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Episode 11: Steve Ritchie and Video Game Themes with Jeff Rivera
49 Plays6 years ago
Jeff Rivera of the Pinball Podcast joins us to help with a recap of the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown. Wonka, Black Knight, and deodorant are all covered! You don't want to miss it
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Re-Introduction
00:00:06
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 11 and with me, my co-captain as always.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Scott Larson and with us for the second time is our special guest from the Pinball Podcast, Jeff Rivera.
00:00:22
Speaker
How are you doing, Jeff?
Casual Chat and Pinball Showdown Plans
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm doing great.
00:00:23
Speaker
How are you guys doing?
00:00:26
Speaker
Good.
00:00:27
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:00:29
Speaker
I was going to call you the OPP, that Naughty by Nature song.
00:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, but that means something different.
00:00:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, no.
00:00:37
Speaker
This is a family podcast.
00:00:39
Speaker
I now realize that, but he's the original pinball podcaster, man.
00:00:44
Speaker
Okay, yeah, that's not really what that song means.
00:00:48
Speaker
I know.
00:00:48
Speaker
I Googled it.
00:00:49
Speaker
Don't Google it.
00:00:50
Speaker
People out there, please do not Google it.
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:54
Speaker
The OG would have worked.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:56
Speaker
I was going to say OG, but...
00:00:59
Speaker
I thought OPP would be cooler.
00:01:02
Speaker
We're going to co-op that acronym.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, don't.
00:01:09
Speaker
You can't drive your kids in the car and have people say, Dad, what's OPP?
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, we're off to a great start.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:19
Speaker
Oh.
00:01:21
Speaker
You know what?
00:01:22
Speaker
What have you two been up to?
00:01:23
Speaker
Because obviously I can't drive this vehicle at this moment.
00:01:28
Speaker
Well, Jeff, why don't you take it away?
00:01:30
Speaker
What did we do?
00:01:31
Speaker
We went to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, didn't we?
00:01:35
Speaker
We did.
00:01:37
Speaker
I tagged along.
00:01:38
Speaker
Jeff already had everything booked, and so I tagged along and I said, hey, what flight are you taking?
00:01:44
Speaker
And by the way, can I sleep in your hotel room?
00:01:48
Speaker
And thankfully, it had two beds.
00:01:50
Speaker
It did.
00:01:51
Speaker
We pushed them together and we had a great time.
00:01:53
Speaker
We snuggled.
00:01:53
Speaker
That was a big spoon.
00:01:54
Speaker
Or a little, I can't remember.
00:01:56
Speaker
I don't know.
00:01:57
Speaker
Put Jabba back in the hut.
00:02:02
Speaker
No, great.
00:02:03
Speaker
We had a fantastic time at the show.
00:02:06
Speaker
Sure, we'll talk about that a little bit.
00:02:08
Speaker
Absolutely.
Tournament Experiences and Sneak Peeks
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, let's do.
00:02:10
Speaker
You guys were snapping pictures and sending them all weekend long.
00:02:14
Speaker
I mean, it looked like quite the party you guys were having going on.
00:02:17
Speaker
It was a riotous party.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:19
Speaker
You know, it was actually, it was my first, um, my first event.
00:02:24
Speaker
Uh, and so I, I will say there was more to do than I thought.
00:02:30
Speaker
And I was also more tired at the end.
00:02:34
Speaker
And I think I got lost about 20 times and had to keep testing, texting people and saying, are you guys still around?
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:43
Speaker
Uh, and usually I was.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:49
Speaker
You should have just got one of those leashes like you put on your kids, you know, so that way you don't have to worry about them wandering off.
00:02:54
Speaker
No, it's seriously, I would just kind of wander off because I would because you'd play a game and then I'm less of a really good.
00:03:05
Speaker
I have a little bit of ADD on if someone is playing a pinball game for about 15 minutes, I kind of lose interest and I say, hey, there's one down there.
00:03:17
Speaker
But it was a lot of fun.
00:03:19
Speaker
I loved going.
00:03:23
Speaker
Why don't we start with a recap?
00:03:24
Speaker
So what did we do the first night?
00:03:27
Speaker
The first night?
00:03:28
Speaker
I think we played pinball.
00:03:29
Speaker
But mostly it was in the tournament area.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah, we played.
00:03:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah, because the main tournament qualifying ended on the first night.
00:03:39
Speaker
You had to play all those games the first day.
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:42
Speaker
Or are you talking about the first night we arrived?
00:03:44
Speaker
Because the first night we arrived, it was the day before the show.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, actually, the first night we arrived, I think, was the that was great because we got there.
00:03:54
Speaker
And because we were special guests of the show, we actually got in early and were able to go and see some of the some of the games set up.
00:04:04
Speaker
And we even were able to play Black Knight and we played the pro and the LA was set up.
00:04:10
Speaker
We got some games in on Wonka.
00:04:12
Speaker
Um, Oktoberfest, they were setting up, but we didn't get any games on that, that night, but it was really impressive to see everybody setting up their custom games and, uh, bringing them in.
00:04:26
Speaker
There was some really good talent there.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it was, it was awesome.
00:04:29
Speaker
Um, getting there a day early, like you said, um, I usually get in the day of the show.
00:04:35
Speaker
So that worked out the way that worked out.
00:04:39
Speaker
I think I'll be going in the night before, uh,
00:04:41
Speaker
every time.
00:04:42
Speaker
So it was really nice to ease into pinball and not have to be my first like flip on a game in Denver being on the tournament.
00:04:51
Speaker
So, uh, but yeah, but day one was all about tournament stuff and we did quite well.
00:04:57
Speaker
I'd have to say.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:59
Speaker
They, uh, I would say the Utah contingency did pretty well.
00:05:03
Speaker
So I, I entered, um, well, I, I did three tournaments.
00:05:07
Speaker
I did the, the main tournament, um, since I am,
00:05:12
Speaker
barely ranked um i qualified for the novice tournament and then um everybody can do the classics tournament and i really had a blast playing those classics games yeah they were set up so well um great selection of games super clean um every single one played perfectly um until barakora caught fire but that didn't have anything to do with what was set up it was just bad luck but uh
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, it was great.
00:05:40
Speaker
Had a lot of fun.
00:05:41
Speaker
Wait, wait, wait.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:43
Speaker
Barracora caught on fire.
00:05:45
Speaker
It did.
00:05:46
Speaker
And it was, were you playing it, Scott?
00:05:50
Speaker
No, no.
00:05:51
Speaker
It was Dan.
00:05:53
Speaker
Dan was playing it.
Steve Ritchie Adventures
00:05:54
Speaker
It was about an hour before qualifying ended.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:01
Speaker
All of a sudden, very, very strong smoke smell and a little bit of smoke under the glass.
00:06:06
Speaker
We opened up the coin door and
00:06:08
Speaker
it burped out a little cloud and one of the coils had locked on and burnt up and we had to cut the power to, to stop that.
00:06:17
Speaker
And so I was playing on the machine next to it.
00:06:20
Speaker
Just basically trying not to cough through that game, but.
00:06:23
Speaker
But I did it.
00:06:24
Speaker
I did have an interesting game on Barakora though, because I played it and I queued up on it and it,
00:06:33
Speaker
I played the game and they went to record the score and they tried and they said, huh, that's kind of weird.
00:06:39
Speaker
This isn't recording.
00:06:41
Speaker
They went and they looked and he said, you have no more entries, which it still probably wasn't a big deal because I was like solidly in the lower third of classics.
00:06:53
Speaker
But that was like a game I did really well on.
00:06:56
Speaker
So I was like, oh, well, so here's a pro tip for you.
00:06:59
Speaker
Next time you go into the tournament area, make sure you actually have entries left before you queue in on the game.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, it helps.
00:07:07
Speaker
It helps.
00:07:08
Speaker
They need to have a mulligan role, right?
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, I really did well on that.
00:07:14
Speaker
Can I just pay?
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, but I will give a shout out to to Brandon and Snow for running.
00:07:21
Speaker
such a great tournament.
00:07:23
Speaker
And one, they're both very approachable.
00:07:25
Speaker
And two, you can tell that they really like people and pinball.
00:07:31
Speaker
They were very personable and just welcoming to everybody who was coming up.
00:07:35
Speaker
And so being as that it was my first tournament experience, I couldn't describe it any easier than how they had it set up.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, they did a great job.
00:07:48
Speaker
They really did.
00:07:49
Speaker
And they always do.
00:07:50
Speaker
And
00:07:52
Speaker
It just ran so smoothly.
00:07:54
Speaker
Problems were addressed very quickly.
00:07:57
Speaker
There weren't a lot of problems to begin with, but when there were, they were on it really quickly.
00:08:01
Speaker
And I actually thought the tournament format was a lot of fun for classics in the main were both different.
00:08:07
Speaker
But the way they did main is that
00:08:10
Speaker
everybody who played qualified.
00:08:12
Speaker
It just, whether you qualified for a division or B division, and then from there they set up a ladder system.
00:08:18
Speaker
So if you qualified really high, you got a few buys going into finals.
00:08:24
Speaker
If you've qualified low, you had to fight your way back up, but it was, it was really cool.
00:08:29
Speaker
Give everybody a shot.
00:08:30
Speaker
Cause all you had to do is catch a hot streak and you could, you know, have a chance at winning the thing.
00:08:34
Speaker
So it was a lot of fun.
00:08:35
Speaker
They did a great job.
00:08:39
Speaker
Don't know quite where I finished, but I made A finals and I won a few rounds.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah, well, I was in B, so I played right at the start and I won my first match, but then I immediately lost the next two matches.
00:08:57
Speaker
But I had a great time, so I'll definitely do it again.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yep.
00:09:02
Speaker
And then classics went well.
00:09:04
Speaker
I think I finished ninth in classics.
00:09:06
Speaker
Didn't one of our guys from Utah end up taking classics?
00:09:12
Speaker
No.
00:09:14
Speaker
But Dan finished third, I believe.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, he was pretty high up there.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:18
Speaker
I think that Matt – didn't Matt win some too?
00:09:22
Speaker
I'll hurry and look it up while you guys chit-chat.
00:09:24
Speaker
No, it's fine.
00:09:25
Speaker
People are already tuning out in droves on our – Yeah, that's enough tournament talk.
00:09:29
Speaker
But Matt got a trophy at Navas.
00:09:31
Speaker
So anyway, everybody who went from our league, though, got some money.
00:09:38
Speaker
Okay, so let's actually talk about the most interesting story that we had on the first day.
00:09:46
Speaker
So this is the day after.
00:09:50
Speaker
So this is the real day of the show.
00:09:52
Speaker
So Jeff and I get up, and we look at our tickets and say, oh, there's breakfast.
00:09:57
Speaker
And for some reason on weekends, it's good until like 8 o'clock in the morning.
00:10:03
Speaker
So yeah, breakfast served from six to eight.
00:10:05
Speaker
So we said, yeah, okay.
00:10:07
Speaker
So we decided that's not what we're going to do.
00:10:10
Speaker
Um, so we actually went out, got breakfast and I have a Spider-Man downstairs.
00:10:16
Speaker
And so, uh, before the, uh, I packed up to go, I, uh,
00:10:22
Speaker
took the trans light out and anybody just, here's a pro tip for you.
00:10:27
Speaker
The first time you take a trans light out of a, um, you know, of a back glass, whatever the glass holder, it has some like gorilla tape on there and it is like prying a lollipop from a baby.
00:10:40
Speaker
It's just not going to happen.
00:10:42
Speaker
So I spent like about an hour trying to get it without ripping out that Translite.
