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Ep 68: Pinball Legend Joe Kaminkow
50 Plays4 years ago
Joe talks about growing up in the coin op biz, Williams, and starting a business partnership with Gary Stern.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Mention
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
I am Josh Roop here with me.
00:00:10
Speaker
My co-captain is always Scott Larson and Scott.
00:00:14
Speaker
Should we hurry?
00:00:14
Speaker
Let's hurry and talk about flipping out really quick.
00:00:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:16
Speaker
Let's talk about the, the sponsor of the show, flipping out pinball.
00:00:20
Speaker
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00:00:27
Speaker
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00:00:30
Speaker
They are able to, if they get some sock in soon, they'll be able to hook you up with a new machine, but they also know when the manufacturing guidelines are and when they're planned.
00:00:39
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So if you have that Guardians of the Galaxy that you really want in your game room, go ahead and contact them.
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00:00:46
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Or also, if you want to get on maybe a future title, if you want Keith Owens' next game, just go ahead and say, hey, put me on the list.
Guest Introduction: Joe Kamenkao's Industry Influence
00:00:52
Speaker
Wait, Keith's designing?
00:00:54
Speaker
I didn't know that.
00:00:54
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:00:55
Speaker
All right.
00:00:56
Speaker
So I want to talk about, this is a pre-epic guest we have on.
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Speaker
I would dare say that pinball would not be what it is today without this man.
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not only because of the partnership he made early on with Gary Stern, but because of the licensing and changing the game from what it was in the 80s into the 90s.
00:01:14
Speaker
We have Mr. Joe Kamenkao on.
00:01:16
Speaker
How are you doing, sir?
00:01:17
Speaker
I'm doing great.
00:01:18
Speaker
Thanks for having me on, guys.
00:01:21
Speaker
And you were like multiple.
00:01:23
Speaker
You're in the Pinball Hall of Fame.
00:01:24
Speaker
You're like in the Slots Awards Hall of Fame.
00:01:27
Speaker
I mean, you've.
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Speaker
Gaming.
00:01:29
Speaker
You're very titled.
00:01:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:31
Speaker
And so I feel very honored to have you on.
00:01:32
Speaker
It's awesome to have you here.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, one or two to go, I guess.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:37
Speaker
Okay, so I'm curious because when you get in an industry like this, you start as a fan.
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Speaker
And then you figure out how to get in and be part of the industry.
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Speaker
So what started
Joe's Early Gaming Industry Experiences
00:01:52
Speaker
you out?
00:01:52
Speaker
Because you were a young man when you started getting into the gaming industry.
00:01:57
Speaker
Well, younger than most actually would know, I was actually five.
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Speaker
I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Speaker
When I was five years of age, my father became the comptroller of a company called General Vending in Baltimore, Maryland.
00:02:14
Speaker
And they were the largest game distributor, jukebox vending machine company in the Baltimore, Maryland area.
00:02:24
Speaker
So at that point in time, they were a Gottlieb pinball company.
00:02:30
Speaker
And I used to go on Saturdays with my dad to work.
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He seemed to work on Saturdays as well.
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Would hang out in the showroom and play games, see the games.
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And then eventually, you know, after I got bored doing that and had my crackers and juice box or whatever it was, I'd start folding brochures and putting them in envelopes or learn to go to the back of the house and
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watch the guys fix the games or do whatever.
00:02:59
Speaker
So, um, really at a very early form of age, I may even have a picture here.
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Speaker
I could probably show you if you give me one moment, my favorites.
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Speaker
Um, I have an interesting photo of me at the, uh, Virginia music operator show.
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probably when I was about six or seven years of age and a kid.
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So I sort of
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dare say I grew up in the business.
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I became a second generation person in the industry.
Venturing into Game Distribution and Entrepreneurship
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And then in 1974, my father moved to Boston and went to work with a company called Bally Northeast.
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Used to be Robert Jones International.
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Bally had three distributorships.
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They had Advance in San Francisco, run by Chuck McMurdy.
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Joe Robbins ran Empire in Chicago and dad ran Valley Northeast in New England.
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And of course they were Valley and Midway and early Atari distributors.
00:04:09
Speaker
You know, dad knew, you know, Nolan and all these guys at the very beginning of all of their careers.
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And, you know, again, moved to Boston and, you know, when I'm 14 or whatever, you know, I go after work, I go on the weekends.
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It was my summer job.
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working at the distribution.
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So I was always around games.
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And then when I was in college in the 80s, I started operating games.
