Damn it, Beavis, why do you always do that? Why do I always do what? How come every time I say something, you, like, say the same thing? How come every time before I say something, you say the same thing? It's like, you just do it first. See, Beavis, you just did it again. See, see, you just did it again. Damn it, Beavis. Yeah, see, that's what I was gonna say, yeah. I was gonna say, damn it. Hey, Beavis. I'm a big, stupid butthole and my mom's a slut. Yeah, yeah, I was just going to say, you're a big stupid butthole. And my mom's a slut. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, the show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. This is episode 159. Wow. So you say we do about two hours a show with me and you. So we've been on over like 320 hours. Oh, my God. Ron, how do you even do it with that? How do you deal with this? I don't know. But we're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. Holy shit. We have a guest. Who is this guest, Mr. Ron? This is... the master of IE pinball, Inland Empire pinball, the streaming sensation, Carl D'Python Anghelo. Hello. Hello, Carl. Hello. Good afternoon, or in your case, morning. Morning. Morning. And everyone steals every idea from you, so guess what? When it comes to streaming, they steal all the ideas. You are the master. Yes, everyone, even the people who were streaming before Carl, have stolen the idea of streaming from Carl. Yes, because Carl made it better, and they had to catch up. They had to catch up. Mm-hmm. So, Carl, we're surprised you're here, and you haven't been arrested. Yeah, I know. All that music I'm playing on the screen. All that music, you've been streaming Guns N' Roses. I don't believe you have not been just booted off Twitch immediately. I can't believe it either. Yikes. What do you mean by that, Ron? Well, let's get into that. Because, you know, when it comes to streaming, this has been a very polarizing subject about what you can stream, what you can't stream. And I know for you, Carl, like you're trying to get partner, correct? Or at least kind of trying to get partner. Yeah, I've been trying to get partner for a while. What do you have to do to get partner? It seems like insane. I mean, the primary, the difficult item is having an average of 75 viewers over a month. so that's 12 streams at least with your total over 75 which for a pinball stream is extremely difficult I mean Jack does it Jack's got his audience cemented in basically which is great but anyone else on pinball you can see it's a very small audience that comes and watches things so you can leverage large tournaments like if I had leveraged pin Slash properly I might have been able to do it I took the week off before pin Slash so I didn't to have my required 12 streams for the month. So, yeah, but for partner, it's not that important. The only reasons I want partner is because I want transfers always available so that I can stream 1080 and not have to worry about people that have lesser bandwidth so they can still watch. And I want the opportunity to get in this from the front page. That's a good thing. Yeah, I know, at least when I've streamed, I think the only time we've gotten over 70 or whatever is tournament. Yeah. That's literally the only time we've ever done that. So, Carl, you've been doing a lot in the past couple months with Ping Slash. Congratulations on that. That was an excellent, excellent view. Thank you. Do you have plans for Ping Slash 2, the electric boogaloo? It might happen at some point. I know. I'm definitely thinking right because that took four months of my time to set up and, you know, build all the tutorials, build other video assets, arrange everything. It was a massive show. And then, you know, I had a large crew helping me, too. Yes, you did. Congratulations to all of them. They all did a great job, including the commentators, everyone doing the judging, the time, everything. That was very cool to see. Yeah, I was floored with how much help I had. And it would not have happened without all those people. That's the oldest guy that we, you know. Yeah, him, I don't know about. He goes to the next one. Yeah, there you go. I love the judging. It felt like the NFL. You know, we have to go to New York City to get the ruling, and you're just waiting for the ruling to come back. So many of those decisions landed on the second. You know, it blew my mind. I wasn't expecting that many to come down to, you know, that wire where we have to watch the VOD to see, okay, exactly on the timestamps. Was this 30 seconds or was it 31 seconds? You know, crazy. For those who don't know what Pin Slash was, it's basically head-to-head with challenges and timed. So if someone finishes their challenge before the other person, or if they appear to finish at the exact same time, there needs to be a review to see who won. Over the Internet. Yeah, over the Internet. Not even at the same place, with two different machines. Same machine, two different locations. Same machine. Yes, two different locations, possibly. or same title, I guess I should say. Not the same. Machine, machine. Plus, like the last two weekends, you have been showing some replays. Yeah, I've got all this extra footage that I haven't stuck on YouTube yet, so I thought I might as well start replaying it on Twitch and see if there's an audience for it, and it looks like there is. So as long as people are enjoying it, I'll keep throwing stuff up there, and maybe even pull up some of the old tournaments that no one watches anymore on YouTube. pull up an old in-disc here, like 2018, 2017, something. We'll see. See where I'm going. I've got Freeplay Florida still from 2019 that I haven't edited yet. That'll be next up. I enjoyed in-disc especially, because since I was there, I didn't actually see the stream. I never watched it, because I was there. You were commentating. Oh, God, that's right. Yeah, the Classics final. Yeah, they abandoned you at the end of it. Yeah, they abandoned me, and I was all alone. And then Carl was like, Plug this or mention this, and then I forgot what he said. Fail. Yeah. We got through it, but, yeah, that was fun. And then this week, or last weekend, I guess this weekend when we're recording, you did the California State Finals. With a twist, you had, like, live commentary, current commentary. Yeah, I wanted to try that, see if it worked out or not, kind of an experiment. I think it did. A little rough at first, but for the final match, we had Adam Lefkowitz, Haley George, Raymond Davidson, and Snow Galvin and myself on there. I think it worked out, so maybe that will be something we go forward with for like the last couple games in these replays. Yeah, man, I can't believe Jim Belcido beat you again. And you picked the same games as last time. I don't understand. That was his first state championship that he won. Which is cool. Yeah. So I see you've been nominated for a couple things, sir, for IE Pinball. Some nominations have come through, yeah. Yes, the TWiPS for This Week in Pinball for Best Streamer, and also for the Pinball Industry Awards you were also nominated for Best Pinball Streamer. So we hope for that. And you can still vote for the TWiPS, so if you have not voted yet, we're going to push our seven listeners right on to you, Carl, and hopefully get you. Is it a raid? It's a raid. vote raid so Carl let's just say I'm a new streamer I want to get into this thing for whatever reason I want to get those five people watching my pinball stream what kind of equipment should I buy what should I do give me some advice and how much do you expect to spend yeah yeah that's the key how much do you want to spend that's always my first question okay what's your budget how much are you looking to spend because for my biggest recommendation is to start small You know, I don't like webcams I don't like using webcams for streaming But if it's your first time streaming Try out with a cheap laptop Or whatever you've got around the house And some webcams Don't put too much investment into it Until you know that you're going to enjoy Doing this So just a snowball mic Three webcams, laptop And some stands to put the cameras on That's really all you need to get started And then if you enjoy it Then you can, you know, bump up to some HDMI-capable cameras, whether it be HandyCams or SLRs, digital SLRs or mirrorless cameras. That's very small. It does seem there's three levels. There's your webcam level, and then you graduate to, like, the HandyCams, and then you go to the high level, which is now your mirrorless cameras, which I was so confused. Like, you mean an actual just camera, like you, you know, point and shoot, take pictures of, like that does video now? I'm just so not with the times on that and that's what you're using now, correct? Yeah, I use a mix of that and I've moved recently to a Sony ZV-1 it's more of a point and shoot camera it's built for vlogging and I think I may be moving to that for all my cameras if I can pull together the funds for it they're not cheap but when tournaments start back up it'll be better to have those than the mirrorless that I'm using You know, they're a step up from the handy cams, but they're about the same quality as the mirrorless, but they're more portable. The power requirements are easier to manage with a single USB instead of the mirrorless. You have to buy additional equipment, and often they have two USBs, so they take more power, and they don't last as long on batteries, which is hard for the wireless rig, you know, to move things around because you need something to last 8 to 10 hours at least, which those things don't in most cases unless you buy a massive battery. How much do those cameras usually cost, Carl? They're $700 to $800, I think, right? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, like $700-something if you get them on eBay. Yeah. Yeah, eBay is a good source. I just got the Sony CV1. Ah. The only issue I had with it was its field of view is not the same as the 405. It is not, correct? It is not. I didn't realize it was that much different. because I put in the rig in the usual spot, and it zoomed all the way out, and, like, I couldn't do Demoman. It wasn't getting the size. So I actually had to remount it higher on my rig. And my rig is shorter. My rig is just so it can roll around my basement. It's not, like, full height, I guess. But that worked, remounting it there. The only issues I have now are with two games, and Bruce can probably guess what those are. What two games would I have issues with with Field of View? I'm trying to think. Field of view with two games. Can't get the whole play field in there. Well, wide. Yeah. I don't know. Wide body. Yeah. Big game. Yeah. And. And. And. Cheetah. Cheetah, that's right. Cheetah. You know, the play field that you have right next to your games where. Yeah. Sitting right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Luckily, I had like an older mount because I couldn't use like the clip mount. It was still too low. So I needed another way to get it higher, but not... I couldn't have it higher than the rig, because then it would hit stuff when I'm trying to roll the rig around. But that worked. But, like, that's the only two games I'll have an issue with. But even then, it's like you don't get the shooter lane, but you can still get the game. Oh, well. Oh, well. Oh, well. Do you see any other advancements coming your way, Carl? Like, any other ideas in the crockpot? No other real ideas. I'd like to upgrade my wireless capability, capability, but I'm using Pro Screamer equipment already for that, and if I bump up to something better, it's thousands and thousands of dollars, and I'm not willing to invest that much into better wireless equipment. Okay, so I've gone to the next level. I have my ZV-1s in place, but I want to do some stuff with direct audio capture and direct video capture. What do I get for that stuff? And depending on the game, What do I get for, like, I have Sterns, I have Williams games. Like, what can I do? All right, let's start with Stern because the issue with Stern is they have a direct capture device, but they're not releasing it, they claim, because of DMCA issues, which I don't know if that's the real reason or not. But regardless, there is an alternative on AliExpress or Amazon. There's an Amazon seller that carries these things. It's an LVDS2 HDMI adapter board. will convert the signal on their displays to HDMI, so you can pull that out for direct feeds. Other companies, most of them have HDMI outs already, so you just need a splitter, an HDMI splitter, and you pull that into your HDMI capture port. It's pretty darn simple. Audio is a little trickier to me. I like the GoXLR, this mixer, to pull audio in. I mean, you need hardware to grab the audio from the game, of course. So I use Penovator's sub-outputs. They basically just double out the audio channel. So it's not sending just a subwoofer, you know, a low-frequency audio stream. It sends the whole thing, and you can grab that on whatever you want to put it into on your computer. Yeah, and they look like they have, like, all the Williams. Like, even going back to, like, System 11 and stuff, they have different kits. and they're only like $35 per game. One of the cheaper things I've seen. Right, exactly. I know other people have, you know, they put alligator clips with speakers and pull it out that way. I haven't explored that path yet. It's something I want to try because if you pull in older games, you know, like say an older Valley, you know, say Flash Gordon, you want to pull direct audio out of. I haven't gone down that path yet. Spookies are easy because they pull audio over HDMI. So you don't even have to worry about that. And JGP is just a standard audio splitter that you can use. Okay, so simpler, definitely. Okay. What about my D&D games? Those are, you just use the Pinnovator's