Ep 85: Don't Panic, Nerd Out! with George Fisher

Transcript

Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.

Speaker: We are on episode 85 with me, my co-captain, as always.

Speaker: Scott Larson.

Speaker: And Scott, it's another wonderful day, isn't it?

Speaker: It's another wonderful day.

Speaker: There's a lunar eclipse going on right now.

Speaker: Yeah, and Spider-Man is making an appearance at your house, it appears.

Speaker: Apparently, that's what happens when you have an 11-year-old with a Spider-Man mask.

Speaker: Let's talk about our sponsor before we get to our guest.

Speaker: Yeah, we got flipping out pinball.

Speaker: So again, if you have that, that burning desire for that special pinball, go ahead and contact Zach and Nicole Minnie.

Speaker: They will be able to find the, your heart's desire.

Speaker: You know, I actually, this is one of the random times when I don't have a lot of stuff pending.

Speaker: So, but hey, hopefully there'll be a new machine coming out here soon and maybe there'll be something coming up, but maybe we'll talk about that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So anyway, yeah, contact Zach and Nicole.

Speaker: And if you know what, that pinball machine isn't doing it for you, try to get an Escalera or maybe get a big buck hunter for your home.

Speaker: So check all their arcading options they have there.

Speaker: Well, you know, you know, the topper king, he's got a bunch of toppers in.

Speaker: So go look at the website too.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: Well, you know, I met this gentleman.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: It's been at least over a year ago, maybe more.

Speaker: And, um,

Speaker: I watched the streams.

Speaker: I was very intrigued because I am a huge Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan.

Speaker: And I noticed, don't panic, flip.

Speaker: And I'm like, that's got to be part of that, you know.

Speaker: And so I jump on the stream and I meet George.

Speaker: And this guy's enthusiasm and streams are amazing.

Speaker: And so I've been wanting to have him on for a while now.

Speaker: And we've had the opportunity.

Speaker: So now we have George Fisher.

Speaker: How are you doing, sir?

Speaker: I'm doing well.

Speaker: Thanks for having me on.

Speaker: That was so mellow.

Speaker: That was like NPR right there.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Well, yeah, I've got the mic all set up here.

Speaker: I feel like I'm ready to focus on just talking at this point.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So how do you feel about the conflict in the Middle East or Ukraine?

Speaker: Can you give me...

Speaker: I got nothing.

Speaker: I will tell you, because I didn't tell you guys this before, because I want to be shocked for this.

Speaker: I feel grungy right now because I'm sitting in so much glitter.

Speaker: I don't know why my wife decided to use the pinball machines as her spot for like kids clothes.

Speaker: And it looks like a male entertainer has been all over my basement because there is glitter everywhere.

Speaker: You know, it could be any entertainer, really.

Speaker: Maybe.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The when when we first got married, there was someone above us who she liked to glam up and she would go and glitter bomb herself on her porch.

Speaker: And for some reason, it would just kind of fly down.

Speaker: So my my one year old would be crawling around in glitter all the time.

Speaker: I hope you guys are, I hope you're, you're ready to have glitter just for the next week and a half, pretty much everywhere.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You, you've heard Dimitri Martin talk about glitter.

Speaker: It's the, it's the, it's the herpes of craft supplies.

Speaker: Every time the sun comes out, flare up.

Speaker: Oh, there it is.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Oh, my goodness.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Enough about us and our weird glitter stuff.

Speaker: George, tell us about yourself.

Speaker: How long you've been in this hobby and why the crap you're even here.

Speaker: And how much glitter do you use on a daily basis?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So I think I want to start with the best question first.

Speaker: The amount of glitter that I use on a daily basis.

Speaker: I only used a small amount today.

Speaker: And it's usually a significant amount every other weekend while I've got my daughter here.

Speaker: So I'm relatively new in the scheme of things to pinball.

Speaker: It was about 2017.

Speaker: My ex at the time was looking to get a pinball machine.

Speaker: I had just purchased my first multi-cade and was playing tons of games.

Speaker: Pac-Man and Galaga and, man, Arkanoid and Super Breakout was absolutely loving it and wanted to get something comparable for her, and her request was a pinball machine.

Speaker: I hated pinball.

Speaker: I grew up feeling like pinball was just a waste of quarters.

Speaker: I would much rather put it in another machine where I feel like I could be good at something.

Speaker: I didn't understand that there was rules, that there was the concept of modes and progression in a game, and even that there was simple things like trapping up.

Speaker: Not that that information wasn't there.

Speaker: I just never obviously took the time to figure it out.

Speaker: So did some research.

Speaker: This was shortly after Ghostbusters came out.

Speaker: Decided that Ghostbusters theme-wise was right in line with something we both liked.

Speaker: And Pinball Machine was going to be a really big investment.

Speaker: It wasn't something I wanted to fix, so I definitely wanted to grab something new.

Speaker: Ended up going to a local place called Pinball Jones.

Speaker: Threw, I think, what, $5 into the quarter machine and went through it very quickly on Ghostbusters.

Speaker: Not only is that game brutal, but I just...

Speaker: was flipping the flippers around kind of thing.

Speaker: But two games away or a game right next to me, there was a guy named Levi who looked over and said, hey, you know, there's more to it than just flipping the flippers and trying to keep it out from going straight down the middle or down an out lane.

Speaker: And, uh, and I'm like, oh really?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And he just walked me through, uh, I'm playing on medieval madness.

Speaker: He just walked me through simple things like trapping up and the benefits of that first aiming and where to aim, you know, shoot the flashing lights that, uh, that mantra, I feel like we've all heard.

Speaker: And that was the beginning of the end.

Speaker: Shortly after that, purchased my first game.

Speaker: I fell in love and my ex was very frustrated at how much time I was spending in pinball.

Speaker: Ended up joining a league and actually Levi's dad and sister ended up kind of taking me under their wing and teaching me all of the games in league.

Speaker: And that was a really, really good time.

Speaker: Still do league two to three times a year.

Speaker: And...

Speaker: But also found that as I was playing, most of the local places closed or just my work schedule didn't enable me at the time because I had a... I'm trying to think of how old my daughter was at the time, but she was probably two or three years old in 2013, and this would have been 2017.

Speaker: So she was about three to four years old, and basically everybody was sleeping at that point by about 10 o'clock at night.

Speaker: So...

Speaker: 10 to 1, I kind of had to myself and I'd play pinball and I happened to spot, it was straight down the middle actually on YouTube.

Speaker: At that point, I didn't really know about Twitch and saw Zach and Greg do, you know, I'd watch their videos, but saw them do a live stream on YouTube and was able to chat with them.

Speaker: And I'm like, man, this is fantastic.

Speaker: So I decided to, that's what I wanted.

Speaker: I wanted to have the ability to talk to people about pinball, but not have to go out of the house to get it done and play my pinball games.

Speaker: But at the same time, I'm also like the worst at multitasking.

Speaker: So I spent several months doing local recordings and posting those to YouTube.

Speaker: uh, afterwards, no editing at all initially.

Speaker: In fact, I rarely edit, uh, unless I'm doing any kind of fun videos, um, even now.

Speaker: And, uh, eventually, uh, while I was doing YouTube, um, and I was following some, some other gamers on YouTube, like MF Pally Time, uh, for Heroes of the Storm, and there was a few others, and,

Speaker: Pallytime was talking about maybe making the switch over to Twitch, and I just didn't understand the concept of what made Twitch popular until I actually made the jump and started watching Heroes of the Storm over on Twitch and realized that I could actually engage with the streamers, and it just offered up this whole other...

Speaker: level of fun.

Speaker: That's how I found Jack Danger, Pinball Undesirables, Buffalo Pinball, to name a few that were all streaming at that time.

Speaker: And it was just, it was a lot of fun.

Speaker: So after several months of being on YouTube, decided to switch to Twitch and did that for several months before Al Anonymous came on my stream.

Speaker: one time and he said that he was on a mission to get everybody to switch over to 60 frames per second.

Speaker: And for whatever reason, that was a fun trigger for me, where I realized that it wasn't just in streaming about, it didn't just have to be about doing the bare minimum, that there's a possibility for either upgrading your equipment or upgrading your knowledge of the equipment to

Speaker: to put out something better.

Speaker: And suddenly it just, something clicked in my brain.

Speaker: And I realized that what I really wanted to do was not just be able to engage with the community and learn more about pinball and do it with the pinball machines I have, but I wanted to go on location and build

Speaker: equipment that allowed me to set up quicker or more efficiently and still provide that fluid, beautiful play field that you see at the time, very few streams with good audio.

Speaker: And the good audio honestly didn't come until much later.

Speaker: Just another one of those switches that clicked one day, I realized, I'm like, wow, this streamer's audio is amazing.

Speaker: How do I get that kind of audio?

Speaker: And, um, yeah, and that's, that's just the rabbit hole of, of streaming coming across, uh, other streamers who do something kind of different or unique, or just seeing something that helps open your eyes to the, to the possibilities of, of what, of what your stream or other streams could be.

Speaker: And, uh, and another one was, I was on a stream and I saw this at the time.

Speaker: I had no idea what it was, but it turns out it was Boca, which is, uh,

Speaker: um a very uh it's the aperture rating on a on a lens is uh is very small so like a 1.8 as opposed to a 4.5 or a 5 or something like that and and it allows the focus to be specific while the the background gets blurred out or whatever you're not focused on to be blurred out and i just fell in love and it's something i have

Speaker: abused horribly.

Speaker: And yeah, Manu, I know everyone else out there.

Speaker: I know I abuse it, but I love it.

Speaker: Saturation is another thing.

Speaker: I like bright colors.

Speaker: And I feel like I've backed off there.

Speaker: But bokeh is still one of those things.

Speaker: And what got me was I couldn't figure out what it was.

Speaker: I couldn't figure out what the right question to ask was in order to create

Speaker: to create that.

Speaker: So I had to go out to the community and start asking questions, which drove the discord, which then drove this, this want to, to make sure everyone had all of the information possible to, to stream at a quality level that was like bordering on cinematic.

Speaker: And, uh, and, and that's where we are today with the pinball community and,

Speaker: And just this ridiculous community of streamers who are constantly pushing the envelope on quality and what's possible on integrations.

Speaker: You got so many fun things like iSkiDo who has...

Speaker: the ability through redemptions to flip as flippers.

Speaker: So the right flips the left and the left flips as right, or you can invert them.

Speaker: And there's all kinds of lighting integrations now with software where people watching can actually trigger light shows in people's homes.

Speaker: And then you've got

Speaker: other streamers like Frisco Pinball and obviously Manu from MPT3K who are just pushing the boundaries of all the fun, cool things.

Speaker: And it goes so much more than that even.

Speaker: It's not just like what's technically feasible, but it becomes kind of an art to figure out, to think of how to incorporate this engagement with the audience in different unique ways.

Speaker: Another great one is Surreal7.

Speaker: who has to this day, I think one of the greatest audience engagement redemptions, which is the lights dim and they, and they flash on and off.

Speaker: And he's got another set of lights behind a door that flash on and get brighter and softer and brighter.

Speaker: And it starts the growl from Ghostbusters and then ultimately Sigourney Weaver's scream.

Speaker: And it's, it's,

Speaker: It's visual in that it's recreating the scene, but there's also sound and it's all timed beautifully.

Speaker: And then you have the lighting and it's all triggered from a single redemption.