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So I had Curry College, University of Maine in Orono, Stonehill College I owned.
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video games and pinball machines that I would put in their jukeboxes, work as an operator, and then opened up a chain of arcades called That's Entertainment in Maryland with a friend whose father owned a variety of Luskins, if you remember Luskins.
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They owned a variety of appliance stores, and we carved like 2,500 square feet out of the appliance stores.
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When the arcade business was, you know, Pac-Man Red Hot and started, you know, operating games there.
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So at some point in time, you know, I was 20 years old.
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I owned several hundred games while I operated.
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What was where that led to next is, you know, I met, you know, for instance, you know, in 75 or 76, whenever it was, when the Who's Tommy came out, Tom Neiman got tickets for me and dad.
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And we went to New York and saw the opening of Tommy.
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So, you know,
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You know, it was very intriguing to me.
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I looked at some of the pinballs.
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I was like, I was really disappointed when Space Invaders came out that it looked like a Geiger thing.
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I like Paul Ferris's work, of course, but, you know, it didn't look like what I thought Space Invaders should look like.
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So when I had my arcades,
00:06:03
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I was buying a lot of games and like, you know, kick man or things like that.
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I'm like, man, this is really not something I want to play.
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And I'm sitting here spending money.
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I go, I probably could do something better than these guys are doing currently.
Logical Highs and Early Game Design Challenges
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Now I had an engineer named Tom Doe that used to come into my, my, my arcade from Westinghouse missile systems engineering.
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And he's like, Oh, he loved playing games.
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We started talking.
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He goes, I can make a better game than this.
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It's like, I'd like to make a better game than this.
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And in 1981, we had a company called Logical Highs that we sold the right of first refusal to our very first video game to Williams.
00:06:44
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We had talked to Stern and a bunch of others.
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This is coincidentally is a picture of me at the West Virginia Operator Show.
00:06:52
Speaker
Okay, that's so great.
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It's a great video of it.
00:06:56
Speaker
It's probably like what, late 60s, early 70s?
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Oh, I would say that was probably 67.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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We just decided to make a game.
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We never had never made a game.
00:07:09
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I really didn't know what I was doing.
00:07:11
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I talked a good game.
00:07:12
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I think we got $500,000 advance from Williams and went off and made a really suck ass bad game.
00:07:19
Speaker
A really bad, sorry, a really bad game.
00:07:21
Speaker
You're fine.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah.
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But we learned a lot and then we turned into a second product.
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And then Williams, Mike Stroll offered me an opportunity to come work at the company in marketing and market research, which my goal was get there and get into game design.
00:07:39
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One of the games I, my very first pinball was
Williams Era: Designing Defender and Industry Downturn
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a defender pinball, which was kind of, kind of funny when I think about it.
00:07:46
Speaker
I sold Williams the right to make defender pinball, even though they own the right to defender, but I came up with the idea of turning into a pinball.
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So if anybody ever sees the fender and,
00:07:56
Speaker
You see there's like two pop-upers on that game.
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Right by it, all the credit they would give me was certain design services by to Williams Electronics Inc.
00:08:06
Speaker
by Logical Highs Inc.
00:08:10
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is on that game.
00:08:11
Speaker
Is that around the time they also made Joust too?
00:08:14
Speaker
Because those were right in the same era.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah, same time.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, this was me at Williams.
00:08:19
Speaker
That was the first video game I made.
00:08:20
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:08:21
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Very cool.
00:08:22
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Yeah.
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So kind of fun.
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I'm sure I have a picture of Defender in here somewhere too.
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Speaker
And then, and of course, you know, the Williams hit, hit the skids.
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Speaker
I mean, the,
00:08:32
Speaker
Well, the video game industry crashed in around like 1982.
00:08:35
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It imploded.
00:08:38
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Yeah, more than it was really 83.
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I went over to Japan.
00:08:41
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I got the rights to 1942, but Williams really didn't want to sell a conversion kit.
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Didn't think they could sell a real game.
00:08:49
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And Star Rider happened, which is the Laserdisc game that Bill Fudson Rider and Python worked on.
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And it was a beyond disaster product.
00:09:01
Speaker
There's me with Larry Holmes at a Bali trade show booth.
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And I was probably 77, 78.
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Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:08
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But, um,
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The business imploded.
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I mean, literally the factory shut down.
00:09:19
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There was no hope.
00:09:21
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We, I went over a license, 1942, Arabato, we sold a couple hundred conversion kits.