piece. So there's a Pinnovator's D&D extender thing. Oh, you're talking about direct displays for D&D. Yeah. So Dr. Pinball's, my gosh, D&D extender. Dr. Pinball. Dr. Pinball, yeah. That'd be fantastic We used them at Indus one year For eight or nine of the machines But you know the last year I was Crazy enough to hook up cameras to Every single game But they're a great device and yeah You can't get ColorDMD out of them Because ColorDMD uses a LVDS connection to the display And it's not the same as what Stern does The connector No one's been able to find a connector that I know of That will grab a ColorDMD direct but you would get the monochrome DMD with that device. And by the fact it's called a DMD extender, can you still, will you still have your DMD functioning at the same time you're outputting the DMD to something else? Yeah. Exactly, yeah. You output it to use the Raspberry Pi on the DMD extender and that converts it to HDMI but the actual DMD on the game just uses a pass-through ribbon cable. Hmm. you've blown me away with money. What do I get for software? How do I capture all this? I'm getting all this stuff out of my games. Where am I sending it to? Software, most people are using OBS. It's free. It's a bit of a learning curve, but it's very powerful. If you want to move to something easier to use, there's XSplit, but that costs money. How much? I mean, they have a monthly and lifetime license. You know, whatever you want to pay, pretty much. If you want to pay the $15 or $20, I honestly don't know what it is monthly. The lifetime is like $260 or $300, somewhere in that range. So once you've decided that this is your thing you want to do forever, then buy the lifetime so you're not, you know, if it's within your budget. Right, yeah, if you want to go XSplit. Now, I've used XSplit for years, and for Pen Slash, I had to move over to OBS Yes, because with all the inputs and all the captures I was using, it was crashing XSplit constantly. Are you going to go to that permanently, or keep using XSplit for your regular streams? Exactly. I'm jumping back and forth between the two. It depends on what computer I'm on and where I'm streaming from. There are things in XSplit, like the whiteboard feature, is so much easier to use than OBS. I know there's a plug-in written by one of the Pinball Community members, Mike Walsh, for OBS. So you can do, you know, telestrations in OBS. But in exploit, it's just so simple to do. And it's basically that. If I want to throw something together in five minutes, I can do it in exploit faster than I can in OBS. Okay. Okay. So hardware. What do I need? I have all this HDMI coming in. How do I get this into my PC or laptop or my Mac? Although you probably don't have a Mac. Please no Macs. No Macs. Okay. Well, let's see. So you need HDMI capture devices. So if you're going just with a lot of people go with one or two HDMI and then use USB for the third or fourth cameras. For that, most likely a Elgato Cam Link for a single input. It's a USB device that captures, you know, just goes to HDMI to USB. If you want to go big time and go with a desktop machine, I use a Magewell Quad HDMI capture. So it's a single PCI Express card that has four HDMI inputs. and that card is expensive, but it's been the best purchase I did for that machine just because any signal I throw at it, it captures without any question. No blips, no issues whatsoever, especially with the oddball resolutions sometimes. Like the JJP smaller screens, they're often like a 480 resolution or they're something different. So that device has been able to pick up anything that I've thrown at it. And that is quite expensive. It is quite expensive. But on eBay, they're about half price used. So you can go that route. But you need a desktop. And most people don't want to use a desktop for streaming. They want to use laptops so they can sit on the machine right next to them and just run the cables to that. So another thing you've been doing for quite a while now is streaming wizard modes. you get a game usually a lot of these times there are games that are loaned to you to try to get the wizard mode on. And either they're ridiculously hard to begin with or it's a game where they've made it ridiculously hard to try to challenge you to try to get to the wizard mode. And of course I'm thinking of games like Big Buck Hunter and 24. Would you say between these two games, they almost broke you? Yeah, definitely. I mean, Buckhunter was at the beginning of all this. And yeah. The thing with Buckhunter is I did that daily until I finished it. I wasn't stopping. I'm like, now, I'm not going the same game for 13, 14 days. I'll take breaks. So that's why Buckhunter almost broke me. It was funny, though. I'm going to say something. I was watching him. He did Simpsons so fast. I was like, boom. He did Simpsons like a couple days. I was like, wow. Okay. And then he goes, big muck on him. I'm like, uh-oh. This is going to be a challenge. And it became a challenge. Really bad. I was like, I came in every day to succeed. I thought one day you were just going to go, like, slam it, like, go into a rage tilt or something. You're like, really? I'm this close? And no. And over again, yeah. Oh, God. That's the thing for our listeners. Carl doesn't swear. No. He's very clean. So to actually hear him slip up at least once or twice, when the voice of those two streams was, it's just music to my ears. It was. It was golden. I was like, oh, wow. But it was very cool to see. And you've been doing some great challenges, you know, between those games and the others. You did Avengers again. Older Avengers. Yeah, that was funny timing, too, because I had no idea Infinity Quest was going to be released. I got requests for this, though. I found one of the local guys here had a machine they were willing to lend me. So I was like, okay, let's do this. And then the week after, Infinity Quest is released. The timing. It was fitting. Perfectly fitting. And I would say, especially during Big Buck Hunter, I noticed the increase in the viewer count, like the longer it went. Just because you see you had a counter of the number of plays, and it's just already 100, 101, 102. She was like, oh, my God, like how many is it? 200. It got up there for some of them. I don't know if it was that high, but definitely in the hundreds, in the low hundreds, for sure, which is surprising again. And another time I didn't take advantage of that to try and get partner. My timing on getting partner has been pretty poor. I will say that. Well, 24 was heavily modded. It originally had lightning flippers, had an entire gate removed, all these crazy mods to it to make it just obscenely hard. Right. The ball guide was removed completely. So the center ramp the left ramp I guess you could say. It normally has a ball guide that you can just hit on it. That ramp is so easy to hit normally. It hits the ball guide, goes up the ramp, whatever. And there's only one exit out of the pump bumper that's on the right hand side. So the owner removed that ball guide plug some of the holes there, because there's the lamp socket holes, and so the ball can exit out on the left-hand side of the pop-up nest, which added so much randomness to the game and made that ramp a lot harder to hit. And then the game had lightning flippers and had super bouncy super bands in places, you know, strategic spots to make it difficult. It was a nightmare. It was. And I never, I looked at that game and I went, this isn't going to take that long. And on the first stream, I nearly got there before even knowing the rules and how to do it. And I never got that close until the last day. And you eventually put regular flippers on there. Yes, I did. I took the lightings off and put regular flippers on because I was going insane. We have like Big Buck Hunter. You were doing a thing where I think you got it with a hat on. You were wearing the cap. I was wearing the cap, yeah. Yeah, the Hunter hat. That was sent to me. And you have also the Cone of Shame. What's the Cone of Shame about? I remember turning around once and you're wearing a cone. Like, why is he wearing a cone? The Cone of Shame is, well, okay, I wanted a dunce hat at first for when I make a horrible flip or fail, you know, some flub. I found the Cone of Shame instead. It was from Exploding Kittens, that card game, and one of the expansion packs. So I thought it would be fun. And the only time I made a massive mistake, I put the cone of shame on. Now, I hate the damn thing because, if you don't know, Zach McCarthy's DMACC pinball is always trying to get me to wear it. So I made it a channel points reward that you have to pay points to get me to wear the cone of shame when I do something wrong. Well, one stream he decided, and this was also my fault, he decided to spend all his channel points to get me to wear the cone of shame for like an hour. Oh, nice. So, and I didn't have any limits on it Which was my mistake So I had like 10 redemptions in a row So I wore the thing Just, I stared him down And went, I'm doing this You did it, fine I don't like it But I'm wearing the damn thing So yeah, it's just a fun thing Overall I want to burn this one I'm done with it So which was harder? 24 or Big Buck Hunter? That's the question, isn't it? That's it I mean, I would almost say big buck hunter. It's tough to say, though, because 24, the three main goals, is like having three monster bucks in one game that you have to do because the three multiballs, progress doesn't save over. It resets every time. So if you don't do it during that one multiball, you're doing it all over again. But I think I would say buck hunter overall. I was going to agree with that one. On a standard Buckhunter, you're still going to have trouble getting there. But on a standard 24, it's not going to be nearly as difficult. Good answer. Good answer. I agree. I agree. Now, you do stream some of your own games on your channel. I do. Like Avengers, Guns N' Roses. How are you liking those? Those are two of the, I would say, the highest rated releases of last year. Yeah, and I don't buy that many new games But this year really caught me for some reason So both of those games are phenomenal games I'm hooked on Guns N' Roses It fits my play style perfectly I love the risk-reward of building up a song To maximum value And losing it And crying over the 100 million points lost But it's just fun it's the building phases of before you get into a song of trying to build a booster multiball, getting the patches collecting everything I can just bring it all in until I can get to the song and then try and maximize the value it's great I love what they've done and then Avengers is completely different that is more strategic in what you're doing I feel the gems I still can't wrap my head around some of the gym strategies. I don't have any. Okay. So Carl does it. Okay. It's too hard. It's too complicated. This is proof, folks. This is proof that the rule set is too difficult. Yeah, but I have some, but it's stuff like the space gym. I forget to use the space gym to move gyms to recharge them or to where I should put the space gym. So you have to think so far ahead like, okay, I've got the mind gym on Black Widow. I want to use my mind gym during this mode and then use the space gym to move the mind gym to recharge it to use the mind gym again. And I've just confused you. Yeah. What? Yeah, what? This is the problem. Yeah, it is. But it's a great shooting game. At the same time, you do not have to do that. The game shoots great. There's great rules in there as it is. You don't have to pay that much attention to the gyms to progress in the game. it's that extra level for the people that want to do it. Yeah. Do you ever think the manufacturers get worried when they see you streaming something in case some issues come up with the game? I mean, your Avengers LE has a warped play field. It had issues with the ball walker. Your Guns N' Roses has the hot flipper syndrome, it seems. I turn on and I see a weird temperature sensors on display on the screen. It's like left flipper, right flipper, like 200 degrees. He's like, whoa, seems kind of hot for a flipper. Well, I would hope if they see issues that it helps them out. Just to correct whatever they need to on the lines or figure out solutions. So you've done this in the past for another game. I did. For Rick and Morty, I made a lot of changes to that game. I moved the rails quite heavily. And that wasn't even my game. That was Shane's game over at Ace Goge. That was one of the first ones. Yes, it was. Yeah, which they made modifications probably along the lines of what Carl did on future models. And the warped play field, how did he even figure out it was warped? Because I'd drop a ball on the right-hand side by my hand, and it would, you know, go to the right. Same thing on the left, so I pulled out my – I took the ramps off, and I pulled out my level, and oh look the level isn level on this It rocking back and forth Let measure this and see how much you know Twist it out Yeah exactly Ouch Yeah, not good. I think that's a very common issue on stern right now, too. Yes, it is. It was just a problem. I mean, people look at the clear coat and the insert issues. I think wood quality is a bigger issue than both of those. I think it's thinner. We've commented in the past. So I think that's a big problem. I'm scared. I'm scared now. Why are you scared, Ron? Because my Jurassic Park's on order. I'm scared. It's going to be warped or anything when it arrives. And I'm worried the same thing. I have a pro right now, and I have a premium on order. I've had it on order since July with the IFPA rewards, and it's supposed to be here February, finally. But, yeah, I'm worried about it now that the wood quality isn't going to be there on it. I'll get a warped field. You got it with the rewards last year. Oh, okay. So you've had a slight increase in the price. Oh, yeah, I took that increase, yep. Yeah, you're in California, so that's probably going to be. I almost canceled, yeah. It was about $700. Oh, $700? A little in between $600 and $700. Yeah, because you got the higher taxes there. Ouch. Yeah. Yeah, we talked about that in a previous episode. It was so, the way they did it, like all games for this going into this year now, Not even honoring the old price. Yeah, that hurt. Yeah, that hurt. I mean, they could argue. You didn't put any money down. My check was already over there. That's true. It was already with Josh, but it wasn't cash. Yeah, it just wasn't cash. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I've been through the procedure. And they did the same thing again with Batman and... Oh, we'll get... Well, let's talk about that. let's say we're on Stern. If we're going to say stuff about Stern, that's bad. At least be legit. Of course. That was pretty shitty up there. That was a douchey move. Yeah. So what they did is, if you had an order in for Elvira or Batman 66, and you probably had it in for months because it's been months since they made them, basically Stern got in touch with their distributors and told them all orders for those two games are canceled, and And if they want to reorder, it's $500 more. That was douchey. That's kind of douchey. But you know what, Bruce? People mostly re-bought back in. Yeah, I would say 95-plus percent of people were like, okay. Because you got so used to, oh, I'm getting this game. But honestly, if I had an order in and then said, boy, I need more money, you should have said, okay, as of January 15th, any order after January 15th is going to be increased. any order before, we will accept and go from there. And on the 14th, at 5 o'clock, you put this email out. Go on. Done. I wouldn't care that. It's kind of the same thing with the rewards. It just was announced and then anything after this is now this. It's like, well, normally I'd already have the game by now, but since you guys are so behind... Yeah, now I get screwed. Now I'm screwed. I have to pay an extra $500 or whatever to get this game. You know. Which has increased more all around because of all taxes and everything else. I understand some of it is cost of wood and that kind of stuff also, but why is it only those two games? Yeah, that was my question. That's exactly. Yeah, unless they're supposed to be a higher, I mean, I don't see how they would cost that much more. And another thing is, you know, I know people are saying Batman hasn't been increased in three years. Okay, I agree with that. Maybe it does need an increase. But still, $500 worth of Batman, Maybe you go like what you've been doing in the past for all the other certain games, $100 or $250 maybe, not just cancel everyone's order, and then $500, let's get it. Come on. Bring it on. That was pretty dickish. And the other thing, go back to the rewards program, I think. Yeah. In Carl's case, like you're in California. It's not like – like technically, if I knew someone in Massachusetts that was close to me, I could have it sent there and not incur that extra charge. I mean, how long do you have to drive to get out of state? If you wanted to do something like, and I don't even know if any states around there, is Nevada test free? No, it's not. I'd have to go to Oregon. Oregon. Oh, my God. No way. No. Wow, so all the Seattle people, and they've got a lot of good players there, so they're getting all their games way cheaper. Yeah. Damn. Portland's good, too, see? Plus, if you're in Chicago, like, you just pick it up in Wisconsin. Yep. That's the easy way. well, I don't know if you heard our episode, but you came up. So I brought it. Like, poor Carl. He's really going to be paying because he's in California. He can't even drive anywhere else to pick it up somewhere. Well, so technically I'm supposed to pay the tax as it is, right? Yeah. We're all supposed to pay the tax. And if you didn't, you're supposed to report it. Report it on your taxes. Yeah. Right. So. So really, in theory, it's only a small increase from the shipping price because my shipping price was quoted lower than the flat 300 they're doing now. Yes, most people were. I don't know. That's another thing that kind of got me a little bit. That's true because you're getting the flat fee. So that's where you'd be kind of screwed if you're relatively close, but now your shipping was low, and now it's higher because it's a flat fee. That also could hurt. And they're making money on it still. They really are because most people didn't pay $300 through any other place. It is really rare. And now charging $300 as their flat fee. Say if I was in Indiana. That truck only costs probably about $80 to $100 in diesel and dropping it from one place to another place. But in California or maybe Florida, yeah, maybe it is close to that, $300. Nickel and diamond, you bastards. If you want to talk about nickel and diamond, you get into topper talk, okay? Oh, God. Oh, God. We didn't even mention that. Okay. Well, speaking of, you were on the podcast, Bruce, with the Topper King. I know. I was on the Popper Topper King, and oh, my God. It is the stupidest. I don't agree with charging literally. $1,000. Yeah, $1,000 for a topper. And some toppers will do better. Like on Jurassic Park, you get a topper. For Jurassic Park, you get an extra mode. But some toppers, you're not getting anything extra, and you're still paying $1,000. What the F? It looks like they're just... So the pricing is weird. It's weird, and then there'll be ones that are lower for no reason. They're all over the map. Of course, I'm part of the problem, because I have my Star Wars topper. Yeah, see? Oh, no. Nope, no toppers here. It's so cool. It's R2-D2, and he moves. The only one I got is free. I got the free topper on my Rick and Morty. That's it. Yes. And it's a pretty cool topper. Yeah. No? I wouldn't pay for it. I wouldn't pay for it at all. Okay. But, you know, yeah. So they seem to like you on the pinball show. They kind of did, I think. You and Zach bonded. I think you're like bros now or something. Yeah. We're bros, man. Yo, G. No, I was very lucky to be on that show. I felt very privileged. And afterwards, the response I got was just overwhelming. I didn't expect as many people emailing, texting me, messaging me. Some of these people I'd never even heard of. Oh, now that I heard you on this, I'm going to go hopefully hear you on Slamto. Like, where the hell have you been for the past five years? Oh, that's a great response, Bruce. That's me, of course. Of course. Well, the thing is, you got to hear what Bruce says when I can't censor him. Yes. And some of the stuff, man. And that was nothing. Yeah, it wasn't too bad. It wasn't too bad. We made some comments about Mr. Fix, which have now been, I heard, it was on the super awesome pinball show. They said that Dave only met one person. As I also stated, Dave is going after one podcaster. Yeah, the one we don't mention, but you immediately mentioned on that show several times. Yes. You see what I deal with, Carl? I try to stay out of this stuff, and then he just gets me into trouble. Let us throw out the line and see what can I hook. Yeah. We'll get back to that. We'll get back to that. Because, you know, we have a new segment. Yes, we will. Now, that's a tease for later on. It's a tease for later on. So, you have two great new games with Guns N' Roses and with Avengers, and you're getting another great game with Jurassic Park Premium. What makes you You say Guns N' Roses really clicked with you And you said Really the risk and rewards Is it the shots for you also Or is it just that risk and reward Really keeps you sucked in It's a combination of them It really is The shot They're not as Avengers shoots better I'll admit that No question there But Guns N' Roses shoots great too It does. It's just the variety of the play. It's really like two different games. You know, you've got, like I said earlier, the build phase and then the song phase. I feel the songs actually pull you more into that game. They do. They do by far. I didn't realize there was a build phase until I watched you playing. You were getting all these other multiballs before the song multiball, and there seems to be like six of them. Like everything is a multiball. I'm surprised it's not a multiball multiball. It's just there's so many multiballs. And then there's the patch thing. Like, how does the patches work? What is that all about? Patches, they just enhance some part of the game. So, you know, like they'll give for those booster multiballs, there's four patches. And each patch for each individual one, like for Third Light, it increases the combo time. So you have more time to combo the ramp because that's how you score on that one. And then the other patches give you the sponsor patches, you know, give you certain band members always spotted during the game so you don't have to shoot their shots to spot them. Or it makes it easier to spot things. Or it gives you increased score on this or that. Or it makes the tour easier. It gives you more time for on the road. You know, a lot of things. I mean, there's 36 of them. Yeah, some of them are like, condom. What? Some of them, it's like, wow, okay. I will say it's probably one of the most approachable games they've made as far as a beginner. I just want to get in a song. And then someone, say Carl plays it, okay, I want to do all this other stuff before I get in the song because it makes the song worth way more. Exactly, yeah. You can play as much as you want before the song, pretty much. I mean, I found a way to pretty much extend those booster multiballs as long as I want. And would you say, well, I think as far as me and Bruce is concerned, It's the game of the year. It should win whatever awards for game of the year. I would say, I think it just, it has that little extra something that maybe Avengers doesn't have. Exactly. It's got the full, it's the full package. Like, Avengers has the play field. I mean, it shoots like a dream. But it doesn't, it doesn't suck me in. It's lacking on the presentation, I think. The light show's getting great as the code expands, but I feel like the animation, it's very simplistic. It's very basic. It's, I mean, you know, single images moving across the screen with no real animation. And then, like, the main screen, the trophy room, I know it shows my trophies, but I can't see them, and it just doesn't do anything for me. I can't, it doesn't draw me in. Yeah, it's just more, I want more energy. I like goofy games, as I've stated many times on this podcast. Like, when I fire up Deadpool, I left my ass off. I mean, that game's funny as hell. Even Rick and Morty and that kind of stuff. Yes, funny as hell. You don't get pulled in on it in Avengers. Yeah. I honestly, and I played, and we'll get into this later, but I played some more Jurassic Park. As much as I was bagging on some of the call-outs, the more I listened to them, the more funny they became to me. I actually kind of like some of them now. Like, the Battlestar Knight accent. Plus it's got the John Williams music, so that automatically puts it another level above. Right, but at the same time, Jerry Thompson's score that he wrote for that is fantastic. I mean, I listened to so much of it because of Pink Slash, because they let me use the music for it. And it's great. I think it's some of the best work. You got to use the music for it. Did you get permission from Stern? I got permission to use the music. Wow! Speaking of permission, did you know that Stern has updated their end-user license agreement? Specifically that pesky little thing that said that Stern doesn't allow you to stream. I've seen the posts online. I haven't read it myself completely through, but I saw the updated line. Here's the updated line. In view of the rights held by third-party owners of authorized content, e.g. music and video clips, Stern does not have the legal authority to give permission to stream the gameplay of Stern pinball machines. Okay. Okay. So you're on your own. You're on your own. That's CYA. I mean, that's probably what it should have said from the start. Yeah. But there you go. But, I mean, people getting on Stern for that, the original agreement, I mean, like I said, if you want to get on them, get on them for work playfields and price increases. Don't get on them for this. because, let's face it, here we go. I'll run the scenario by you. Say Pinball Browser, which most of these things were basically don't use Pinball Browser in their end-user licensing. Don't use Pinball Browser. Say Oliver from Pinball Browser, he adds support for Jersey Jack. You can now do Jersey Jack games. So I take a game that Carl's very familiar with, Pirates of the Caribbean. You know, the game that doesn't really have anything from the movies in it except the one big character who does the voices. but that's it. And say, you know, we're going to change that. We're going to do the, like they did with Jurassic Park, the treatment on that. We're going to put all the movie clips in there. We're going to have tons of Captain Jack in the game, tons of, you know, all that stuff that they couldn't get the rights to, we're going to put in. And then we're going to stream it. Do you think Jersey Jack's going to be okay with that? Of course not. Of course not. No, no. It's the same thing. Because it is a Toy Story, Disney also. Yeah. Doesn't Disney own everything? So since that's supposedly what they're working on, I mean, I think they would feel if they see streams, but not that they're looking for streams, but, I mean, it could come up. Like, what's all this crap in your game that we didn't give you rights to? Yeah. It's the same scenario. They're just covering their ass. That's all it is. People need to chill. Carl's still streaming. He hasn't been pulled yet. Not yet. Not wrong. Yes, Carl. So, Carl, if we don't want to get pulled, what are some tips you can give me, since you've been streaming so much Guns N' Roses to not get pulled? I mean, I don't know. It's possible I get pulled in the future because it's all Twitch. Yeah. So I'm rolling the dice right now, to be honest. It's a matter of does Twitch go back and look at previous recordings or does the recording industry look back and see? Even though I've deleted them, I know they're still on the server somewhere. I read about that. So you can get DMCA strikes for things you haven't even kept online. But I have to hope that Twitch is going to make deals with the record companies, kind of like YouTube does. So when I put a video on YouTube, if you're monetizing it, all the money goes to the record companies. Yeah, the end users. Well, sometimes it doesn't work anyway, because then you have that issue with the billion-dollar babies there, the quiz remote. I was going to say that. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, Alice Cooper, that one was weird because all the other songs were fine, But then Billion Dollar Babies is held by some other record company, and they say, no, wait. You can't put this on here no matter what. So I muted the audio for it so I can keep the video up there, which sucks. It's this empty void at the end of this massive wizard mode, but whatever. Which I do. I understand the companies. It's not like you're going to these things, this kind of a stream to listen to the music. Yeah. You've got all these sound effects on top. and no one's going to make a recording out of this. But I understand that they want to maintain their, you know, property. The thing about YouTube, that's, like, if you upload a video that's unlisted or private, it doesn't matter. Like, if it has content in it, they'll still, even if it's not public yet, you'll still get the message, you know, oh, there's problems with this. And like you said, there are just certain songs that just seem, you can put some out there, but others are just like, Not even a warning. Like, no, we're going to mute this. You can't put this on there. You shook me all night long by ACDC, as an example. It literally played. I had my sound way down on my ACDC stream, and a little of that bled through at one point, and boom, just that one song got a hit. It's crazy. It is crazy. All right, let's see if I have any more streaming questions for Carl. I have the master on here. Oh, my God. Well, the issues I have with streaming is I'm trying to figure out how to set up all the other Twitch crap. You know, all the, you know, send me bits, do this, you know, make cool animations go across the screen, all that stuff. Is there any easier ways of doing that? Are there different builds of these programs that have stuff included so it's easier to implement? That's where I just don't want to spend the time to do all that crap. I use Streamlabs for all the overlay stuff, so for the chat box and for the alerts and bits and whatever else. Is that a plug-in? Because I know there's a Streamlabs build of, say, OBS also. Right. There is, but on Streamlabs there's another section that's like the dashboard where you can create overlays or widgets, they call them widgets, there. And basically you get a URL and you plug that into a browser source on your streaming software. and then it pulls that up on there. All right. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm, because I'm using stream elements and you make the overlays and it's got the cup on it, you know, where the bits go in and all that stuff. Right. And it's the same, it's basically the same thing. Right, with stream elements, I had a more difficult time. I think you have to do a full screen, you have to position the elements on that screen, right? Yes. Right, so with Streamlabs, you can just pull in the individual elements as its own little thing. So like I've got an alert box, It's a chat box and a third one that I can't think of right now. But basically, there are three different inputs, and then I put them on my layout. You're over it, yeah. Instead of having to deal with elements, yeah. That might be a have-to-go, because on there, it's like you create the whole overlay. So every time I want to move stuff around, I have to change the overlay in Streamlabs and then do that. Okay. Exactly. I mean, I'm always changing my layout at the end of the game. So there's no way I can do that. And what's like the most inputs? I've seen streams where you've had six different inputs seemingly. You've had player, let's see, play field cam, player cam, then like a direct in for the video, another direct in for some other screen on the game, another camera pointed at some specific thing on the game, and then maybe one more camera somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah, I can do, on the box I use for daily streaming, I can do six inputs. At Indus Guide, 12 inputs. Jesus. I was running 12 cameras because we had two wireless rigs plus the roaming camera plus some room cameras. So if you're using that card that does the four HDMI, are you using the HDMI to USB for the other two? Yeah, for my box downstairs. I've got an older card, an Avromedia AIM Broadcaster HD. It has a HDMI and a VGA input. And the reason I keep the VGA in is because I need it for the older JJPs or like pirates. The small screen is the VGA. The phone on dialed in is also a VGA. The phone is a VGA too, yeah. Yeah, so I keep that around for that and then one USB to HDMI device for the last one. All right. Any more advice you might give to up-and-coming streamers out there? Other than don't get upset if you notice only five people are watching your stream or something. Yeah, exactly. Don't watch your viewer count, really. That's the key. Just stream as if you, you know, always be talking to the chat, whether anyone's there or not or anyone's replying or not. If you are streaming and you're not talking, you're just playing the game, no one's going to stick around. So people want interaction. The more interaction you can make with your chat, the better. All right. Do we have any other ideas, Carl, what you want to do for next games for your? Next game is here. It's ready. I have a Stranger Things on loan from Stern, actually. How did that happen? They sent me a Stranger Things campaign. Wait a minute. Are they trying to pacify you for the Avengers thing? Good question. I don't know. I got the email. I got the offer. I'm like, oh, yeah, that sounds like fun. Let's do it. So they sent me a premium with the UV kit. I haven't started yet because I'm trying to see how I can show off the game as best as possible with the lights. because I almost think I want to have my room completely black, completely dark to show off the UV and the lighting and the projector. Just because otherwise, and I've got a, I started direct capture on the projector. I'm testing that. I'm trying to maybe overlay it on top of the existing one so it has more saturation on stream. We'll see. I'm experimenting with things before I start it. You should email Sarah like, I have everything almost ready. By the way, how's my Avengers play field coming along? You may want to speed that up if you want the stream to start. Or just game back. You can hold it for ransom until, like, I want my play field. If you notice, he's not saying anything. So we're not going to get him into trouble then. I know Avengers are out of stock right now, too. And they're not producing them at the moment, right? February, March, I think, is the next run. Yeah, I think the last weekend in February, the first weekend in March, is the premium run. Yeah, so, I mean, for me, it's just waiting. It's not like, I mean, what am I going to do? No, you just got to stop. I have people there that I know have been asking about it constantly, so it's just a matter of time. So you weren't supposed to be getting it. Are they going to send you, like, just a play field or a populated play field? It should be a populated play field. As far as I know, it's a populated play field. My big fear is that when it comes, it's warped again. I mean, I've seen pictures of these Led Zeppelins that people have put that are completely warped. And I see the difference. If you look at a playfield from JJP versus a playfield from Stern, you see how many layers of play they have. JJPs are 11 or 13, and the Sterns are 7, I want to say. I mean, it's cheaper wood, without question. And if they're going to do a price increase, in my opinion, that's where they need to step up their game, go with better quality wood. It's a necessity, I think. Stern needs to get wood. Oh, my. Better wood, yes. Better wood. Okay. So what's on the docket, Mr. Ron? You ready to help us out, Carl? It's going to get silly. Are we doing that first? No, no, we'll see. We'll just use their license agreement. We talked about that. Let's get into some news. I'm just going to bring off the This Week in Pinball Hi, Jeff. News. Hello, Jeff. I'm just going to read news from the internet because, you know, that's what all great podcasters do. Pinball Hall of Fame. They need money. They need money. They need $500,000 because of COVID to complete their new building because they were not expecting their numbers to be down originally when they had this whole plan and then COVID, of course. Basically, in 2019, they made $1.2 million, which that's what they kind of expected to make 2020 but they made $500,000 Yeah So they're short significantly So they have a GoFundMe currently that's looking to get $200,000 And I saw they're up to $75,000 Yep so they're moving right along So if you feel like you'd like to donate you've been there a couple times you should donate Because it's going to be a big ass building and it's right on the strip and it's like right by the Las Vegas sign It's actually right by the best place in Vegas, Fry's Electronics. Oh, Fry's Electronics. Looking like a true geek there. Oh, it is. Fry's Electronics. Come on, Carl's lucky he has them out there by him. Fry's? Isn't that an extinct business just about? It is for some people, but for some people it's not. God, Fry's is. It's Radio Shack on steroids? Yes. The shelves in SoCal, they're bare last time I was in there. The company was on the edge before the pandemic already. So I would... Sorry. That's going to suck. I like that you can go there and just get solder. Get a soldering iron, tips, anything like that. Caps, chips, connectors. Oh my God. If they go bye-bye, we're screwed. Okay, so we got Guns N' Roses Collector's additions coming out. Yes. They started building them. They'll be on the line for two months. So if you got an LE on order, you're waiting to at least two more months. Yeah, how'd you get yours so soon, Carl? Do you know people? Yeah, my distributor is Shane at Ace Kogi on tilt. He always takes care of me. Oh my. It's tight with Jersey Jack. I saw they had all the band members games ready. Of course they did. Did you see that? They had plaques on them. You wonder if they'll actually ever play them. Will Axel ever play his game? No. It reminds me of going back to the Williams days where they used to give games to all the people that were involved in the game, which would be great to see. It is. Some of them actually played them. Others didn't. Or some of them didn't get them. Well, Star Trek Next Gen was a Gace McFadden, Crusher, and I think Michael Dorn. Michael Dorn. Neither of them ever played. They were still in the box. Right. Michael Doran held onto his for his children's college fund. Yeah. I know when he sold it, yeah, because the local guy over here bought it, I believe. So collector's edition, more lights, another sound bar, more power, and different art. And the Koma lock. And the Koma physical lock. Yes. Which was interesting. I heard an interview with Eric Meunier where he said that that was originally going to be in the LE. Yep. And they costed it out there, so they kept it in the collector's edition. So I guess the collector's edition is the only game you can play that has the full vision. Oh, there's a thing, a slam-tilt interview with Tim Sexton, Raymond Davidson, and Dean Grover. You see that? Ooh, those assholes. We made the news. We made TWIP. Yay! And our interview actually meant something. Yay! It seemed like, no, they actually got some good information out of it, which is great to see. Price increased when we talked about that. Led Zeppelin was featured at the Consumer Electronics Virtual Show. Yes, it was. By Stern, they had their ambassador doing it for them. Oh, Jack Danger, yes. So he showed off the, I think it was the Pro? Was it the Pro? Or was it both? Hopefully it wasn't warped. Boom, boom. The Guns N' Roses was featured on CNET. They talked about, by far, the most technologically advanced pinball machine ever. It's pretty packed when you go underneath that play field. Oh, and they show the collector's edition, which has the, and I love this, the skull shooter. The fact that they didn't screw with the damn knob and make this huge, like, thing that you can't, like, especially in a game like this that has a skill shot, that always bugged me. They do the custom shooter rod with a huge like they had the scared stiff one that was a huge cue ball That was so huge it was ridiculous because you know Scared Stiff there an actual skill shot There's going to be, looks like the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast started a new venture called Pin Swap. That almost sounds porno-y. Yes. In a way. My mind is really in a bad location. But, yes. I see that. It's make money renting your machines. Seems like a good idea. Like a central location. And the Pinball Network has a new website. Yes, they do. Silver Ball Chronicles. No, it's thepinball.network. Oh. Well, then there's another thing coming called the Pinball Show or something, but it's like in Europe somewhere. Yes. So these are the same name. Yes. See, no one uses the Slamtail Podcast. No one ever would even think about that. You know, inadvertently, like I never put the word pinball in there, which seemed like a stupid thing at the time, but now it kind of differentiates it from a lot of stuff, the fact that there is no, it doesn't say pinball, it's just slam tilt. Yeah, everyone calls this slam tilt. Let's quiz Carl. Who's slam and who's tilt? Ah, crap. Let's keep our guests on. I've been listening forever. Okay, you got a 50-50 shot. That's true. What do you think of when you think of slam tilting a machine? Who is more of a slam and who is more of a tilt? Shoot. I'll say Bruce is slam. We have a winner. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You are correct. It goes backwards to me because I always feel, Ron, you put your name first on it and Bruce is second. As it should be, yes. But, yes. There's another thing. Do you get to listen to any podcasts anymore? because I remember last time you were on in 2017, you listened to the podcast while driving to work, which was a long drive, if I recall. Exactly. So I have greatly decreased my podcast listening. Yeah. I'll pick up some here and there, but, yeah, I don't listen to nearly as much as I used to because of the drive. So you're working from home now? Yep, I'm working from home 100%, so. Me and Ron are not that privileged. Well. Do you think? Do you think when COVID is over, you will still be working from home? No, I don't. You don't? Well, hopefully I get some additional working-home days. I already work from home on Fridays. Okay. So hopefully I'll get some more since everyone has done it now. I was the only one in the department that had a telecommunity agreement. But now that everyone has, they see the benefits to it. So hopefully, I'm crossing my fingers, I'll get more days at home so I don't have to make that two-hour one-way drive. Because I'm thinking, like, where I work, I just can't see them. It's working so well. Like our call center, I can't see them ever coming back in again when they can just take all the calls from their house. Yeah. Well, that makes sense, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's just a lot of them. I mean, I'm there because I'm in IT and I have to work on the equipment that's in the building. And, like, facilities is there because it's facilities. It's the building. But there are very few people in our building at this point. Me, I'm an essential, unfortunately, so I have to build stuff. Yes, you're working on NDA-type stuff. NDAs. NDAs. Yes. Everyone's NDAed. Everyone's NDAed. Ron, did you buy a new pinball machine? Well, I made a road trip this past weekend. Woo-hoo! An exciting road trip. And it started right after we recorded our last podcast, where Bruce gets a hold of me. And he told me to buy, buy, buy. I did. What did you tell me to buy, buy, buy, Bruce? One of the local guys in Rochester put up two pinball machines. First, he put up an Iron Man, the newer version with the different side art and everything like that. Was it Refinery Edition? Refinery Edition, yeah. And then he also put up an original Attack from Mars. Original Attack from Mars. Yeah, so it actually had the color DMV in it, the Bill Ung kit, a couple other good things in there. And I said, Ron, this is a really good deal. You should buy it. And I told him and I told Eric, who is another friend of the show, Eric Russell. And Eric Russell got back to me first and said, who else would you tell? And I said, well, I told Ron also. He goes, let Ron do it. I don't have the money right now. And Ron came back like three minutes later like, really? You think I should do this? I'm like, oh, yeah, he's got nice stuff. So I got him in contact with the gentleman who was selling, and you can tell the rest of the story, Mr. Ron. Well, the thing is, I had been to this gentleman's house at least twice and had played the game before. So it was a game I was familiar with. So, yeah, I went over there. It was what it said it was. It's basically got, like, black trim on it. It's got the color DMD. And, well, the saucer kit, I'm getting to the point where I can't remember the last time I saw an attack from Mars that didn't have the saucer kit in it. That's true. Yeah, the thing is, it was in his basement, so I helped him bring it upstairs, which was fun. He has a very narrow, like, stairway. He does. And, yeah, and the Carl Weathers cooperated ridiculously. So I got out of work early on Friday, drove to Rochester, drove to Zach's house, or Zach, hi, Zach. Hi, Zach. and that Saturday, it's like the sun is out. It's like 40-something degrees, which is warm. Well, Carl's there like, oh, my God, that's like free chili. But here it's just like, this is ridiculous. I mean, it's not even free. I walked out. He was helping me put it in my car. I had just my sweater on. It was like ridiculous. And I'm like, damn, the Carl Weathers is sure cooperating for me here. But while I was there, and Bruce will love this part, I asked if I could play one game, one of his other games. Guess what game it was, Bruce. I know what game it was. I let Carl guess. Oh, come on. You just mentioned it, Carl. Stern gave it to you. Stranger Things, really, man. Stranger Things. He's got, and this guy, he's a hiring collector. Like, he gets all the LEs, and all the games are super pimped out and all that. So he's got a really nice Stranger Things with super enhanced audio. So the audio sounds incredible. Of course, it's got, you know, it's a premium. It's got the UV kit in it, all that. and we even turned the lights off. Turned the light off, fired that thing up and I really like that game. I think it shoots good. I love the sound on that. It's incredible. The music is awesome. The atmosphere it has. Well, you just bought Stranger Things. I did. Oh, yeah. It's called AFM. No, honestly, the one thing it feels way more like Medieval Madness when it's coming down the left side. I'm like, oh, but even then. I agree. Yes, I agree. But, I mean, the shots itself and the rules, hey. Oh, I like the rules. They're a copy. You get to the, and I got the total isolation twice and got my. So you got total isolation twice. Congratulations. I got third. And I got third. Third on the game. And I'm starting to think maybe I should have used that for my rewards because they were available. I think that is a very, it's super immersive. I was really feeling that game, Bruce. I was really digging the Stranger Things. I have to say, you're wrong. No, I'm not. You got the good... Carl's going to prove it when he streams it. Everyone's going to realize how awesome it is. You got the good Brian Eddy game, and it's called Attack from Mars. You brought it home. You're going to enjoy that very, very much. Wow. Still busting on it, huh? That's the truth. How much Stranger Things have you played, Carl? Well, okay. Go back, it was last year, really, and I thought the game wasn't that much. I really didn't. It was dull to me. But after it got here and I played it just the last week or so, just testing it out, it's like you said, it's immersive. I'm drawn into the game. It really has a – it's an experience, I'd say. Yes, that's it. It draws me in a way that Avengers doesn't. I agree with that. But it got more interactive, and the UV kit is incredible. Oh, you need the UV kit. Yes. If you don't have the UV kit and you have a Pro, and you're playing around with the Pro, you're going, why? The Pro is not even... You still can get the UV kit. You just can't get the screen. I know that, but it's really big on that game. I mean, my issues with it are more... That thing has had way too many mechanical issues for something that was tested for a year. You have a bash toy. That wasn't supposed to be a bash toy. You're supposed to be able to hit it in the mouth. It didn't work. It didn't work when they streamed it the first time. No. Stern streamed it. It's never worked. They literally had to change the code to make it a bash toy. And now they made it with you have a walker bomb now with it. A walker bomb. Because they didn't really use the button. Nope. What is it called? The telekinesis lock. All kinds of issues. Yeah. Aren't they selling a new ramp or some other new part you can get for it just so it works? correctly. I don't know. It's some plastic that changed in the top of the ramp. Yeah, there's like an upgrade. Yeah. Well, and there's also the post. Isn't Stranger Things the ones that post were flying out of the game? Oh, it used to. In the beginning, yes. They were and then, well, here's a funny thing. They were sending when they, the operator by us had a pro, and they sent them the updated post, and it was exactly the same post. He's like, you didn't change anything. And then they finally said, oops. That, to me, that's one thing Stern's got to, I know they make way more games than anyone else, so it's going to be more of a problem. But they need, at this point, well, it sounds like they need better wood. Yes. Better coil stops. Yes. Because things like that is still an issue. It's terrible still. So I just swapped them out in Deadpool and Star Wars, because why not? Because I could see the dust in the bottom of the game from them. It's not even the dust. You can hear it as soon as you hold a flipper. You know that coil stops is dancing around in there, not connected. or loose, really loose on the rivet. To me, those are the things they really got to focus on more. Yeah. But those are the main issues with Stranger Things, these weird, like, and they tested this, and this thing was, what, a year and a half in development? When you think about it, I mean, they hired Brian Eddy. It was announced at TPF 2018. So you figure if he started then or maybe a month later, the game came out, what, December 2019. 18 months. So it's almost a year and a half. That's the part I don't understand. But getting past all that. The problem is this. They don't test the games in the field anymore. That's the biggest problem. Yeah, they can't because then they'll just come out like, hey, it's here. I know, but guess what? That's how they knew these games would survive. You know, and that's the problem. That is a problem because they can test it all they want in-house. Yep. Like on their one game that maybe they had the thing going in its mouth correctly. But when you're mass making these, you know, put like 10 of them on location, and the reports are coming back, no one can hit the Demogorgon's mouth at all. No one's hitting it in. Like, oh, okay, we have a problem. Maybe we need to make a modification with this thing. Yeah, it's like Avengers had that issue with the ramp too. Oh, and Black Widow ramp was terrible. And Infinity Quest, the Black Panther ramp, you know, the ramp that goes from the, you know, the ball flying off that ramp all the time. So it worked on their development machines, but none of the production machines. You know, the ball was flying off because the ramp was mismade by the manufacturer. By the manufacturer, exactly. It was bent just slightly wrong. Yep. Enough that it made the ball fly off the ramp. Yeah, the degree, there is a new one. If you call off, if you have that issue, yes. Yeah, that's the other thing. You've got to call off. Right. But at least I think there is a bulletin on that. If I go to Spooky, there's no bulletins. There's no manuals Okay, so since you're on that Let's go with that So after I picked the game up And was at Zach's house Played a bunch of games, fixed a bunch of games Played a ton of Ice Show Oh, yay If you want to learn some cool nudging Yes, I played it I'm the one that helped Nork on it originally With the light pockets and everything I hate how you turn that thing on and off Oh, you hit it You bash it on the belly of it. It's just stupid. After that, you know, I left early Sunday morning and stopped by to visit Bruce. Yes, you did. And we played some Rick and Morty. Which is now better than it was the first time you played it. Mm-hmm. And it's still, I fixed the, since you were here, I fixed a couple more things. Ugh. I will say, okay, how do I say this in a nicer manner? You need better quality. Yes, out of the factory I'm not even talking about that part of it I'm just talking about shooting that thing That's clunky as hell It makes Simpsons Pinball Party look flowy Yes Joe Balcer would play that and be like, damn This thing plays great This thing doesn't, this thing's clunky No, I don't I mean, I play that thing, you have It's got, the software is awesome I mean, the whole cut, the way they did that with your Morty and all that. Call-outs are incredible. Light show is great. Sound is great. But then you play it. And I'm just trying to think of satisfying shots on the game. Like when you got yours, Carl, could you make the loop? No. The inner loop at all? No. I mean, it's kind of. It'll come around and kind of die near the top, but it has enough to get around. No, that one would rattle right around the spinner because of the design. Bruce has a later production one. So you have a loop shot that loops okay. Sometimes it will die near the top and just kind of barely make it. You have the left ramp that's so steep, even Capcom Airborne would say, damn, that's a steep ramp you got there. The right ramp's okay. Then you hit, like, the right orbit. Now, again, these are made for home use. These are not made for location. I don't care what anyone says. Because you hit the right orbit, what happens? The ball comes out on the left side. Like, if you're not ready for it, it's going to go right by your flipper. There's no new person who's going to play the game and be like, huh? What the hell happened? They needed a flasher there to flash for a millisecond. Something. Just bring your eye down there to go, oh, wait a sec, what's that? And then kick it out. I mean, I knew it because I watched the stream. Yeah. You