Transcript
Speaker: Thank you for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
Speaker: This is episode 33.
Speaker: Scott, we are knocking it out of the park.
Speaker: We've done, what, three episodes in a week?
Speaker: This is crazy, man.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Well, I think I don't really have anything else to do except for talk pinball.
Speaker: So that's why I keep texting you.
Speaker: It's like, hey, do you want to record?
Speaker: Hey, it works.
Speaker: I don't, it doesn't bother me one bit.
Speaker: So, uh, I might be a little busier.
Speaker: I've got little old ladies with no hot water.
Speaker: And so I get to get out of the house every once in a while, but, uh,
Speaker: I had Friday off, you had Friday off, and our guest is joining us.
Speaker: You want to introduce him, Mr. Scott?
Speaker: We have us Josh Sharp, who is not Zach, but he is Josh, and he is part two of the Sharp legacy in pinball, and currently he is the one who is driving the bus on competitive pinball while he works his side gig at Raw Thrills.
Speaker: How are you doing today, Josh?
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: I think I'm more like part seven.
Speaker: My dad usually takes up at least six parts.
Speaker: Well, that's just the interview part.
Speaker: I want to do a disclaimer right now, though.
Speaker: Teolis, just because we had him on second to his dad does not mean he's second to everyone else.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Look at you guys just falling into this.
Speaker: How much did he pay you?
Speaker: Tell me.
Speaker: How much did he pay you?
Speaker: Well, he bribed us by having us on his podcast.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Well, you want to talk bidets, man.
Speaker: Jeff and Scott, you get those two together.
Speaker: They talk about their tushy for hours on end.
Speaker: Hey, actually, what we did, so speaking, since you're in the home business, we actually spent all week ripping out our old toilets and putting in new ones.
Speaker: So that's what I've been doing at home while I've not been working.
Speaker: Dang.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The porcelain throne wasn't enough for you.
Speaker: You had to upgrade, huh?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Whoever built the house, they actually used the crappiest toilets.
Speaker: And I use that intentionally.
Speaker: They are the worst ever.
Speaker: And I'm serious.
Speaker: You would try to flush down a tissue piece of paper and it would it would clog.
Speaker: So I got tired of every other day.
Speaker: My kids calling is like, Dad, the toilet's plugged.
Speaker: Well, my job, though, I get called and like, check out this toilet.
Speaker: It can suck down a golf ball.
Speaker: I don't know why I'd have a golf ball in their toilet for, but OK.
Speaker: They should check their diet.
Speaker: That's not really how fiber is supposed to work.
Speaker: I got a one year old.
Speaker: I think there's been plenty of things larger than golf balls in toilets here lately.
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: I remember my nine-year-old flushed his favorite Ninja Turtles toy because he thought it was going in a swimming pool, but then he realized as soon as he flushed it, it wasn't coming back, and there was tears for 30 minutes straight.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: Wait, that wasn't your kid.
Speaker: That was you.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: My favorite is the complete roll of toilet paper.
Speaker: When I see that just soaked up and completely waterlogged and just come on, come on, children.
Speaker: And of course they leave it there.
Speaker: They don't actually do anything.
Speaker: Once it passes the rim, they're like, I'm out.
Speaker: That's the job.
Speaker: I'm up and I'm upstairs in my bedroom.
Speaker: I have no idea what went on downstairs.
Speaker: To the single people you will never know right now, the frustration of being in the coronavirus as something as valuable as toilet paper going down the toilet as you're running towards it to save it.
Speaker: You never thought in your life you would scream at someone for flushing toilet paper.
Speaker: Okay, we're off the rails already.
Speaker: It's crazy already.
Speaker: Meanwhile...
Speaker: do the Monty Python and for something completely different now.
Speaker: Okay, Josh.
Speaker: So give us an update.
Speaker: What have you been up to?
Speaker: Obviously you are in the arcade industry and life has changed radically over the last two months for you.
Speaker: So give us an update on that.
Speaker: Working, uh, working from the home basement now.
Speaker: And yeah, our business, our business is obviously a fraction of, of what it has been.
Speaker: So we're kind of in, uh,
Speaker: The way our COO explains it, we're kind of back in startup mode.
Speaker: So, you know, for us, we don't really have anything that we can sell to people right now.
Speaker: So we're in the process of development of, you know, the next generation of products for, you know, what we're thinking our industry is going to look like.
Speaker: And then, you know, branching out to other avenues, whether it be mobile, console, whatever, to try to pay them bills, guys.
Speaker: It's tough.
Speaker: Now, Raw Thrills typically has been basically arcade-centric or Ticket Redemption or Dave & Busters or all those type of things.
Speaker: Do you have a significant home sell market like pinball does?
Speaker: Not, I mean, not like pinball does.
Speaker: Our buck hunters, you know, get sold a lot through to home game rooms.
Speaker: And I think, you know, our games are so big
Speaker: the level of buyer it would take to bring home a twin driving game or one of our bigger environmental games.
Speaker: We'll usually see game rooms of celebrities that have them.
Speaker: But beyond that, they're expensive and they take up a lot of space.
Speaker: So it kind of limits the ability for a pinball machine.
Speaker: As long as you have a three by five square foot of space, you're kind of okay.
Speaker: What is the future?
Speaker: I know we were kind of talking about coronavirus.
Speaker: Some of the sanctions are kind of being lifted.
Speaker: What's it looking like for you guys when you can start getting back to work?
Speaker: I mean, for us personally, you know, and I guess we share this with Stern, our production lines are down now until June 1st with the governor's order yesterday.
Speaker: And, you know, for us, you know, June 1st, you know, besides the games, we haven't finished inventory.
Speaker: We have
Speaker: you know, to get our production line back up and running, it's tough to know at what rate, you know, the market, the capacity for the market is going to be sitting at.
Speaker: So, for example, like I'll joke with my wife, like on June 1st, if they say you can go to Chuck E. Cheese, you know, what percentage of moms out there are like, heck no, we're not going to Chuck E. Cheese family.
Speaker: Are you guys crazy?
Speaker: That at some point, you know, is that like,
Speaker: One in four moms is probably like, there's no way we're going.
Speaker: And so that limits your ability.
Speaker: Now your maximum market is 75% of what it used to be.
Speaker: So at some point, there's going to be some new level.
Speaker: Everyone talks about the new normal.
Speaker: I think there's also going to be a new normal with respect to the earnings potential based on who's going to be venturing out to these family entertainment centers for entertainment.
Speaker: Well, and the other scary part too is I don't know about up in your neck of the woods, but they were talking down here, like a lot of the bars can start opening back up, but they won't be allowed to have arcades in use.
Speaker: And so it's like, well, what does a barcade do when your business is the arcade?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think so much of that is unknown.
Speaker: And I think it's going to be one of those things where, where, you know, barcades will try and open and either they'll be, you know, thinking
Speaker: it's like, we think we passed these tests and it's like, it turns out we don't, we're back to shut down.
Speaker: And I know like, you know, bowling alleys also have game rooms and where, you know, family entertainment centers fall, you know, are they, are they considered like movie theater level of a venue?
Speaker: I would say we're certainly far from an essential business.
Speaker: So it'll just, I mean, we're just as,
Speaker: as anxious to find out those answers.
Speaker: It's really hard to speculate because it's kind of unspeculable, speculatable, whatever that word is.
Speaker: It's yeah, the best thing we can do is just put our heads down and keep developing the best product we can and then just find a way to push that to the market through some medium.
Speaker: So when you guys are up and running, how many games do you typically produce on your assembly line every day?
Speaker: uh it's about 40 a day okay that's usually our average i know that i mean i joked that with some of our our vendors who we shut down you know i know we've been taking in you know about 200 sets of parts a week and this month we sold three games so the the ability to there's gonna be sometime even on june 1st that you know to get the production line up and running it's uh
Speaker: It's what my boss calls the 99% F in purchasing and production.
Speaker: If you're missing anything, you're not building anything.
Speaker: So there'll be some bumps in the road to making sure that we're expediting all of our parts back into production to be able to start building again after shutting everyone down so we don't have to pay bills.