Speaker: And it's a different level of immersion.

Speaker: And

Speaker: Seeing that, I feel like, is just what's so awesome about the streaming hobby as a whole and really shows what the community can do when everybody puts their collective heads together to help each other as opposed to just trying to only do your thing, right?

Speaker: Like, how do I do this and how do I do it in a way to teach other people or not even teach, maybe just put the idea out there and

Speaker: and ask for feedback and find out like, oh, you know, I thought this was the limit, but it turns out like you can actually do this A, B, and C over here.

Speaker: And you just blew my mind with what I could potentially do next.

Speaker: It's so great to be a part of that community.

Speaker: Okay, fun little side note.

Speaker: When we were recording this, Scott had noticed that our timer froze and he's like, are we still recording?

Speaker: I looked at the recording and it claimed that we'd record the first 12 minutes of the podcast.

Speaker: So I said, we're good, but let's start a new recording just to be safe.

Speaker: So we stopped, we started doing a new recording.

Speaker: Well, I started to edit this.

Speaker: It actually only started, it only recorded the first four minutes.

Speaker: So that spot you just heard by George is his origin story they resubmitted to us.

Speaker: And somehow we got from his origin story to competitive players on stream to exploiting games for competition.

Speaker: And that's where we're picking up.

Speaker: So just so you know why this is jumping from origin story to competition play, that's why.

Speaker: And that's the whole point of competitive pinball.

Speaker: You know, it's actually a great rule set if the modes actually enhance what you're planning on doing as a competitive rule, because a lot of times competitive players, again, they're only focused on how can I maximize the amount of points I can get while maintaining the safest amount of shots.

Speaker: There are many games where

Speaker: It's shoot the right ramp or shoot something.

Speaker: It's not really a full gamut of the machine.

Speaker: And a game that is a great tournament game has a couple of combinations.

Speaker: One, there are multiple ways.

Speaker: It's not just shoot the left target.

Speaker: It's five different ways that you can possibly do it.

Speaker: And then depending on your situation, you can actually exploit that and the rules are balanced.

Speaker: And that not one way of playing is going to significantly outweigh the other ones.

Speaker: And that, that is a, that is really the magic of having experts, tournament players who are designing rule sets because they understand all that.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: They, they have played in a competitive setting and they certainly do not want a game that you're, you know, it's a combination shoot, right, shoot, left, shoot, scoop, cash out.

Speaker: The other thing I've noticed in spending a little bit more time with competitive players to me is that I'm in software and I spend time, like we were talking about earlier, there being some interesting personalities in pinball.

Speaker: Well, even more so, I feel like multiplied a few times in the software industry.

Speaker: There's some really interesting people out there and you'll find...

Speaker: The way that sometimes software gets developed or on the flip side of things when you're doing security and penetration testing, there's a certain mindset that has to do with kind of trying to figure out where the weaknesses in software are.

Speaker: And occasionally, you come across that.

Speaker: And what I've seen, I think, consistently from all of the really high competitive players I've spoke to is this want to find where those weaknesses are in existing code.

Speaker: and find out where there's a break and where somebody didn't program something appropriately, like checking when there's an increasing, let's say, jackpot in some sort of a situation with, let's say, Game of Thrones.

Speaker: If you get into a particular multiball and you get into

Speaker: a progression where it adds 10 million for every jackpot you had completed previously, but you find out that the code left something open and never put a cap on it.

Speaker: So you can continue doing that and you throw a multiplier on top of it and suddenly you're scoring a billion or two or three billion points a shot.

Speaker: It's that kind of...

Speaker: hacking, I feel like for lack of a better term, that I've found in some of these discussions and a really cool one that came up recently.

Speaker: I don't remember the tournament, but there was a competitive player who...

Speaker: took a known bug in Johnny Mnemonic, where when you grab the ball, you can move it over and place it on the pad.

Speaker: And there's a three-by-three pad that allows you to do things.

Speaker: But if instead you just drop the ball back on the table, it then shoots it back up and gives you 40 million points or some number of points.

Speaker: So you just...

Speaker: constantly do that over and over again.

Speaker: And it does require hitting some of the buttons on the table.

Speaker: And, you know, you've got several billion points if you do it enough times, enough to... I think a lot of competitive players, isn't the glove disabled because of that exploit?

Speaker: I'm not sure if it was because of that specific exploit, but I do think they're often disabled.

Speaker: Well, and I love that game.

Speaker: If I could get another Johnny back, it's so fun to get the times three or whatever it is once you get the three balls and then apply it to the spinner and then just start hitting the spinner for all those points.

Speaker: Oh, it feels so good.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I like those exploits.

Speaker: I mean, look at Shadow.

Speaker: you know, they found out a competitive exploit years ago where you just shoot the left orbit and then the inner loop over and over and over.

Speaker: And there was never a cap put on that scoring.

Speaker: And it just, it just excels.

Speaker: If you, if you're just hitting it over and over and over, I mean, jackpots are worth what, like 20 million and all of a sudden you're getting like 300 million a shot because it never caps out.

Speaker: So it just like, yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker: If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out Bo and Karen's tutorial of Shadow.

Speaker: He goes through three different strategies of, or competitive strategies of how to play Shadow.

Speaker: And the last one is the outer orbit to the inner loop.

Speaker: And it's hilarious because he just starts, he's cracking up at how many points are coming out of this game.

Speaker: And he's like, this is obvious.

Speaker: If you can do this, this is obviously the way to play Shadow.

Speaker: So...

Speaker: with Johnny demonic, I haven't spent a lot of time playing it.

Speaker: Um, but I, I saw the movie at the theater when it came out and there was a heroin addicted porpoise that hacks at like I, I, with, with ice cube working with the porpoise who is fed heroin to keep them focused on, on hacking computer systems.

Speaker: Like I, how do you, how do you beat that in terms of theme?

Speaker: We,

Speaker: Do you remember the story with George Gomez on that one?

Speaker: Like they watched, he watched the movie, he walked out of the movie theater, got on the phone.

Speaker: He's like, can we change?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Can we get out of this?

Speaker: Can we get out of this?

Speaker: Cause it was terrible.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But they'd signed an agreement saying they do that, do it without even seeing the movie.

Speaker: So they just kind of like,

Speaker: got general information what was gonna be in the movie and so they're like they just started putting in the game and then they got to watch and he's like oh yeah i should have said no it was a screening it was it was a screening he actually flew out there to see it yeah is that what it was yeah you know here's the funny thing is i've i've still never played a johnny mnemonic oh they're so good i like it i don't know how many they actually made i think three thousand some around there

Speaker: Yeah, but it's not one of those games that's still out there.

Speaker: It seems that most of the time they're modded to Matrix or something like that.

Speaker: We just had two in Utah, Sal.

Speaker: Really?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Anywho, move on.

Speaker: So I want to tease something really quick.

Speaker: We've been putting a puzzle piece up on Facebook about kind of the project we've been working on.

Speaker: I want to give another hint right now.

Speaker: George, we talked about a little bit about this in Texas.

Speaker: And, uh, once I finally was like, yes, I'm doing this.

Speaker: You were one of the first people I called.

Speaker: And, uh,

Speaker: I pitched you the idea and you were super on board.

Speaker: And then, yeah, I was so stoked.

Speaker: You know, I, after talking to you at Texas, I wasn't too concerned, but, uh, I don't know what to say.

Speaker: I know we're slowly trickling out the information.

Speaker: I'm, I'm beaming with excitement because of what we're doing.

Speaker: Uh, I don't know what, what sold you on the concept?

Speaker: If you can,

Speaker: if we can tease it and be as vague as possible.

Speaker: Yeah, sure.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You might, you might have to edit some of this.

Speaker: You know how Tom Holland gets made fun of for giving stuff away all the time about, uh, Marvel.

Speaker: I'm, I'm the person who called the, the, the, the birthday boy directly because I realized he was left out of the email about his birthday party, but I didn't connect the two dots.

Speaker: I'm like, Oh my God, how did we miss Mike?

Speaker: Let me call Mike and be like, Oh my God, there's a big party happen.

Speaker: Oh, it's your surprise birthday party.

Speaker: I'm hanging out.

Speaker: So I when wow, trying to be super vague here, a getting an opportunity to do anything with Scott and Josh, I'm like, I'm in.

Speaker: That's number one.

Speaker: And number two, once you mentioned what it would be benefiting.

Speaker: Uh, I I've had a good amount of experience, uh, recently and, uh, just over the past couple of years and, uh, and anything I can do, I feel like to help out specifically with that.

Speaker: I, uh, I would love to, to help out with.

Speaker: Perfect.

Speaker: Love it.

Speaker: That's, that's good and vague enough.

Speaker: That's pretty good.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: The birthday boy still doesn't know about the surprise party.

Speaker: Not yet.

Speaker: Not yet.

Speaker: Well, it's funny, too, because I've been kind of going crazy with this.

Speaker: And Scott had left on vacation.

Speaker: He's been gone for, what, 10 days or something?

Speaker: Yeah, I actually planned a cruise with my family two and a half years ago.

Speaker: And it has been put off twice.

Speaker: because of COVID.

Speaker: And so we, we just barely took the cruise and yeah, it was like, so Josh pitched this.

Speaker: I'm like, okay, great.

Speaker: I'm going to be in the Caribbean.

Speaker: I'll talk to you in 10 days.

Speaker: He gets back and he gets, he sends me a message like, what the heck have you been doing while I was going?

Speaker: I was like 300, 300 pages.

Speaker: And what is this?

Speaker: What is this group feed that I'm part of?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'm so excited.

Speaker: You don't even know.

Speaker: All right, we'll move on, but yeah.

Speaker: Okay, well, I want to talk to you a little bit about streaming.

Speaker: And okay, you brought this up before, but I want to talk about it now.

Speaker: You actually had some equipment stolen from you.

Speaker: Yeah, what the crap?

Speaker: And so, okay, one, I would have no idea what equipment I would need to stream.

Speaker: That's one thing.

Speaker: But two, to have your setup...

Speaker: basically stolen from you when you're trying to stream.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So lead us through that.

Speaker: Tell us what happened.

Speaker: So it was just after Texas Pinball Festival ended, I decided to go out and go see a movie just down the street from TPF.

Speaker: There was a Cinemark, like a big Cinemark, just down the street.

Speaker: And I have a Jeep Gladiator, and I had all of my equipment in the bed of the truck not locked up, except for the really expensive stuff, which I put into the cab and locked it up.

Speaker: And that was my streaming camera, as MPT3K would say, the talent cam, my Playfield cam.

Speaker: The second Playfield cam, I had an Edelkrone

Speaker: motorized tripod and like movement system that allowed you to like tilt pan and interpolate between two different positions.

Speaker: You guys, I think you guys saw that at, at TPF and, and expo and, and all of that along with my, with my personal laptop all got, all got taken from inside the cab of the vehicle.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: But nothing in the bed got taken.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Which is interesting because I had a Magic the Gathering cube that I had brought hoping to do some magic.

Speaker: I don't know if you guys are familiar with Magic the Gathering, but you can do a draft, right?

Speaker: So I put together a cube of like 540 of the greatest magic cards of all time.

Speaker: And I've got maybe about...

Speaker: It's probably about 100 games played on it, and we recorded all the statistics of every single game and changed the cards in the cube over roughly two years' time after every single game to try and coordinate and get each color down to about a 20% win rate.