00:09:27
Speaker
Um, Luden Castro basically said, if you don't get like 4,500 orders or some number, I don't remember the exact number, but it was a very large number of games.
00:09:37
Speaker
He's basically said, I'm not reopening Williams ever again.
00:09:39
Speaker
It's done.
00:09:42
Speaker
We had just finished making like Mystic Marathon and I don't remember the name of the dumb game.
00:09:51
Speaker
It was a dumb pinball with like mushroom theme.
00:09:53
Speaker
It was awful.
00:09:54
Speaker
And we had like two games in process.
Revitalizing Williams with Space Shuttle Pinball
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Speaker
One was Mark Ritchie was working on a game called Sorcerer.
00:10:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:07
Speaker
And we were working on a game that became Space Shuttle.
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Mark Springer came in, did the first art on the game.
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Larry was programming it.
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Speaker
Eugene, we got to go.
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Speaker
He was at Berkeley getting his MBA.
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We got him to do a new sound package for us.
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Speaker
Went back and convinced everybody to put the Harris CVSD back on it to do speech.
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Mark Springer came in, and it was really funny.
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He was having a hard time.
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drawing the back glass and not having the tail kind of looked like it was laying down.
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Speaker
So Larry and I went over to Toys R Us at lunch one day, which was on the other side of the river behind Williams, bought a styrofoam space shuttle and brought it back.
00:10:50
Speaker
And Barry had the drawing on his play field where the ramp came up into the orbit.
00:10:55
Speaker
So just here, show this to Mark and, you know, Barry's cutting a hole out of the piece of styrofoam and it's sitting on the ramp and it's under the back under the glass.
00:11:05
Speaker
And that's sort of how that happened.
00:11:06
Speaker
And then Mark did eventually get his tail fixed.
00:11:11
Speaker
And we told Mike, you know, if the future of the company depends on the game, we weren't scheduled to be next.
00:11:17
Speaker
But Larry and I lobbied hard to make space shuttle the next game.
00:11:24
Speaker
And we went to the trade show, had a thousand dollar marketing budget where we bought a bunch of blow up space shuttles.
00:11:30
Speaker
And.
00:11:33
Speaker
If it wasn't for that game, Williams wouldn't exist.
00:11:35
Speaker
Williams would have closed.
00:11:36
Speaker
It was over.
00:11:37
Speaker
And what year was that?
00:11:38
Speaker
Because I distinctly remember when the Challenger exploded because that was a very... That was summer of 80.
00:11:45
Speaker
That was AMOA of 1984.
00:11:49
Speaker
The game went into production in 85.
00:11:51
Speaker
We had a post in the middle, flash lamps, and it was dynamic and it was exciting.
00:12:02
Speaker
The business was done.
00:12:05
Speaker
That literally reopened Williams.
00:12:09
Speaker
I've got notes here that you sold about 7,000 of those.
00:12:12
Speaker
Does that sound about right?
00:12:13
Speaker
Might've been more, but at least seven.
00:12:16
Speaker
I think it was, it was a, it was a pretty big number.
00:12:18
Speaker
And the big thing was we got enough games to get the factory open again on that order from the AMOA show.
00:12:24
Speaker
I mean, and then Mike left the company about four months later, but, um, and then I left not too far after Mike.
00:12:32
Speaker
um went over to game plan and made um what was it called let's see um Loch Ness Monster and they kind of ran out of money they made Cyclops instead of Loch Ness Monster which Roger did didn't go anywhere and uh that's kind of like you know Gary and I knew of each other that's where Gary Gary was doing pin star at the time and he connected with me and I was the young hot
00:12:59
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designer, right?
00:13:00
Speaker
Like they get to make something cool and did something interesting and had a different vision of how to get, get it done.
00:13:08
Speaker
And, um, we kinda, you know, struck our, our partnership and, you know, it was me, Gary and Shelly in the basement of his house, we were gonna start a pinball
Starting a Pinball Company with Gary Stern
00:13:19
Speaker
company.
00:13:19
Speaker
And we went to a Konami.
00:13:23
Speaker
Endata East to see if either would fund us.
00:13:26
Speaker
Both were very interested.
00:13:27
Speaker
Eddie Pellegrini lent us some money, helped us get this thing going.
00:13:31
Speaker
And as I said, the rest is history.
00:13:36
Speaker
You know, we started the company.
00:13:37
Speaker
We made Laser War, cobbled together the first four games with
00:13:42
Speaker
The first game I designed over, I started on Thanksgiving Day, 1986.