Speaker: And do you have a similar distribution like international and local, you know, 40% international, 60% local or something along those lines?
Speaker: Yeah, ours is really, it depends on the game line.
Speaker: So, you know, depending on the game line, China is a pretty significant portion of our business where we'll actually export kits out to China and they'll build and sell to China and neighboring, you know, neighboring Far East countries out there.
Speaker: But it's a pretty, you know, 50 domestic, 50 everywhere else is about where we're at.
Speaker: Are there certain titles that do appeal more outside the States than they do inside the States?
Speaker: MotoGP, our motorcycle game, was definitely more Europe-centric than in the U.S. I know it's a huge brand in Europe, and I had not heard of it when we got the license.
Speaker: I had never heard of it before, and that certainly shows in our sales of that product line.
Speaker: You know, after watching Ford versus Ferrari, I can attest that I didn't realize how big racing was.
Speaker: I mean, this is even the 60s.
Speaker: I mean, racing is a huge thing back there in Europe and stuff like that.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: I think here in America, we kind of like, it's just NASCAR, you know.
Speaker: It amazes me.
Speaker: They just set up these racetracks in the middle of the city.
Speaker: When I was in Europe 10 years ago or so, we couldn't go into Monaco because they had the race.
Speaker: The whole city was shut down and was turned into a race course.
Speaker: which I just find unbelievable that they're rocketing around 200 miles an hour on these narrow streets and just missing all these buildings by inches.
Speaker: It's crazy to me.
Speaker: I think we tend to try and grab as many universal licenses as we can.
Speaker: I think Stern went through that when they got the NASCAR license and you realize it's a big license in the US and then outside of the US, which is half their market,
Speaker: it was a tough sell.
Speaker: And that's when you see, you know, them making the grand prix version of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To be able to satisfy that market.
Speaker: So, you know, you definitely, if you, if you pick a property to do a game with that is kind of centric somewhere, you just limit the opportunity for, you know, the number of units you can move.
Speaker: So let me ask you this, Josh.
Speaker: There's a lot of naysayers out there.
Speaker: There's you hear the rumors, you hear the rumors of, you know,
Speaker: a teenage mutant turtles pinball machine coming out and whether you know that or not we're not going to ask you that but we do know that ralph raw thrills released a teenage mutant turtles game does that game have world appeal it does it sell yeah really for us and i mean i told you guys off air i can tell you on air that once we uh when we launched the game the first you know the first three months into selling it it was like holy mo like
Speaker: We were surprised at the strength of the license.
Speaker: It was a lower budget game for us, and we were still excited to try an old-fashioned joystick brawler as sort of a new genre for us to enter.
Speaker: We were kind of driving and shooting game-centric.
Speaker: So for us, we felt like any Turtles sales were going to be new sales for us.
Speaker: People weren't choosing between the three drivers we had available at the time.
Speaker: This was going to be a new sale.
Speaker: And I can remember talking to Jody briefly after we launched our game that they got to get this license because there's some power behind the brand without a doubt.
Speaker: And we're still selling it today.
Speaker: I remember the first time I saw it because I, you know, I typically when I go to these kiddie gambling places, I'm usually not interested in most of those things because it's get 500 tickets and you get a whistle or something like that.
Speaker: But I looked over and I saw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game and I thought,
Speaker: hey, I want to play this.
Speaker: This looks like a lot of fun.
Speaker: And so it took me back to, you know, my eight to 12 year old days when you went into the arcade and you saw that brawler game and you'd never seen anything like it.
Speaker: It was like, wow, this is really cool.
Speaker: And it's certainly not it's not really skill intensive.
Speaker: You're just smashing buttons, but it's just so much fun.
Speaker: There's something about it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, just looking back and I have all of our sales history here and it's like,
Speaker: the fastest game we ever had to that to a thousand, like the first thousand units out the door.
Speaker: It was one of the fastest we ever had.
Speaker: Just it blew it out of the box when it started.
Speaker: That is awesome.
Speaker: Well, and I look at, so I have a nine year old, he's going to be 10 here in December.
Speaker: And I grew up on the Konami games, the, uh,
Speaker: Teenage Mutant Turtles number two, which was on the Nintendo, which was called the arcade game.
Speaker: And then Turtles in Time.
Speaker: I love those games.
Speaker: And then my son has grown up with the newer generation, the Nickelodeon.
Speaker: We have the full series on our digital library.
Speaker: And so when we went to a bowling alley and saw this game there,
Speaker: That's the only thing he wanted to do.
Speaker: And so we played Ninja Turtles for 30 minutes plus just dumping quarters in this thing.
Speaker: It's a fantastic game.
Speaker: It's cool to see something so predominant from my childhood is now reflecting on my own child's childhood.
Speaker: For us, it was, with all of our games being so big, the ability for that game to be, especially in FECs where
Speaker: where really people are usually on timed play and racing around to play as much as they can, and you're left with playing anything that's open.
Speaker: It was a high-capacity game because it was a four-player game in a small footprint.
Speaker: So the earnings in that game were amazing because you were able to get $4 at a time per play for a lot of the metrics that those FECs use is earnings per square foot.
Speaker: So, you know, our giant Halo four-player game that's like an 11 foot by 11 foot, you know, square feet space it takes up, you know, you could fit six turtles in the space that that happens.
Speaker: And the earnings per square foot were off the chain for turtles for sure.
Speaker: Well, if you can find a way of scaling that down a little bit, I would be able to sneak it next to one of my pinball machines because I love having a little bit of variety in my game room.
Speaker: But right now I think that would hit the ceiling.
Speaker: I'll tell you what, man, we're, uh, we're looking, uh, if I would love to be able to offer, you know, that content we have, we have a great, you know, 45 minute game there with a ton of fun that, uh,
Speaker: We're actively working on trying to get that into the home one way or another.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, shoot me a message and I'll be your first buyer.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Deal.
Speaker: Well, and they're wonderful games.
Speaker: They really are.
Speaker: My son and I, it always seems like we live in a small town and even our Walmart here has a Rothrails Jurassic Park shooter.
Speaker: And we've dumped enough quarters in that thing to beat the game.
Speaker: And it's just it's a blast to play.
Speaker: I got my son addicted to Halo.
Speaker: As soon as he saw the Halo game, we had to play that when we were out at a bowling alley out in
Speaker: the city.
Speaker: It just, they're fun games.
Speaker: And if you could bring them to a home market, that would be amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a little, you know, for us, the balancing act in terms of, you know, our games are really focused on providing fun to a casual player quickly, because we know we kind of only have, you know, for those people that play once about three minutes for those people that are willing to, to invest, you know, most average people play about 10 minutes.
Speaker: So, you know, you'll get two or three continues, but there's definitely a,
Speaker: a depth component to home gaming that I think we'd probably have to dive back into our software a little bit to make the longevity of that home game ownership a little bit more appetizing.
Speaker: But it's all being discussed daily on our now Slack channel that was created when everyone went home.
Speaker: You know, the amazing thing, though, about my game room is that, yes, it's certainly pinball heavy, but I also have an air hockey table.
Speaker: I have a shooter game.
Speaker: I have one of those slide things.
Speaker: And having just something that people come down, some people are intimidated by pinball because really a lot of times, and we talked about this last time with your dad, is that a lot of people younger than our generation never saw pinball in the wild.
Speaker: They never did.
Speaker: And, but when they see something like a, a button master or some sort of cooperative play, they immediately are drawn to it because they think I can do this and it's not gonna, it's not above my skillset, which is basically nothing, but they, they always go to those first, which is interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'd agree with that.
Speaker: I see that when, uh, we hosted my son's birthday party here a few years ago and, and
Speaker: I've never had to show so many kids how to start a game, and it's like, all right, hit the start button, and they're just standing there.
Speaker: It's like, oh, now you pull this, and then the ball goes in.
Speaker: And it's like they pull it, and the ball is just bouncing around.
Speaker: It's like, oh, no, now you have to use these buttons on the side, and then that hits the ball back up.
Speaker: I mean, it's like, oh, my God, come on.
Speaker: I was just like, you play an Xbox controller that has how many buttons on it?