Speaker: So the cube as it stands now is between 20.5 and 19.5, I think, for every color.

Speaker: and it's almost 100% all actual cards.

Speaker: That was the most expensive thing, and that was just sitting unprotected in the back.

Speaker: I'm an idiot, evidently.

Speaker: We're thinking that people just won't take stuff, but they took the laptop and the majority of my streaming gear from Cinemark just down the street, seriously, a short walk away from TPF.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: Man, that sucks.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So how long did it take you to get all that stuff back?

Speaker: Have you been able to restock yet?

Speaker: So I've got a new Playfield camera, which is that one is it was an a6400 from Sony that I was using with a

Speaker: a standard lens, uh, like the, the kit lens.

Speaker: And I bumped it up to the a 6,500 thinking that that's going to be my more standard, like bring with me, uh, style camera for, for like kid photo shoots and stuff, which I had packed up with me all this weekend while, uh, I was doing, um,

Speaker: Um, like outside walking stuff with, um, with my kid and then a couple of the neighbor kids and just taking pictures all over the place, throw them up on Dropbox and send them to all the parents.

Speaker: So that was a minor upgrade.

Speaker: I went from the a 6,400 to the 6,500, um, and grabbed a couple of lenses.

Speaker: I was able to, to grab those off of a Craigslist close by.

Speaker: And, and now is not the time to buy any kind of, I feel like electronic devices, be it laptops or cameras, everything is really expensive.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: The player cam, on the other hand, it was never justified the first time through, the amount of money I feel like I spent and the style of equipment I went with, which was the Sony FX3, which is a cinema style camera that I had for the player cam.

Speaker: And that wasn't just for streaming.

Speaker: I'm working on a web series with my daughter about her stuffed animal.

Speaker: And I just, I like filming stuff.

Speaker: I don't know if you guys have ever seen the silly commercials we put together for TPN about pudding and about the, that it's a, okay.

Speaker: There's the, the pudding one.

Speaker: There's the one where like TPN is a drug that can make you feel better.

Speaker: And there was one about positive drugs kids like like Smurf berries.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Not air style drugs, but like like like Prozac or something like that.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: And there is two others, two others we did over time that were a lot of fun.

Speaker: And I just really enjoy doing that.

Speaker: So I kind of wanted to start heading that direction of doing a lot more.

Speaker: maybe film things, but keep it kind of silly and fun and enjoyable.

Speaker: And my daughter loves the editing portion of things.

Speaker: Like as we give characters superpowers using some really easy tools in Adobe Premiere, she just loves every second of it.

Speaker: So it's a great way for us to hang out and have a good time.

Speaker: Um, and, uh, so, but that camera was fantastic.

Speaker: And the lenses I picked up for that camera, which also were all taken, unfortunately, um, we're just really, yeah.

Speaker: Heartbreaking.

Speaker: Uh, especially knowing that in afterwards, insurance won't pay for any of it.

Speaker: because you make money off of twitch yeah exactly yes you know what you should have done is you should have said that you make them for adult recreational videos in your home to share with your friends okay and then they would be really careful with that term

Speaker: just just letting you know just there's a red line there i don't make any money off this that we just share it amongst friends you know wow wrong okay only no sorry yeah okay so mechanical bull riding is is a hobby okay sure yeah sure actually you know i'm just gonna move on uh

Speaker: So if I were to get into streaming, okay, so I know nothing about streaming and this is a role playing scenario.

Speaker: And the good news is I literally know nothing about streaming and you are an expert on streaming.

Speaker: What would you tell me?

Speaker: Hey, this is what you need to do.

Speaker: This is your entry level into getting streaming go.

Speaker: Um, so for equipment, you want to start out with whatever you have available.

Speaker: Um, the, the, the difficulty in streaming, uh, and this is something I've come across so many times with new streamers is that they want, they want cinema style quality right away and they want to dump a lot of money into it before they get started.

Speaker: But the, the problem with streaming honestly is kind of consistency.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: So when you start streaming, you're likely not going to get many people watching.

Speaker: And you might do it for several months.

Speaker: And it can feel awful when you're out there and you maybe have one or two viewers for several months.

Speaker: And occasionally you get a raid and it feels fantastic.

Speaker: And you get chat going.

Speaker: Especially when you're doing it solo without people being there with you.

Speaker: It's...

Speaker: It can be difficult if you don't have the energy from chat kind of helping drive things along, which is something you see so easy that seems so easy to come by when you're watching other streamers like Jack or like Manu from MPT3K or any of these other streamers that have 60 to 100 people.

Speaker: And they just they seem so energized every time they get on stream and they're talking with people.

Speaker: There's lots of back and forth.

Speaker: They're playing.

Speaker: They're stopping.

Speaker: So it takes a while to get to that point.

Speaker: And you have to make sure that you enjoy doing it for the sake of streaming first.

Speaker: And then afterwards, you can worry about quality and you can worry about what technology can you pick up to make things easier, like a stream deck or maybe better cameras if you want to increase your quality, right?

Speaker: And so that is step one.

Speaker: Whatever you have available now, be it maybe a camera on your laptop, the microphone,

Speaker: on your laptop, maybe pick up a 920 or something like that.

Speaker: The CX405 is an excellent camera that we have done so many videos on comparing the CX405 by Sony alongside the a6400 or an a6000 or the FX3 even and showing how it's actually kind of difficult sometimes to tell the difference in camera quality between something which is less than $100, be it the CX405 and something which is, you know, five to $6,000.

Speaker: So

Speaker: Yeah, finding that minimum amount of equipment to do it just well enough to not have your quality send people away, I think is a really, really good starting point.

Speaker: And then after that, finding a spot and building a schedule and then being consistent for a certain amount of time seems like the best way to get going.

Speaker: And finally getting to a place where you're happy streaming because it's something you enjoy doing.

Speaker: Because there's no, short of Jack and now Carl, i.e.

Speaker: Pinball, just got his Twitch partnership.

Speaker: And there's Buffalo Pinball.

Speaker: I think that's pretty much it on the pinball line of partners on Twitch.

Speaker: And the likelihood of anybody else who focuses on pinball really hitting that, if they're just going to focus on pinball, is minimal.

Speaker: So make sure you're doing it because it makes you happy and you enjoy it.

Speaker: I enjoy streaming, but I have a hard time of finding a happy medium of when the kids aren't in the house versus, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker: Cause like with you, you've picked what usually on about 10 PM mountain Easter time.

Speaker: So that's 12 Eastern nine o'clock California time.

Speaker: And, uh, I assume you do that because it's, it's a little more quiet in the house.

Speaker: You're kind of away from the family and whatnot.

Speaker: Uh, that's kind of what I would have to do.

Speaker: But the problem is my basement shares the wall with my son's bedroom.

Speaker: And so,

Speaker: That's the problem.

Speaker: I think I either have kids running around screaming or I've got to be dead silent for the bedtime.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So, and so that's why I have a hard time with consistency on that part.

Speaker: And, and I started out with, I'm like, I have extra cell phones in my house.

Speaker: Cause apparently, you know, you never get rid of your old one.

Speaker: You just buy a new one and the old one goes in the drawer.

Speaker: A lot of my Androids have apps that you can use to link to your computer.

Speaker: And so I just use all my old phones for my Playfield camera, my player camera, all that stuff.

Speaker: I haven't spent a dime on streaming.

Speaker: I need a new laptop anyway.

Speaker: So it's like, well, I bought the laptop.

Speaker: Ray Day gave me the specs on which one he uses.

Speaker: It's a gaming laptop, which I'm all for gaming.

Speaker: So why not?

Speaker: I mean, and I felt like it was a good investment too.

Speaker: And so...

Speaker: Really, I'm not even out money because I need a laptop anyway.

Speaker: So that's my recommendation.

Speaker: Like George was saying, find kind of the minimal place, figure out if you enjoy doing it, if it's realistic for you to do and just have fun with it.

Speaker: It's fun when people come in like teal-less and give you crap while you're playing, like you're flipping too much.

Speaker: You need to stop.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Now, TLS would be say, smash the action button.

Speaker: Hit it.

Speaker: Hit it.

Speaker: Yes, you're playing turtles.

Speaker: It's a pizza party now.

Speaker: Get 40 slaps now.

Speaker: Okay, I know we'll get to this at the end too, but George, if they want to catch you streaming, when can they do that?

Speaker: So that is three nights a week, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, Monday and Tuesday on don'tpanicflip.com from 10 o'clock p.m.

Speaker: until roughly 12 o'clock a.m.

Speaker: Mountain Time.

Speaker: And Thursday is 10 o'clock p.m.

Speaker: to 12 o'clock a.m., but on the Pinball Network's channels, which would be twitch.tv slash pinball network, facebook.com slash the pinball network, and youtube.com slash the pinball network.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: And I highly recommend it.

Speaker: You know, I know Zach Manny had gave you kind of some accolades a couple months ago for your transitions and stuff.

Speaker: And I never really noticed them, but they're so high quality.

Speaker: I remember one stream where you were playing and you're like, oh, we need to change the record.

Speaker: And like it shuffled to the record player really well.

Speaker: You had a camera just for the record player.

Speaker: It's like, we're going to put on the next album, whatever it was.

Speaker: You put it on and it shot right back to you playing pinball.

Speaker: I was like, that's like legit.

Speaker: Like...

Speaker: awesome stuff like it i don't know it was it was pretty cool that was about that same time i had uh we were getting djs actually there was uh there was an interesting time period where um dj rushe and uh manu and i feel like there's a couple of other streamers uh who had built up some fun relationships with djs uh and and there was this huge focus on not only playing music but having live djs dj pinball streams

Speaker: And there was a good like three to six month period where that was happening.

Speaker: And I love specifically the one you're talking about was I was in a multiball and we needed to flip the record.

Speaker: And I had just initiated multiball.

Speaker: I think it was on Stranger Things.

Speaker: And I hit the scene swap button to that, ran over while the multiball was still running and it was just initiated.

Speaker: So I still had a bunch of ball save, flipped over the record and ran back and was able to swap over the scene.

Speaker: Using just the stream deck to switch between them.

Speaker: It was great.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: It was awesome.

Speaker: What were you going to... I cut you off, Scott, didn't I?

Speaker: Oh, no, no.

Speaker: It's fine.

Speaker: Well, so I guess I was kind of wondering how DJ and pinball.

Speaker: That sounds fun.

Speaker: It's like a party atmosphere.

Speaker: But if you're actually trying to hear the sounds of the game, you're trying to do the call-outs, and you're actually trying to explain to people what's going on, how do you balance that?

Speaker: That is a really good question.

Speaker: The callouts of the game are one thing.

Speaker: And you can direct pull audio from most pinball games, especially Sterns.

Speaker: It's really easy.

Speaker: They have kits.

Speaker: And you can get a 3.5 millimeter jack and run it directly into something like a GoXLR and the line input.

Speaker: And suddenly you have direct audio running right into your stream.

Speaker: So you can then adjust the volume of that as necessary without creating an echo, especially if you're feeding that back through something like headphones like we have on right now.

Speaker: But I typically turn off music for most of the games that I play.

Speaker: Mostly just because you play a game 30 or 40 times.

Speaker: I don't need to hear the music anymore.

Speaker: And I know I'm going to upset you guys when I say this, but I streamed Rush with the music on, I think, for one session.

Speaker: And since then, I don't think I've played with the music on.