00:13:49
Speaker
It was a Thursday.
00:13:53
Speaker
On Monday, I had a finished play field design, and by the end of the week, we had a working whitewood.
00:13:59
Speaker
And we had a road King that we bought, took off all the parts, rewired it on our whiteboard and stuck it back in their cabinet and turned on the lights and just kind of made it cycle the ball to shoot it and pop some pop bumpers to make sure it worked.
00:14:14
Speaker
And that's, that's how it started.
00:14:16
Speaker
Wasn't, wasn't very fancy, but
Licensing Iconic Titles for Pinball Machines
00:14:18
Speaker
it worked.
00:14:19
Speaker
You were pretty early on seeing the value in licensing.
00:14:27
Speaker
And I'm looking at what you did.
00:14:29
Speaker
And the things that always jumped out at me of the Data East era is that they had identifiable themes already already.
00:14:39
Speaker
you know, purchased and put into a pinball machine.
00:14:41
Speaker
I mean, you have, you have Playboy, you have Robocop, uh, back to the future, a fan of the opera, which, um, you know, it was probably, um, it was almost leveraged, but not quite.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:52
Speaker
Right.
00:14:53
Speaker
It was, it was leveraging a musical that was well known, but, uh, and so, you know, you had turtles, you had Batman, you had Star Trek.
00:15:00
Speaker
So all these titles are well known.
00:15:05
Speaker
Uh, what led you in that direction?
00:15:07
Speaker
Well, you know, Valley did in the early days.
00:15:11
Speaker
Um, even laser war, by the way, was supposed to be laser tag.
00:15:15
Speaker
We just couldn't get with worlds of wonder to get the deal done.
00:15:18
Speaker
So we just kind of did a rivet of what was really red hot at the moment.
00:15:22
Speaker
You know, Bally's heyday when Tom Neiman was there was stuff like Dolly Parton, right?
00:15:28
Speaker
Or $6 million man or Tommy or, you know, pinball wizard, right?
00:15:35
Speaker
Um, Gary did Ted Nugent and, and, and we had, uh,
00:15:40
Speaker
Globetrotters and Nitro Groundshaker was kind of a Prudhomme type of thing, you know, snake versus mongoose.
00:15:48
Speaker
And there was always value in, you know, that something will end up in your basement and have more intrinsic value.
00:15:55
Speaker
And it was a really good reflection of pop culture.
00:15:58
Speaker
I mean, one of the ones I'm really, probably two that were really, ones I was super proud of,
00:16:03
Speaker
I mean, we were the second licensor in the world to have The Simpsons.
00:16:08
Speaker
I mean, The Simpsons, the Tracy Ullman show, we identified this brand and went after it.
00:16:13
Speaker
I mean, as Matt was so shocked that we were so early, you know, we ended up spending a lot of time with Matt, granting the creator of Simpsons.
00:16:22
Speaker
And, you know, he actually flew to David Letterman's show.
00:16:26
Speaker
talked about the pinball on the David Letterman show and flew to New Orleans the next day for the MOA show, which we had four of the biggest security guards you've ever seen walk somebody into a trade show.
00:16:37
Speaker
Nobody knew who Matt was, but next thing you know, it's like, wow, who is this guy with all these security guards?
00:16:42
Speaker
And he signed autographs for, I think, the next eight hours and drew pictures of Bart.
00:16:48
Speaker
So had it broken by then?
00:16:50
Speaker
Because exactly what you said.
00:16:52
Speaker
It just happened in a big way, but we were a year ahead of it in the license.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, because for those of you who don't know, the origin of The Simpsons was it was on a variety show.
00:17:04
Speaker
It was a one-woman variety show, the Tracy Ullman show.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, it was...
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, Matt was doing life as hell before that.
00:17:11
Speaker
Or South Park, you know, before we had YouTube and viral videos, all my friends in Hollywood are sending me these videotapes of this thing called the Spirit of Christmas.
00:17:22
Speaker
I got like 30 videotapes in a week of Christmas.
00:17:25
Speaker
I'm like, what the hell is South Park?
00:17:26
Speaker
And went and got that brand very early.
00:17:29
Speaker
Jurassic Park was a product, but we had a relationship through Back to the Future and through Amblin and through doing a book that allowed us to, you know,
00:17:40
Speaker
get Jurassic Park and not have other competitors get it.
00:17:43
Speaker
But I mean, some of the things we did were amazingly serendipitous.