00:10:48
Speaker
But I wanted to make sure that, hey, for Steve Ritchie to sign it, I need a Sharpie.
00:10:53
Speaker
So I didn't find one.
Seminars and Game Feedback
00:10:55
Speaker
So right after breakfast, we went and we grabbed a Sharpie and then went back to the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and then we immediately walk out of our room.
00:11:09
Speaker
And what happened, Jeff?
00:11:11
Speaker
Well, we ran into the King of Flow himself, Steve Ritchie, and we had ourselves a morning with him and it was interesting.
00:11:22
Speaker
So, yeah, we just were talking to him in the halls, we're walking down and we got down towards the entrance of the show and he said that he felt like an idiot, I think were his words, because he had forgotten deodorant.
00:11:33
Speaker
So he said he was going to catch an Uber and we offered to give him a ride to the grocery store so he could buy some.
00:11:39
Speaker
And he also needed liquor and he also needed some Sharpies.
00:11:42
Speaker
Can I pause you for one second?
00:11:45
Speaker
It's the most ironic thing because Steve Bowden has been pushing this for like the last three months that if you can afford to go to a pinball convention, you can afford deodorant.
00:11:54
Speaker
And all this time, it's just been Steve Ritchie.
00:11:58
Speaker
It's a subtle hint.
00:11:59
Speaker
It's a subtle hint to Steve to wear the deodorant.
00:12:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:04
Speaker
Please proceed though.
00:12:07
Speaker
So yeah, we ended up taking Steve, uh, on a little shopping trip to get deodorant liquor and Sharpies.
00:12:14
Speaker
And he was kind of our buddy throughout the show after that, but it was, it was funny.
00:12:17
Speaker
He was telling stories as we were driving around and, um, we were shouting as, um, we needed to, to talk with him, but it was actually a lot of fun.
00:12:27
Speaker
He was, he was hilarious.
00:12:29
Speaker
And, uh,
00:12:31
Speaker
it was just kind of a funny way to start the show.
00:12:34
Speaker
It was the first minute of the floor opening as we were right about to step on.
00:12:39
Speaker
And instead we did a one 80 and walked back out to the parking lot to, you know, drive Steve around.
00:12:45
Speaker
But, uh,
00:12:46
Speaker
But it was great.
00:12:48
Speaker
We had fun.
00:12:48
Speaker
And then he was really cool about just goofing around with us afterwards whenever he'd see us.
00:12:56
Speaker
He's like, I remember you guys.
00:12:57
Speaker
You're the ones that got me the liquor.
00:12:59
Speaker
I think the best part about it, because he was like, I'm going to have that stuff left over.
00:13:03
Speaker
So I want to make good.
00:13:04
Speaker
He's on an expense account.
00:13:06
Speaker
So he gets some just because I'm sure he's going to be having people up to his room and I'll just
00:13:11
Speaker
or going to different rooms because people would bring pinball machines to their rooms.
00:13:16
Speaker
And so he was always like, I'm going to make sure you, uh, you get some of that liquor.
00:13:21
Speaker
Now we just laugh.
00:13:21
Speaker
I'm like, that's great.
00:13:23
Speaker
I'm not sure he's going to drink.
00:13:26
Speaker
Obviously he's not listened to an episode lately.
00:13:29
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:13:32
Speaker
But no, it was a, it was really great.
00:13:34
Speaker
And, uh, then went in and, um,
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:40
Speaker
And I guess that I'll kind of jump to Monday on that.
00:13:45
Speaker
I went to Steve Ritchie's seminar and afterwards there was someone who had a customized black night and he was heading in.
00:13:55
Speaker
to do the, uh, to someone wanted to show him something.
00:13:58
Speaker
And so he came over and we pointed out the customized black knight that had the, um, had basically a custom wire form and it shot up and then went across and, uh, dropped down into the, uh, left in lane.
00:14:14
Speaker
And so you didn't get a free feed up to the top.
00:14:19
Speaker
So it's a beautiful game though.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's completely and totally restored and then just lightly modified.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:30
Speaker
I think the modification confused him.
00:14:32
Speaker
He's like, why would you do that?
00:14:37
Speaker
So there was a picture with you and Steve Scott where you guys kind of had arms over shoulders and he was pointing at the camera.
00:14:45
Speaker
What was that all about?
00:14:47
Speaker
You know what?
00:14:48
Speaker
So that was when he signed my Spider-Man Translight.
00:14:51
Speaker
So I made sure I took it over and he signed it and I was the last one in line.
00:14:55
Speaker
So we just talked a little bit and Jeff was there.
00:14:57
Speaker
And so we took a picture and then he made a joke and was pointing at the camera and I was laughing and that's what you got.
00:15:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then, uh, yeah.
00:15:12
Speaker
And, and then that day on Monday, uh, Jeff was out gallivanting around and right after I showed him that thing, he said, I'm hungry.
00:15:21
Speaker
Are you hungry?
00:15:22
Speaker
Let's go get lunch.
00:15:24
Speaker
Very spur of the moment.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:27
Speaker
So, uh, Steve, Steve Ritchie, uh, took me out to lunch and really the take home message from that is he's comfortable being Steve Ritchie.
00:15:37
Speaker
He's genuinely happy doing what he's doing.
00:15:42
Speaker
I think that it's revitalized him in the second half of his career.
00:15:47
Speaker
He's 69.
00:15:48
Speaker
He's still designing pinball machines.
00:15:52
Speaker
I got some tidbits from him.
00:15:54
Speaker
He goes to about six shows a year.
00:15:58
Speaker
He goes because he likes going and he likes seeing the people.
00:16:03
Speaker
Um, and he said like, you know, Stern's not paying him money to go to these shows.
00:16:08
Speaker
It's just him going out cause he wants to, you know, he still likes that interaction with people in pinball.
00:16:15
Speaker
And I just think he's, he seems genuinely happy doing what he's doing, which is really great to know that he's been doing this all this year and he still has that passion.
00:16:24
Speaker
I don't know how many people have the same passion after, you know, after working in industry for so long, but he still has it.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, he does.
00:16:33
Speaker
It's a whole different Steve Ritchie than I remember seeing a few years ago.
00:16:38
Speaker
So it's great.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:39
Speaker
It was just fun seeing him like that.
00:16:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:41
Speaker
I think it's, and I did ask him, I said, do you ever get tired of these shows?
00:16:48
Speaker
And he said, yes, but you can't show that.
00:16:54
Speaker
So I'm really, if you think about it, I'm going to six shows a year for, for a 69 year old guy.
00:16:59
Speaker
And that's really impressive.
00:17:01
Speaker
That shows some stamina and he's, you know, he still wants to get out there.
00:17:05
Speaker
So I really liked that.
00:17:07
Speaker
The king of show.
00:17:08
Speaker
Exactly.
00:17:09
Speaker
The king of the show.
00:17:10
Speaker
You know, okay.
00:17:11
Speaker
So I, I went to, I went to both Steve Ritchie seminars and I took a lot of notes, but I, uh, I don't want to bore you with a complete recap of it, but there are, um,
00:17:21
Speaker
There were some things that I really want that I thought was very interesting.
00:17:27
Speaker
One, he says, he said, you know, his job, and this is basically a quote, I make pinball machines to sell pinball machines.
00:17:36
Speaker
So he, you know, he's dialed into, that's his job is to make sure that Stern is able to sell his designs.
00:17:45
Speaker
He says the 80s retro is really big right now.
00:17:49
Speaker
He said, and I'm not sure how the pricing would be on this, but it was interesting.
00:17:53
Speaker
He said they sell games by the container.
00:17:58
Speaker
And so I don't know how that breakdown was, but I thought that was interesting that obviously it's kind of a bulk order situation for most things.
00:18:05
Speaker
I mean, obviously not all things.
00:18:08
Speaker
He said that they have 17 million parts at Stern at 26 cents a part.
00:18:16
Speaker
So I did a quick calculation.
00:18:17
Speaker
They have 4.2 million in inventory.
00:18:20
Speaker
Wow.
00:18:21
Speaker
Just in little parts.
00:18:27
Speaker
The interesting tidbit he dropped that on Black Knight,
00:18:35
Speaker
the left play field design was stolen and basically some industrial espionage.
00:18:45
Speaker
And that left hand side is flash, flash Gordon.
00:18:50
Speaker
It's flash Gordon.
00:18:52
Speaker
Huh?
00:18:53
Speaker
So yeah, that's, I thought that was, that was really interesting.
00:18:59
Speaker
Um,
00:19:02
Speaker
We asked him about his favorite Valley Williams game, and he said that Star Trek The Next Generation was.
00:19:11
Speaker
He said Jonathan Frank wasn't that into it, but Brent Spiner was, and so that's why data is very heavily featured in the game.
00:19:21
Speaker
Let's see, what else can I say?
00:19:23
Speaker
I'm trying to go through this quickly, so I'm not completely boring.
00:19:27
Speaker
Well, the one thing that you're telling us about, you're talking about Steve Ritchie's favorite designs from other designers.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:34
Speaker
So that's, let's see if I can find...
00:19:37
Speaker
Dennis Norden.
00:19:38
Speaker
So he said he liked Whitewater.
00:19:40
Speaker
Um, I don't know who designed Mata Hari, but he likes it.
00:19:44
Speaker
Uh, uh, very also he liked Comet, uh, Mark Ritchie.
00:19:48
Speaker
He liked Indiana Jones, the pinball adventure, uh, for, um, John Borg.
00:19:54
Speaker
He liked Metallica.
00:19:56
Speaker
Um, on Brian Eddy, he liked attack from Mars better than
Pinball News and Legacy Reflections
00:20:00
Speaker
medieval madness, but he said they're both, you know, quite good.
00:20:05
Speaker
Um,
00:20:06
Speaker
on my notes, it says Ray Chancellor.
00:20:09
Speaker
I put date and I don't know if that's like 1789 or there's a, he said something and I couldn't hear what it was.
00:20:15
Speaker
So it's a pinball machine.
00:20:16
Speaker
That's a date.
00:20:19
Speaker
Greg Knitch is a captain.
00:20:21
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:20:22
Speaker
George.
00:20:23
Speaker
He liked Lord of the Rings.
00:20:26
Speaker
J pop.
00:20:27
Speaker
He said, none.
00:20:28
Speaker
And then of course everybody laughed.
00:20:31
Speaker
However, he said, he, he said, I'm kidding.
00:20:33
Speaker
He likes theater magic.
00:20:35
Speaker
Um, which Pat Lawler machine do you think he liked the best?
00:20:38
Speaker
Uh, I guess, I guess Jeff was there, so I'm going to be the one that's guessing.
00:20:44
Speaker
No, no.
00:20:44
Speaker
Jeff wasn't, Jeff wasn't at this one.
00:20:46
Speaker
Cause this was the second seminar.
00:20:48
Speaker
Oh, I'm going to go with whirlwind.
00:20:52
Speaker
Bonsai run.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:54
Speaker
You know what?
00:20:54
Speaker
That would be interesting, but he said roadshow.
00:20:57
Speaker
He liked roadshow.
00:20:59
Speaker
So yeah, that, that was a little out of left field.
00:21:01
Speaker
And, uh, Jeff for Jessica, I asked, uh, Steve Kirk and he said he has three good ones.
00:21:10
Speaker
He said, uh, nine ball stars and I can't read my writing.
00:21:16
Speaker
Um,
00:21:17
Speaker
infinite disaster.
00:21:18
Speaker
I don't know enough about Steve Kirk, so maybe there's another one there, but anyway, whatever.