Speaker: My favorite is there's a flashing light button that says start and they stare at the machine for 30 seconds saying, how do I start this?
Speaker: My favorite is the comparison to the Xbox and PlayStation controllers where like now there's way too many buttons for me to know what's going on and to see these kids struggle with like a start button and two buttons.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: We even like the JJPs though, too.
Speaker: When you haven't touched any for a little bit, it flashes in big letters on the screen.
Speaker: It shows you what the start button looks like.
Speaker: Press here and then pull the plunger this way.
Speaker: But I guess that's what we've come to, right?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Now, Josh, you have been in the gaming industry your entire life, basically.
Speaker: All of it.
Speaker: Every second.
Speaker: And so how, see, that seems to be the dream.
Speaker: Anybody in my generation, I guarantee they watch Silver Spoons and they saw all the games that they had in their big room and they thought, that's awesome.
Speaker: I would love to grow up like that.
Speaker: But you did.
Speaker: Like, how was that?
Speaker: It was as awesome as you would think.
Speaker: The like, I've told the story before, but like the only thing I missed out on was, was the story of finding pinball that everyone seems to have, you know, my dad talks about his memory of finding pinball in college or whatever.
Speaker: And like, I don't have that story of like,
Speaker: You know, I was in a bowling league with my dad when I was eight and I was waiting for him to finish.
Speaker: And I saw Dr. Dude over in the corner and I just walked up to it.
Speaker: And there was, you know, that story that seems to be like just permanently embedded in at least the people that maintain pinball in their lives.
Speaker: It obviously had a strong enough hold that it carried their interest forward.
Speaker: Like I have none of that.
Speaker: Like I have, I have photo albums that my dad's given to me of me, you know, standing and playing and I don't remember being that young.
Speaker: So it's, uh, yeah, it goes back before all memories that I have.
Speaker: Over the years being involved with Bally Williams and Midway, you know, and then both being in video games and in pinball, um, there's, there's a lot of diversity in your childhood and,
Speaker: I know that they talked about you were in the Mortal Kombat.
Speaker: You and your brother, Zach, were in the Mortal Kombat advertisement growing up.
Speaker: Where have your tastes land?
Speaker: Do you have more preference over one over the other?
Speaker: Pinball versus arcade games?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I would say definitely we're a more pinball-leaning family.
Speaker: I mean, I work not in pinball.
Speaker: I work on the arcade side.
Speaker: But, you know, I spend...
Speaker: just as much time on the hobby side of with pinball.
Speaker: I know that like, I loved NBA jam when I was a kid, that was kind of my jam.
Speaker: I had my junior high partner in crime, Bert Tong.
Speaker: We'd go to the arcade and play four player games against anyone who was willing.
Speaker: So, you know, I definitely loved arcade games as well.
Speaker: And, you know, through a lot of the relationships my dad had when he was back at Williams Valley Midway,
Speaker: you know, we were getting so much in the home console space through the Midway games that were coming on the console.
Speaker: He was getting, you know, other games from that same publisher and whatnot.
Speaker: So, you know, we were often at home playing with Zach and my dad and calling the Nintendo Power Hotline for help.
Speaker: I mean, we were definitely a game family.
Speaker: And I think, you know, as I've gotten older and
Speaker: realize like how special pinball is as a medium i think it's stood the test of time to me as something that is special more special than uh you know arcade games where like now you have like name cabinets what the recreation of an arcade experience is much easier and the recreation of a pinball experience is impossible
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: You cannot simulate a pinball machine.
Speaker: You can try, but it's just not the same thing.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: So who was your team on NBA Jam?
Speaker: We, I mean, we played the Bulls a lot because I was a kid.
Speaker: It was a kid in Chicago with the Jordan years.
Speaker: It was tough to pass up, but I would always type in ROG and then 8148 and play as my old man in tournament edition, at least.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that was a code.
Speaker: I didn't know about this code.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And now working with, you know, a lot of the raw, too many of the Raw Thrills guys were around back in the old midway days.
Speaker: So it's hilarious to be able to enter codes and be like, oh, my God, I work with that guy.
Speaker: You know, there's some 30-year-old version of himself in the game.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: My daughter, seriously, the other day, we were playing a game and she shouted out, boom, shakalaka.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is funny because I don't think I've ever played NBA Jam with her, but it was hilarious and she's five.
Speaker: So if if I wasn't as pinball obsessed as I was, I'd be getting one of the NBA Jam one up machines for sure for my basement.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, they look good.
Speaker: You'll just have to put in your bedroom.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: OK, but that's pretty tight.
Speaker: I have the four player TMNT game and getting four people around that is pretty tight.
Speaker: Yeah, I can believe it.
Speaker: I can believe it.
Speaker: You need a Rothrills NBA Jam.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: It's like you're playing basketball with your buddies because you're so close, you're sweating on each other.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Being from Utah, I can respect the Jordan years, but I'm like, man, if Jordan wasn't around, I think Utah would have been a powerhouse back then.
Speaker: There's a lot of teams through the 90s that if only it wasn't for Michael Jordan.
Speaker: Well, Barkley didn't get his ring.
Speaker: Those Knicks teams were awesome back then.
Speaker: The Reggie Miller Pacer teams.
Speaker: Yeah, it was all the oxygen in the room was sucked out of out of basketball by one guy.
Speaker: I'm enjoying I'm enjoying reliving all that with the last dance documentary going on right now.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: It just wasn't one guy, though.
Speaker: It wasn't one guy because look at Jordan came.
Speaker: He left and they came back with the Washington Wizards and take what you will from it.
Speaker: But he had a great team that surrounded him, too.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, no.
Speaker: Well, it's absolutely true.
Speaker: And that's what's amazing when I hear more about the last dance is that they they were basically planning on ending the team.
Speaker: They knew that was the last last year, which just shocks me.
Speaker: It's like, why would you ever try to break up the team?
Speaker: You guys are dominating.
Speaker: Egos.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Look at the Golden State Warriors right now, man.
Speaker: Well, the Golden State Warriors went through a similar thing where you could tell last year that they were running on fumes.
Speaker: They were still dominating, but they were impending for a breakup.
Speaker: You know, though, if you would have told 12-year-old Josh that in 20 years that the LA Clippers were going to be becoming a dominating team in the NBA, I would have laughed at you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I still laugh a little bit about it.
Speaker: It's like, why wouldn't you change the name?
Speaker: It's the stupidest name.
Speaker: Like why you're like, I want to, I want to name a team where you could brand it and sell it to everybody.
Speaker: Let's name it the Clippers.
Speaker: Like who won that?
Speaker: Who won that marketing pitch?
Speaker: I don't get it.
Speaker: Oh, you'll have to read the – this is a total side tangent.
Speaker: I apologize, but I can't remember what it's called now.
Speaker: But there's a story of the gentleman that bought the LA Clippers, the one that's famous for the things that happened, what, 10 years ago of his racist comments.
Speaker: Sterling.
Speaker: Yeah, Sterling.
Speaker: You got to listen to it.
Speaker: It's ESPN –
Speaker: Like off the court or something like that.
Speaker: It's the Sterling story.
Speaker: It's only five.
Speaker: It's a podcast.
Speaker: I know you guys are listening to podcasts.
Speaker: So just go download it.
Speaker: It's very, very interesting.
Speaker: It makes you wonder what the heck happened for this guy to even stay in business as long as he did.
Speaker: But I'm going to I'm going to bring it back onto the rails here.
Speaker: Josh, with pinball ending, almost ending in 1999, what do you think made it survive?
Speaker: I know we all said that Stern was able to keep it alive, but how was that even accomplished, especially at that point in time?
Speaker: I mean, I think, and I mean, from the IFPA side, I've seen it with our organization during any sort of like dark times, like the number of pinball, competitive pinball doesn't need new games to exist.
Speaker: I think
Speaker: it needs new games to help expand and bring in, you know, new people that need to find it.
Speaker: But like, to me, competitive pinball, you know, survived through all of that anyway.