Speaker: Otter boy.

Speaker: Otter boy.

Speaker: I'm going to kick you guys both out, and I'm going to start Loser Kid 2 Pinball.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: Done.

Speaker: Is that like coast to coast or head to head?

Speaker: Loser kid to pinball to pinball.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Well, considering when Josh signed up for, uh, for Stern insider, he just jumped on the, the loser kid too.

Speaker: So I, or the loser kid.

Speaker: So I basically had to settle for loser kid too.

Speaker: So,

Speaker: So to bring it back around then, Scott, to what you were asking about, how do you focus on the game?

Speaker: Like there's a when I have that audio coming in, I have the ability to adjust the volume.

Speaker: And sometimes I'll bring down that incoming audio so that way I can walk through something if necessary.

Speaker: But for the most part, it's exactly like you said, it's more of a party atmosphere.

Speaker: I've got my volume turned up.

Speaker: I've got the game volume turned down.

Speaker: There's some great music in the background that I

Speaker: honestly is just fun.

Speaker: And we, I try to put as much focus on the, on the DJ or on that third party as, as possible.

Speaker: And the chat usually talks about what's happening, trying to zoom in and actually see the, how the someone's hands are moving or the buttons that they're pressing, right?

Speaker: Because that's,

Speaker: it's great.

Speaker: I want to show off pinball and man, I hope I'm playing well enough to justify people being in, but a huge part of, of pinball when you're not a Raymond Davidson or, or an Escher is, is not the quality of gameplay, but maybe the enjoyability of, of hanging out with either the, the, the streamer and, or the, the community that streamer has.

Speaker: Don't let George fool you.

Speaker: He's a good player too.

Speaker: I mean, when I was watching you play Jurassic Park, when you can get to, was it King of the Island multiball?

Speaker: Was it with the T-Rex and the Spinosaurus or whatever?

Speaker: Spinosaurus start fighting.

Speaker: You're like, we're there.

Speaker: Let's do this again.

Speaker: I was like, again, you're doing it for like a second time on stream tonight?

Speaker: Like, I have a hard time getting to it just as is, you know?

Speaker: Hey, I'm just like, if I get past the second dinosaur or so.

Speaker: And that's going to left or right, not actually trying to get the big guys.

Speaker: Jurassic Park is one of those amazing games, though.

Speaker: I still to this day feel like I am disappointed that I got rid of my first Jurassic Park because it played perfectly.

Speaker: I ordered another Jurassic Park from California, had it shipped out, and the playfields warped.

Speaker: Oh, makes it particularly difficult because the outlanes just act like magnets.

Speaker: for the ball as it sends it over there.

Speaker: But when Escher comes over and plays, he can beat the game easy peasy every single time.

Speaker: So it can't be that difficult.

Speaker: I'm just, I make it look really difficult, I think.

Speaker: Gotcha.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Isn't Escher like top 10 in the world?

Speaker: He's number two right now.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: See, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's like saying it can't be that hard because Ray Day can do it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And you, you were actually watching.

Speaker: So we were supposed to record a couple nights ago and I was packing up my Jurassic Park and

Speaker: pro and i got myself a whitewater and you're like no where's your where why where's it going i've always wanted whitewater i'm so ecstatic you don't know i i love this game i still feel that whitewater will definitely be part of the remakes you think that yeah i think so

Speaker: I hope so.

Speaker: If it gets an updated code set of... I think it'll have to get an updated code, but that layout, the fun factor is still way up there.

Speaker: And the flow is good.

Speaker: There's a good mix between flow and stop with it.

Speaker: depending on how you're playing it.

Speaker: But that insanity fall shot, even my son Carter, we were playing it today.

Speaker: He's like, that shot feels so good.

Speaker: It's so cool coming down those rapids.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it hits the glass every time.

Speaker: Always scares me.

Speaker: I love it.

Speaker: It's the O shot on, on Jurassic park.

Speaker: And this is like the flow on Jurassic park is it's, it's insane.

Speaker: The, and yeah,

Speaker: I can't not say it.

Speaker: Jurassic park is, is I, in my opinion, the perfect game.

Speaker: It is it's immersion at multiple levels in the game.

Speaker: It's not just the toy, which moves left and right, right?

Speaker: The, the Jeep, or as I call it, the, the, not a Jeep.

Speaker: It moves left.

Speaker: That's the direction you're going to move on the play field.

Speaker: Boom.

Speaker: Now you have that connected to the play field and you move left and right on the play field based on the position of the Jeep and then add in the LCD, which has you in first person perspective, driving a Jeep like that.

Speaker: to me to this day, still combo the fact that that game is just so much fun to shoot and to play and the rule set while it took a hump like getting over in order to figure out exactly how to play it to this day.

Speaker: It's it.

Speaker: I just understand it.

Speaker: It makes entirely too much sense as to how to play it.

Speaker: And then this crazy thematic immersion throughout the play field, the toys and the LCD,

Speaker: I struggle with ever getting rid of it again unless it's to upgrade to an LE.

Speaker: Well, you could upgrade to an LE.

Speaker: There are three for sale right now.

Speaker: $17,500, $18,500, or $19,995.

Speaker: It's funny because I was going to jokingly say under $20,000, but...

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: 320.

Speaker: You know what, George, I would let you have mine for $25,000.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It has a topper and it has like the glow thing on the shooter rod thing.

Speaker: So you can see the topper back there.

Speaker: I'm good on the topper.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: See, honestly, Godzilla for me is the perfect package.

Speaker: Okay, I do have a question for you guys because I was just noticing this the other day when I was playing Godzilla.

Speaker: My left stand-up target is migrating to the left, like the ones next to the building.

Speaker: Are any of yours doing that?

Speaker: Your Tesla shot?

Speaker: No, it's... Yeah, it's the power line shot, sorry.

Speaker: It will give you a Tesla strike once you hit both the power line shots.

Speaker: Yeah, it's to each shot of the building.

Speaker: I like how George got up to go side of the building.

Speaker: Yeah, you didn't see it.

Speaker: This is a visual.

Speaker: But yeah, George got up.

Speaker: He's like, I'm going to go look at my play field.

Speaker: I think I'm going to come on.

Speaker: Is yours doing that?

Speaker: No, no, they're perfectly aligned right now.

Speaker: Yeah, because mine is probably just because it's a brick fest for me.

Speaker: But on the left side, it's starting to migrate where I'm like, oh, that shot's getting a little more challenging.

Speaker: I think I may have to get one of the pin side mods that hold those stand-up targets straight up and down.

Speaker: Mine's migrating a little bit, but not bad.

Speaker: It's not terrible, but it's enough that I was like, oh, that's that's going to be an issue.

Speaker: The only complaint I have, and I haven't found anyone that's fixed it yet.

Speaker: Maybe you guys know when you the plunger for some odd reason, it like rattles there.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: No, mine does, too.

Speaker: However, it makes the the super duper skill shot easier to make.

Speaker: Because I'm able to drop it right behind the flipper and then hit the scoop.

Speaker: See, I haven't been able to do that yet because I can't get it to go up around behind the upper flipper because it goes into that lane and just rattles around and drops down.

Speaker: Oh, no.

Speaker: I've noticed for some reason.

Speaker: It depends on how smooth I'm trying to launch it.

Speaker: But if I pull it all the way back and then just let up like a millimeter or two, then I can typically get the super great skill shot.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: I'll have to try that.

Speaker: So George is like, sure.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Uh huh.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He's like, whatever.

Speaker: I don't care.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: I know it's hard to see, but I just barely sent you the picture and you can see that it's barely starting to migrate to the left and it looks a lot less, uh, less of a big deal than I, it actually is because it does make that shot a little harder.

Speaker: Oh, your, your manila shot.

Speaker: The one that comes back through the back door.

Speaker: Oh, yep.

Speaker: I see it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: It's migrating left.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, so I need to find, I think the pinball life has those.

Speaker: I've never noticed cause the manila shot does nothing.

Speaker: Well, I guess it does something, but it's, uh, um, I just never shoot it cause it's like an instant down the center.

Speaker: Okay, I didn't say that I was good at shooting.

Speaker: I just said I hit it all the time.

Speaker: Oh.

Speaker: You know, the one that migrates the most there is the... It's not a stand-up.

Speaker: It is kind of a stand-up, but for Deadpool, the snicked shot.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: If it doesn't have the upgraded backing that stops it from floating, that will move throughout the game.

Speaker: to where you have to adjust on the fly where that shot is.

Speaker: Oh, I'm going to have to go look at my Deadpool and see if the SNCT is upgraded.

Speaker: That's what I need to do.

Speaker: Is that an aftermarket, George?

Speaker: Aftermarket.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: So you'll need to send me a link on that because eventually I'll have to, when I get better at that shot.

Speaker: I will send you a link.

Speaker: It is the first because I've owned Deadpool twice now.

Speaker: And it was the first upgrade I did minutes after solidifying the deal on the second time I purchased it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And actually, I've heard Chuck said the same thing about Rush and getting the stand up targets from migrating.

Speaker: Like he said, he said, it becomes a big deal.

Speaker: Like I, I haven't put as much time.

Speaker: I need to, I need to troubleshoot mine still, but the side ramp is still giving me an error.

Speaker: And I think it's just a, probably a modification or just a, um, not a mod, but a, an adjustment that will keep it.

Speaker: Because again, I think the, uh, I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but my,

Speaker: it sounds like the buck in the back left is firing independently just when I'm playing around.

Speaker: So it's, it's become kind of annoying, which is sad because I haven't played rush because I haven't had time to actually fix it.

Speaker: So what's funny is I found that rush is so polarizing.

Speaker: Now that now it's been out there in the wild, people are trying to get their hands on it.

Speaker: People either love it or they hate it.

Speaker: Like I know a gentleman that bought one premium played what five games on it.

Speaker: And he's like, no, I'm like,

Speaker: You haven't given him enough time, but he played it at Texas and stuff too, but he got it in his house and he's just like, this isn't for me.

Speaker: Okay, but Josh, there are two types of people in the world.

Speaker: There are the people who like Rush and the people who are wrong.

Speaker: Oh my goodness.

Speaker: Well, it has nothing to do with the music or anything.

Speaker: That's what's funny is like the game's almost as polarizing as the band because like you either love them or I hate them.

Speaker: I guess there is middle ground people too.

Speaker: Like I'm middle ground.

Speaker: I don't mind listening to them, but it's not my first go-to.

Speaker: If there's one thing I could change is I hate double in lanes.

Speaker: I would definitely just drop it and have a single in lane on both sides, but that's just because I'm a crappy player.

Speaker: I loved X-Men and it feels that the layout feels very similar to X-Men.

Speaker: It is very similar.

Speaker: So I'm really happy with the game so far.

Speaker: I like the aesthetics of it short of the center, like where the three different band members are.

Speaker: I really... Oh, you can put a red star over that.

Speaker: Come on, give the 2112 decal and you can just slap it on there if it bugs you.

Speaker: Slap it right on in the middle of the play field?

Speaker: Sure, why not?

Speaker: Okay, I like it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Oh, my goodness.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Well, do we have any more questions about streaming or whatnot, Scott, before we move on to we have just a couple topics we wanted to cover before.

Speaker: OK, no, I think we're good.

Speaker: But that's a good resource.

Speaker: If you want to check out George, we'll we'll again include the links at the end.