00:21:25
Speaker
Hey, I was writing really fast.
00:21:28
Speaker
The, the one thing he, it was interesting when he was talking about working with, with licensing and this was, this was interesting.
00:21:39
Speaker
And I think it's, this is certainly a fair assessment in dealing with any license and not just like the,
00:21:46
Speaker
you know, not just Disney, but it's just kind of any license.
00:21:48
Speaker
Right.
00:21:49
Speaker
And he just said, um, I don't know how to make movies.
00:21:54
Speaker
They don't know how to make pinball machines, which, which is kind of, which is a fair assessment, right?
00:22:02
Speaker
Because I think that they don't, if you remember back to our interview with Eric, um,
00:22:09
Speaker
designer of JJP's Pirates of the Caribbean.
00:22:12
Speaker
He said he was asked, he's going to Disney and there's so many people he's working with.
00:22:18
Speaker
And he's like, they're used to designing like a lunchbox.
00:22:21
Speaker
And so you send off like one design and they're not used to sending, getting approval for all these things.
00:22:28
Speaker
It's like, I was asking for hundreds of permission to
00:22:33
Speaker
for what he did.
00:22:33
Speaker
And he said at the very end, they said, yeah, okay, I get it.
00:22:36
Speaker
I get why you're asking for all this stuff, but it's just so outside of what they normally do.
00:22:42
Speaker
I can imagine that it was a breath of fresh air for him to design black night, which is saying it's, it's licensed, but not, not really.
00:22:51
Speaker
It's not a, not a heavy license that they have to deal with, uh, actors and likenesses and all that.
00:22:58
Speaker
So, yeah,
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah.
Pinball Rumors and Adaptations
00:23:01
Speaker
Anyway, Jeff did.
00:23:02
Speaker
Sorry.
00:23:03
Speaker
I took a long time talking about that.
00:23:05
Speaker
Do you have anything else to add or talk about that?
00:23:11
Speaker
About the actual Steve Ritchie seminars?
00:23:16
Speaker
Anything to add on like Steve Ritchie or just anything he said?
00:23:20
Speaker
No, I think it kind of covered most of the points that I thought that were the most interesting parts.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:28
Speaker
trying to think if there was anything else that stuck out, but I think he got most of them.
00:23:32
Speaker
We asked about his design philosophy and he said he likes having the theme first.
00:23:38
Speaker
So he doesn't start on a design and then retrofit the theme on there.
00:23:47
Speaker
He said he does start with the LE.
00:23:50
Speaker
So he starts with the top of the line version of it and then figures out ways of scaling it back for the pro model.
00:23:58
Speaker
Um, so I, I, you know, I think that's good.
00:24:01
Speaker
He's on, on themes.
00:24:02
Speaker
He said they won't do another sports game, uh, cause they never succeeded.
00:24:08
Speaker
Um, and, uh, honestly, what sports theme has besides, well, can you even count world cup soccer?
00:24:14
Speaker
94 is a successful sports theme.
00:24:18
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:24:20
Speaker
And he, uh, he did mention, um, the, the one thing that was, uh, challenging.
00:24:26
Speaker
I did just barely read it.
00:24:29
Speaker
He talked about the challenges of, and we talked about this before, about making a game out of a game.
00:24:38
Speaker
And so if you have things like Monopoly or Wheel of Fortune or something that is a game anyway, and then you're trying to layer a pinball machine using those things, it's clumsy and doesn't really work.
00:24:55
Speaker
Well, it sounds like you guys had a blast.
00:24:56
Speaker
It sounded like it was quite the hoot of a time.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, it was awesome.
00:25:00
Speaker
It was great.
00:25:01
Speaker
Made me quite jealous.
00:25:02
Speaker
But Scott did make it up to me.
00:25:05
Speaker
I don't know how he found the time, but in the middle of Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, he texts me, hey, this guy's selling his Jurassic Park because he knows that I've been looking for one for like five years now.
00:25:19
Speaker
And he's like, give him a call.
00:25:21
Speaker
So I call the guy.
00:25:22
Speaker
I'm like, is it still available?
00:25:24
Speaker
He's like, I posted it like 10 minutes ago.
00:25:26
Speaker
So I'm like, I'll pay you a down payment right now.
00:25:29
Speaker
You pull it off the website so no one else sees it.
00:25:32
Speaker
And I will pick it up as soon as I can make arrangements.
00:25:36
Speaker
And so we made some arrangements and I got it home and I'm pretty happy with myself.
00:25:42
Speaker
I was a little upset when it first got home because- Because of Jurassic Park.
00:25:47
Speaker
Well, no, not that it was Jurassic Park, but I bought it without even testing it, essentially.
00:25:55
Speaker
And I brought it home.
00:25:56
Speaker
And then once I got home, the T-Rex, I guess, on all Jurassic Parks has a hard time left to right movement.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:03
Speaker
A lot of people just say, just turn off the left to right and just do the eating motion, which that works great.
00:26:09
Speaker
But I was frustrated when I first turned on and the T-Rex is sticking to one side.
00:26:14
Speaker
And then I asked him if the shaker motor worked and he said yes.
00:26:17
Speaker
And I got it home and it wasn't working.
00:26:20
Speaker
And come to find out that it was just turned off in the settings.
00:26:23
Speaker
So I turned it back on.
00:26:26
Speaker
And I was frustrated because I thought one of the buttons were missing for the... I'm used to Bally Williams.
00:26:31
Speaker
Like, I've never owned a Data East.
Exploring Future Pinball Themes
00:26:33
Speaker
And so just to have two buttons, I was like, what the heck is this?
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little clumsy.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:38
Speaker
And so I'm like, I'm missing a button, dude.
00:26:40
Speaker
Like, how am I supposed to go through all this stuff?
00:26:42
Speaker
And he's like, not my problem anymore.
00:26:45
Speaker
I then read up on pin side that, you know, you, you have just the two buttons and you use the start button as one of the also, uh, diagnosis buttons.
00:26:54
Speaker
So after I got all figured out and realized that seriously, the only thing that was broken on it is a switch that goes to the control room and the, the cabinets in fantastic shape.
00:27:04
Speaker
There's like one good,
00:27:05
Speaker
gouge on it but the rest of it's just shiny black and i'm pretty i'm pretty pleased as punch so you guys got to hang out with steve richie and i got to get a jurassic park so i'm pretty pleased it's a good trade it's almost the same
00:27:21
Speaker
Almost the same.
00:27:22
Speaker
Well, and this is the title my wife's been looking for.
00:27:24
Speaker
So once the kids start demanding so much attention, the new twins, I think she'll start playing it.
00:27:30
Speaker
So fingers crossed.
00:27:32
Speaker
Hey, always getting a game that your wife likes or your significant other likes is certainly a good move.
00:27:39
Speaker
I agree.
00:27:40
Speaker
So that was my, that's what happened in my last two weeks.
00:27:44
Speaker
So I'm not very eventful.
00:27:47
Speaker
So not as cool as you guys hanging out with Steve Ritchie and going to breakfast and being his chauffeur.
00:27:54
Speaker
Actually, you know what?
00:27:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:56
Speaker
And Jeff, do you want to talk about the chicken and waffles?
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, they were fantastic.
00:28:04
Speaker
Breakfast place we went to, Early Bird I think is the name of it.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yes, Early Bird.
00:28:10
Speaker
Kind of just ended up there because it was cold.
00:28:14
Speaker
We didn't want to go to Denny's.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah, and it was not a chain place that was national that we knew of at least.
00:28:23
Speaker
So we went there and I think we both had, we're going to order something different, but the waitress said that the chicken and waffles are the most popular things where we both said, yeah, sure.
00:28:31
Speaker
Whatever goes that.
00:28:33
Speaker
And they were quite amazing and they left me full for the next three days basically.
00:28:38
Speaker
So yeah, it's a, it's a giant waffle covered with chicken, like a, I don't know, a deep fried chicken thing and like loaded with gravy.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:49
Speaker
And hot sauce.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:51
Speaker
And maple syrup.
00:28:52
Speaker
And we ate the whole thing.
00:28:54
Speaker
Each of us ate our own like giant waffle plate.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:59
Speaker
That doesn't sound super delicious.
00:29:00
Speaker
I'm not going to lie.
00:29:00
Speaker
I'm not a huge gravy maple waffle or maple syrup.
00:29:04
Speaker
It wasn't like a heavy, like super heavy gross gravy though.
00:29:08
Speaker
It was good.
00:29:10
Speaker
It was good.
00:29:10
Speaker
It was good.
00:29:11
Speaker
It seemed like kind of like a biscuits and gravy with, uh, with fried chicken.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:17
Speaker
But I would say it was really good.
00:29:19
Speaker
And you can't eat them every day.
00:29:21
Speaker
But it was certainly a good one.
00:29:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:26
Speaker
Nice.
00:29:27
Speaker
So, Jeff, were there any other seminars that you went to that you thought were interesting?
00:29:34
Speaker
I did not get to make it to many of them because I was in tournament finals on one day.
00:29:42
Speaker
And, yeah, I just was not quite able to.
00:29:47
Speaker
So I would have liked to have gotten to more of them, but.
00:29:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:50
Speaker
Hey, did you go to the, did you go to the American pinball one with me?
00:29:55
Speaker
I did not.
00:29:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:56
Speaker
So I'm going to give you a quick recap on, sorry, this is, this is Scott Larson's nerd report on, on pinball stuff.
00:30:07
Speaker
But so I went to Barry Osler's and it was really interesting because I,
00:30:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:30:13
Speaker
One thing he said is that American pinball is hiring.
00:30:17
Speaker
So anybody out there who really wants to get into pinball and has any sort of unique talents, he said, send them your, you know, contact them, send them your resume because they're, they're bulking up.
00:30:30
Speaker
So, uh, I thought that was interesting and, and good.
00:30:34
Speaker
Uh, always having healthy, uh, healthy groups in the hobby is always excellent.
00:30:40
Speaker
Um,
00:30:42
Speaker
A couple things.
00:30:43
Speaker
They said Houdini, he said they sold kind of around 700.
00:30:50
Speaker
He said their goal is to get 10 to 15% of the market.
00:30:56
Speaker
And then later he said, so if we're selling about 1,000 to 1,500, then that would be a success for us.
00:31:05
Speaker
So at least according to Barry Osler, if Houdini
00:31:11
Speaker
10% is 1,000, then that means they think 10,000 pinball machines are roughly being sold here.
00:31:16
Speaker
I don't know if that's a lot or not a lot.
00:31:18
Speaker
I can't decide yet.
00:31:19
Speaker
I think that with – it seems like with modern society that everyone's kind of partitioned off.
00:31:27
Speaker
We've talked about this before that there doesn't seem to be any super bans anymore because –
00:31:34
Speaker
There's no barrier to entry.
00:31:36
Speaker
And so people, they're not relegated to thinking of five or six really big bands.
00:31:43
Speaker
I mean, they, you know, I went to work the other day and I asked what music they wanted, what he wanted.
00:31:52
Speaker
And he said, how about Big Head Todd and the Monsters?
00:31:57
Speaker
And I said,
00:31:59
Speaker
okay.
00:32:00
Speaker
So I looked, I'd never heard of them.
00:32:02
Speaker
I looked them up and it was available.
00:32:04
Speaker
And so I think that people have the ability to find these, these niche, these niche sports and these niche groups and these niche ways of staying entertained.
00:32:16
Speaker
And so in many ways that has revitalized pinball into, Hey, it's a niche hobby, but there's a critical mass that keeps it going.
00:32:29
Speaker
And so I, so I think that that, I think 10,000 is actually, it's a healthy amount.