Speaker: They're just, and you see it now with games like how many, how many games at Pinberg are, you know, of the most recent vintage, you know, out of the 400 games they use, you know, maybe, maybe 30, 20, you know, how many new games have been made the last three years that, I mean, at some point, you know, the difference,
Speaker: between new games entering the market or not, there's such a rich history of games available.
Speaker: It's kind of just a really small percentage of new equipment that ends up being added to sort of the landscape.
Speaker: I mean, as far as the industry side of things, I mean, I think the closure in 99 was more about public companies needing to show certain things to their shareholders.
Speaker: And I mean, I see that with, you know, Gary taking Stern public, you know, away from Sega at that time.
Speaker: And really, you know, 99, the closure of Williams Valley Midway led to Raw Thrills being created.
Speaker: So, you know, there's a group at Raw Thrills that were into arcade and it's like, hey, you know, there isn't a big enough industry here to carry, you know,
Speaker: what's needed for midway shareholders to, to, you know, make the dollars they need to, you know, they were, they were focusing on, on mobile and whatever at that time.
Speaker: But, uh, there was certainly enough money to be made in the industry for a, a smaller right-sized company within it.
Speaker: Now you, uh, you talked about competitive pinball.
Speaker: Now you're really the, the driver behind the, I guess the,
Speaker: the codification and the, uh, the resurrection of the IFPA.
Speaker: Tell us about that.
Speaker: And what was your driving force on that?
Speaker: Uh, the, I mean, it all started, I've been playing competitively since 93 and have really, people have taken my quote out of context in terms of like, I really love playing pinball competitively far more than I like playing pinball for fun.
Speaker: And I still love playing pinball for fun.
Speaker: You know, I'll play every day down here in my basement.
Speaker: But I think there was an inability, certainly back then, you'd run into, you know, and being a high level player, you run into, you know, one or two times a year where you were able to get these group of high class players in the same room to battle it out.
Speaker: it was clear that that was not happening enough to satisfy, you know, my competitive urges and, and the competitive urges of many of the other top players.
Speaker: And, you know, that's kind of how the, the world pinball player rankings system started.
Speaker: It was, it was created as a way for, for the top level players to be able to indirectly compete with one another.
Speaker: So, you know, while we may back then, you know, we may only meet at,
Speaker: at Pinball Expo and Papa and that's it, you know, for the year, you know, there was, there was no chance for any other way for us to directly play against each other.
Speaker: But now there was a way for us to, you know, earn, earn ranking points through our own local play and be able to find some way of comparing myself to people in Europe who maybe didn't even go to Expo or Papa.
Speaker: And I'd never, I had no idea who they were.
Speaker: So that really opened up the system, you know, finding a way to indirectly compete with everyone was really like this launching pad for, you know, I think growing interest in the sport.
Speaker: And, you know, shortly after seeing that, like the world ranking system was something that, you know, was moving beyond me tracking results that I could find on the internet into an Excel document,
Speaker: the, uh, you know, we started getting people who were into volunteering their time and also competitive pinball fans like, like Brian Shepard on our side, who moved everything over to our website and, and moved all of the score recordings to a database that, uh, you know, I talked with my dad about sort of helping rather than there being a ranking system from some kid sitting in his cube.
Speaker: And, you know, I was, I was Roger Sharp's son, but I wasn't much more than that back then was, uh,
Speaker: using my dad's help to reach out to the then owners of the IFPA brand who had left it dormant.
Speaker: And back then, the two world championships that were being run in the 90s were Papa and IFPA.
Speaker: And the IFPA brand was sort of left dormant.
Speaker: And we reached out to them about negotiating those rights for us to be able to use that brand and sort of run the world pinball player rankings under it.
Speaker: And my dad was able to work out a deal with the AMOA, who was the group that an industry trade group that still had the rights to the IPA.
Speaker: They created it back in the 90s to help operators.
Speaker: And they signed it over to us.
Speaker: And we started rolling with that ever since.
Speaker: Shortly after the world rankings came out, it was probably a few months that we kind of, we knew, I felt comfortable that we had something here.
Speaker: You know, a lot of the responses from the high level players were,
Speaker: were insanely positive back then and off we went.
Speaker: So I'm a very average player and to get to that next level to that, uh, that B and A division, what are the things that you would tell me to become a better player?
Speaker: Playable play a lot is by far the number one, number one thing.
Speaker: And not only play a lot for fun, but play
Speaker: Put yourself into as many competitive situations as possible.
Speaker: And I feel like the, you know, local, the backbone of local events are really key for this.
Speaker: You know, it's one thing to sit and blow up games in your basement and you have a ball one and you hold start, you start over.
Speaker: There's something to learning to deal with having to execute in moments as a competitive player that you very rarely have to put up the best game you've ever played in a tournament.
Speaker: you're more often than not put into situations where, you know, if you can just start this one feature, you've won the match.
Speaker: And you may not even needed to have had a good game to reach that feature.
Speaker: But the moment in time that you're trying to control the ball to then make the shot to trigger this feature, like those are the moments that will take you to the next level in terms of being able to execute to your potential, you know, in tournament play.
Speaker: I kind of want to expound on that too, because, uh, you know, it also teaches you not only to have a plan a, I think a lot of times when you're, when you're playing in your basement or whatnot, you always focus on plan a, when a tournament situation, you, you have to have a plan B and a plan C. So if you're not hitting the T-Rex shot on Jurassic park, like you should be, you know, you've, you've got another opportunity of me going for the chaos letters.
Speaker: Cause you're shooting ramps or, you know, you're shooting other stuff a little bit better.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: That was just another thought that came to my mind while you were talking about that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And situational play and situational strategy is a huge, you know, if I go up to Adam's family and all I do is, is want to tour the mansion because that's how I've been playing the game since I was 12.
Speaker: You know, if you're down by, you know, 9 million going into your last ball, you don't need the tour to tour the mansion to win.
Speaker: So you start bringing, you know, other things into play, like, you know,
Speaker: side ramp and swap a couple of times and you're done.
Speaker: Like, so, and you wouldn't think of that if you were just, you know, one track plan A in mind.
Speaker: That brings up a good point too, because I was playing in a tournament once and we were playing on Stargate and it was like, I was behind by a million, but I realized if I just hit the skill shot perfectly, I wouldn't have to play my ball.
Speaker: I didn't, because I was the fourth player.
Speaker: And so I was able to hit the skill shot.
Speaker: And if I wasn't thinking, I would have breezed right past, I would just plunge and start playing, right?
Speaker: And so it gives you other ways to realize, hey, there's more than one ways to skin a cat, I guess is the saying.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think, you know, obviously...
Speaker: in order to formulate those plan A, Bs and Cs, which are so important, you know, you need to know the rules of the game.
Speaker: And I think that's where, you know, the internet and the tutorials and everything that's available out there, the deep dives into game rules, like you used to have to play the game to figure that out yourself.
Speaker: I can remember back,
Speaker: you know, in the 90s, like Pinball Expo, the tournament was always on the newest released game.
Speaker: You were literally, you know, kind of redefining your strategies while waiting in the qualifying line, watching the people that were playing, talking to the other people in line.
Speaker: I mean, you had no outlet to be able to gain that knowledge outside of physically playing the game in an event.
Speaker: It makes me chuckle, too, because I'll have people come over to my basement and I can sometimes overwhelm them.
Speaker: I feel like I've got three very basic games.
Speaker: I've got Attack from Mars.
Speaker: I've got Monster Bash and I've got World Cup Soccer 94.
Speaker: And, you know, some World Cup's the best for beginning people.
Speaker: I have one and it'll never leave.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: But I take them, you know, they saddle up to Monster Bash right now because it's the shiniest, brightest one that gets your attention.
Speaker: How do I play this?
Speaker: Well, you shoot all the shots.
Speaker: I don't know how to put it, you know, because in that game, you're just trying to obtain the monsters.
Speaker: And so they're like, well, how do I obtain a monster?
Speaker: And you start explaining like each ramp is the bride and the orbits are the werewolf.
Speaker: And they look at you because they don't know what an orbit is.
Speaker: They don't know what a,
Speaker: a Vuck is, you know?
Speaker: And so you just, they look at you and they'll say, how do you remember all this?