Speaker: And you also have some pretty cool swag, I've noticed.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So so how can they get the swag before we move on to the topics?

Speaker: I want to know more about swag.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, uh, that's on silver ballswag.com.

Speaker: Uh, they, there's a page there for don't panic flip.

Speaker: I don't know the exact link.

Speaker: I'm probably like silver ball swag.com something slash don't panic flip, uh, for that.

Speaker: Also I, uh, and something I wanted to go under pinball promoters, that's where it is.

Speaker: There you go.

Speaker: It's third one on the left.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Also, for videos or if you're hoping to get into streaming, there's a few really good places to go.

Speaker: The place I started off with was Jack Danger's web page.

Speaker: That's still great, I think, for getting started even today.

Speaker: And then outside of that, there's some videos that MPT3K and I have done that walk you through initially how to do it low budget and then comparisons between higher end equipment.

Speaker: And you can check those out on MPT3K's YouTube.

Speaker: And then outside of that, there's also the Pinball Community Discord.

Speaker: And that's a public discord just called the pinball community.

Speaker: There's a stream tech channel that is hit probably 20 or 30 times a day with either new streamers or existing streamers.

Speaker: Any and all questions are typically answered there with references all over the place.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: I, I have a followup question.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: You have a pangolin shirt.

Speaker: Yes, I do.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: What a pangolin, a pangolin.

Speaker: Is that kind of like a liger?

Speaker: No, it's actually an endangered species.

Speaker: It looks like a, I don't know, it kind of looks like a hedgehog with a long tail.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: And it's... Dragon scales.

Speaker: Yeah, it's an endangered species that for some reason people in China are eating because they think it's delicious or something, but...

Speaker: Yeah, eating and they and also it's one of the most popular endangered species animals that people think they actually want to keep.

Speaker: There's if you can check out Save the Pangolins dot com.

Speaker: There's a charity that I and my daughter donate to every year.

Speaker: We have a couple of T-shirts that we get yearly from them.

Speaker: I was going to say, I've got your super sweet whale and brick shirt.

Speaker: Is that one you can only earn or can you buy that through Silver Ball Swag?

Speaker: No, you can only earn it by watching the streams.

Speaker: You have to redeem using points.

Speaker: And that is the Don't Panic Brick shirt, which is a reference to actually this tattoo, which is kind of hard for you guys to see here.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: It's a moment in Hitchhiker's Guide where two missiles are using the impossibility engine turned into a bowl of petunias and a whale.

Speaker: And there's an amazing conversation that happens where the whale is trying to figure out life just before it hits the ground at terminal velocity.

Speaker: And the bowl of petunias says, oh, no, not again.

Speaker: Also, just before hitting the ground, it's one of my favorite moments in literature.

Speaker: And that shirt is a reference to that favorite moment.

Speaker: And that's in the first book, right?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: In the first book, yeah.

Speaker: I even love the narrator's like, and if we understood why the Petunias said that, we'd have a better understanding of life or something like that.

Speaker: Yes, exactly.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: I will say that when I turned 42, I did say, ask me anything now.

Speaker: I am the answer to everything.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Life, the universe and everything.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Do you know why it's actually 42?

Speaker: No.

Speaker: So in computer coding, I was told that 42 can be anything you want it to be.

Speaker: Like when they put, I know it's like zeros and ones, but like when they attach certain codes to certain things, I guess 42, when you use that in code, it actually is whatever you need it to be.

Speaker: I don't know how that works.

Speaker: I don't know about that.

Speaker: I'm like, you'll have to Google it, but I'm pretty for sure.

Speaker: Because someone was telling me about that.

Speaker: I was like, yeah, I don't know computer software that well.

Speaker: So maybe George can confirm for us.

Speaker: Well, Reddit.

Speaker: Reddit obviously has something on it.

Speaker: Oh, Reddit's the go-to.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: If it's there, it's gospel.

Speaker: Legit.

Speaker: Oh, I hope I'm not too late, but the sentence, it's the answer to life, the universe, and everything has 42 letters.

Speaker: Oh, interesting.

Speaker: So thank you, Reddit, from hashtag deleted, whatever that is.

Speaker: So maybe the count got deleted.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: There are.

Speaker: It was too profound.

Speaker: They had to get rid of them.

Speaker: There are also 42 dots on a pair of dice.

Speaker: Wow, all these things I did not know.

Speaker: What's interesting, once you start seeing number 42, you see it everywhere.

Speaker: Like I was at Disneyland and we were walking through the Who Framed Roger Rabbit ride

Speaker: And one of the doors that's in the waiting line is 42.

Speaker: Like they put 42 in there, like in the movies and stuff like that.

Speaker: You'll see 42 everywhere.

Speaker: Once you, it's kind of like pin spotting.

Speaker: There needs to be like a 42 spotting.

Speaker: Like, you know how the Facebook group has pin spotting.

Speaker: So every time they see a pinball machine in a movie or a TV show, they always like clip it and put it there.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: There needs to be a 42 spotting.

Speaker: Wouldn't surprise me on the software side that if 42 is somehow usable somewhere, it's in response to Douglas Adams' book.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: It's probably linked to that as opposed to came first, right?

Speaker: Yeah, there's so many nerd references throughout, like HTML.

Speaker: Let's say there's a specification where you can have a 404, page not found.

Speaker: That error code, it's a 404, and it's built into HTML as an agreed upon, if you get a 404, this is what it means.

Speaker: One of them is 418, if I remember correctly, which is I'm a teapot.

Speaker: I'm not making that up.

Speaker: That is a legitimate error code.

Speaker: And the reasoning behind, I think, an HTML status code 418 is I'm a teapot.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: So you'll find those kind of hidden gems throughout software all over the place.

Speaker: Well, I didn't realize that Douglas Adams wrote that book years ago, like in the late 70s.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: It was a long time ago.

Speaker: I didn't realize it's held up so well to even to nowadays.

Speaker: In fairness, I have listened to the first book.

Speaker: I don't read.

Speaker: I listen to books.

Speaker: I've gotten halfway through the second book.

Speaker: And for some reason, I just stalled out.

Speaker: So I need to revisit it and and push through.

Speaker: But the first book was hilarious.

Speaker: First book is great.

Speaker: The first book is great.

Speaker: I've read it so many times.

Speaker: I've read the second book twice and there's five books, I think in that series.

Speaker: I never, I never finished them.

Speaker: I couldn't, I couldn't.

Speaker: They seem to kind of wander, don't they?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But the first book is great.

Speaker: So, you know, they need to, okay.

Speaker: Speaking of random books that have a big following, we need a good omens pinball machine.

Speaker: Oh,

Speaker: Neil Gaiman.

Speaker: Fantastic.

Speaker: Fantastic book.

Speaker: Make that happen.

Speaker: As long as it's not based on the television show.

Speaker: No, the audio.

Speaker: Actually, I thought the television show was okay, but the audio book was hilarious.

Speaker: And I still listen to it about every year.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Check that one out.

Speaker: I actually have never listened to good omens or read it.

Speaker: Oh my God.

Speaker: Anything honestly by Neil Gaiman.

Speaker: Like you could do never, you could just do a Neil Gaiman pin and do like Coraline never wear a Sandman.

Speaker: There would be, there would be a line out the door for Sandman.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: There's a big either movie or television show related to Sandman coming out.

Speaker: Well, there's also an audio book from audible.

Speaker: So.

Speaker: Hmm.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: Oh, I remember I was going to say, did you know that the very last book in the, what do they call it?

Speaker: The trilogy of five books for hitchhikers actually was not written or finished by Douglas McAdams because he had passed away.

Speaker: Did he die?

Speaker: Yeah, he passed away.

Speaker: And so it's kind of like a collaborative effort.

Speaker: I want to say across a couple of authors.

Speaker: Did you just make him Scottish, by the way?

Speaker: Is he Douglas McAdams now?

Speaker: Yeah, he's Douglas McAdams.

Speaker: Doug McAdams.

Speaker: Old good Doug McAdams.

Speaker: Oh, good.

Speaker: He had a pint of Guinness and forgot to where he placed it.

Speaker: That's Irish.

Speaker: Great.

Speaker: Get your terrible stereotypes right.

Speaker: I'm crossing so many.

Speaker: I'm just, I'm quoting a Robin Williams stand up.

Speaker: You know, they said that the Irish found civilization had a couple of pints of Guinness and forgot where they put it.

Speaker: That's probably any common on the, on the, the book side for that to happen.

Speaker: Robert Jordan did the same thing.

Speaker: He had a wheel of time.

Speaker: Oh my gosh.

Speaker: And my, my brother is a huge fan of wheel of time.

Speaker: And I just look at him.

Speaker: I was like, I can't, I can't go down that rabbit hole.

Speaker: Oh yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Now, considering you have them tattooed on your arm, that's what you're pointing to.

Speaker: Yeah, I my problem is and this is another reason why I don't get tattoos is because it would be like a giant Bon Jovi, New Jersey tattoo on my back that I would like think it was cool for about a week.

Speaker: And I'm like, what did I do?

Speaker: No, all of my favorite books and quotes I have tattooed down the left side of my body right now.

Speaker: And Blood and Bloody Ashes from The Wheel of Time is there.

Speaker: I love that series.

Speaker: I've read through it so many times.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So Wheel of Time and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Good Omens, they're all coming up next.

Speaker: Those are the new predictions for all of the pinball companies out there.

Speaker: Spooky was trying to get the license, but unfortunately, JJP,

Speaker: got it from them.

Speaker: So, well, I mean, if I could make a legitimate prediction of the next book, that's going to become a movie that will eventually become a pin, then none of that has happened short of the book yet would be the name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which got picked up by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Speaker: because it is a very musical focused book series.

Speaker: The problem is, is that the, the writer, uh, Patrick Rothfuss is a complete slacker and he's taken 10 years to, to finish up the third book in the series, which I'm guessing is the biggest reason, uh, they haven't committed to it yet.

Speaker: Likely due to the same concerns that game of Thrones had.

Speaker: It could have went, uh, Scott Pilgrim style.

Speaker: I mean, they hadn't even finished the final book and they were, they were making the movie.

Speaker: I mean,

Speaker: Well, most of the time, the movies don't go to the end of the series anyway.

Speaker: They kind of give up after, you know.

Speaker: Yeah, a certain point.

Speaker: If you've ever read the series of Scott Pilgrim, it actually follows it pretty close.

Speaker: It does really well for the time frame.

Speaker: I mean, they really could have got a couple movies out of that.

Speaker: And I don't know why they jammed.

Speaker: Is it five or seven books?

Speaker: No, six.

Speaker: Sorry, there's six books.

Speaker: Six books.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So I had the same book.

Speaker: Do you have them tattooed on you?

Speaker: No, not yet.

Speaker: I will.

Speaker: There's no question.

Speaker: So I've got like four or five lined up that I'm going to do all at once.

Speaker: Cause I, the, the arm is all done.

Speaker: I've got the, uh, my, I think third Harry Potter tattoo.

Speaker: So I've got to go down the side and then start hitting my leg.

Speaker: Cause it goes all the way over my shoulder and then it goes down the backside.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: That is by far more commitment than I have to any sort of artwork.

Speaker: So my, my head off to you, sir.

Speaker: Well, and the and the the dorkiness factor of it is it started off with a with a shirt.

Speaker: Yeah, if we're not dorky enough already or nerdy, it's a it's a it's a dragon.