know, but, I mean, your average person, if you're put in a location, they have no clue. It's just that whole right side. And then the left side with the – honestly, the one shot I actually thought was kind of satisfying is hitting the very tip of the right upper flipper to get it up into the left shot. That was kind of nice. And I guess the Denise-y lock thing is kind of cool, you know, with the two drop targets. They hit it back and forth. But, man, you hit that. We were – on Bruce's, we were getting rejects out of that scoop. And it just sounds clunky. Yeah. I just don't find it fun to shoot. I don't find it fun to shoot. I find it fun for the, I actually find it fun for everything else. Everything else. But I know, oh, Ron, it doesn't have flow, so you don't like it. It's like, hey, I like Deadpool. Do you call Deadpool a flow game? I would call that a flow game. It's just very clunky shots. You're hitting posts more than you're, Ron was saying it. We should have a game, a drinking game, where if I hit the post, or if I don't make a complete shot, I drink. You'd be drunk in a minute. Would I? You'd be dead. I felt like it was no fear. It was like post-hitting mode. It was like, boom, clunk, miss. What, we had the clunk counter? Yes. Of course, I'm not very accurate, to be fair. But, man, it was like I'd shoot stuff, clunk, clunk, clunk. I'd have balls where I'd make one out of ten shots. Yeah. I mean, they're tough shots. They really are. It's just that you don't tweak the game. You know, I mean, when I had the one here, I could get into a flow of shooting, you know, right ramp, left ramp, loop, garage, right ramp. You can do it, but it's tough to do. It's very difficult. I know. I can barely do it sometimes. But then you get a great game, and you're at $45 million. You're going, wow, I really had a great game on this. And then you have 12 games after it that you're sitting there going, oh, my God, why is it such a clump fest? And I'm like, son of a fucking – and then the problem I have is I can't even get a manual for this thing. Oh, they don't have a manual yet? There's no manual. There's no manual for the one before this. Oh, Alice Cooper. There's a manual for TNA, kind of. It gives you basic stuff on how the RGB strings are set up and all that. Yeah, there's nothing. The game has been out for almost, you know, literally a year. Hello, guys. I know you're a small company, but you've got to take care of the issues instead of just calling support and going, hey, what's going on here? Well, they are helpful when you call them. They're very helpful, I will say that. But, yeah, it's very frustrating since we're used to all these other companies. Like, you look at Jersey Jack, that manual for the Jersey Jack, when you buy it, it's incredible. It's the bomb. You know, I'd rather pay. I'll buy a good manual like that. But, yeah. That's my issue with you, Carl. You're too good. You are too. You watch these streams and like, wow, look at Avengers. Whoa, look how many times in a row you can hit that shot. I can't wait to play this game. And then I play this game. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Well, no. I just can't hit the shots as many times. It's just like, oh. It looked way more fun when he shot it. So then wait, Carl. After he plays my Rick and Morty, he goes over to my AFM? Oh, it was beautiful. Ah. It's like I still made the right decision. I feel at home. Except for your massive flipper hop, which I finally got him to change his mind. You've got to really pound Bruce to get it through to his head. But he's that flipper hop on the right side forever on this game. Yep. It's silver ball saloon. I'm there like, you know, Clippy sells lane guys. You can get rid of that. Nope. Nope. So we're playing it. We're playing it. We're playing it. And after, like, the third game, Bruce was like, if you're going to pick up some lane guys, you can get me a pair. Well, he said you were going to buy them first. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. But I got to you. Did you buy them? Oh, yeah. I mean, but Clippy's in California, and he's sending it, you know, U.S. Postal Service. So it'll probably be two months before I get it. Yeah. Totally fine. Why would you want to keep it? Why would you want the flipper hop? Yeah, why, Bruce? In tournaments, it was nice because people were not used to it. What? Is that like Earthshaker they did at like Papa one year where they made massive flipper hops so you couldn't shoot the ramp over and over? Yes, exactly. So you care that little about your constituents? No, I care. I wanted to make it harder so they wouldn't be on it for 20 minutes. You know, think about it. If you're really good at Attack from Mars, I had people sometimes like Eric sitting there on it for 15 minutes a game. 20 minutes a game. Make it hard. Make it money. And the thing is, Bruce, your flipper hop is nothing compared to the left flipper hop on my team. Holy crap. It makes it so hard to hit anything on the right side on the fly. Anything. But you got it. You got your AFM. You've been begging me for mine for years, and you got one. I got one. Good choice, Carl, for him? Oh, yeah. It's a great game. Yeah, of course. What are your classic favorites? We've never asked you, Carl. I don't have any classics left in my collection. The oldest game I have now is Lord of the Rings. Well, that's a great game. Yeah, so I consider that a classic of this win. I mean, how far back do you want to go? Honestly, when you think of classic, what's the three best games you think of? If you were in a tournament, you would say, this is what I want to have in that thing. I know he likes Paragon. Yeah, I was going to say Paragon. I love that game. I regret some of mine, but fine. I know that feeling. I had 12 games here originally and now I have 5 to 6 so I was something ahead of the game and I keep the modern games at this point just because they hold my interest for longer sessions let's see, what are the classics? or if you wanted to buy one say if you had more room what would you want to buy? if I had more room I'd pick up another Paragon I'd pick up a Flash Gordon so you like pain I like pain but you don't have Iron Man anymore Not Deep Enough. I don't have Iron Man anymore. Not Deep Enough. And TNA, probably not Deep Enough. If I had a lot of space, I would pick up another TNA. I really, really enjoy that game a lot, but in a smaller collection, it grows old. So if I could play a game here and there on it, it'd be great. Okay. And what else? One more game for your older. Yeah, one more game. I'm trying to think of something. Old Stern, old Bally. Alien Star. Alien Star. No, not an alien star. I enjoy it, but it doesn't click with me. It's just a single shot. Yeah, that's all it is. No. But it's a great shot. Great single shot. It's a great single shot, but it's the only shot that matters, you know? I might say Simpsons. That's one I let go of a long time ago. Smart move. Smart move. No, no, no. Wow, you let go of yours, Bruce. I did, and guess what? It went to a good person. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. No, I liked it. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, hit the garage. Hit it again, hit it again, hit it again. You've got to get up to the top, and then you've got to lock it, too. Yeah, so exciting getting the same series of shots over and over and over and over. Wow. I've got to look at my collection. What have I sold since I, you know. There you go. That's the way you've got to look at it. What do you want back? Honestly, a safe cracker. I'd love to have a safe cracker back. That was a great game. I miss my safe cracker. It's so unique, but again, for a small collection, it just doesn't go well. No, it doesn't hold you. Honestly, at the end, I was just playing the special mode. You know, the assault on the vault. Yeah, that's all I was playing at the end, just to have fun. You know, like I had 90 seconds. What can I get? What can I do? Speaking of TNA, I sold mine. You did? I did. I sold mine, Bruce. It's gone. Did you wave it and say, see you later, sucker? I still like TNA. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for TNA. Did it go to a local person? No, Western Mass. Okay. Younger guy by younger guy, probably in his 30s, but, you know, a couple of young kids. He didn't have them with him. He picked it up. Then I show him the basement. And he's, I'd say, more of a newbie than in a couple years. And finally he had the proper reaction, the reaction I always hope to get when someone comes out of my basement. Because usually non-playing heads is just like, this is weird. Dude, what the hell is this? His reaction was, I quote, holy shit. And it's like, yeah. That's what I want. Well, how many games you have on the internet, Ron? 24, 25? No. Just like 29, 30. Okay, so that's a good reaction to have. Yeah. He played a bunch of them. It was fun. And then he sent me a picture the next day of his kids playing it. Let's go into a new home. It will make the whole family happy. So I've done good in the pinball community. So what's up for next sale, Mr. Ron? What are we going to help bring up? Roller Games is torn down. Okay. So that's next. Then probably Spider-Man. That's going to hurt. Yeah, that will hurt. That will hurt. That was my first new in box, Carl. Never forget your first one. Right. I still have my first new in box right next to me. My Lord of the Rings. I still have my first game. Yes, you do. Black Knight. Black Knight. Yeah. Yeah. I got to sell these games to make room for the, what I want to do is, once I get, you know, Roller Games and Spider-Man gone, I move the meteor where Spider-Man was, so now I can actually have the full stern row, which everyone always complains when they're at my house, because I have all these classic sterns, and now I have Spider-Man in the middle of them, and they're like, that's out of place. It's like, man, you people are more anal than me. It's like, okay, so I get that meteor, so then there's a full row, and then that will allow me to bring Quicksilver back down and put it in Meteor's place. By the way, I hear your buddy, Zach Manning, you know, you just did that podcast with, he considered that the number one most overrated game, Quicksilver? I don't know. What the hell? No, it's not. No. No. The art sucks. I'll give you that. The art sucks. It's totally green. Green penises are not really where it's at, but still, come on. Two spinners. Two spinners. And a sweepable drop target is better than half the games. All right, all right. I'll talk in a way that Zach Mini can understand. Okay, here we go. Okay. So what you do, Zach, is you connect the soundboard. You put a subwoofer, a big external subwoofer under the game, and then you crush that spinner and have a religious experience. No, no, no. You have to do one more thing. Oh, then you need to put a topper. You have the big 12-inch vibrator. Yes. Green. A green vibrator. You put it on top as a topper, so every time you hit the spinner, it's like the fish in the fish scales. It shakes. Yep. There you go. You do these two things, and you will completely change your mind about quickspill. There. Holy shit. Wow. That's pretty bad. Green vibrator on top of the machine. I'm just thinking of the thing going like, you know, fish scales. Oh, God. I like fishtails. I like fishtails. Fishtails is great. Yeah. Well, sometimes that's not a popular opinion. I know a lot of people do not like fishtails. It's a little unbiased scoring, you know. Unbiased. You mean unbalanced. Unbalanced, sorry. Unbalanced with the, you know, of course, the spinner shot, you know. But I do like once you get in the multiball, you have control of your destiny. That's the best thing about it. I love that you can do the two different ways. You can do the Monster Fish, but if you're playing someone who actually does the multiball and gets the supers, like, oh, shit, got to do that. Like, you have to do that. I like that part of it. That's what I like about that game also. It's not deep, but there's different challenges. I feel when you have as many games as – you get in different moods. Like, I'm definitely in the Valley – 90s Bally William mood currently. You are. Like, they're just so fun. Like, they don't have near the amount of call-outs, but the call-outs they have are so good, you just repeat them over and over again. The game does that, too. It's like, being invaded by a shark from Mars, you know. No one misses with the USA. Pretty much all the quotes in that game are good. Yep, I agree. Damn, you're some ugly Martians. Well, someone hit one of those things. You again. Or you get your Martian multiball, or you're trying to start it, and you get all three of the Martians, and the fourth one's just there, and he's there, oh, no. Yeah. Or if you get in the... Or if you're trying to... Yeah, you're trying to hit it, you know. Ha, ha, ha, miss me. Ha, ha, ha, miss me. When you get in the kick-out hole. Yeah. Here we go. Tech corner. I'll do some tech stuff here. Because we have people who like tech stuff. I'm sure Carl loves tech stuff. I had one of the weirdest things about the Attack from Mars that I got. It had, like, a hack, but it was the weirdest thing. And I don't really understand why it was done. I understand why one part was done the way it was done, but I can't understand the other part. Are you ready? So visualize the game in your head. I'm looking right at it. So what had happened, the left slingshot, the upper post, you know, the post that actually goes through the plastic post, had broken at some point in its life. Okay. And they didn't have the right part, obviously. So what they did is they took, like, a three-inch number eight screw, and they put it in from underneath the play field through the T-nut. Oh, no. Yeah. You know, up through, and then put a nut through it. So from the top of the