00:17:46
Speaker
So for instance, we did Back to the Future.
00:17:49
Speaker
We only had six weeks to do the game from the time we licensed it till the time it came out.
00:17:55
Speaker
Six weeks.
00:17:55
Speaker
Six weeks.
00:17:57
Speaker
I mean, the play field we did in two days and programmed it in a month.
00:18:01
Speaker
And we had a game that, you know, someone had created, which wasn't very good.
00:18:06
Speaker
And we scrapped it and we had to fill the line, keep the line running.
00:18:10
Speaker
And then at the last minute, Michael J. Fox decided not to be on the game.
00:18:14
Speaker
And.
00:18:16
Speaker
You know, we still pulled off a great game, but, you know, I looked at that relationship.
00:18:19
Speaker
I built a great friendship.
00:18:21
Speaker
As a matter of fact, this past weekend, I was in London with Bob Gale, who wrote Back to the Future and the new Back to the Future musical just opened there.
00:18:29
Speaker
And I'm an investor in it.
00:18:30
Speaker
Oh, good for you.
00:18:32
Speaker
Bob and Bob all these years later.
00:18:35
Speaker
But back to the future, you know, I ended up becoming great friends with Bob Gale.
00:18:39
Speaker
I was at his 40th birthday party.
00:18:41
Speaker
He and Zemeckis came up and said, hey, why don't you go back and do Tales from the Crypt?
00:18:47
Speaker
Because, you know, Walter Hill, Bob Zemeckis, Dick Donner, and Joel Silver own that brand.
00:18:56
Speaker
So I went over to see Dick Donner.
00:18:58
Speaker
He was filming Lethal Weapon 3.
00:19:03
Speaker
And next thing you know, I'm with Mel Gibson in his trailer, and he's doing three Stooges impersonations for me.
00:19:09
Speaker
And I think I'm the only person that Mel ever gave his likeness rights to between that Lethal Weapon and Maverick.
00:19:17
Speaker
So that happened because of Back to the Future that then we got to Joel Silver and did Tales from the Crypt.
00:19:26
Speaker
And you probably heard I did a custom one of a kind Joel Silver pinball that Dick gave to Joel as a Christmas gift that year.
00:19:33
Speaker
And then that led to Aaron Spelling.
00:19:36
Speaker
Right.
00:19:37
Speaker
So, I mean, it's.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:39
Speaker
It's been a very serendipitous ride.
00:19:41
Speaker
And, you know, fortunately, we've been able to network and, you know, build wonderful friendships that have been enduring for decades.
00:19:49
Speaker
And, you know, obviously, these same brands and these same friendships became very valuable at IGT as we changed the slot machine business.
00:19:59
Speaker
The social game business at Edzinga, you know, we have games that are played by literally have a billion downloads that we've created that, you know, I'll wake up and 1.8 million people are concurrently playing one of my games.
00:20:13
Speaker
1.8 million at the moment.
00:20:16
Speaker
So, you know, it's kind of been, but back to the licensed product, you know, we,
00:20:21
Speaker
And I think Gary even strayed for a while and made some non-licensed product early in the post-Sega days and realized that the great value of a good brand ends up in somebody's basement.
00:20:35
Speaker
Or if you remember how our business used to operate, an operator buys a game, operates it for a year or two years, whatever it is.
00:20:43
Speaker
Hardcodes, they last a lot longer.
00:20:45
Speaker
They don't wear out.
00:20:46
Speaker
And then they sell the game at the value of what they paid for it or more.
00:20:52
Speaker
the profit that the game made during that period of time is really their net value in what the game produced.
00:20:59
Speaker
And, you know, obviously something less that's not as generic gets a higher dollar back into the house, right?
00:21:09
Speaker
Because, you know, somebody is more excited about putting lethal.
00:21:12
Speaker
I mean, I look at, you know, we made almost 11,000 lethal weapons.
00:21:17
Speaker
I never see a lethal weapon hardly ever for sale.
00:21:21
Speaker
I mean, that game was 20 years old.
00:21:23
Speaker
I never see a South Park for sale.
00:21:25
Speaker
I never see my original Simpsons for sale.
00:21:28
Speaker
I never see a Rocky and Bullwinkle for sale.
00:21:31
Speaker
I mean, these games had, they're just like a sponge.
00:21:34
Speaker
They got sucked up and they're just gone, right?
00:21:38
Speaker
I mean, they just, they had great, great value.