00:32:34
Speaker
It's not, it's not a hundred thousand, but it's, it's still a healthy amount.
00:32:38
Speaker
Well, what kind of numbers was 1992 doing between all pinball manufacturers?
00:32:43
Speaker
Do we roughly know?
00:32:44
Speaker
Well, there was more that, but it kind of steadily declined like 92 to 99.
00:32:50
Speaker
You, you just saw all the different manufacturers just close up shop except for a, except for Stern.
00:32:58
Speaker
So,
00:32:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:00
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:33:01
Speaker
So his takeoff, um, so he said when he designed wizard of Oz, there were no limits.
00:33:09
Speaker
And so it was like, whatever you want to put in the game, they could, they could.
00:33:13
Speaker
So he's like, we went from like, you know, ramps to one upper play field to two upper play fields too.
00:33:19
Speaker
So he said that was, it's obviously a lot of fun to design a game, but you can just cram full of everything.
00:33:30
Speaker
They did Oktoberfest.
00:33:32
Speaker
I really wanted to ask him, what about Oktoberfest was his dream theme?
00:33:39
Speaker
Because this has always been his passion project.
00:33:42
Speaker
And so I kind of wondered.
00:33:45
Speaker
Now, we got to go and play Oktoberfest.
00:33:49
Speaker
Jeff, what did you think of Oktoberfest?
00:33:53
Speaker
So I've played Oktoberfest before.
00:33:55
Speaker
My big thing with it is it does a lot of neat, fun stuff, but it does so many things that it starts to kind of lose its identity somehow because everything starts to just feel like minor variations.
00:34:10
Speaker
The other problem with it is it's super, super long ball time type of game.
00:34:16
Speaker
And it needs to be much harder.
00:34:18
Speaker
Modes need to be kind of snappier and quicker if they're going to have that many modes in it.
00:34:23
Speaker
So like the code could be addressed, but the play field is just long, either long back of the play field shots that are easy to regain control of, or they're near the flippers, but they don't tend to cause a lot of danger when you make or miss.
00:34:42
Speaker
So
00:34:44
Speaker
The game just goes and goes and goes.
00:34:47
Speaker
It's fun to flip and shoot on.
00:34:49
Speaker
I just, it would drive me nuts having it at home.
00:34:53
Speaker
I'd get pretty tired of it pretty quickly.
00:34:56
Speaker
I mean, we had a game on it that lasted 53 minutes.
00:34:59
Speaker
I timed it.
00:34:59
Speaker
Wow.
00:35:00
Speaker
Was that Dan's game?
00:35:03
Speaker
That was the game where we played four players and we ended up just letting a couple of balls go at the end.
00:35:09
Speaker
So that was 53 minutes with letting some balls go.
00:35:12
Speaker
I felt really bad for the people waiting behind us.
00:35:14
Speaker
But I don't know.
00:35:17
Speaker
It's not a bad game.
00:35:19
Speaker
It's lacking some refinements that could make it a good game, I'll say.
00:35:25
Speaker
I will say, we didn't camp on the game.
00:35:29
Speaker
There was like two people behind us.
00:35:31
Speaker
If there were a bigger line, then I think we would have just played one ball and moved on.
00:35:36
Speaker
but we didn't feel that obligated to move on since the people were right there.
00:35:42
Speaker
And they, they seem to be interested in what we were doing.
00:35:46
Speaker
So I guess two, two of my takeaways, it is interesting.
00:35:51
Speaker
The longer you play on the game, they have these magnets that get activated, which I'm assuming is simulating you getting farther into the Oktoberfest celebrations and
00:36:02
Speaker
And so the ball is a little more squirrely when you're playing it.
00:36:06
Speaker
Um, now if you're, you know, if you're kind of a control, most good players are very controlled and you're trying to grab the ball and to, uh, do these controlled shots.
00:36:19
Speaker
And if the, if the game is fighting you a little more as you're getting in, which is theme appropriate, um, there has to be kind of that risk reward as the,
00:36:32
Speaker
as the difficulty ramps up, the points would have to go up exponentially because otherwise I think it would just get kind of annoying.
00:36:41
Speaker
I agree with Jeff.
00:36:42
Speaker
I'm not, I've said it before.
00:36:44
Speaker
I'm not really the best player.
00:36:46
Speaker
I'm competent, but I'm not an amazing one, but I could, I could shoot for a long time on it.
00:36:53
Speaker
My problem with it was, and I know that it's at, it's at a, it's at a, it's at a convention.
00:37:01
Speaker
And so,
00:37:02
Speaker
you're getting some power draw, the left ramp going up to the roller coaster is super steep.
00:37:10
Speaker
And that is really hard to hit, even with a clean shot, that's really hard to hit.
00:37:17
Speaker
So I can see that being very frustrating.
00:37:20
Speaker
Also, the wire form, the roller coaster wire form,
00:37:24
Speaker
really is one of the coolest looking things in the game.
00:37:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:28
Speaker
I know you're just watching the ball go on this big, long, uh, like wire form, but visually that's kind of one of the cool things in pinball is watching the ball do something.
00:37:40
Speaker
And so, although you could play long, most of your playtime is really on, you know, on the surface.
00:37:47
Speaker
And it seemed like it was, it took a lot of effort to try to get it above the play field.
00:37:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
00:37:55
Speaker
So I wish that that wire form were used a little bit more just because it's fun.
00:38:03
Speaker
It looks really great.
00:38:04
Speaker
I understand when they were talking about Lord of the Rings when it was built and Gary Stern.
00:38:12
Speaker
It doesn't really make sense to have the Balrog do something every time.
00:38:17
Speaker
But Gary is the one who's saying, hey, we're spending, I can't remember how much it was, like $50 for this mech, which apparently is a lot in a build of materials.
00:38:25
Speaker
And he's like, I want it to be out there every time.
00:38:27
Speaker
And it's the same thing with Iron Monger in Iron Man.
00:38:32
Speaker
You pretty much see that every game.
00:38:35
Speaker
And it's kind of a big feature in what's going on.
00:38:39
Speaker
I don't know Iron Man would be that interesting if you only saw Iron Monger like one in 10 times.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:46
Speaker
So who knows?
00:38:49
Speaker
Maybe that's something that they can work on.
00:38:52
Speaker
But I thought it was a fun game.
00:38:54
Speaker
I think it'll do good on location.
00:38:59
Speaker
It certainly doesn't fit the theme of my game room.
00:39:04
Speaker
But I thought it was a solid game.
00:39:08
Speaker
I guess I'll put it that way.
00:39:10
Speaker
I wouldn't say an A+, but I thought it was a solid game.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:39:14
Speaker
I mean, not every game is a home run.
00:39:15
Speaker
It's just, it's not that.
00:39:16
Speaker
But again, it's not a bad game.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, but you got to play.
00:39:21
Speaker
You put in a lot more time on Wonka, though.
00:39:23
Speaker
So talk about Wonka.
00:39:27
Speaker
Okay, yeah.
00:39:28
Speaker
So Willy Wonka's thing I was most excited to see, partially because I have a deposit down on one.
00:39:37
Speaker
So I just kind of wanted to, I don't know, confirm my choice to be in on that game because I still have time to, you know, obviously pull out if it wasn't what I thought it was going to be.
00:39:52
Speaker
Luckily, I...
00:39:54
Speaker
was quite happy with it.
00:39:55
Speaker
It just is a smooth shooter.
00:39:58
Speaker
There's shots everywhere.
00:40:01
Speaker
I mean, there are a ton of shots on that game.
00:40:03
Speaker
And Lawler always does that.
00:40:05
Speaker
Like Twilight Zone, every single angle seems to be
00:40:09
Speaker
coming from or leading to another shot and the game does that.
00:40:14
Speaker
Um, I mean, the artwork is, I, the criticisms to it are fair.
00:40:21
Speaker
Um, it doesn't seem so bad while you're playing it, but, uh, it sure sounds and looks happy when you're playing it.
00:40:28
Speaker
Um, um,
00:40:29
Speaker
But yeah, I was super happy with everything I saw with it to this point.
00:40:34
Speaker
I guess the production version is going to be a little bit different.
00:40:38
Speaker
They've made some geometry changes to the final version.
00:40:42
Speaker
So apparently the changes that they made make it even a little bit more challenging, which was good because I had pretty long ball times on it.
00:40:50
Speaker
But yeah.
00:40:51
Speaker
At a show, things are never quite as steep or as mean as I set them up at home.
00:40:56
Speaker
But I was glad to hear that it was going to be a little bit tougher, a little bit more challenging in the final one in the upper playfield area.
00:41:03
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:41:05
Speaker
I was just really happy with it.
00:41:07
Speaker
I feel like they got a real winner there.
00:41:09
Speaker
And it was kind of fun hearing other people's reactions to it, too.
00:41:14
Speaker
It seemed like it was pretty universally praised at the show.
00:41:18
Speaker
So one question I have for you, Jeff, I was listening to the head to head pinball podcast with Martin and the new co-host Joe Lemire, and they were talking about Willy Wonka and they said that it's kind of hard to see that upper right portion where the shots are out there underneath the screen.
00:41:36
Speaker
Did you feel that way as well?
00:41:37
Speaker
Or was it kind of set up differently where you could see it?
00:41:40
Speaker
So what I actually felt was that the shots, you don't see them very well, but I felt that they went very easily just by...
00:41:52
Speaker
the ball coming, if you, it felt like if you flipped it, it just went.
00:41:55
Speaker
And I guess the change is actually to make those shots a little bit less automatic.
00:42:01
Speaker
So, um, it was actually Butch Peel, uh, said that, uh, in the production version, it doesn't, it feels a little bit more challenging.
00:42:13
Speaker
Um, I don't know, um,
00:42:15
Speaker
how big of a difference it's going to be.
00:42:16
Speaker
But he just said that the people who've been play testing it are a little bit more happy with it.
00:42:22
Speaker
But I know what they're talking about when they say that they don't quite see those shots as clearly.
00:42:27
Speaker
And yeah, I can see that for sure.
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, it seemed that I had a lot of fun on it too.
00:42:35
Speaker
It feels, if you are a Pat Lawler fan and you like the trap up and surgical shots selection, you'll like the game.
00:42:47
Speaker
Pat knows how to make a game feel fun.
00:42:50
Speaker
And I think the Wonka theme works really well with his style.
00:42:58
Speaker
It is very, very Twilight Zone-y.
00:43:00
Speaker
I'll say that.
00:43:02
Speaker
If Twilight Zone doesn't turn you on, definitely play this one before you put some money down.
00:43:07
Speaker
But if Twilight Zone is your jam, I think you'd enjoy it.
00:43:12
Speaker
So does it feel anything like Roller Coaster Tycoon?
00:43:16
Speaker
No, not at all.
00:43:18
Speaker
It was, it's a very fun shooter and, and visually there's a lot going on.
00:43:24
Speaker
Um, I agree with Jeff and that the, the light show integration with the art, it does, it certainly looks more spectacular with their light show.
00:43:34
Speaker
I mean, the one thing Jersey Jack has consistently done is in visually tantalizing.
00:43:41
Speaker
So, um,
00:43:43
Speaker
It takes it to a different level with the game on versus it off.
00:43:48
Speaker
Cool.
00:43:48
Speaker
There were also a lot of little fun touches that I just don't know if they come across in streams or not, but the pop-upers singing the Oompa Loompa song.
00:43:57
Speaker
For some reason, that was just kind of cool.
00:43:58
Speaker
It was good integration.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, they certainly, there's a lot of attention to the details on the Jersey Jack products.