Speaker: So all the the quotes are around a dragon, but the dragon doesn't have wings, which is often referred to in literature as a worm.

Speaker: W.Y.R.M.

Speaker: OK, yeah.

Speaker: So it's a bookworm.

Speaker: is brings it all together.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Love it.

Speaker: Um, but yeah, uh, Edgar Wright, uh, I think wrote the script and, uh, and directed, uh, uh, Scott Pilgrim versus the world, which to this day, between that and another Edgar Wright film, which is hot fuzz are two of my absolute favorite.

Speaker: I feel like masterpieces in, in filming.

Speaker: and enjoyable content online and i love scott pilgrim not only the the book series and to go back josh but to what you were saying there are in the first book actual scenes from from the the comic book that are are almost like 300 style directly happen in the movie and are nailed perfectly it it's so fantastic it's it the translation from the book to the movie is perfect

Speaker: And just some of the little nuances in that, it's great.

Speaker: Even the first battle scene from the first Evil X. It's almost like word for word.

Speaker: It's just great.

Speaker: If you haven't checked out the Scott Pilgrim series, please do yourself a favor.

Speaker: They're a graphic novel, so if you're into comic books.

Speaker: But just the whole series is fantastic.

Speaker: It's just...

Speaker: I think the reprinting them all is colorized and stuff like that now, too.

Speaker: You can get the full series or whatever.

Speaker: But go through your Kindle or whatever.

Speaker: Read the first one.

Speaker: If you're into video games, it's worth your time.

Speaker: It's all retro throwback stuff.

Speaker: It's like Ready Player A or something.

Speaker: Ready Player One or something.

Speaker: But not as stylized.

Speaker: I don't know how else to explain it.

Speaker: It's almost like a love letter to the old games.

Speaker: It's an awkward phase of someone's life where they're kind of transitioning from like, I got out of high school and I'm living on my own and I'm trying to figure out life.

Speaker: And, uh, some people have got figured out and some people do not.

Speaker: And Scott Pilgrim does not have it figured out.

Speaker: So it's, it's just a great book.

Speaker: It's a great book.

Speaker: Well, as, as Glenn would say, check it out, right?

Speaker: Check it out.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: You guys touched on something, and I'm going to use this to segue really quick.

Speaker: Predictions for the next JJP game.

Speaker: We've seen on their social media pages that they are gearing up.

Speaker: They are producing next games.

Speaker: Do we think it's Toy Story?

Speaker: Is there any other... I would be shocked if it weren't Toy Story.

Speaker: It's like how long of the buildup for Guns N' Roses was there.

Speaker: And it was really the worst kept secret out there.

Speaker: And so it's almost...

Speaker: it's almost ridiculously open at this point that we're just waiting for it to finally drop.

Speaker: Um, I would put it this way.

Speaker: I would be shocked beyond belief if it weren't Pat Lawler and toy story.

Speaker: So my question to you is, cause we're all family men here.

Speaker: Are you in on one?

Speaker: Uh, is it one of those things you've got to see at first?

Speaker: Is it something that you absolutely love?

Speaker: You know, Toy Story is a little mixed for me.

Speaker: And this is probably just a theme thing for me because I think the first one and the second one are great movies.

Speaker: The third one, it almost felt like, oh, we're doing this again.

Speaker: Wait, something interesting happens and they get stuck and then they have to find some elaborate escape.

Speaker: And then the last one, I felt like.

Speaker: Okay, so now not only do I think all my abandoned Luke Skywalker dolls are out there somewhere, abandoned in the backwoods somewhere running around, but it's almost like I appreciate the theme for the original Toy Story and Toy Story 2.

Speaker: But when it gets beyond that, you know, kind of the initial grow-up phase, it starts losing the magic for me.

Speaker: And I would say the same thing about Wreck-It Ralph.

Speaker: for me, that connects to me on a, on a big level because I love the original, the, the theme, the integration was amazing.

Speaker: And at the very end, it is this, Hey, we're wrapped up in this, in this really neat, feel good story.

Speaker: And I understand the second one.

Speaker: And it was fun to kind of go down those things, but it was almost like, yeah, okay.

Speaker: Like we're,

Speaker: It's interesting, but it's still the same thing.

Speaker: It's like, hey, they develop this relationship and then they fight and they break up and then they kind of this they reconcile and have this kumbaya.

Speaker: But it doesn't seem like it's as magical at the end than I would say the original Wreck-It Ralph.

Speaker: So

Speaker: Long story, longer.

Speaker: Toy Story for one and two, if they could just keep it at those two, then I would really appreciate it.

Speaker: And it would probably connect with me on the theme.

Speaker: Okay, second, layout.

Speaker: Um, Pat Lawler is a mixed bag for me.

Speaker: Uh, I like playing a little faster, uh, than he typically does.

Speaker: And most of his games are typically, uh, trap up, shoot.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Recover.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Trap up, shoot.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Recover.

Speaker: And I know that he's produced, he's designed amazing games out there and, uh, maybe just better players appreciate his style more than me.

Speaker: Um, but, uh,

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I'm, I'm kind of at that.

Speaker: I need to see it first.

Speaker: What do you think, George?

Speaker: I'm right there with you.

Speaker: I, um,

Speaker: I really enjoyed the first couple of, uh, of toy stories.

Speaker: And I think you nailed it.

Speaker: I think you nailed it there, Scott, with the, uh, if they can keep it focused on the first two, it makes the most sense.

Speaker: The, the third story I feel like was, um, the first one that was shifted more towards the parents as opposed to the kids.

Speaker: And it had to do a separation anxiety as your kid goes to college.

Speaker: And then the fourth one was, in my opinion, addressing what parents do with, um,

Speaker: Sorry, what's the phrase for when your kids are no longer in your home?

Speaker: Empty nesters.

Speaker: There you go.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So the fourth one I feel like was really targeting the concept of empty nesters and what do you do with your life after your kids have gone on?

Speaker: So do you move on?

Speaker: Do you separate?

Speaker: What does that look like when you're no longer...

Speaker: It just, it seems like the third and the fourth movie had nothing to do with kids.

Speaker: And how do you even play that in a pinball game?

Speaker: Like, I'm imagining as you progress through the third movie or the fourth movie and like Buzz and Woody decide they're going to go their separate ways.

Speaker: Are you bawling at the end of that game?

Speaker: Because it was such a heartbreaking moment that you're reminded of.

Speaker: Toy Story seems like a weird theme to me.

Speaker: It's one that I can totally understand why people would get behind, but Toy Story seems so not at face value having anything to do with toys or kids, especially in the later movies.

Speaker: So I think if they kept it focused to the first two, it would make a lot of sense or at least make it a lot more fun.

Speaker: Unless, of course, they did a 180.

Speaker: And what if it's Toy Story only a name, but it's focused on Lightyear, the new movie that's coming out?

Speaker: about Buzz.

Speaker: And that, to me, I could get excited about because there's, it's Toy Story and we happen, there's going to be some fun references likely, but it's a science fiction movie about a character from a Toy Story universe of television show.

Speaker: But...

Speaker: There's some fourth wall breaking there, I feel like, or some serious meta going on with now this is the realistic version of a live action television series that the kids love from the cartoon that we loved growing up with.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: It's kind of confusing as to what this actually is, but I could get excited if it was about Lightyear as opposed to Toy Story.

Speaker: See, and me, I'm really nervous because I know my kids will love this for some odd reason.

Speaker: We've well not odd reason I know why I've got two three year olds and I've got an 11 year old to Disney plus is hot commodity in this household.

Speaker: And for a month straight we watched nothing but Toy Story.

Speaker: One, two, three, four, the offshoots, the Halloween special that every little Toy Story thing we could get our hands on what's it seems like we watched that month.

Speaker: And

Speaker: I think you're right.

Speaker: I think if they keep it just to maybe the first movie, maybe the first two, it would work out fine.

Speaker: I do have a – and I think it's hard too because the first one – if you watch the first one and then you watch the fourth one –

Speaker: CGI has come so far.

Speaker: I watched the first one.

Speaker: The well, it was actually on.

Speaker: So we went on a Disney cruise.

Speaker: OK, so most of the time I was slathered in in sunblock and standing in the middle of the pool with this giant Disney movie playing while my kids kicked, prodded and poked me as they were swimming around me.

Speaker: And so, yes, I noticed that, especially when you look at Sid's face, the bad kid, you're like, oh, wow, that is definitely a big deal.

Speaker: But I would say the toy animations still hold up.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Like it's the human animations that have been completely changed.

Speaker: But the toy animations, I would say they would hold up.

Speaker: Yeah, I still think it'll sell a boatload of games.

Speaker: Because it is a theme that almost everybody can at least be interested in, at least accessible.

Speaker: It's not going to polarize people like Rob Zombie or something.

Speaker: I'm trying to think of a theme that could get released right now that assuming it has the backing of a company that's not just going to ruin the code or make some really awful mistakes with regards to the layout or something like that, that just won't sell right now.

Speaker: There's so many people who want pinball machines.

Speaker: I would say there is some rumblings.

Speaker: This is what I noticed my friends who are in real estate is that he's felt like tremors in the force where there are people who are

Speaker: having a little more challenge on, on selling their, their high priced homes.

Speaker: And I will say that he's dealing with really high end homes, but still people are like, Oh, I don't know if I'll qualify for that.

Speaker: And so I don't know.

Speaker: And I think what's, what eventually is going to happen is I mean, we love pinball.

Speaker: We're obviously pinball freaks for, for lack of a better term.

Speaker: And we will probably be interested in buying these, these high priced toys,

Speaker: regardless of the market.

Speaker: However, we're going to start losing some casual people.

Speaker: And especially something like this, where people in pinball already have a feeling of Lawler.

Speaker: Are they really interested in Lawler game?

Speaker: Are they not interested in Lawler game?

Speaker: Are they interested in the JJP game?

Speaker: Are they not interested in the JJP game?

Speaker: Whereas you're going to start losing the casual people who they don't know anything about that, but they know Toy Story.

Speaker: My nervousness is too, is that this whole play field thing really plays into that.

Speaker: It makes me nervous when someone buys our very first game and a chunk of their play field comes off and the company supporting it's like, yeah, we're not going to do anything about it.

Speaker: Here's a washer.

Speaker: And here's a washer, put it over the hole.

Speaker: That's my big concern too, is, is,

Speaker: Yeah, to be fair, all companies have a similar issue.

Speaker: And I own tons of Stern games, but you had a play field issue with TMNT.

Speaker: Correct.

Speaker: But they took care of me with no problem.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: They did, but they gave you a new play field.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The printing was off on the play field.

Speaker: So they gave you a new play field, but okay.

Speaker: I mean, that's, yes, they did make good on it.

Speaker: However, you would have to spend a lot of effort to, to depopulate and repopulate your play field.

Speaker: And so it wasn't a populated play field.

Speaker: Yeah, it wasn't a podcast.

Speaker: So you see what I'm saying is like, I mean, I don't want to be that person who's just picking on one company because all companies have have supply chain issues and they also have quality control issues.

Speaker: And while they're trying to do to make do, there's, you know, there's only so much they can do.

Speaker: That's the depressing part, though, is like I get it.

Speaker: I totally get it.

Speaker: starting sending me a blank, a blank play field is still a step up from doing nothing at all.

Speaker: No, absolutely.