play field, it looks fine. Yeah, it's from the bottom. You lift the play field up and you see the thing sticking out. You're like, oh, that's weird. If it was just that, it'd be like, okay, that's obvious. They didn't have the part. They did that. Fine. But when I first lifted the play field, the service rails, the left service rail was loose. What the hell? I pull it out. Where it's mounted on the bottom where it mounts to the play field was not in the correct spot. It was mounted to where that screw was. So that screw was going through it. Oh, God. I have no idea why. And then they put a lock washer in the middle of the screw, so it was kind of pressing against it, but it was still loose. Yikes. You know, and I'm trying to think, why? Why would you? Is there something busted where it would normally mount? And luckily it a tech from Mars so there a zillion high photos of the thing out there you know play field up and all that So I looking Like yeah it supposed to mount here It supposed to mount where the little mini post is the metal mini post It goes all the way through the play field and it mounts to that That's where it's supposed to be mounted. And it looks fine. They're like, I don't understand. So I moved that. I took the screw out, moved it back where it's supposed to go. I mean, it's close to a socket, like a light socket. Maybe they were afraid it was going to short to it. I don't understand. I don't understand why that was moved. And I already got the part from Marco. I've replaced the metal post, and it's back to factory. That was a weird one. I don't really understand that. The other thing is he had these, like, not the mirror blades, but some kind of metal blades on the sides, and they were impinging, like, lifting the plate belt up and down. Because the screws that went through them, they were flatheads, but they didn't go in enough. They weren't flat. And even then, it was quite, it was thick enough that, you know, I'd lift the play float up and it'd keep getting stuck. Like, what the hell am I hitting on? I was hitting on the screws. So I removed those entirely. Good boy. And now that's fine. The other thing is it had a blackout board in it, like a little mini board from Pinbits. Yeah. So you're familiar. So it ties in because, oh, yeah. Attack from Mars. This is my first WPC 95 game. Wow, did they get cheap. holy shit man if I was an operator at the time I'd be like oh man they can't be doing good I didn't realize the entire speaker panel is all plastic now yes instead of used to be wood and had a little like the you know no no art of course no the best part is Ron I will tell you the best part about WPC 95s the tub no no what's the best part the smaller fuses you have to now Oh, yeah, I saw that. It's got the smaller, like, European-themed, like, oh, shit, I don't have any of those. Nope. And then I take the back glass off. It's like, oh, yeah, it has the tub. So what it is, instead of a back glass and then, like, an insert panel that you open, it's all one part. So it actually has a plastic tub with all the lights on it that's attached to the trans light, to the glass. It's such a pain. When you take it out, you have to unplug a connector every time if you want to remove it. Oh, my God. That's terrible. It is nice for one thing, though. If you have to access both sides of the machine, it's nice. Like, say, if you're trying to go into the backbox and it's gone, that's nice. Yeah, I follow you. Yeah, that's the nice part about it. The other thing they cheapened out on is they went from the five triax to the three triax. So they have three GI strings in the game instead of five, which the previous games do. So they have three GI strings on the play field, and the head is just always on. So someone had, I guess the previous owner, had gotten a different pin bits, blackout board, and all it does is it ties into the GI for the other GI strings, and it will turn the lights in the head off when the GI in the plate field goes off. Right, good for strobe. Oh, yeah, and good for multiple things. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The multiball interest sequence looks way better because the lights actually go off and you see all the flashers in the head. It's better for video mode because it actually goes off. And, yes, especially for a multiball, it's like it probably should have looked to begin with. But the game is totally LED. So I did my usual. I got both the LED OCD board and the GI OCD board and put them in. And it's like, well, how do I use the blackout board now? Because you can't use it. It doesn't fit in the breakout box that comes with it. No. But I didn't realize, and I was looking at it, You can program the GIO CD board to do exactly what the PinBits board already does. Oh, nice. You can take, because it'll show five strings, and it'll show three of them. It's like input one, two, and three. And then the other two will just say always on. It's like, hmm, well, what's input one? Input one is the lower playfield GI, which is what the PinBits one was keying off of. Like, hmm, I wonder if I put input one for the strings four and five, what will happen? And sure enough, I have controllable GI. Woo-hoo! And it fades off and on, just like it should. It doesn't, like, just go off and on. It does the fading and everything. So, another recommendation for the OCD boards. I love them. I got them in multiple games. If you're going to LED those things, you need them. The newbie guy that came over and brought my TNA, I had him play Attack from Mars, and he's like, you know, is this all LEDs, huh? He's like, yeah, hard to see, ain't it? He's like, oh, yeah, I was going to say something. Yeah. So that's my brief tech corner, I guess. Do you have any – what did you do your Rick and Morty, Bruce? What did you have to do? You said you did more stuff. I lowered the drop target because it was hanging up when you were playing it. It hung up on the ball. The ball hung up on the top of the drop behind the drop target for one side. Still playing with the pop bumper that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't work. I've moved the spoon now two or three times. It's killing me. Do they have U.S. switches on that game? No, they do not. No, they do. No, they do. TNA did not. Yeah, no, that's right. They do have U.S. switches, and, you know, I've played with that, too. Just, like, every time I play it, I'm like, oh, I have a list. I have a piece of paper on my computer desk, which is right behind it, what I have to do the next time I go into it. That shouldn't happen. Well, then you also have Curls streaming Guns N' Roses. What's with the flipper coil temperature? What is with, and we talked about this before in a podcast, everyone uses the Williams parts, but none of them seem to be able to duplicate Williams' feel. Me and Zach, we played a long game of Congo. We got to whatever the wizard mode in that thing is, like the diamond multiball, like twice. Played it for like 30 minutes straight. Turn it off. Like, okay, put your hand on the coil. It's like, that's a little warm. Yeah, no, these things are burning your finger hot. Yeah. I mean, any theories? Like, why? This seems to be a difficult thing. And they're using dual-wound coils, right? They're using the same coils as their Williams coils. Right. Yeah, I have no idea. I really don't. I mean, I just would think this is something you'd want to get. Because you said you had burn marks on one of the wrappers. rappers. One of the rappers is discoloring from the... That's crazy. So Carl has to get fan kits put on there so it doesn't get too hot. I'm helping Ted Monk, Vic Ireland, to build that fan kit for JGP like he did for Stearns. I mean, my Stearns, I put it in Stranger Things just in case. I put one in Avengers. If you talk to him, can he do one for earlier Stearns? Pre-Spike? Like Sam Stearns? Oh, eventually I think everything will have it. It is on Iron Man because, you know, my Iron Man is fine at the beginning, and then it'll start to get a little weaker. And the problem is I don't want to put the, you know, the Super Lord of the Ring coils in there because then it'll be too – then it'll be ridiculously powerful, and then it'll eventually weaken to where it should be. That's not really what I want. Yeah, I added fans to my Lord of the Rings. I mean, my own, like a year ago. Yeah. And a big 8-inch, you know, CPU fans. That's pretty sad. Well, it's sad because they're using the – Stern's still using the single-wound coil. Yes, they were. Why? I'd love to have an engineer from Stern and ask why on WWE they did the dual-wound. They did it over one game, and then they went back. And it worked, and it worked. It actually feels stronger on WWE. What was the issue? Why did they go back? The dual-wound's cheaper, right? It would be. Okay. It's a cost-cutting thing, maybe. It's one less transistor. Less winding on the coil? Yeah, we're worrying about that and the field not being, you know, just... I think some things we have to figure out that shouldn't be cost cut. At the same time, what's interesting about these temperature readings is that the Stern single-wound coils have been cooler in general than the dual-wounds on JCP games. Yes, I agree with that. Yeah, at least with Spike, they seem to be holding up pretty good. I mean, I think if you have a really long game of Avengers, you're probably going to have issues with those ramps. Yes, I think you do a little bit. But with the Jersey Jack games, it's just in low voltage situations, it's a problem. Yeah, it's like the diverter on Guns N' Roses. It's a dual-on-coil, and it's always held in with the five volts. It's surprising it gets as hot as it does. Yeah. Damn it. Damn it, Jim. You were hoping for good stuff, weren't you? Well, it's just the only reason I have it. Like, if you have new technology, like if those new opto whatever, those sensors, things that are in Guns N' Roses that they're using, you know, that are underneath the play field, if they had issues, it's like, this is a new thing. Like, okay, you know, this is a brand new thing we're doing. So there might be some issues here and there. But the whole dual-wound coil flippers that don't get 200 degrees, they had that kind of perfected in the 80s and 90s. So why is it so much of an issue now? So I'd love to have an engineer and say, well, obviously, it's because of this. This is why. Because the way they're doing this and this, and it has to be this way. Like, okay. Then it'll shut me up. Well, don't the flippers go through on, they go through the spike system, you know, through the node boards. So they kept the pulse the same for the coil, and it seems like it, honestly, they feel the best, the sterns. Even though they're not using Williams mechs. Oh, yeah. They still feel the best. They're the snappiest of anyone I have. And I've played everything. What do you think, Carl? I played Spooky. Well, TNA flippers were strong as hell. But they were getting weak. When me and Bruce were playing it, it was getting big-time weak by the end. Yes. Spooky has the same issues as JGP. They get too hot. And there's a kit for them. But, yeah, now they have the EOS switches on there. And their response to me when I had weak flippers was turn up the voltage. On the 48 volt. for the 48-volt power supply in the back, you know. That was their, you know, help. And it did help a little bit, but it's just like, oh, really? I mean, you keep harping on it, but it's the damn flippers. It's the main interface between you and the game, and this wasn't... If I play a long game of Attack from Mars, the flippers aren't going to die on me or, like, catch on fire. Okay. All right, I'm going to get off that soapbox. Okay, get off that soapbox. All right. Ready for the ball bag? Oh, I love the ball bag. But do you want to do our other thing before the ball bag or after the ball bag? No, we'll go after the ball bag. We'll go after the ball bag? Yes. Leave the best for last. Oh, yeah, or the worst. Or the worst. Carl is nervous. He's been warned that it could get really bad. He's been warned. Okay, so email, first email here from Scott, our Scott. Our Scott. How you doing, Scott? How you doing, Scott? Correcting me. The Oliver who does pin browser is different than the other Oliver that did the code for my Stargazer. You thought they were the same. Two European guys named Oliver doing code, and somehow they're different guys. Yeah. Damn it. Okay. I'm sorry. I screwed up. Another correction. Fail. I fail a lot. This is from Jim. He says, hi, guys. Thanks for all the awesome content. I wish for more technical talk, though. Oh, boy, you got a lot of it today. He wanted to tip you about this thread on Pinside. And he sent a link, and it is a very interesting thread. You'd like it, Bruce. It has no drama, and it's all tech. Good. It's from a user called Dumbass. Literally, that's his username. Excellent. I really like him. And he's just making tons of Williams boards. Basically, he's doing, and I'll just read just one little excerpt. Excerpt? Is that right with a P? PT. BT excerpt. Let's see. I want to make sure I get this right. Okay. Yeah, he's selling these. All boards that are listed are bare. They are also available complete. Complete boards are fully socketed but do not contain processors or EPROMs. Boards that originally supported batteries now support batteries with an external connector or optional and VRAM. So basically, he's selling like the bare bones boards with nothing on them. And they are Marc Silk screen to a level I've never seen. if you somehow screw up putting something on this board, you can't read. Everything is so true, and exactly what component you're supposed to put in, the orientation, everything is right on the board. There's so much writing on the board. So he's selling those and some that are populated, but you still have to get stuff for it. Okay. And