Speaker: And you're like, and it changes from each game to each game, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I actually, I love, on purpose, I kind of don't explain the games down here to my kids and I've, I've really enjoyed, I'll watch them play and I enjoy watching them figure stuff out.
Speaker: It's like the high, the highlight for me when I can hear, you know, Colin explaining to Charlotte, I have a monster bash also.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: Explaining to her how, you know, they understood how to get Frankenstein and the stuff that's kind of really easy to understand, like hit the Dracula targets enough time and you get it in the hole for Dracula.
Speaker: And my daughter was not understanding how Bride worked because she's physically over on the left ramp.
Speaker: So she didn't understand that you needed both ramps to start her mode and to hear, you know, my son had figured that out and hear him, my eight-year-old son explaining to my six-year-old daughter how to get it started is just like, you know, I'm in heaven listening to that stuff.
Speaker: So that brings me to the next point is that so you were able to start this thing because you didn't have that at least you still have that itch for competitive play.
Speaker: And so you started up the IFPA or resurrected it.
Speaker: And that's that's a lot of work for you.
Speaker: So at some point that I know that you get beat up a lot with all the rule changes and everything you're trying to do to redefine things.
Speaker: At some point, I would say, man, like these ungrateful brats.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Like I'm doing this for everybody, including myself.
Speaker: And all I get is is feedback.
Speaker: Like, how do you deal with that?
Speaker: Because I think at some point I would say, you know what?
Speaker: I'm out of here.
Speaker: You guys you guys think.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I'd probably have an unhealthy sense of, I don't know, something's wrong with me.
Speaker: Like the amount that I love, probably like the negative feedback.
Speaker: But to me, what's worse than negative feedback is nothing, no feedback.
Speaker: Like to me, that shows, you know, a very strong passionate interest in the sport.
Speaker: And that's just something that I appreciate.
Speaker: So, and most of the time, you know, the people, I don't think people realize that the amount of thought that goes into the changes that we make, that I sort of, I joke that I love the hate because, you know, most people are bringing up
Speaker: things that we brought up internally and then had worked through, whether it was running simulations, which we used to do for changes to the system, we would copy over all the results and then run it the new way and then be like, oh my God, this looks like garbage.
Speaker: I don't understand why it sounds so great in theory.
Speaker: So everyone's complaints, it was more often than not that we
Speaker: we had those exact same proposals and then proved how terrible they would have been if we would have enacted them.
Speaker: And, and so, so for me, I can laugh that like, you know, we've already done that homework, even if people haven't realized it.
Speaker: So, but more often than not, you know, it's, it's that vocal minority, the, the same five people that, you know, as soon as back in the day, every time that we jumped a, uh,
Speaker: a system to a new rev or whatever, it'd be like, you know, I'd get the emails and we'd see the posts on, you know, well, RGP back in the day, there was no pin side, but you know, this is it now, now I'm done with competitive pinball.
Speaker: I can't believe you guys are doing this again.
Speaker: And then, you know, we changed the system a year later and it's like, that's it.
Speaker: Now I'm out.
Speaker: And it's like, but you, I thought you were out last, last year.
Speaker: What happened?
Speaker: You stuck around.
Speaker: I can't believe it.
Speaker: Like it's so it's all in the noise to me.
Speaker: It seems like all the people who says, if that person gets elected, I'm moving out of America.
Speaker: Right, that's right.
Speaker: I'm moving to Canada.
Speaker: I'm moving to Europe.
Speaker: I still have yet to see you guys move anywhere.
Speaker: It's just interesting.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: It's all bark, no bite.
Speaker: So you are ready to announce the $5 buy-in for all tournaments on this show, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Not yet.
Speaker: Not quite.
Speaker: Although we may have some
Speaker: Some fee announcements coming if we ever come back.
Speaker: There's some stuff on the horizon, but nothing $5 related.
Speaker: I found it that you have brought it up before, and I totally agree with you when you talk about the competitive aspect of it, when you're trying to reach a new audience.
Speaker: Like, the award matters.
Speaker: When people, and your dad was talking about it last week with us, is that when they had tournaments, they gave away a Datsun 280.
Speaker: That just seems crazy.
Speaker: I mean, that would be like, hey, we're going to give a Mustang out for the winner of this tournament.
Speaker: Who wouldn't want to compete?
Speaker: But I completely agree with you when you have all these other competitive scenes out there and they say, oh, you worked really hard.
Speaker: You spent all this money to be a great pinball player.
Speaker: What did you get?
Speaker: Well, I got a $2,000 prize or I got a $500 prize or something like that where it's not even sustainable, really.
Speaker: You're still losing money by competing.
Speaker: And occasionally, yeah, if you're really good, you win a game.
Speaker: But still, that's, you know, that's five thousand dollars after you have invested probably at least that much just to get good or to travel or anything like that.
Speaker: And so, yes, being able to find that market.
Speaker: So, yes, there is a big carrot at the end.
Speaker: If you win, you will get rewarded.
Speaker: So the real question Scott's trying to ask, Josh, when is the IFPA going to start forking out the money for Mustangs and Camaros?
Speaker: Unfortunately, we don't keep any of those dollars that come in, so it's going to be a while.
Speaker: Maybe we can find some outside sponsorship.
Speaker: Wait, I thought you took your $100,000 per year cut, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I may have to start keeping it, depending on where this Rothrill business goes.
Speaker: Well, I'll introduce you to two guys, Martin Robbins and Jeff Teolis.
Speaker: They're fantastic at getting high-dollar sponsors.
Speaker: Oh, I heard it.
Speaker: I heard it.
Speaker: So that is one thing to emphasize, too, is like you do this out of your passion, which I still find unbelievable that in many ways you're actually self-funding some of this stuff just to keep it going.
Speaker: And so if for all the naysayers out there, I say congratulations to your commitment to actually keeping competitive pinball alive, because it takes someone like you who has been so motivated to do this in your spare time when it's not your day job.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think you can probably, through your guys' talks with my dad, you know, I would say it's not surprising if there was someone that was going to be, you know, fighting for the sport with an insane amount of passion, it would probably be my dad's son.
Speaker: So I'm happy to take the mantle from him.
Speaker: And, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I'd say I'd probably enjoy the competitive aspect of it probably more than he does.
Speaker: So if your kids come to you one day and they're all grown up and everything and the mantle is getting ready to be passed and they look at you like, dad, it's just not as cool as air hockey.
Speaker: Are you going to be able to accept them for that?
Speaker: I've gone with the, uh, I've gone with the no pressure approach as a parent.
Speaker: And my dad actually did the same thing with Zach and I, he, he went beyond the no pressure approach.
Speaker: He, he went with the, you're not allowed to play competitively approach.
Speaker: So maybe Zach and my interest in the sport is some sort of like subconscious revolt against our father.
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: I got to go sit on a couch and figure that out probably.
Speaker: I can't remember what documentary it is, but I remember your dad talking about that.
Speaker: It's that documentary where you're – Special one lit.
Speaker: No, it was the Vice documentary.
Speaker: Yeah, the Vice.
Speaker: It's a shorter one, but it's the one where you end up... You're in the tournament and you're swearing and they look at your dad and he's like, that's my son.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This is where you do not insert that clip into your family-friendly podcast.
Speaker: We'll insert just a big old long beep for about four minutes and we'll say, that was the interview or that was the portion of the video.
Speaker: If you'd like to check it out.
Speaker: I think I had...
Speaker: Only when that was filmed, do we even have our first?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I had Colin was super young.
Speaker: I've since gotten much better at the swearing now that I have three kids that my new go-to F word is now fart.
Speaker: So my kids like that a lot.
Speaker: You don't want the elementary school calling.
Speaker: So your son was running around screaming this.
Speaker: Well, we learned that last night.
Speaker: I watched that on this stream and here's what I heard.
Speaker: Actually, speaking of air hockey, I'm not kidding.
Speaker: I want when I first got into pinball, I was really new at it and I just pulled up on Netflix or one of those streaming platforms.
Speaker: And I watched Special Winlet, which is completely depressing because it's like you think pinball is going to die at the end because at the very end they have all these rusted out husks of games out in the, you know, in someone's backyard.