00:44:07
Speaker
And by the way, so I also went to Butch Peel, his seminar, and he's one of the engineers at Jersey Jack.
00:44:17
Speaker
And it's amazing.
00:44:21
Speaker
He's a very down to earth guy, very much an engineer.
00:44:26
Speaker
And he's trying to help with the interaction of understanding, building these things
00:44:36
Speaker
What's the best way of describing it?
00:44:37
Speaker
Building these instruction manuals, but also working on having an online interaction one.
00:44:44
Speaker
So you're saying, hey, I want to go in and take apart this play field.
00:44:48
Speaker
And so you can click on it and it will explode it for you online.
00:44:52
Speaker
And it'll say, OK, this is how it looks assembled and this is how it comes apart.
00:44:56
Speaker
And
00:44:57
Speaker
really from a novice hobbyist, that would be hugely beneficial for me.
00:45:03
Speaker
And I know that's a crazy amount of work.
00:45:06
Speaker
Butch is so great to talk to and he's very approachable.
00:45:10
Speaker
He's one of the guys who when I was having, well, still haven't fixed it, but on my Wizard of Oz, that door, he's one chimed in.
00:45:17
Speaker
It's like, oh, by the way, it's this page on the manual.
00:45:21
Speaker
Go look there.
00:45:24
Speaker
So.
00:45:25
Speaker
Cool.
00:45:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:45:27
Speaker
Just a quick recap too, though, Jeff, what did you think about the LE Black Knight?
00:45:33
Speaker
I enjoyed it.
00:45:34
Speaker
It shocked me how little there was to shoot for on the upper playfield, but it felt much more in line with the series than the pro did.
00:45:43
Speaker
I also have really warmed up to that game overall.
00:45:46
Speaker
I know it's hard.
00:45:48
Speaker
I know it's tough to grind out points on.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:53
Speaker
But I think it's a good location game.
00:45:55
Speaker
I don't know that I'd be excited to own one, but I think it's one of those.
00:45:58
Speaker
It's just fun to step to.
00:46:00
Speaker
And the day after the show, I got back and I went to play our location one and threw some initials up and racked up a bunch of credits on it.
00:46:08
Speaker
It was fun.
00:46:09
Speaker
Nice.
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:46:10
Speaker
I think the, uh, the LE, um, with the upper play field, it feels like a modernized version of black night 2000.
00:46:20
Speaker
So if you are a Black Knight 2000 fan or Black Knight slash Black Knight 2000, it is the logical progression to that.
00:46:29
Speaker
If you want like a stripped down and modified and I would argue faster version, the pro version is for you.
00:46:36
Speaker
I also think that it works really well in playing with friends because the ball times are going to be short.
00:46:41
Speaker
So you're not going to be waiting around a while because it is a brutal game.
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah, it was cool to be able to bring back that whole aspect of Black Knight where you have a ball rolling, you're punching the lock bar to make it hop just a little bit so you can catch it on the flipper tip and try and get an orbit around the upper plate to line up another shot.
00:47:04
Speaker
Yeah, and having that missing from the pro, that's the biggest thing that's missing from the whole Black Knight feel.
00:47:12
Speaker
So that's back.
00:47:13
Speaker
Well, the pro is...
00:47:16
Speaker
is much more aggressive because the ball is constantly flying at you.
00:47:20
Speaker
It's there.
00:47:21
Speaker
There is no, there is no slowdown.
00:47:23
Speaker
I mean, with the, with the upper play field, it's a little slower.
00:47:27
Speaker
And I'd say the catapult lock is really cool.
00:47:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:31
Speaker
But yeah.
00:47:32
Speaker
And it's the pro version is drag racer.
00:47:36
Speaker
It's just going full speed all the time.
00:47:40
Speaker
Yep.
00:47:40
Speaker
Yep.
00:47:41
Speaker
For sure.
00:47:42
Speaker
Cool.
00:47:42
Speaker
And by the way, I actually got more time on,
00:47:45
Speaker
Jersey Jack Pirates.
00:47:49
Speaker
I'm more and more impressed with that game every time I see it.
00:47:52
Speaker
And I play more and more and find out there's all these little things that Eric put in there that still just blow my mind.
00:48:03
Speaker
I'm trying to appreciate it more, but it feels like that is such a giant undertaking that I still only understand about 20% of what's going on in that game because it's so impressive.
00:48:18
Speaker
It's like a big time digital pinball game where it feels like it's doing stuff that are only, you'd only seen a digital pinball game, but it's actually doing them.
00:48:28
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:48:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:29
Speaker
It's like a Zen pinball machine comes to life.
00:48:32
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:48:34
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:48:35
Speaker
Well, it's time to buy one and get down in your basement.
00:48:38
Speaker
Sounds like, well, I have two pirate, two pirate games.
00:48:42
Speaker
So that'll be my third one.
00:48:44
Speaker
Sounds like a plan, man.
00:48:47
Speaker
So,
00:48:48
Speaker
Well, cool.
00:48:50
Speaker
I guess if that wraps it up, I guess we'll move on to a little bit of news then.
00:48:54
Speaker
which is like nothing.
00:48:59
Speaker
The only thing that's come out, we've talked about this like the last couple weeks, it just seems like more and more is coming out slowly from deep root.
00:49:05
Speaker
Really, the takeaway from it is Robert Mugler's cocky, and we're supposedly seeing prototypes of Raza in November at the Houston Expo.
00:49:18
Speaker
You guys want to put in on this?
00:49:22
Speaker
I just hope he's
00:49:24
Speaker
Right.
00:49:25
Speaker
I mean, it's been the longest weird, bad, stupid story in pinball.
00:49:33
Speaker
So hopefully this is it coming to an actual resolution.
00:49:38
Speaker
If they're there, great.
00:49:39
Speaker
If they're not, it just sucks for the people being strung along.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yep.
00:49:43
Speaker
I do want to I really do want to see just see something happen.
00:49:48
Speaker
You know what?
00:49:48
Speaker
Here's my attitude.
00:49:49
Speaker
He's certainly, he's certainly coming off with a lot of bravado.
00:49:54
Speaker
Um, I, I also think he hasn't taken any money and he's also been doing at least something for the J pop people, which is something that he never had to do.
00:50:07
Speaker
So it feels to me that he's putting his money where his mouth is.
00:50:12
Speaker
And I, I like the bravado.
00:50:15
Speaker
I like him saying, bring it on.
00:50:17
Speaker
I also,
00:50:18
Speaker
If he is able to produce what he, what he is saying, then I'm all excited.
00:50:25
Speaker
Uh, and I think that the vibe seems very much in that Valley Williams, 1990s feel, which I really think we, uh, we could use more of.
00:50:40
Speaker
Well, cool.
00:50:40
Speaker
Yep.
00:50:41
Speaker
Well, the only other news that I could really think of that we haven't talked about, uh, the day, uh,
00:50:47
Speaker
like two days after we recorded, Nate Shivers came out with coast to coast and did his final episode of indefinite hiatus.
00:50:58
Speaker
Um, it's just crazy.
00:51:00
Speaker
Ending of an error, I guess.
00:51:01
Speaker
But I wanted to point out some stuff though, Jeff, that like he talked about how you guys were the inspiration for him starting that up.
00:51:09
Speaker
So really everyone should be thanking the pinball podcast for all the years of coast to coast.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
I don't know that he wouldn't have done it on his own otherwise, but I do remember when he first started coming out with those episodes and he had just first started and Don and I had picked up on him and we started kind of mentioning it on the show.
00:51:33
Speaker
We were first impressed at the rate he could put them out, and then we were really impressed by the quality of what he could put out.
00:51:39
Speaker
And then everyone else started to recognize that as well.
00:51:41
Speaker
And it was a fantastic run they had with it.
00:51:44
Speaker
He's not done with his pinball media production stuff.
00:51:47
Speaker
We know he's just kind of changing what he's going to do.
00:51:50
Speaker
But it was a really good run for the show, and it was actually nice to hear him come back and at least give it a proper sendoff.
00:51:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:57
Speaker
I agree.
00:51:57
Speaker
It's basically closing one chapter and opening a different one.
00:52:00
Speaker
It's, it's leaving one band and starting another.
00:52:03
Speaker
So, um, yeah, I, I think it's fine.
00:52:06
Speaker
He's certainly entertaining.
00:52:08
Speaker
He certainly knows how to be a PR guy and whatever he is involved in will be successful.
00:52:14
Speaker
So,
00:52:16
Speaker
I think people just need to, you know, a lot of people have complained of how he ended the episode.
00:52:20
Speaker
I'm like, dude, just it's, it's an entertainment thing.
00:52:22
Speaker
Just, it's a teaser.
00:52:24
Speaker
Come on.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:25
Speaker
It's what Marvel's been doing for 22 films.
00:52:27
Speaker
Just, it's a teaser saying that he's not done.
00:52:30
Speaker
He's doing something else.
00:52:31
Speaker
Just wait for it.
00:52:32
Speaker
And,
00:52:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sorry.
00:52:34
Speaker
If, if, if people have a problem with it, then they can take the money back, whatever they paid him.
00:52:38
Speaker
Oh wait, nothing.
00:52:39
Speaker
So they can, I'm sorry, this, this is for free.
00:52:45
Speaker
So if you're complaining about a free product, then, you know, just turn it off.
00:52:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:50
Speaker
So, well, cool.
00:52:52
Speaker
That pretty much covers our news.
00:52:54
Speaker
I know some other stuff happened, but we're not going to talk about it.
00:52:56
Speaker
So yeah, if you're really worried about go on the interwebs, if you really want to dig that hole, go into Pinside.
00:53:02
Speaker
So,
00:53:02
Speaker
Yeah, if you want to watch A Flame War, just go to Pennside.
00:53:05
Speaker
I don't really care about the crazy drama.
00:53:10
Speaker
I guess my attitude is let's be nice to everybody in the sport, regardless of who you are, what your affiliation is, political, religious, sexual, whatever.
00:53:20
Speaker
Why don't we just focus on playing the game and not deal with the other stuff?
00:53:25
Speaker
Or why don't we just respect the other stuff?
00:53:28
Speaker
I'll just leave it at that.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:31
Speaker
So cool.
00:53:33
Speaker
Um, I wanted to hurry and do a time warp since we have Jeff on.
00:53:37
Speaker
I, I didn't, I did not warn you that this was coming cause I wanted you to, uh, I don't know.
00:53:44
Speaker
I want you to have your mind clear of the questions I was going to ask.
00:53:48
Speaker
So we're going to go back eight and a half years.
00:53:51
Speaker
You ready for this, Jeff?
00:53:52
Speaker
The date is October 6th, 2011.
00:53:54
Speaker
Um,
00:53:57
Speaker
This is the first day that the first episode of the Pinball Podcast came out.
00:54:03
Speaker
I remember.
00:54:06
Speaker
I've got show notes here.
00:54:08
Speaker
I took notes.
00:54:09
Speaker
This isn't necessarily what was in your show notes.
00:54:12
Speaker
I wanted to go over the news and rumors of October 2011 to see how much of this came true.
00:54:18
Speaker
You ready for this?
00:54:20
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:54:20
Speaker
Let's see what we got.
00:54:22
Speaker
This is going to be crazy.
00:54:23
Speaker
Do you remember the Stern rumored next title coming out?
00:54:30
Speaker
In 2011?
00:54:31
Speaker
2011.
00:54:31
Speaker
Oh, boy.
00:54:37
Speaker
You and Don had talked about there was leaked photos, so you guys were pretty for sure of it.