all kinds of different boards, and, like, display boards, special review boards. Just check, just look for dumbass PCB on Pinside, and go to the first post, we'll have all the stuff he has. Good. And you see other people on the thread that are giving thumbs up, like Chris Hibbler, I trust him. Yes, I do. I trust Chris very much. Thank you for the heads up, Jim. Maybe we should be on Pinside more often. Nah. Nah. My sanity. We'll just have our listeners tell us when there's something we actually should read. Like other listeners have told us about other things, about other shows. Oh, whatever. This is from Pete He has a Quicksilver question Alright The most overrated game around according to Zach Manning Yes Ron and the artist formerly known as Bruce The middle finger I have been searching for a Stern Quicksilver For a long time now and finally have a lead on one My question is What are your thoughts on the rule set Would you change anything if you could Hmm Yeah maybe if you like did something to add a letter to make it. Like, if you could, like, some of the letters up top. Spot a letter? Yeah, like a spot a letter. But they already have that, though. You complete the drop target. You sweep the drop target back and you get your letter. You want another way. Yeah, another way. Or maybe getting that hole on the side, you know. I would say some way to make spelling Quicksilver a little easier, because, man, it hardly ever happens. I know. Yes, has Stuart or Scott made any ROMs to update the rules? I think the only the only ROM I know Scott made one that resets the multiplier yes and I had him make a special one for me that swaps the sounds I wanted the really deep hum awesome sound to only occur when the spinner is lit you have to earn that sound not just get it at the beginning yeah more like Stargazer but Stargazer has that that low hum sound when it's lit I kind of wanted to replicate that but if you get the chance to buy it buy buy buy Well, unless it's like, you know, $8,000. It is overpriced. They were right about that in their post-overdraft. It is way too expensive. What do you think of Quicksilver? It's fun. It's a great game. It's way overpriced. There you go. Thank you, bastards. I thought about one when I saw one for $1,000, you know, however many years ago. I know. It's a game that's so good that people look past green penises. Think about this. The art is so bad, but people still just look past that because the game is so good. I think the crappy art proves that it's an awesome game. Yep. I have one more, and I'll stay until next week, because it's really silly, and we're about to do something that's really silly. Okay, we're good at silly. All right, so to make a long story short on this one, so Bruce is on this other podcast where he talks shit about somebody, a certain other podcaster. Me? Who we don't mention. We don't mention. Yeah, but you do. No, I do. Yeah. I wasn't on the show. It turns out you apologized to him. I must have because he got a letter stating that I did when I didn't. Yeah, basically, the one thread we're in that has people who listen to his podcast, they informed us that Bruce apologized, and Bruce was very surprised to hear this. I never fucking apologize to anybody. I don't. So basically, he read a fictional email on the podcast. Bruce's apology. He said, I felt bad that he got COVID, which I didn't even know that. I don't listen to him. Then he said, I was congratulating on his wife having a baby. I didn't know he was pregnant or his wife was pregnant. I didn't know they were expecting. So I will say that. Congratulations on that. That's a happy, joyous occasion. I never said it before that. the brilliant thing about this is you just make it up and then if you ever come back it's like hey i got an email that said this i had no way to know it wasn't from you unfortunately i do have proof that i did not send it first and second that he was been trying to contact me and i did not acknowledge his contact he is not a friend of my facebook and he sent me all these things saying you should talk to me man just talk to me okay okay well so instead of turning this into the thing no one wants, Podcaster Wars 2021, the final Who Gives a Fuck, let's make a positive out of this. Because the more I thought about it, and this is, you wonder how much we think alike sometimes. I was thinking of this, and I was thinking, you know, if we read some kind of fictional emails on the air and made them funny, it could be like a segment. And then when I went over to visit Bruce, before I was leaving Rochester, like, Bruce, you know, that whole thing with the email? I have an idea. And then he says, well, I have an idea. And then he literally says my exact idea. So we're like, okay, we're on the same page, it sounds like. We are always on the same page, usually. But if we're doing this. Yes, we are. We've got to put some effort into this. We need to put some effort in. We need to make it very obvious that these are not real emails. No. Really? So we need our puppets. Huh? Our puppets to read them. Yes. I say they should be finger puppets. So my middle finger goes to the court. Yes. Are we familiar with Puppet Pals? Or have we heard of Puppet Pals? I think, Carl, you've heard of Puppet Pals. Heard of Puppet Pals. Yeah, I haven't listened yet, but I've heard of it. I know about it. Well, they're exclusive to the Pinball Network, and they're very expensive to try to get. So I couldn't get them for our segment. No, we tried. We slaved over it. So we got our own puppets. Yes. Slammy and Tilty. Yes. and they're going to help us read this fictional letter, or this fictional email. We even have a name. Yes. What are we going to call it, Bruce? No, I'm going to let you do it. You're the man. You're the man. It's called Fairy Tale Email, and this could be either good or bomb horribly. If we don't do it again, then obviously it bombed. We even have intro music for this. We have intro music. Are you ready for this, Bruce? I'm ready. Are you ready for this, Carl? I don't think Carl's ready. I'm terrified right now. You should be terrified. Because I don't even know what I'm going to say. That's this. This is all in the cup. I have no script. We do not work with scripts here. Whoa. This song's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like Ozzy. Welcome to another episode of Fairy Tale Email. Hi there, I'm Tilti. And I'm Slammy. And it's time to have our new segment. Hopefully we're on here longer than one segment. Hopefully this lasts. I don't know. I don't know, but it's called Fairytale Email. And we're going to have an email that we're going to read on the air. Oh, yay! Hold on, I'm going to get it up right now. Oh, you're going to get it up all right. Oh, very funny, Slammy. Okay, this email is from, let's see, the email address says LROPP at Prodigy.net. Oh, fuck. Oh, wait a minute. It's sent directly to Bruce. Oh, fuck. It says, hello, Bruce. I am Lonnie D. Ropp. You may know me from Stern Pinball, as you continually talk shit about me on your podcast. What's your problem, man? I've been in the industry over 30 years and created some of the greatest games in pinball, but you keep talking shit about me on your podcast. What's the matter with you, Bruce? You giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-faced, dickhead, asshole. Whoa. Whoa! Seems like he's got a problem with you, Bruce. What does he say? I demand an apology on air. Bruce doesn't usually apologize, does he? Lambie knows. He doesn't apologize to anyone. All he does is give the middle finger out to people. Well, hold on. He's got some more details here. You must apologize. If you do not apologize, you will see that I have a special set of skills. The skills I've developed over a long period in pinball. So if you apologize now, that will be the end of it. If you don't apologize, I will put endless storm call-outs in our upcoming ELO pinball machine. Oh, no! P.S. LOL, just kidding. We would never make a game for that shitty band. Fuck you, Bruce. Goodbye. Wait a second. Lonnie D. Ropp has never made a rule set easier. Never. He's never done anything. He's so copyish, it's not even funny. Oh, my God. How could you think that he would be original? You know, Slammy, you keep going on about this. Stranger Things is a great game. It's a copy. No, it's not. It's a great game. Carl D'Python Anghelo is right here. He's going to tell us how great Stranger Things is. Isn't it great? It's great. Oh, wow. I should change my mind now. Okay. Carl, the voice of pinball, says Stranger Things is great. Lonnie D. Ropp rules. Bruce apologizes. Probably never. Never. That concludes this episode, possibly one time only, of Fairytale Email. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye. Goodbye. Bye, Tilti. Bye, Slammy. Bye, Carl. Wow. Wow. We paid these? I hope we didn't pay these guys. Oh, I hope we didn't pay them. Oh, good. If we did, cancel the check run. Cancel the check. I can't wait for just the vehement hate mail of that segment. I cannot wait. I can't wait. And poor Carl had to go through that. Poor Carl. Carl's like, wow. Wow. We got a new review on Apple Podcasts. Nice. How bad is it? Three stars. We got three stars, so it's not terrible. It's from Rickismyname. He says, great podcast. If you enjoy hearing poor imitations of 20-year-old pop culture references, Stewie, Beavis, King of the Hill, they're all here. Wow. So he's pretty lame as it is also. Oh, they're shorter comments. This isn't the other pod. I know. I'm just saying, you know. Well, he said Stevie, not Stewie. So he's really stupid. Maybe you do his good. Hey, you do a great Stevie Wonder. Wow, you've guaranteed we've lost another listener now. I'm great. That's great. Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder. Okay. I just called to say this podcast sucks. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Is that Stevie Wonder? Yes, it is. I thought that was, okay, I was thinking Lionel Richie for some reason. Stevie Wonder. Yeah. Can you confirm? Okay. Carl is confirmed. Damn, I'm usually better at that. Okay. Yeah. Carl's like, what did I get myself into? Is this almost over? Oh, God. All right. I think that's about all I have. We could probably mention this because by the time this airs, this will already be out. Yes. Congratulations, Ron. Congratulations, Bruce. We have both been reach around. Yes, we have. We earned a reach-around. Mm-hmm. And Carl's involved, too. Carl's involved also. He presented a reach-around. That's right. And I think you were in the running for one also, too, I think. No, I think the reach-around's for the people they don't like. And they like Carl. They don't like us. Yes, exactly. But congratulations, guys, Marty and Jeff. Definitely. Thank you for the reach-around. We'll be expecting ours in public. No. You can give Bruce his. I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine. I want my reach around. All right. So that has been Episode 159 of the Slam Tilt Podcast. The one thing I did forget to mention last week is we can be found at slamtiltpodcast.com. Upper right, all our links are there. Facebook, our Twitch channel, trying to stream more lately, YouTube channel. We can be reached at slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com. I didn't know Stewie was off the air now, and Gene Simmons doesn't sing for Kiss anymore. And, you know, wow. And I thought Beavis and Butthead was coming back on the air again. So, wow. You're still on that. Yes. See, you learned something. Just don't get in going. This is what I have to deal with. And I probably have to edit usually, but this one's staying in. Oh, okay. Just for you, it'll stay in. Thank you, Carl D'Python Anghelo. Thank you, Carl, as always. What's your channel? Please plug away. By the way, it's IE Penball on Twitch. Yes. If you have not subscribed to IE Penball, please do. It is a treat whenever it pops up. Usually later at night on the East Coast, I will admit, but I'm sitting in bed, and my wife's like, what are you doing? I'm like, watching Carl. Yeah, so it's 7 on Wednesday, 7 p.m. Pacific, of course, but then 11 on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. So if you're playing your Avengers or your Jurassic Park or your Guns N' Roses and thinking, man, I wonder what a good player would do playing this game. Carl is the person you want to watch. Definitely. And, Carl, what you do have next year at InDisc, you will have me and Ron there. Awesome. Yes. Glad to have you. Yes. I have no business right now, so I'm going out this year. If you're going to InDisc next year, which of course you are, make sure when you get there, if you go to LAX, make sure it's super late. Yes. And drive at night? Not during rush hour. Well, not during any time during the day. You literally need to get there, say, 9, 10 at night, and then drive into the hotel. Yes. That's your best bet. If you come any other time, or maybe, you know, 3 in the morning, 4 in the, but after a certain time, you're screwed. You're going to take 3, 3 and a half hours to drive, how many miles? It was less than, it was like 50 miles? No, it's got to be more than that. It's about 80. About 80. I think it's 80. Okay. It looks, yeah. All right. So thanks, everybody. No one got back to us to say, please mention us. So screw y'all. Okay. Screw y'all. But, yes, thumb up bonus. Hi, Zach. Hi, Zach. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Slammy and Filthy. Hold my mind. Hold my mind. Can you prove it? Can you fly? Hold my mind. Hold my mind. Can you prove it? Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my. Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is... Oh, I screwed up. Wow, that's a first in a while. Wow. Oh, sorry. It's the afternoon. Yeah, that's right. It's Carl's fault. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Slammy and Filthy. Probably will after that segment.