Speaker: And there's another one that's called Way of the Puck.
Speaker: By the way, if you want to know about competitive air hockey, watch, watch Way of the Puck, because that is really interesting.
Speaker: And you're talking commitment by about 10 people who are so into air hockey since 1972.
Speaker: I'll have to.
Speaker: I know there was someone else pointed me to like a foosball documentary that's I think coming out.
Speaker: I think it's new.
Speaker: That is the same thing.
Speaker: It's a deep dive into the competitive world of foosball.
Speaker: And yeah, man, I'm in.
Speaker: I'll definitely I'll check that out.
Speaker: So the one question you you grew up in pinball.
Speaker: I found it later in life.
Speaker: And the question is, and we asked again, Roger, about this last week.
Speaker: Where is the next generation?
Speaker: Because arcades are not there anymore.
Speaker: Like, how do people get exposed to pinball for the next generation?
Speaker: Because all the people who are getting their 80s nostalgia thrill ride because they grew up in the 80s when pinball was everywhere and they're buying up all the licenses, where is it going to be in 10 years when they're
Speaker: those kids never got exposed to pinball.
Speaker: I think, you know, the, I think the nostalgia plays is, is a convenient cop-out even today.
Speaker: I think like I've seen it with, with barcades, especially like there's people that are in their, you know, low twenties that had not seen pinball that are,
Speaker: are finding it through, you know, them venturing out to bars.
Speaker: And I think the other, the other big Avenue is through a video pinball on like mobile and console platforms.
Speaker: I think you're, there's access to pinball as a game that, especially on the mobile side of things, whether it's, you know, Zen studios and Farsight that the access to people learning about the game is way better than you would think.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I'm not worried about the next generation at all, personally.
Speaker: I mean, I think I'm seeing, you know, for the longest time, Zach and I were like the youngest people in competitive pinball.
Speaker: You know, we were, we were the, we were the kids as everyone else that's about 10 years older than us.
Speaker: You know, they were in their twenties in the nineties and Zach and I were in our lower teens.
Speaker: And, you know, we've seen, I mean, you look at the people that are now, you know, top ranked in the world and,
Speaker: There's people that are well under 21, you know, that are the best at this now.
Speaker: So I'm not concerned.
Speaker: I think all the talks of the concerns are like those old talking points that I don't think are as relevant anymore.
Speaker: So Josh, I don't know if your favorite theme has been made yet, but if you could pick any theme for a pinball machine, what would you pick?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Theme doesn't really drive me at all like it does other people.
Speaker: I'm just looking for that complete cohesive package that brings whatever theme to life.
Speaker: So you're one of the people that when we did the Keith Elwin episode and he said he'd do laundry day as his terrible theme.
Speaker: You'd probably buy that if Keith did it?
Speaker: I'm in.
Speaker: Day one.
Speaker: He was even talking about a dryer mechanic that would spin the ball and stuff like that.
Speaker: I was like, he's already got this figured out.
Speaker: I'm in.
Speaker: No hesitation.
Speaker: What are you spending most of your time in your game room on right now?
Speaker: Playing a lot of Jurassic Park.
Speaker: Loving that.
Speaker: I pretty much go around and my kids tell me what they want to play.
Speaker: As they start learning games, they like watching me kind of blow stuff up and get to places they haven't been.
Speaker: With my daughter, it's a lot of Batman 66.
Speaker: With my son, it's a lot of Iron Maiden.
Speaker: It's a lot of Attack from Mars.
Speaker: And we just finished out shopping out my World Cup, so we've been playing a lot of that.
Speaker: And my 8-Ball to Walk's been playing a lot of that.
Speaker: one of the biggest questions I have, and since I didn't grow up in pinball, I am learning more and more about how to maintain games or at least, you know, just basic skills.
Speaker: Now you've known about this your entire life, but how, like, how,
Speaker: How do I go through?
Speaker: Because and I talked to you again, Roger, about this.
Speaker: And in medicine, there's two approaches.
Speaker: When someone comes in, what they do is they say, I don't know what's wrong.
Speaker: OK, so the first step is diagnosing the problem.
Speaker: The second step is now that you have a diagnosis, how do you fix it?
Speaker: How do you treat it?
Speaker: And I look at pinball machines the same way.
Speaker: There are ways that you need to learn how to diagnose.
Speaker: and a way that you learn how to treat.
Speaker: And so one question I have is, how do you get to that point when you could diagnose and treat a game?
Speaker: And my second question is, why haven't the manufacturers come up with like a service school or an online school or something where
Speaker: Either it's videos out there or a manual or something like that.
Speaker: So when people get into getting a machine, that's one of the biggest things.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, I have this machine in the corner, but I can't fix it.
Speaker: Let me answer that in five minutes since I am needed urgently through my text.
Speaker: And I'll answer that as soon as I get back.
Speaker: 20 minutes later.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Service.
Speaker: What, what, what, what?
Speaker: Pinball sucks at servicing.
Speaker: That's what we're doing.
Speaker: Basically, how do you actually teach people these skills?
Speaker: Because the guy that I have come out, he is great.
Speaker: Like if I call him, I call.
Speaker: He's Ray at Action Pinball in Utah.
Speaker: If you need him, give him a call.
Speaker: He comes out and he does it, but you know, he's in his fifties and there's a, he knows everything that's going on, but where's that next guy who knows how to do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And I would like to be that guy, but I don't really have the time.
Speaker: My wizard of Oz has sat dead for a year until I finally just said, forget it.
Speaker: I don't have time to fix it.
Speaker: I called Ray and he came out and in 10 minutes, he knew it was up.
Speaker: Yeah, that's tough.
Speaker: It's, and I have to say, I mean,
Speaker: I'm even limited in my capacity of what I can do that I keep.
Speaker: I use get Gavin Miller here in the Chicagoland area.
Speaker: Gavin's game service.
Speaker: He's awesome.
Speaker: And the same thing, like I will have a post-it note on my wall and I'm seeing this during the quarantine time of like, oh yeah, that's not working on that game.
Speaker: That's not working on that game.
Speaker: And if I get a long enough list, that's usually like once I, once I get past a half a dozen games, it's worth his time to come out because I'm,
Speaker: You know, his minimum call time is 90 minutes and most of the stuff he could fix in eight minutes.
Speaker: So, you know, I try to make sure I have enough work to keep him occupied for at least that minimum.
Speaker: But it's a great question.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think you see like enthusiast operators are kind of the new level of operator out there in the world for Pinball that, you know, I think you're going to see more people learning how to do it themselves.
Speaker: And then, you know, you'll see those people, you know,
Speaker: offering those services to those who need it within their communities, I think is probably the best way outside of that.
Speaker: You know, you're left with really hoping for, if you're focusing on new games, you're, you're hoping for manufacturers to help pick up the slack and then through, through their distribution and dealer network, making sure that they're trained in the products from their manufacturer.
Speaker: We have the same thing at raw thrills, making sure that our distributors know,
Speaker: you know, how to fix our games, how they should be operating and, and making sure if we're seeing any sort of like systematic failures that we're, we're doing the right thing on our end in terms of, you know, service bulletins or putting up common problems that happen over time of games.
Speaker: You know, we just started making YouTube videos at Raw Thrills to just show like, here's how you completely disassemble and reassemble a Jurassic Park gun and,
Speaker: And we had it was part of a project for a new one of the new mechanical engineers that we brought on board.
Speaker: It was like, as he was learning how to do this himself, you know, as someone who was only school taught and not street taught, we we asked him if he wouldn't mind, you know, once he learns how to do this, just film a video of him doing it.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: And it's been great because it's taught him how to do it.
Speaker: And we now have the asset of a tutorial video that other people can lean on to how to do it themselves.
Speaker: Do you think we'll ever get to a point, though, where it's...
Speaker: where i think i think of cars in this respect where they just pretty much hook up the computer to the car it diagnoses it for them and then the part could be pretty much plug and play um because i feel like that's kind of the direction we're going everything's getting so small you can't really solder on the circuit boards anymore yeah i mean i think you've seen that with like you know highway pinball and their model i think there's something to i think depending on your focus of home martin like
Speaker: Right now, you can either focus on selling a game to the normal commercial channels, and the people who buy it commercially are pretty more savvy than the random person.