00:54:42
Speaker
And it looked like it was going to be a quick and fun, fast game.
00:54:49
Speaker
I can't think of it off the top of my head.
00:54:52
Speaker
I bet if I really, really thought about it, I could come up with it.
00:54:57
Speaker
It was Transformers.
00:55:00
Speaker
Wow.
00:55:01
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately, it did come out.
00:55:04
Speaker
Well, that's what made me chuckle as I was listening to this.
00:55:05
Speaker
And you're like, man, Gomez is really good at fast, good designs.
00:55:09
Speaker
And I'm like, eight and a half years later, no one's talking about this game.
00:55:14
Speaker
And usually when they do, it's not that great.
00:55:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:17
Speaker
Right.
00:55:18
Speaker
Right.
00:55:19
Speaker
The news at that time was Tron update had come out.
00:55:22
Speaker
The last update.
00:55:23
Speaker
You hadn't owned one at the time yet.
00:55:25
Speaker
I know that you own one now, but you talked about how you.
00:55:28
Speaker
I do.
00:55:29
Speaker
Played one a lot at the local bowling L.A.
00:55:31
Speaker
I think is what you said.
00:55:33
Speaker
So.
00:55:34
Speaker
Something like that, maybe.
00:55:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it was a movie theater.
00:55:37
Speaker
Thank you.
00:55:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:39
Speaker
And then there was more rumored titles.
00:55:41
Speaker
There was three pretty solid ones coming out from Stern.
00:55:46
Speaker
Do you remember what those were?
00:55:50
Speaker
Let's see.
00:55:54
Speaker
Boy, you caught me at a bad time.
00:55:57
Speaker
Would it have been ACDC?
00:56:00
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:56:02
Speaker
Which at the time, you said that there was horns on the Stern logo, so you didn't know if it was ACDC or this other game, which was then another rumor.
00:56:12
Speaker
Uh-oh.
00:56:16
Speaker
Horns, horns.
00:56:16
Speaker
Remember, we were just three years after when the biggest movie event said come out.
00:56:26
Speaker
I think I'm really dumb right now.
00:56:28
Speaker
Are you talking in the background?
00:56:31
Speaker
Are you
00:56:32
Speaker
Are you phoning a friend?
00:56:33
Speaker
That's not me.
00:56:35
Speaker
Are you texting Bill?
00:56:36
Speaker
You're texting Bill, aren't you?
00:56:39
Speaker
No, I have no lifelines.
00:56:42
Speaker
Let's see.
00:56:44
Speaker
After ACDC, I'm having a hard time remembering back to 2011.
00:56:48
Speaker
That's actually the hard part here.
00:56:50
Speaker
So 2011.
00:56:50
Speaker
I know ACDC.
00:56:51
Speaker
I got that.
00:56:52
Speaker
I got mine in 2012.
00:56:53
Speaker
What movie would have come?
00:56:57
Speaker
Iron Man?
00:56:58
Speaker
Close.
00:56:59
Speaker
It was Avengers.
00:57:01
Speaker
Avengers.
00:57:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:02
Speaker
Unfortunately, that came out as well.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:07
Speaker
But the horns was misconstrued as it could have been Loki from Avengers.
00:57:10
Speaker
And so that plus John Borg at the time had a picture of Avengers on his desk.
00:57:15
Speaker
So that was the other fuel to the rumor.
00:57:19
Speaker
So, and then there was the, the other rumor was a project Alice.
00:57:24
Speaker
So I'm assuming this is what ACDC ended up being, but it's because Steve Ritchie and lemon sheets had come out and said they were working on project Alice and they were both excited about it.
00:57:35
Speaker
So,
00:57:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:57:36
Speaker
And then you had two throwaway title names that you think that Stern was putting out there to throw off the scent, which I think is hilarious because one of them was Munsters.
00:57:48
Speaker
Yep, I remember that.
00:57:50
Speaker
And then the other one was Muppets.
00:57:52
Speaker
So seriously, out of all the titles that had been rumored, most of them had been made.
00:57:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:58:01
Speaker
Oh, and there was one more rumor, which was Elvira 3.
00:58:05
Speaker
And the rumor was that was JJP's next game, and they'd only come out with Wizards of Oz at the time.
00:58:10
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that.
00:58:13
Speaker
That still has not made its way out.
00:58:15
Speaker
I can't see JJP doing Elvira.
00:58:18
Speaker
But I think that it's ready to be put out there at any time.
00:58:24
Speaker
I think they're just waiting for a Lolan production or
00:58:30
Speaker
some delay and they can just kind of plug it in.
00:58:32
Speaker
I think it's one of those evergreen titles that you can actually, the theme is not dated.
00:58:38
Speaker
And so you can still kind of put that in.
00:58:41
Speaker
I think that's what's going on.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:45
Speaker
Well, and who knows between Dennis Norman moving around and cause it was originally tied to him, wasn't it?
00:58:51
Speaker
Yeah, but he finished it before he left.
00:58:54
Speaker
Right.
00:58:55
Speaker
No.
00:58:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:56
Speaker
So, but anywho, that was your time warp.
00:59:00
Speaker
wow sorry there was a lot more too you guys crazy it was eight years ago well and what's funny is the first episode you guys kind of did like a title of the episode like a not a title a theme not the theme you're right right and the pinball pinball machine that you guys had picked out for that one was judged red so yeah yeah i remember that because don love that well that's the game that brought us together yes
00:59:26
Speaker
yeah so after listening to that i wanted to buy a judge dread so i still can't i like this good i am happy so yeah yeah crazy game i think you have to have it's it can't be your only game but it can be a you know part of a a smattering of a games you have so yeah if i remember right like that was before like even um pinball arcade was even out there was like
00:59:56
Speaker
Nothing was out yet.
00:59:58
Speaker
It was a weird time.
00:59:59
Speaker
It was the dead zone of pinball.
01:00:01
Speaker
That was before the pinnacle started because we had about 12 years of death.
01:00:03
Speaker
And then just 2012, it kind of started picking up again.
01:00:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:14
Speaker
I mean, the crazy thing is that's when, um, Raza started was like right around the first couple of episodes that we recorded is when Ben heck and J pop teamed up to do that.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:26
Speaker
And, um, I think Allison made land was out then too, or at least, uh, the foam core stuff was, it's finally gonna, finally gonna happen.
01:00:34
Speaker
I guess it's, uh, who knows?
01:00:37
Speaker
I, I never thought wizard of awesome would have been a good theme and apparently it is.
01:00:40
Speaker
So yeah.
01:00:44
Speaker
Crazy how much has changed in eight and a half years, right?
01:00:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:49
Speaker
So we've all changed.
01:00:50
Speaker
You know, here's the funny thing though, is this is now that they've kind of gone through and we've talked about the, the themes, like the, the themes that should be, or at least the bands.
01:01:03
Speaker
And, um, I was thinking that they could, they could actually make a pink pinball machine.
01:01:09
Speaker
I think that she would actually, she would sell.
01:01:11
Speaker
I think that I,
01:01:14
Speaker
You've been listening too much Franchi lately, man.
01:01:15
Speaker
No, seriously.
01:01:16
Speaker
Did he say that?
01:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, he's, I don't know, he uses Pink as a reference for all of his stuff he talks about.
01:01:25
Speaker
I've been kind of busy and haven't really listened.
01:01:27
Speaker
But I was just thinking of what modern artists would actually make a good pinball machine.
01:01:33
Speaker
I'm like, I think that would actually work.
01:01:37
Speaker
But anyway, that's just a side note.
01:01:42
Speaker
Well, speaking of themes, we wanted to hurry and talk about this.
01:01:46
Speaker
I was talking to you guys about it, and it sounded like you wanted to talk about video game themes in pinball.
01:01:53
Speaker
Because I know you, Jeff, used to work for Nintendo, correct?
01:01:58
Speaker
Not for Nintendo.
01:02:00
Speaker
but very closely with them.
01:02:01
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:02
Speaker
So between that and I know that we're all kind of into video games.
01:02:09
Speaker
I mean, for heaven's sake, Scott's got a two and a half foot Mario sitting in his basement.
01:02:13
Speaker
So until I steal it, but yeah, he does.
01:02:17
Speaker
So my question to you two, so my question to you two is why do you think video game theme didn't work out?
01:02:27
Speaker
Cause we've had like a joust where we had baby Pac-Man, two different super Mario brothers, a street fighter.
01:02:34
Speaker
Um, that's, that's what's coming off the top of my head.
01:02:37
Speaker
Is there, is there any other ones I'm missing in there?
01:02:39
Speaker
Um, yeah.
01:02:43
Speaker
Well, there's like a defender.
01:02:45
Speaker
I'm sure the space invaders.
01:02:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:47
Speaker
There's yes.
01:02:49
Speaker
Uh huh.
01:02:52
Speaker
I think the point,
01:02:54
Speaker
is they're hard to remember because they're just not that great.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
Um, but I mean, I, I, I think there's reasons for it.
01:03:04
Speaker
And I think the reason for it is because they fall into one of two traps that either try and make it, try and recreate the video game experience through pinball, which does not work.
01:03:17
Speaker
So they definitely tried to do that through street fighter two, like,
01:03:21
Speaker
you're going to do your fights and you're going to, you know, bash the car like you do in the game.
01:03:27
Speaker
And none of it really works.
01:03:29
Speaker
You'd rather just play the game and pull off the special moves and all that stuff.
01:03:35
Speaker
Or, um, it's the other way where they've just taken kind of like a generic layout and they throw the video game theming on top of it.
01:03:44
Speaker
And it doesn't feel like anything except for just a thrown on theme.
01:03:50
Speaker
And, um,
01:03:51
Speaker
It's just tough because you go into it with such a strong mindset.
01:03:54
Speaker
Now, I know that's true with movies.
01:03:55
Speaker
I know that's true with like comic book themes and stuff.
01:03:58
Speaker
But video games, they're tied to a style of play so tightly that there are certain video games, especially the old popular ones, that you play them out of muscle memory almost.
01:04:11
Speaker
If you were to sit down and play like Frogger or Pitfall now, like the old Atari games, you'd probably
01:04:17
Speaker
playing the same way you did when you were four or five years old.
01:04:22
Speaker
So translating that to a different medium, it's just weird.
01:04:27
Speaker
It's really hard to do.
01:04:29
Speaker
I don't know.
01:04:30
Speaker
There's a lot.
01:04:32
Speaker
Do you think also, you know, another title that just came to my mind that I know is a total turd is Spy Hunter.
01:04:37
Speaker
That one's terrible.
01:04:39
Speaker
It's a weird one.
01:04:40
Speaker
That is a really weird, weird game.
01:04:43
Speaker
But I think the only is about a third of it.
01:04:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:47
Speaker
I think the other problem too is, well, two reasons.
01:04:51
Speaker
I think that originally video games weren't as big.
01:04:56
Speaker
We've gotten to a place now that they're huge.
01:04:58
Speaker
Like some video game franchises are bigger than movie franchises.
01:05:03
Speaker
And so, but back then, you know, it was hard to market a pinball machine based off of a video game when video games were only, had only been around for five years.
01:05:12
Speaker
Okay.
01:05:12
Speaker
See, you're actually, you're wrong on this.
01:05:16
Speaker
You're wrong because you're dead wrong because when the reason why they made a joust pinball machine and a defender pinball machine is because that was when the early arcades were huge.
01:05:34
Speaker
And that was before the 1983 crash when that almost wiped out the video game industry or at least took it down to the brass tacks down there.
01:05:45
Speaker
But there was almost nothing left.