Speaker: Or, or giving some, uh, some hard as nails, uh, finger polish paint.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, uh, one thing I wanted to add was about the, uh, the housing market, you know, we're up almost two and a half percent, uh, since I think I, I purchased even, even the place I'm currently in right now.

Speaker: So just in the past six months, the, in order to combat, um,

Speaker: Oh my gosh.

Speaker: Inflation.

Speaker: Inflation.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: In order to combat inflation, they've increased the mortgage rates up two and a half percent.

Speaker: Which lead into why people on the housing side are starting.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: They're starting, but you're going to feel that there's less.

Speaker: I know it's more of a feeling, but less easy money out there.

Speaker: And what happens is people start thinking, well, I'm, you know, I don't need to take that luxury thing.

Speaker: I mean, the toys are the first things to go, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'm not going to dig into that because I feel like that's a can of worms within itself.

Speaker: But yeah, I get what you're saying.

Speaker: So it's going to be interesting to see what the market does here.

Speaker: And I feel like that's a segment for a different show because I still want to do one more thing before we wrap this all up.

Speaker: I know we're at the one hour mark.

Speaker: Well, technically a little more because of what happened before.

Speaker: Anywho, I've got a segment still.

Speaker: And I notified these two about it.

Speaker: But if you guys have never listened to Slap Save Pinball podcast, which I can't actually find on the internet anymore.

Speaker: Pull out the Wayback Machine.

Speaker: Yeah, let's pull out the Wayback Machine.

Speaker: They used to play a game called Flip Bolt Torch.

Speaker: It's very simple.

Speaker: We're going to pick a year of pinball machine.

Speaker: I will give these guys the list.

Speaker: They're going to decide which one they're going to flip for money, which one they're going to bolt to their floor, and which one they're going to torch, whether with gasoline or a lava pit.

Speaker: I don't care how you do it.

Speaker: You could do Todd Tucky style off the roof.

Speaker: Throw the Street Fighter off the roof.

Speaker: So I've picked the year, and I'm going to go very specific with the year because I'm pretty for sure...

Speaker: If I, if I say the Gottlieb's in this year that you guys would be like, yeah, I'm going to torch punchy the clown.

Speaker: Oh, come on.

Speaker: Punchy the clown was awesome.

Speaker: So here's the year.

Speaker: You ready for this?

Speaker: We're going to go Bally Williams, 1993.

Speaker: Oh, so here is the list.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Go ahead.

Speaker: What Scott?

Speaker: No, no, no.

Speaker: I'm saying, okay.

Speaker: I'm, I'm ready.

Speaker: You ready?

Speaker: Ready?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Braum, Stoker's Dracula.

Speaker: Indiana Jones the Pinball Venture, Judge Dredd, Star Trek Next Generation, Twilight Zone, and Whitewater.

Speaker: That is quite the list.

Speaker: That's a good year.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So give me those again.

Speaker: I did write them down.

Speaker: So Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Indiana Jones.

Speaker: Indiana Jones.

Speaker: I've judged red Star Trek, the next generation, Twilight Zone and Whitewater.

Speaker: So we have six to choose from.

Speaker: You have six to choose from.

Speaker: Man, that's that was a really good year.

Speaker: And they did.

Speaker: I mean, heck, Twilight Zone, they produced 15,000.

Speaker: Whitewater was 7,000.

Speaker: Man, they were pumping out games back then.

Speaker: Mm hmm.

Speaker: I mean, just in those two alone, we're over 30,000.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Now the challenging thing is I actually do, I know immediately one of the answers.

Speaker: I know immediately one of the answers.

Speaker: So do you want to go first, Scott?

Speaker: Or do you, should we all do our, okay, let's all do our flip first.

Speaker: Which one is that, is that the one you're going with Scott?

Speaker: Yeah, that's, that's the one I immediately know.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Which one are you flipping?

Speaker: I'm flipping Twilight Zone.

Speaker: Really?

Speaker: Because I actually, ironically, I actually have a super nice Twilight Zone.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: It's never been in my house.

Speaker: It's been at my friend's for about three years now.

Speaker: Oh.

Speaker: Three or four years in his house.

Speaker: And I can't really say that I miss it.

Speaker: But it's a super nice Twilight Zone.

Speaker: And I'm like, well, I don't like...

Speaker: I can't bring myself to sell it yet, but Hey, if you're looking for a super nice twilight zone, uh, so that's the one I would sell.

Speaker: Cause it, cause it's just, it's never for some reason had the pull to bring it into my house.

Speaker: It's you'd sell that over draft or Indiana Jones, huh?

Speaker: Yeah, you know, I like Indiana Jones and my friends.

Speaker: My friend had a nice Indiana Jones that he finally sold.

Speaker: But I played it and I felt like, hey, this is a fun game.

Speaker: But it still had that, I don't know, it kind of felt like I was playing at Chuck E. Cheese a little bit.

Speaker: It felt like, yeah, and it's okay and it does some cool things, but it never felt like, it never really charged me.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Gotcha.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: George, which one are you flipping with animatronic mice eating pizza in the background kind of thing?

Speaker: Is that exactly, well, it's kind of the demented ones too.

Speaker: Cause you know, the last time I went to Chuck E cheese, I swear that I got Hep C. I'm just, I haven't, I've neither been confirmed nor denied, but they had one pinball machine that I'm not kidding.

Speaker: Had one flipper was in the, in the salute position the whole time.

Speaker: And the other one was missing a rubber.

Speaker: So it was just, it was, it was a, it was a Pirates of the Caribbean.

Speaker: And I think that it wasn't even ridden hard and put away wet.

Speaker: It was sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

Speaker: It was that bad.

Speaker: Oh my God.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So selling, I'm selling whitewater.

Speaker: You're selling Whitewater, huh?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: But with the caveat that I would keep it for like a year or two before selling it and wait for the value to go up in preparation for Whitewater 2.0 or whatever that next rule set is and really make the cash assuming that it's like what happened to Rudy's nightmare would happen with Whitewater.

Speaker: Gotcha.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: What about you, Josh?

Speaker: I think I would flip.

Speaker: I think I'm there with you with Twilight Zone.

Speaker: It's hard because I'd either do Twilight Zone or Indiana Jones.

Speaker: Both wide bodies.

Speaker: Both wide bodies.

Speaker: Both ridiculously priced for what they are.

Speaker: I mean, what are Indiana Joneses going for like...

Speaker: Definitely north of 10K, aren't they?

Speaker: It was kind of crazy.

Speaker: My friend sold his for, and I think I can say this, he sold it for $11,000 with the anticipation of buying the new Cactus Canyon.

Speaker: And his wasn't HEP quality, but it was like a step below HEP quality.

Speaker: And I was surprised that he sold it for that because it sold in like 10 minutes.

Speaker: I'm like, you could have got like $13,000 or $14,000 for it.

Speaker: But he didn't.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So I will firmly, you know what?

Speaker: I'm going to go with twilight zone.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Uh, one of the most iconic, both of you guys went twilight zone and it's one of the most iconic pinball machines of all time.

Speaker: Like in every show where pinball shows up, it's a twilight zone.

Speaker: I get it.

Speaker: And I get it.

Speaker: It's, it's the same thing though, is as Adam's family, for some reason,

Speaker: because I didn't get into pinball during the nineties, I got into, into pinball in the last 10 years.

Speaker: It doesn't have that nostalgic connection for me.

Speaker: And if I put a twilight zone or an Adams family next to a Jurassic park, I'm going to take the Jurassic park.

Speaker: I mean, every time just because it's just Jurassic park at the stern.

Speaker: Well, no, I data East lost world is where my heart really is set.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: No, I'm kidding.

Speaker: You and Greg bone must get along.

Speaker: Well,

Speaker: Well, and I think the thing is, too, is Twilight Zone, it is a good game.

Speaker: It is iconic.

Speaker: It's a really fun game.

Speaker: I actually, when I got into the hobby, that's one of the ones I really focused on when I first got in.

Speaker: But I think the problem is it's kind of a one trick pony.

Speaker: Like it's left ramp, right ramp, you know, shoot the piano.

Speaker: And you're just, you're trying to churn out.

Speaker: There's way too many modes.

Speaker: And they're all just like you're churning out modes after modes.

Speaker: Legitimately, that's exactly the game I was thinking of when we were talking about if it's in a competition, there's only one way to play it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, and really that, that was a, when Josh Sharp said that, you know, the game that you love and the game that you hate, and it was the both answer was twilight zone because in the tournament setting, it's, it's very, it's a one trick pony.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Which one you bolt into the floor, Scott?

Speaker: You know, I'm going to take whitewater.

Speaker: It's just it's fun.

Speaker: A great restored whitewater.

Speaker: And I know it's not super deep compared to any modern ones, but it's still just a fun game to play.

Speaker: And.

Speaker: Anytime.

Speaker: So my friend, when I go over to his house and he says the one that always gets played is Whitewater.

Speaker: Like everybody just just gravitates for that.

Speaker: And because my house is it's more of a social house.

Speaker: I bring people over.

Speaker: I had a church group over recently and was just showing him the different games.

Speaker: And so it's interesting to see which games they play.

Speaker: They gravitate toward, I mean, they, they like some, there's something about whitewater that pulls them in.

Speaker: It's the same reason why I still have my stern pirates of the Caribbean, because they all go and play stern pirates of the Caribbean.

Speaker: Same thing as Simpsons.

Speaker: Everybody goes and plays Simpsons.

Speaker: And a lot of times these newer games that I really like, they don't, they don't connect with.

Speaker: I got to bolt Indiana Jones.

Speaker: Just, yeah.

Speaker: The theme is amazing.

Speaker: I would struggle between choosing Twilight Zone or Indiana Jones, only that it's difficult, but that half a second and I'd lean towards Indiana Jones.

Speaker: I grew up with the movies there.

Speaker: When you're hitting the pops up at the top and you actually get the sound of the punches, which are so... It's such an iconic sound from the Indiana Jones franchise.

Speaker: All of it.

Speaker: The theme immersion is great.

Speaker: I love the...

Speaker: It's one of those games that one day when I have room, I'll own and that will be one of the few bolted to the floor pinball machines for me.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Even though Indiana Jones really has no outcome on Rage for the Lost Ark, he could have not have showed up and nothing would have happened different.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Despite that, I'm still, I'm still in.

Speaker: And it's, it's Indiana Jones and it's better than the stern Indiana Jones.

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: The stern Indiana Jones never existed.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: We went in the multiverse that would never have made it.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: i i do enjoy indiana jones and i've got a better appreciation for it now that they've released it on pinball fx and i've been playing the crap out of that because it is so tuned in yes that that is really the problem with those games is because usually when you get and find them the flippers stink so bad you cannot hit all the shots yeah well what's funny too is that game is so heavenly or heavenly heavenly

Speaker: heavily depended on the bonus like your score looks tiny and then depending on how many modes you've completed all of a sudden your bonus shoots up it's the size of the bonus josh size of the bonus it is it is one of those games i think i'm uh i'm i'm probably bolting whitewater i've whitewater i just i feel it's funny because like i'm sitting there with my son today and i'm like do you feel like this game is a game from 1993

Speaker: You've got Earthshaker that's from 1990.

Speaker: That's three years before.

Speaker: And I feel like the premise of Whitewater, even though it's simple, it's one of those simple to learn, hard to master kind of games.

Speaker: And it feels so good every time you get the vacation jackpot, if you can actually get to that.

