heard at the Pinball Network. So check that out. Our latest episode should be coming out very soon.
    114:29
    It will be kind of a Barry Ousler, early 80s Williams pinball thing. Wow. Thanks, Bruce. Damn. Fuck you. And I'm sure you'll have a lot of corrections for it. Oh, I will for this one. You watch. Because you are quite the dick. Yeah, so thanks, everybody. Until next time. I'm a dick. Yes, you're a dick. Thank you, Robert. Say goodbye, Bruce. Well, it's going to be a little long intro today, but if anyone went to the bar, I had a picture of me when I was younger up on the wall given by one of my good friends, Stacy. And one of the people who was in that picture passed away actually late last night. He died from cancer.
    115:14
    He was 54. His name's Jay Dewell. Goodbye, Jay Dewell. Goodbye.