Speaker: And even companies like Spooky Pinball or whoever that are primarily focused to selling to that existing enthusiast market are also of a certain savvy level.
Speaker: I think once you get into trying to sell to Gen Pop, that's where
Speaker: You know, you're looking at at maintenance being a huge issue in terms of like, how do I take off the glass, you know, for the the owners that wouldn't have any idea how to do that, that you start talking about modularity as as really a necessity.
Speaker: If you're looking to like ever sell a game that would be, you know, tens of thousands of people across the planet.
Speaker: So what are the games that you're looking at for buying the next five games?
Speaker: I have an Elvira in my garage and no person to help me bring it down into the basement now until at least May 30th.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: So beyond that, I don't know.
Speaker: Keith Owens' next five games will probably be my next five games.
Speaker: So wait, which Elvira did you get?
Speaker: The new one.
Speaker: Oh, the new one.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I'm pretty much, I'm a, I'm a Lyman and Keith fan boy.
Speaker: So if you had to take up Batman 66 versus the new Elvira, I know Elvira is not as far in code as, as Batman 66, but which, which direction would you head so far if you had to pick one or the other?
Speaker: You know, I've,
Speaker: I've only played Elvira like four times ever, and it was at Pinball Expo back in November where there wasn't anywhere near the amount of code that was in now.
Speaker: So I honestly couldn't answer it.
Speaker: I know that Batman is an amazing piece of work that it would be tough to...
Speaker: to play a game that I think could be as, you know, all encompassing as that game.
Speaker: But, you know, from what I've heard of and seen in, in whether the dead flip videos or, you know, anyone else that's been streaming Elvira, there's, there's a lot of fun there and, and a lot of like new twists on modes there that, that comes from the mind of, of Mr. Lyman that I wouldn't throw either of them out of bed, fellas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I've brought this up before and I've speculated.
Speaker: You're in a manufacturing business where you know behind the scenes what limits your ability to make games or remake games.
Speaker: I'm always curious that there was obviously some hiccups with JJP and them releasing pirates.
Speaker: However, with all the effort they went through on coding it, getting the license, getting all those mechs in there,
Speaker: But because there was some hiccups on when it was revealed and by the time the fans caught up to it, they weren't available.
Speaker: So let's speculate.
Speaker: Why do you think they haven't gone back into the production and spit out another thousand?
Speaker: I mean, who knows?
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: It could be, you know, we get asked, like, we made a game, Aliens Armageddon.
Speaker: And, you know, we get asked, it's not available for sale anymore because our license agreement ran out on December 31st of 19.
Speaker: And Fox was, was really easy to work with for us.
Speaker: And since the last time we renegotiated, Fox was swallowed up by Disney, who is way harder to work with, with respect to, you know, the amount of money they want to see before they, they even decide to smell you at all.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: you know, for a game that was, that was in sort of like the, the back nine of its, of its life, you know, the numbers just didn't make sense for us financially to extend that license, knowing, you know, how much road there was left to pave of, in terms of the market accepting that product.
Speaker: So, I mean, it can be that it can be, you know, if certain parts aren't available, I don't think, you know, Jersey Jack powers would fall under that, but,
Speaker: You know, I know when Stern did Big Buck Hunter, which they licensed from us, you know, they were buying, they didn't tool up that buck assembly, the one that goes back and forth, the whatever, buck on a stick instead of Mick on a stick.
Speaker: They were literally buying that retail deer piece and then mounting it to their assembly that that limited their production.
Speaker: So they could either have tooled up their own buck assembly or
Speaker: you know, figured out some other way to do it, but you never know what's going to limit the production capabilities.
Speaker: It can really be anything.
Speaker: I was going to say, I know that a super awesome pinball show did just interview Jack Guarneri and he said that they, not to rule it out of them never producing it again.
Speaker: So who knows if we'll see it in the future or not, but that is, that is a fun game.
Speaker: And my hat's off to Eric for that game.
Speaker: Do you, do you hang out with, I mean, I would, I would say, you know, knowing that that's a Disney license, I think my dad got that one.
Speaker: But, you know, Disney, we have a Marvel game and, you know, Disney's tough, man.
Speaker: They make a lot of money.
Speaker: So, you know, the ability for our entire industry to be any sort of meaningful for them is really tough.
Speaker: I'm sorry, when you said Disney, you know, before they even sniff you, I'm like, is this a Biden reference?
Speaker: What are we talking about here?
Speaker: Well, it's social distancing, so you have to sniff from six feet away.
Speaker: They have to get a good waft, you know.
Speaker: That's creepy.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But any longer, Disney's going to own everything at this rate.
Speaker: Actually, I know.
Speaker: You've got to start kissing cheeks now, I guess.
Speaker: I'm supposed to be.
Speaker: Today, I am actually supposed to be on a Disney cruise.
Speaker: We bought it like six months ago.
Speaker: So that, yeah, who knows.
Speaker: I thought you were about to say, Disney's thinking about buying our hospital.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That would be awesome.
Speaker: I would love to have Mickey ears when I go in to see a patient.
Speaker: That would be awesome.
Speaker: Josh, you have a copy of your dad's book.
Speaker: Do you?
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I mean, I'm not holding it, but I know where it is down here.
Speaker: It's in the same level of the house that I'm at currently.
Speaker: Did he give that to you?
Speaker: He did.
Speaker: He gave me...
Speaker: for one of my birthdays back in the day, he gave me a copy of every book he's ever written.
Speaker: Okay, tell me about the other books.
Speaker: Wait, how many books?
Speaker: The how-to book for tanning is probably my favorite.
Speaker: Wait, what?
Speaker: Let me see if I can, I don't even know if it's Google-able.
Speaker: Oh yeah, it is.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Can I post a link in the chat?
Speaker: Yes, please do.
Speaker: All right, hold on.
Speaker: When I think of Roger Sharp, tanning's not the first thing that comes to mind.
Speaker: I'm not saying... Now you're like, damn, now we got to get him back on the podcast.
Speaker: Here you go.
Speaker: Check out that link, boys.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: Buy used for $5.
Speaker: By Roger C. Sharp without frying.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Is there one on how to grow a sweet mustache?
Speaker: Right, I know.
Speaker: You guys didn't see that one coming, did you?
Speaker: Not at all.
Speaker: This is going to be the episode photo.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: This is golden.
Speaker: I'm buying this.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: I'm totally buying this.
Speaker: Was that something at GQ?
Speaker: They're like, Roger, we loved your pinball book.
Speaker: We've got the perfect one to follow up.
Speaker: How to get tan without frying.
Speaker: I honestly don't know which one came out first.
Speaker: This is the 79, so the follow-up.
Speaker: The epic follow-up to pinball is tan.
Speaker: You better buy this before you post your podcast because all those used copies are going to be gone.
Speaker: And I love the 70s design star that looks like a Jax game.
Speaker: That is awesome.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Straight out of Austin Powers.
Speaker: Seriously, I did not see that one coming.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Enjoy.
Speaker: I need to reread it tonight.
Speaker: It's a short one.
Speaker: What is it like 50 pages or something?
Speaker: I don't even think it's that.
Speaker: It's like, it feels more like a pamphlet.
Speaker: Oh, that's great.
Speaker: Well, Josh, what's on the horizon for you?
Speaker: Like a pinball in the future.
Speaker: What, what are you looking forward to in six months other than not being quarantined?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm looking forward to the other side of this thing and, and,
Speaker: seeing competitive pinball, you know, where it falls back into place in the world.
Speaker: You know, our world championship is scheduled for November currently.
Speaker: I'd love it if the world got to a place where that can happen.
Speaker: You know, I'd love to be able to go to Pinnberg in two and a half months.
Speaker: I'm not so confident that that's going to be happening, you know, so soon with, I would assume with Illinois and other states, you know, stretching into, you
Speaker: the end of May, it's, it's tough to think about any future plans beyond the quarantine.
Speaker: You know what I mean, guy?