01:05:48
Speaker
And so that was them trying to stay relevant when arcades were taking over.
01:05:58
Speaker
But I agree with Jeff.
01:06:00
Speaker
It was a poor integration.
01:06:01
Speaker
It was almost like an add-on.
01:06:03
Speaker
It was a me too.
01:06:05
Speaker
It was a cereal box that has a theme that's tacked on it and says, now Cheerios with green colors because now it's Zelda different.
01:06:15
Speaker
pebbles or something like that.
01:06:18
Speaker
It's, it was, it was just branded that way.
01:06:23
Speaker
I think that really the reason why most of these things failed is because they had poor theme integration and they also just had poor designs for poor designers.
01:06:33
Speaker
They weren't good designers.
01:06:36
Speaker
I think that the three things that come to mind that I think would make excellent that would translate really well
01:06:45
Speaker
is I think a Super Mario Brothers game, a really good one with a good designer, would actually sell crazy.
01:06:54
Speaker
I think a Zelda game would actually sell crazy.
01:07:00
Speaker
Other things that could be done, Metroid, maybe.
01:07:04
Speaker
I think Metroid is a little more of a niche thing, but if you look at the two pillars that Nintendo has built their gaming system on,
01:07:12
Speaker
It's basically been a Mario game and a Zelda game, and that's driven the Nintendo series since 1985.
01:07:21
Speaker
And so if they were able to find a good designer and a good rule set that's able to work with the theme, I think it would be a huge hit.
01:07:32
Speaker
But you're not going to play the pinball machine like you play Super Mario Brothers.
01:07:38
Speaker
It's not the same, but I think the theme would still ring true.
01:07:44
Speaker
Well, and that brings me to my other question too, is do you think that if they did, do you think that there's enough quote unquote new guard into the hobby?
01:07:54
Speaker
Because my understanding is, is the old guard was kind of against video games because they felt like, and I don't know if this is true or not, but they'd felt like video games had kind of snuffed out pinball.
01:08:07
Speaker
And so a lot of them had like the true and tried pinball players that were years and years ago
01:08:14
Speaker
didn't want these themes because it was kind of a reminder of what killed off pinball at that point.
01:08:20
Speaker
So do you think that we could do video game titles now and then sell?
01:08:29
Speaker
I think you can.
01:08:30
Speaker
I always think you could.
01:08:31
Speaker
I just, yeah, they were just never given the same treatment as, you know, the other themes or the other licenses.
01:08:41
Speaker
And, you know,
01:08:42
Speaker
And it probably, I don't know.
01:08:43
Speaker
I don't know if it was because the designers didn't want to touch the game things because of that.
01:08:48
Speaker
But, you know, a lot of the people that worked on some of those games that were extremely popular were big time people in pinball.
01:08:57
Speaker
You had guys like Eugene Jarvis who were important in pinball were making games like Defender.
01:09:02
Speaker
And like, that's important.
01:09:06
Speaker
So I don't know if...
01:09:09
Speaker
Maybe just the teams weren't right.
01:09:11
Speaker
Who knows exactly what it was, but I do think you could make it work.
01:09:16
Speaker
You just have to try to not recreate, try not to recreate the game feel through pinball because I don't think that'll ever work.
01:09:25
Speaker
Video games, a good video game is based on extremely tight and precise gameplay and pinball's wild.
01:09:33
Speaker
So there's got to be some sort of
01:09:37
Speaker
different angle to come at come at the experience but yeah i i do think it would work i do they just gotta i think it would have to be the right the right license though i i don't think any of these shooter games you know like a halo game or something like i just don't think it that wouldn't work for me um i think you need more of a journey game or something with a storyline and i think that's where
01:10:02
Speaker
Mario and Zelda would work because it's almost like a movie theater movie license that you can craft a story around a journey around if it's a shooter game I don't know how much of how much theme integration you can really get
01:10:18
Speaker
Oh, come on.
01:10:18
Speaker
You don't want the Fortnite pinball machine?
01:10:21
Speaker
That terrible one that someone took a fun house and didn't even put like... Didn't it redo the play field?
01:10:26
Speaker
They just stuck stickers over the top of it?
01:10:30
Speaker
Oh, that was painful.
01:10:31
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:10:32
Speaker
But no, I get where you're coming from on the shooters and whatnot.
01:10:36
Speaker
I think, and honestly, the reason I bring this up is because looking at Black Knight Sword of Rage, I feel like it's got a very video game feel to it with the fact that you're trying to defeat boss after boss to get to the Black Knight.
01:10:53
Speaker
I think you could, same with kind of like Walking Dead where you collect items and stuff like that.
01:10:57
Speaker
I think that the video game elements are there.
01:10:59
Speaker
I think...
01:11:00
Speaker
I really think a Metroid game would do fantastic.
01:11:03
Speaker
The whole point of you're collecting Samus' items so you can power up to defeat the final boss.
01:11:10
Speaker
Right.
01:11:12
Speaker
I think there's so much untapped potential.
01:11:14
Speaker
And really, how many more of these themes can we make that are... I don't know.
01:11:19
Speaker
I still think Munsters is a swing and a miss.
01:11:21
Speaker
That's just me personally.
01:11:24
Speaker
I don't know.
01:11:25
Speaker
But...
01:11:26
Speaker
Jack Danger has been pushing Pokemon.
01:11:28
Speaker
I don't know if Pokemon would be a good theme or not.
01:11:31
Speaker
I don't.
01:11:31
Speaker
But that's what they've been talking about for the last three weeks.
01:11:35
Speaker
When you're selling games, you're selling to people who are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and possible 60s.
01:11:44
Speaker
You're really selling to people who have careers.
01:11:47
Speaker
They have some disposable income.
01:11:50
Speaker
That's when people start restoring cars or getting into an expensive hobby.
01:11:57
Speaker
I guarantee Pokemon doesn't really ring true, at least for my generation.
01:12:04
Speaker
I'm turning 45 this year, and I've never played a Pokemon game.
01:12:10
Speaker
I don't foresee me ever buying that unless it's a, hey, I'm buying it because my kid likes it.
01:12:17
Speaker
I think I have something that you identify with.
01:12:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:23
Speaker
But I could be in the minority.
01:12:25
Speaker
For some reason, Pokemon shows up every five years and goes really big and then goes into hibernation and then comes back.
01:12:33
Speaker
So maybe I'm the outlier here.
01:12:36
Speaker
I don't know.
01:12:38
Speaker
I know I would love to see a Legend of Zelda pinball machine.
01:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:12:42
Speaker
Well, the soundtrack could be.
01:12:43
Speaker
Well, the thing is, both Legend of Zelda and Mario Brothers, they have intact pieces.
01:12:52
Speaker
sound packages that you could really repurpose very easily.
01:12:57
Speaker
And I mean, if you hit that button and it goes, and then launches the ball or whatever, I think that that really does like, Hey, this is kind of fun.
01:13:07
Speaker
Um, who knows?
01:13:09
Speaker
Uh, of course outside of, I just talked about Nintendo.
01:13:14
Speaker
Um, that's basically, those are still from like 1985.
01:13:17
Speaker
I know Zelda's kind of evolved since then, but Mario has kind of felt very similar.
01:13:22
Speaker
Is there any other video game franchise that you would think, yeah, that would work?
01:13:26
Speaker
The thing is with like, I think Mario and Zelda are the big no brainers because they are cross generational and they're also popular with the younger generation.
01:13:35
Speaker
So it's kind of hard to find anything that would
01:13:38
Speaker
be better than those.
01:13:40
Speaker
Um, other stuff that might work.
01:13:42
Speaker
I mean, I want to re-theme my Hollywood heat into a Metroid.
01:13:45
Speaker
I just keep getting set back on that.
01:13:47
Speaker
So I've always felt that that would be a good one.
01:13:50
Speaker
Um, outside of like the Nintendo side of things.
01:13:52
Speaker
I mean, if you had a fortnight pinball machine, kids would run up and play it.
01:13:57
Speaker
I just don't really see it translating that way.
01:13:59
Speaker
Well, shooter or survival type games.
01:14:02
Speaker
I just don't, I don't see it.
01:14:04
Speaker
I like the arena battle style.
01:14:06
Speaker
Um,
01:14:10
Speaker
it's tough like like racing games maybe but I don't think they'll ever do another racing game the only the only racing game that I could possibly see them do is like the getaway three or something like that's the only one I full throttle a fun game but the theme just sold nothing
01:14:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:35
Speaker
Hey, by the way, I don't know.
01:14:38
Speaker
Ratchet and Clank would be a good one.
01:14:42
Speaker
Ratchet and Clank would be good.
01:14:44
Speaker
God of War maybe would be good.
01:14:48
Speaker
I think a good one would be Resident Evil.
01:14:50
Speaker
And it's just because it's produced movies along with the video games.
01:14:53
Speaker
There's a lot of extra outside of it.
01:14:56
Speaker
And we seem to, in the pinball hobby, gravitate towards mature themes.
01:15:03
Speaker
Right.
01:15:03
Speaker
And so, I mean, Walking Dead did very well.
01:15:06
Speaker
And it didn't have any of the assets to it except for the title stuff.
01:15:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:13
Speaker
So I think, I think it could, um, lend very well to a pinball machine, uh, incorporating, like trying not to die and stuff like that.
01:15:24
Speaker
Maybe if you're bitten by a zombie, you have a timed, you know, you got to get an herb before you time out and you end up getting forced to drain or something.
01:15:33
Speaker
I don't know.
01:15:33
Speaker
That could be a really dumb concept, but just stuff off the top of my head.
01:15:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:39
Speaker
I could see it.
01:15:43
Speaker
Video games are tough, man.
01:15:44
Speaker
They're just really tough to translate.
01:15:46
Speaker
Well, I think it's also just a different style.
01:15:48
Speaker
Like when I grew up, I grew up really, I remember Pong.
01:15:54
Speaker
So that was like, I've seen everything going from really basic to really crazy advanced.
01:16:01
Speaker
And at least the early games, it was kind of, it was a repetition and a skill to repeatedly do the same thing.
01:16:10
Speaker
Modern games are completely different.
01:16:13
Speaker
especially like the the you know the World of Warcraft types or the you know just kind of that environmental games it's just different than hey jump over the barrel five times so I just think it feels different but pinball is a lot closer to the earlier ones where it's just one small skill that you're repeatedly doing
01:16:41
Speaker
they should do since since stern's got steve richie they just need to do mortal combat and then it'd be kind of like based like the deadpool style so you're still fighting on the screen be like street fighter too well no but then you can choose from characters like you would on uh pirates of the caribbean and they all have their own little perks to them yeah i don't know i think i think deadpool worked really well um
01:17:07
Speaker
I know that Jeff's less of a fan.
01:17:08
Speaker
I've actually grown more and more to like Deadpool and wouldn't mind having one in my collection.
01:17:14
Speaker
But yeah, I just don't see a fighting one really working as well.
01:17:19
Speaker
But hey, they pulled it off on Deadpool.
01:17:22
Speaker
I don't know.
01:17:23
Speaker
That was just my thought for the week.
01:17:25
Speaker
It's been on my mind for a while now because I grew up on video games originally and then I transferred over to pinball.
01:17:31
Speaker
And so I've always wondered why there hasn't been more, especially with a lot of these franchises that have been established for 25, 30 years.
01:17:41
Speaker
I mean, heck, didn't Zelda just have its 35th anniversary?
01:17:48
Speaker
I mean, it's up there for sure.
01:17:51
Speaker
May was Mario.
01:17:52
Speaker
Mario was 1984.