Speaker: And lining up the five times with the multiball and blowing away 100 million jackpots, it just feels so good.

Speaker: I do love Indiana Jones.

Speaker: I love the mode based on that.

Speaker: I think the wide body is what kills it for me, though.

Speaker: It plays just a little too slow, even though that play field is pretty packed, and so you kind of don't notice it for the most part, and the ramps are pretty quick to come back to you.

Speaker: But I think it's that...

Speaker: And granted, this is all in a vacuum, right?

Speaker: I'm assuming that these games that we're getting are perfect.

Speaker: Your path of adventure, whatever it is, is going to work every single time and whatnot.

Speaker: But yeah, Indiana Jones is a great game, but I think Whitewater edges it out for me, which is kind of weird.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: So, okay, this is a really great list.

Speaker: Is there, which one you, which one you're torturing, Scott?

Speaker: Oh, come on.

Speaker: This is, this has to be universal.

Speaker: Like if you, if you all don't agree with me, then, then this is ridiculous.

Speaker: It's Judge Dredd.

Speaker: I mean, the thing's a flaming turd ball.

Speaker: It is horrible.

Speaker: I'm not going to agree with you on that.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: I'm like, I don't know if I agree with you on that.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: It's a turd.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: No chance.

Speaker: I, I, I don't think I'd ever want to own a Judge Dredd.

Speaker: Have you ever played the game?

Speaker: Yes, I have played a game.

Speaker: The layout on is, is, is fun.

Speaker: I enjoy shooting it.

Speaker: The artwork on it is one of actually one of my favorite, uh, artwork related like play fields.

Speaker: I think it, it feels very true to the original comic.

Speaker: The Kate, it's a wide body that has like two thirds of the game.

Speaker: Uh, like disappeared because of that stupid disc in the upper left.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: the underworld planner whatever it is yeah the dead world dead world that's what it is dead world yeah seriously you could pull that out and use it for frisbee golf i don't know it's still a great game and it's got two different rule sets to it it's one of those unique games where they had two rule sets between the super game and the regular game okay all right okay yeah i mean you're wrong but okay

Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker: For the prize, you can't go wrong.

Speaker: Okay, did you guys notice that four of these six are all wide bodies?

Speaker: Oh, is this the year of wide bodies?

Speaker: Yeah, this is when they started doing the super pins.

Speaker: Yeah, there was only two that weren't wide bodies.

Speaker: The Bram, Stoker's Dracula, and Whitewater.

Speaker: Hmm.

Speaker: I'd have to burn Star Trek The Next Generation.

Speaker: Oh, it's on fire already because of all the shorting out.

Speaker: There's always issues.

Speaker: It's the one game I feel like whenever I play it on location, it usually doesn't play well.

Speaker: And when I have played it, when it does play well, I'm constantly reminded by how much I can't stand the television show.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: The human version is great.

Speaker: And I can appreciate it, but I don't know why I get so turned off based on TNG, which I just wasn't a fan of.

Speaker: Hmm.

Speaker: It is an interesting time capsule though.

Speaker: Like if you watch galaxy quest, I mean, it's hilarious.

Speaker: Cause it's just, it's crushing them.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: One of the greatest movies that that's, that's up there.

Speaker: That is not a movie.

Speaker: That is a documentary based on how dysfunctional the original star Trek cast members were.

Speaker: I'm going to have to rewatch that now.

Speaker: Yes, you do.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Alan Rickman with the by grab stars hammer.

Speaker: So great.

Speaker: Swallow his pride and say, what a savings as they're opening for a new Best Buy style store.

Speaker: It's one of the greatest moments in film, period.

Speaker: It's so it's awesome.

Speaker: OK, speaking of the I guess the since he's the doppelganger for for Spock, have you have you Googled Leonard Nimoy and the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins?

Speaker: I haven't.

Speaker: No, it is great.

Speaker: You basically just Google it.

Speaker: Actually, you know what?

Speaker: Delete this podcast right now and go and watch that.

Speaker: And you have to watch the video because it is straight out of the late 70s, late 60s, early 70s.

Speaker: And I think they had to have been on LSD when they made it.

Speaker: I'm so concerned right now that somehow Tom Bombadil is included in the ballot of Bilbo Baggins.

Speaker: Although it really isn't about Bilbo because Lord of the Rings is where Tom Bombadil came in.

Speaker: And as long as Tom Bombadil is not incorporated, I think I'm okay with everything you just said.

Speaker: He's not, but it's great.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Because Tom Bombadil is the biggest crutch, I feel like, in narrative fantasy or in epic fantasy.

Speaker: And Dennis, that goes out to you, Mr. Kreisel.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Legitimately, the movies are better than the books.

Speaker: On Lord of the Rings.

Speaker: Totally saying it.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: I think I can actually agree with that.

Speaker: The books, I was trying to listen to.

Speaker: If I could have listened to those on four times speed, I would have.

Speaker: Because, oh my gosh.

Speaker: The Lord of the Rings, the books, weren't a great read, I think.

Speaker: There's moments that are so iconic, like as Gimli and Legolas are yelling back and forth at the battle, counting up the number of kills that they have.

Speaker: But The Hobbit, I think that Tolkien was a much better writer when he came back and did The Hobbit.

Speaker: It was more streamlined, yeah.

Speaker: And ironically, the, uh, the movie, the movie, uh, quality inversed.

Speaker: Yes, exactly.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: I, I, I watched the first one.

Speaker: I just couldn't even put in the other two.

Speaker: I own all three because they were like on a sale.

Speaker: It was a combo sale.

Speaker: I have the same thing.

Speaker: And it was like super cheap digitally.

Speaker: And so I own them and I don't think I've ever, I have all the extended versions.

Speaker: I don't think I've ever finished them.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And that's because I don't have the time.

Speaker: If I could watch the movie on top double speed, I would too.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I think I'm right there with George.

Speaker: I'm torching Star Trek to next generation.

Speaker: And I think it's because of that stupid cannon mode.

Speaker: You can't get around and you have to shoot right up the middle into the hole.

Speaker: And even that hole is annoying to get into.

Speaker: Just like it's not.

Speaker: I want a shot that feels satisfying to hit.

Speaker: Not like just some little dinky hole that.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: It just... I will say, if I was going to do a twofer, I would have burned both of them, but mainly it was on the reliability issues on Star Trek The Next Generation.

Speaker: See, and that's why I said we're in a vacuum where they'd work perfectly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But no, there's something about Next Generation.

Speaker: Maybe it's because Richie took that game, made it into a regular, a standard body,

Speaker: I made such a great game in the star Trek, the new movies.

Speaker: It's such a good game.

Speaker: It makes next gen look just that much worse.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But next gen does have that connection to the nineties nostalgia.

Speaker: So I, I'm okay with that connection.

Speaker: I didn't think it was as terrible of a show as a George did, but, uh, still the, uh,

Speaker: I have a problem with everyone's defense of the next generation.

Speaker: When they tell you the, the first season wasn't great.

Speaker: It just make it to the second and third seasons and you'll really enjoy it.

Speaker: But that's, it's like 24 episodes or 20.

Speaker: Like that is a huge chunk.

Speaker: It's a big chunk.

Speaker: Ignore the entire first season.

Speaker: That would be like getting into a 12 or 13 book series and being like, you know, yeah,

Speaker: Oh, Kushiel's Dart actually is a series I have never been able to finish because I've been told by multiple people you have to make it 400 pages into the first book before.

Speaker: I'm not going to happen.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't have the kind of time.

Speaker: Yeah, I will say the, you know, I guess I would say a better series than Star Trek Next Generation would be the Babylon 5 series.

Speaker: If you if you want that connection.

Speaker: Is the Babylon 5 the one where they're constantly in the bar and drinking and there's... That's cheers.

Speaker: LAUGHTER

Speaker: I feel like there is a Star Trek television series where they spend like 20 or 30% of every episode in a bar setting.

Speaker: Oh, I don't know.

Speaker: Maybe that's probably Deep Space Nine, I'm betting.

Speaker: I'm not a Trekkie.

Speaker: I caught episodes here and there.

Speaker: But the Babylon 5 series was actually really interesting because it was written by Michael Stravinsky or whatever.

Speaker: He's a comic book writer.

Speaker: He actually wrote for a lot of the – he wrote for Marvel.

Speaker: in the eighties and nineties.

Speaker: And so it follows very much a, a comic book arc, uh, from start to finish.

Speaker: So I have to give that a go.

Speaker: Yeah, it's, it's a good one by it's, it is a little weird because they thought they were going to run out of funding between four and five.

Speaker: And the five was supposed to be the wrap up series, but so they filmed like an end episode,

Speaker: an end movie that they had like these standalone movies that were with it too.

Speaker: And, but they did get funding and so they finished it.

Speaker: And so you have to do probably Google it like the best way to watch the series, just because it's a little disjointed if you watch it in the release.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: Well, I'm going to wrap this bad boy up.

Speaker: Thank you for that, Scott.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: Way too nerdy.

Speaker: We went super like, like Comic-Con for this whole thing.

Speaker: So there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker: I'm sure there's stuff that Josh would be like, yeah, that's not making the cut.

Speaker: So George, if we want people to get ahold of you, how do they get ahold of you?

Speaker: They can check me out on twitch.tv slash don't panic flip.

Speaker: I also have a website, which is don't panic flip.com where I have a blog where we talk about science fiction and fantasy novels, how to stream and just a plethora of different things.

Speaker: There's also a lot of photography on there.

Speaker: And outside of that, there's the pinball network.

Speaker: You can check out the website, the pinball network and also the pinball community discord where I feel like all super active on that discord.

Speaker: I agree.

Speaker: I'm on there as well.

Speaker: It's a nice, it's a nice discord.

Speaker: Scott, I guess I'll, I'll do the outro.

Speaker: I always do the outro.

Speaker: So if you want to get ahold of us, we're loser kid pinball podcast at loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.

Speaker: If you want to get ahold of us on the socials on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Twitch, it's all at loser kid pinball.

Speaker: We've simplified it.

Speaker: So you don't have to put in the podcast part.

Speaker: Uh, we're more than happy to talk with you and whatnot.

Speaker: We like to chit chat a little bit on there.

Speaker: And we're super stoked.

Speaker: Please keep an eye on the Facebook page over the next couple of weeks.

Speaker: We are releasing puzzle pieces.

Speaker: I did finger quotes there.

Speaker: To the general public, there are some people behind the seats that knows what's going on.

Speaker: And this is exciting.

Speaker: I'm glad that George has agreed to join on our ship for this, along with the other.

Speaker: I counted the other day.

Speaker: I think we have 20 plus people.

Speaker: involved in what we're doing so uh it's it's quite the little army of what we've got going on i hope that's enough to wet your whistle yes and big shout to michael barnard who uh did the rush art and he actually helped us out with the with the art for this project too so

Speaker: Ooh, is that giving away too much information?

Speaker: Maybe.

Speaker: Maybe?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: We'll leave it on that.

Speaker: So thanks again for joining us, George.

Speaker: It's always great to watch and have you on, watching your stream.

Speaker: And I'm glad that we finally got to have you on the podcast.

Speaker: This is awesome.

Speaker: Thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker: You guys are awesome.

Speaker: This was a fun conversation.

Speaker: See you in two weeks?

Speaker: Yep, see you in two weeks.