Speaker: It's like, it's just so all encompassing in, in our lives.
Speaker: Like I would like to see my family and friends in person, you know, beyond zoom chats.
Speaker: That's what I'm looking forward to in the future.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: It feels like we are in this holding, you know, do you know what it feels like?
Speaker: It feels like in, you know, in little league baseball, when you're on deck and you're just kind of waiting to go into the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like, and you're just waiting there.
Speaker: You're like, you're not sure exactly if the next guy is going to strike out and you're going to get a shot.
Speaker: It's just, it just feels like you are sitting there waiting.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: You know, I hope I've enjoyed,
Speaker: cooking more meals at home and playing more with the kids and all that stuff, that it'd be nice to remember this when things get back to more normal.
Speaker: But I'm certainly afraid that it's going to go back to working too much at the office, missing the kids, getting home in time just to put them to bed, bringing in food because nobody had a chance to get anything organized and all the normal just passing of life.
Speaker: I hope that I can keep
Speaker: keep this moment in my head going forward to try to make sure I'm enjoying every day.
Speaker: Cause I certainly wasn't before this.
Speaker: There was a lot of day to day taking things for granted for sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: This is a flashback to our interview with your dad.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: Legitimately.
Speaker: Which I have not listened to yet.
Speaker: I didn't want to listen to it before we did ours.
Speaker: Just a. Okay.
Speaker: So you can make any similarities and I can realize how much like him I am.
Speaker: Well, I mean, Josh, remind me, he talked about it and he asked you once, he's like, I'm a good dad, right?
Speaker: And you're like, yeah, you come home at night.
Speaker: And so he's like, that's when he started implementing, no, we're done at six o'clock.
Speaker: If you need to come in and see me, I'm done at six o'clock.
Speaker: I'm going home.
Speaker: I'm seeing my family.
Speaker: So I, and as a 45 year old professional guy, I think we all can relate to that too.
Speaker: Like, I,
Speaker: Yeah, I can actually remember my dad, you know, Williams was in the city and I live less than a mile from where my parents live now, where I grew up here.
Speaker: So, I mean, he had a commute of 45 minutes each way to the office every day, you know, 40, 50 minutes, probably more.
Speaker: I mean, it was terrible that I can remember when I was a kid.
Speaker: you know, gathering enough courage to ask him if he could be home more at night.
Speaker: Because, you know, so often it would be like me, Zach, and my mom having dinner.
Speaker: And then at like eight o'clock, he'd come strolling in or whatever.
Speaker: And, you know, we played pinball and play video games and stuff.
Speaker: But, you know, how long do we have?
Speaker: An hour, hour and a half before, you know, Zach and I probably went to bed.
Speaker: And, you know, we enjoyed hanging out with our dad a lot.
Speaker: So I can remember asking him,
Speaker: if he could start coming home earlier so we could, you know, have more time together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and I think it's harder nowadays too, just for the simple fact that, you know, back then you got home, there wasn't an internet connection.
Speaker: It's not like, yes, you could get a call from the office or whatnot, but it's, it's kind of like you left the office.
Speaker: It's, it was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I was, yeah, last night I had a, an impromptu, you know, my boss video chats me at like eight 30.
Speaker: It's just, as we're sitting down to watch survivor with everyone.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: guys, I gotta take, I'm so sorry, but I gotta take this.
Speaker: And it's like, it's the 24 seven work day.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I I'm the same way too, is when I get home, there's a lot of people that call me just to deal with little issues.
Speaker: And so I'll be talking with them for about half an hour.
Speaker: And my kids are just like, dad, get off the phone.
Speaker: And it's like that, that dagger in your heart that twists a little bit.
Speaker: You're like, uh, I've become my dad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, but tonight, actually, do you know what I am doing?
Speaker: I ordered deep dish pizza from Chicago and they are sending it to me refrigerated.
Speaker: And so that is actually what I'm cooking tonight.
Speaker: At Lou Malnati's by chance?
Speaker: No, but.
Speaker: What brand?
Speaker: Okay, I don't know.
Speaker: Was it Gino's East or something?
Speaker: Did I not get the right one?
Speaker: I mean, it's fine.
Speaker: Enjoy.
Speaker: Okay, so everyone has their... You know what?
Speaker: Pizza to me is like pinball.
Speaker: There's not really a bad pinball game out there.
Speaker: There's not really bad pizza.
Speaker: There's just different levels of awesomeness for pizza.
Speaker: Okay, where is the LE level of awesomeness that I need to order next time?
Speaker: I'm a big... Lou Malnati's is our go-to out here.
Speaker: How do you spell that?
Speaker: Lou... L-O-U... L-O-U and then Malnati's.
Speaker: M-A-L-N-A-T-I.
Speaker: I'm going to have to order some of this.
Speaker: I think you can ship them frozen.
Speaker: Yeah, that's okay.
Speaker: Yeah, right here.
Speaker: Ship deep dish pizza right there.
Speaker: Oh, it's okay.
Speaker: I thought it was like the Illuminati.
Speaker: So I was like, what are you talking about?
Speaker: The Illuminati?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, that will be... Now, we ordered nine pizzas because it was easier to order nine or seven or whatever.
Speaker: So that will be my next option.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm hanging to tastes of Chicago right now to figure this bad boy out.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Actually.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So when I was in Chicago, I went about 20 years ago or so to a Cubs game with my brother.
Speaker: We just decided to go to Chicago.
Speaker: So we flew to Chicago.
Speaker: We did the Chicago thing and we said, oh, we'll take the architecture tour, which, you know, you hop on one of those boats and it takes you up and down the Charles river or not the Charles river.
Speaker: That's Boston.
Speaker: What river is it there?
Speaker: Probably the Chicago.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: And so we got there and the tour started at 1 p.m., but we got there at 12.
Speaker: And so we were on the L. We just stopped off and got some pizza on that L loop that goes that circle right in the middle.
Speaker: It was on the south part of it.
Speaker: I have no idea where it was.
Speaker: So we sat down, we ordered one of these things.
Speaker: We didn't realize it took 45 minutes to cook this thing.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK, so we got the pizza at 1250.
Speaker: We were supposed to be on the boat in 10 minutes.
Speaker: We shoveled one piece in our mouth, took the rest with us.
Speaker: And then while we were on the L, we hit another piece.
Speaker: And then we ran four blocks straight and hopped right on the boat.
Speaker: And we had some pizza under our arm.
Speaker: And I think that we for about the first half hour of it, we didn't hear anything because we were in a a pizza coma and we were about to throw up.
Speaker: We, yeah, we always call, we call ahead for dine-in even for that.
Speaker: So you can eat up most of those 45 minutes at home or, you know, if we go do it at work, we'll order and then work another half hour and then head over and sit down and get our stuff.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Josh, thanks again so much for coming on.
Speaker: And it's always fun to talk to you.
Speaker: Wish you all the best.
Speaker: And when you get that slightly smaller version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for all thrills, give me a call.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: I feel like we always get through about like a tenth of the questions that you guys send in advance.
Speaker: So we'll have to pick up and try to focus on getting through some more of those at some point.
Speaker: But we can certainly take up the first 15 minutes of the next chat reviewing the tanning book.
Speaker: I can make sure I reread it before then.
Speaker: I'm seriously buying it right now.
Speaker: I'm just glad I was able to be a part of the conversation because last time we had technical issues and I wasn't able to record my voice along with you two.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Next time we do this, assuming I'm back at work, I will bring my laptop into the office that has a mic and speakers available and make sure there's no hiccups.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, thanks again, Josh, for joining us.
Speaker: If you guys want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com or you can contact us via Facebook.
Speaker: Honestly, that's probably the best place to get a hold of us.
Speaker: And we're on Instagram now, too.
Speaker: We still have a couple of t-shirts left.
Speaker: I know that we promised we'd do a t-shirt giveaway.
Speaker: Honestly, we haven't got any submissions yet.
Speaker: So I'm putting it back on you guys.
Speaker: If you want a t-shirt, you better send something in.
Speaker: So anything else for Scott?
Speaker: I think we're good.
Speaker: I'd love to see you in about one to two weeks.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Sounds good.