01:17:53
Speaker
I'm just kind of like, the problem with these bigger franchises, they tend to be more
01:18:00
Speaker
jealous and involved in how it's presented, which is why Disney and Lucas, they're notoriously challenging to work with because they're very focused on their brand presentation.
01:18:14
Speaker
And so I think that Nintendo would be just as challenging.
01:18:19
Speaker
That's a good possibility.
01:18:21
Speaker
Man, that's why they've never went after it.
01:18:25
Speaker
Well, they tried twice, and that was really bad.
01:18:29
Speaker
I think, though, that Nintendo is getting more and more license-friendly.
01:18:34
Speaker
We're seeing that with mobile games.
01:18:35
Speaker
We're seeing that with third-party developers making, like, Mario and Rabbids or the Cadence of Hyrule.
01:18:43
Speaker
I mean, that's an indie-developed game that's being lent Legend of Zelda assets.
01:18:49
Speaker
I mean...
01:18:50
Speaker
I think we're getting to that point where I think the iron's hot right now.
01:18:54
Speaker
If people want to start building that kind of stuff, they need to do it now before it starts going away.
01:18:59
Speaker
So just my thought process.
01:19:03
Speaker
I want to hear from you guys, though.
01:19:04
Speaker
I want to hear.
01:19:05
Speaker
We'll throw a poll up this time.
01:19:07
Speaker
Do you think video games make for a good theme for pinball machines?
01:19:11
Speaker
Yes or no?
01:19:12
Speaker
And we want to hear in your comments what your favorite one would be.
01:19:15
Speaker
Easy enough?
01:19:17
Speaker
I think they can do it.
01:19:20
Speaker
They should do a golden axe or an altered beast.
01:19:23
Speaker
Yes.
01:19:23
Speaker
Okay, maybe not.
01:19:25
Speaker
No, they need to do a, did you ever hear about that terrible, just, it was a one shot game in Japan.
01:19:31
Speaker
It was called, it was, it was made for the Wii and it was called Wii PP and it came with a harness with a Wii remote.
01:19:38
Speaker
So you could pee into toilets and then like cats would pop out of the toilets and you'd pee on their heads.
01:19:44
Speaker
I don't know what the Japanese were thinking, but that was some hot stuff over there, man.
01:19:49
Speaker
That's really bizarre.
01:19:51
Speaker
I would never buy that for my kids.
01:19:57
Speaker
So you never know.
01:19:58
Speaker
There's random things for everything.
01:20:00
Speaker
Are we ending on peeing on cat's heads?
01:20:02
Speaker
Is that really how the episode's ending?
01:20:06
Speaker
No, no.
01:20:06
Speaker
It's supposed to end on a high note.
01:20:08
Speaker
That's pretty high.
01:20:11
Speaker
Well, I think you'd have to be high to design that game.
01:20:16
Speaker
Oh my goodness.
01:20:17
Speaker
It's getting late.
01:20:18
Speaker
I think we need show notes next time.
01:20:19
Speaker
That really took a left turn.
01:20:23
Speaker
Sorry for the inappropriate not family funness there.
01:20:28
Speaker
Oh no, it's just bizarreness.
01:20:30
Speaker
I've never heard of that game.
01:20:32
Speaker
I think my brain just exploded.
01:20:34
Speaker
I'm not mad.
01:20:35
Speaker
I'm just scared.
01:20:37
Speaker
I thought you were disappointed.
01:20:39
Speaker
Not disappointed.
01:20:40
Speaker
I'm just scared.
01:20:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:44
Speaker
So, well, cool.
01:20:45
Speaker
Hey, is there anything that you want to relay to the public while we've got you on, Jeff?
01:20:50
Speaker
I don't know if there's, you know.
01:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, let me give my podcast co-host a shout out.
01:20:56
Speaker
Go check out softplungepinball.com.
01:20:59
Speaker
She's selling pinball merchandise now.
01:21:01
Speaker
So check it out.
01:21:03
Speaker
I will definitely check that out.
01:21:04
Speaker
I heard there's some good stuff on there.
01:21:07
Speaker
Go get yourself a Golden Girls t-shirt.
01:21:09
Speaker
It's pretty awesome.
01:21:10
Speaker
They might have sold out.
01:21:12
Speaker
It's possible.
01:21:13
Speaker
Did you know that my first, the first person I played, I talked to her about your, well, Jessica's website and I mentioned the golden girl shirt and I pulled it up and she said, I need one.
01:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Merchandise and Guest Farewell
01:21:31
Speaker
So I'm pulling it up as we speak.
01:21:33
Speaker
I heard that there was an awesome web designer on this too.
01:21:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:37
Speaker
I don't know.
01:21:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:41
Speaker
Just so-so, right?
01:21:42
Speaker
We collaborated well.
01:21:43
Speaker
Anyway.
01:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, these are pretty cool.
01:21:47
Speaker
Oh, dang it, Jeff.
01:21:48
Speaker
I thought you were going to buy these booty shorts that say soft plunge on them.
01:21:51
Speaker
I think those actually did sell out.
01:21:53
Speaker
They did sell out.
01:21:53
Speaker
They sold out.
01:21:54
Speaker
Dang it.
01:21:55
Speaker
It's because you bought them all, isn't it?
01:21:57
Speaker
No, I didn't get a chance.
01:22:00
Speaker
They sold out.
01:22:03
Speaker
I thought he bought them for his new workout regimen.
01:22:06
Speaker
No, there will be more.
01:22:07
Speaker
Cool.
01:22:09
Speaker
No, awesome, guys.
01:22:10
Speaker
That's great.
01:22:11
Speaker
Well, I guess we should probably wrap this up because if we don't, we'll just keep on rambling, right?
01:22:15
Speaker
We'll just keep going crazy, yeah.
01:22:18
Speaker
Is there any shout-outs?
01:22:20
Speaker
Oh, we got you on, Jeff.
01:22:21
Speaker
Let's hurry and we've officially, I know we texted you this, but we officially dubs you or knighted you.
01:22:27
Speaker
I don't know what it's called.
01:22:28
Speaker
You're a loser kid, just like one of us now.
01:22:30
Speaker
Yeah, inducted.
01:22:32
Speaker
You're inducted.
01:22:33
Speaker
And we're trying to work on getting some swag so we can get you something official.
01:22:38
Speaker
Awesome.
01:22:39
Speaker
It's either a high note or a low note in your life.
01:22:45
Speaker
Wait, what?
01:22:46
Speaker
It's a note.
01:22:47
Speaker
It's a note.
01:22:48
Speaker
It's not a brown note.
01:22:50
Speaker
No.
01:22:52
Speaker
I still find it a high enough.
01:22:53
Speaker
I'm happy with it.
01:22:56
Speaker
Everyone's a loser compared to Raymond Davidson, right?
01:22:59
Speaker
He's number one in the world right now.
01:23:00
Speaker
We're all playing for second.
01:23:04
Speaker
Or worse.
01:23:05
Speaker
Scene never change if you're not the lead dog.
01:23:08
Speaker
We're in the same league as Keith Elwin.
01:23:10
Speaker
How does that make you feel?
01:23:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:12
Speaker
I'm really close to that.
01:23:18
Speaker
So, well, cool.
01:23:20
Speaker
Uh, we appreciate you coming on Jeff and giving us an update of all the Rocky mountain pinball stuff.
01:23:26
Speaker
Um, I know it's a special show for you, so it was cool that Scott got to go enjoy that with you.
01:23:33
Speaker
So yeah, it was awesome.
01:23:36
Speaker
All right.
01:23:37
Speaker
I, I, after the show, I decided I'm on the hunt for a high speed, um, or an earth shaker.
01:23:43
Speaker
So cool.
01:23:44
Speaker
If anyone knows of a good high speed or an earth shaker, let me know.
01:23:48
Speaker
I might have a baby Pac-Man.
01:23:50
Speaker
I don't know if you'd want that.
01:23:51
Speaker
I don't know if I can maintain those.
01:23:54
Speaker
Apparently I'm going to get two of them along with an eight ball deluxe, but we'll see what happens.
01:23:59
Speaker
Okay.
01:23:59
Speaker
Well, let me know.
01:24:00
Speaker
So, so how can we find you, Jeff, besides hanging out on, on our podcast?
01:24:05
Speaker
Um, eventually we're going to release a new episode of the pinball podcast.
01:24:09
Speaker
Um, Jessica was at the Northwest pinball and arcade show this last weekend.
01:24:13
Speaker
So we will get together and record this week.
01:24:18
Speaker
I'm fairly certain of that.
01:24:20
Speaker
The pinball podcast will be back soon.
01:24:22
Speaker
Um, other than that, just, uh, yeah, I, you know, see you around.
01:24:28
Speaker
See you around.
01:24:29
Speaker
Cool.
01:24:30
Speaker
Sounds good.
01:24:31
Speaker
So either check them out, pinball podcast or wherever Jeff's are found.
01:24:36
Speaker
Yep.
01:24:36
Speaker
I'm there.
01:24:37
Speaker
So cool.
01:24:38
Speaker
And how can they, how can they find us, Josh?
01:24:41
Speaker
You should plug yourself too.
01:24:42
Speaker
How can we find us?
01:24:44
Speaker
They can find us on Facebook at the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, or you can reach us at Gmail at Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, or wherever you find your podcasts.
01:24:54
Speaker
We're probably there.
01:24:55
Speaker
I'm pretty proud of ourselves for the fact that we're on Alexa.
01:24:58
Speaker
If you tell Alexa, hey, Alexa, play Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, she'll start it.
01:25:03
Speaker
Yay.
01:25:05
Speaker
Oh, crap.
01:25:05
Speaker
And it's starting in the background.
01:25:07
Speaker
Sorry.
01:25:07
Speaker
Hold on.
01:25:08
Speaker
Actually, not to extend the show, but it was really funny.
01:25:11
Speaker
Stop.
01:25:14
Speaker
My kids were trying to be stupid with the Google Home the other day, and they tried to have it play a poop song.
01:25:22
Speaker
They said, okay, Google, play the poop song.
01:25:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:25:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:27
Speaker
And there was all sorts of noise interference going on.
01:25:31
Speaker
It said, okay, playing the pinball podcast episode, I think it was like 19 or nine or something.
01:25:37
Speaker
We have one that's called poop bumper.
01:25:39
Speaker
And yeah, everyone had a good laugh about that one.
01:25:44
Speaker
All of a sudden it said, you're listening to the pinball podcast with Don and Jeff.
01:25:48
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:25:48
Speaker
That is fantastic.
01:25:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:50
Speaker
My kids were, were talking to Alexa and it ended up being like,
01:25:54
Speaker
There's a, it's like the toilet bowl guys or something.
01:25:58
Speaker
It was like poop and pee on the toilet seat.
01:25:59
Speaker
So they played that for like a week straight.
01:26:02
Speaker
Comedy gold.
01:26:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:04
Speaker
It's, it's, it's gold, Jerry.
01:26:09
Speaker
Well, on that high note, I think we should sign off.
01:26:14
Speaker
If you're still listening, then I feel sorry for you.
01:26:20
Speaker
So, all righty guys.
01:26:23
Speaker
Later.
01:26:23
Speaker
All right.
01:26:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:24
Speaker
Sounds good.
01:26:25
Speaker
I need to grab some stuff because I'm flying out tomorrow.
01:26:28
Speaker
So, all right.
01:26:30
Speaker
Okay.
01:26:30
Speaker
Good luck.
01:26:31
Speaker
Thanks.
01:26:31
Speaker
See you guys.
01:26:32
Speaker
Bye.