00:21:41
Speaker
Even when I see something like the original Guns N' Roses we did, you know, sells for more than the one that's being sold by Jersey Jack today.
00:21:50
Speaker
You know, it had better
Innovating with Dot Matrix Displays
00:21:51
Speaker
value.
00:21:51
Speaker
So, yeah, that's a little bit about the license space.
00:21:58
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome.
00:22:00
Speaker
My other question, too, I don't know if you know a bunch about this, but how did you guys get, because you had the very first dot matrix display pinball machine.
00:22:08
Speaker
What brought that about and how did you guys decide to implement that?
00:22:13
Speaker
Well, we decided to implement it poorly.
00:22:15
Speaker
You know, we had the bigger one originally.
00:22:21
Speaker
And the game is actually supposed to have been out on The Simpsons.
00:22:27
Speaker
We actually had it up and running and working on The Simpsons.
00:22:29
Speaker
And Gene Lipkin at the time basically said to me and Gary, your feet are in cement.
00:22:34
Speaker
If you basically mess this up, the company's going to go out of business and we're going to fire you.
00:22:39
Speaker
So delay it again.
00:22:40
Speaker
It probably would have been out, you know, eight months before.
00:22:44
Speaker
And at the time we looked at the bigger display, one that Williams ended up going to.
00:22:49
Speaker
And just in our bomb cost and going from displays to other things, it was more in line with what our expense was for the existing 16 segment alphanumerics.
00:23:05
Speaker
Hindsight being 20-20, we ended up going to the bigger one again and then even eventually even a bigger or the better dot pitch.
00:23:11
Speaker
when we got to games like Baywatch.
00:23:16
Speaker
But we always looked at, if you're a student of the industry,
00:23:23
Speaker
and you think about what things made the business go through growth spurts.
00:23:30
Speaker
It was going from numeric displays from six segments to seven, going to alphanumeric, all of a sudden having score inflation where you could not just put up text, but put up the word a million or make a million for a shot.
00:23:45
Speaker
So all of a sudden, the flexibility of being able to
00:23:51
Speaker
have more digits
00:23:54
Speaker
the dot matrix kind of gave you or six players.
00:23:57
Speaker
You know, we had versions that allowed two players to play against each other or six players at a time or the bigger player to have a bigger font that was up.
00:24:05
Speaker
But it always drove new, it wasn't a wider cabinet or a wider play field that drove new sales.
00:24:12
Speaker
It was obsolescence, right?
00:24:14
Speaker
So when you went from score reels to numerics, from numerics to alphanumerics,
00:24:21
Speaker
from alphanumerics to dot and now from dot to full tft color displays right you look at you know the new stuff gary makes today and you put it next to a dot matrix game it looks like a dinosaur right it's old and feeble and you know at some point gary will come up with another version will be bigger white or whatever that will make the generation before it
00:24:46
Speaker
less attractive.
00:24:48
Speaker
You know, a blinking light is a blinking light.
00:24:50
Speaker
I don't care if it's an incandescent light or if it's a tricolor lead.
00:24:53
Speaker
Now, certainly the tricolor leads give you the opportunity to put a clear insert on and make it red sometimes or make a blue or make the light shows more interesting.
00:25:03
Speaker
But more than anything, the dot matrix is what had or display changes throughout the history, right?
00:25:10
Speaker
Score, you know, we started with a back glass that had light bulbs.
00:25:16
Speaker
Right.
00:25:16
Speaker
100 plus 200 plus 50.
00:25:18
Speaker
Oh, I got, you know, that's my score.
00:25:21
Speaker
Right.
00:25:22
Speaker
To score drums.
00:25:25
Speaker
To eventually alphanumerics, alphanumerics, the dot matrix to bigger dot matrix to try colored lead dot matrix to color display.
00:25:36
Speaker
So it's sort of a natural thing.
00:25:38
Speaker
And that's what we were thinking at the time.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:41
Speaker
What transitioned you?
00:25:42
Speaker
Because after when pinball was declining, I guess, in the 90s, you went in a different direction.
Pinball Market Boom in the Early 90s
00:25:51
Speaker
So what opened your eyes to those opportunities?
00:25:55
Speaker
Because you've been wildly successful, Adam.
00:25:58
Speaker
Well, a couple of things.
00:26:00
Speaker
First off, you know, the early nineties were unbelievable how many games we made during that period of time.
00:26:06
Speaker
And when we were doing, you know, we went from Jurassic park to star Wars to lethal weapon, you know, that in some order, I think we, we put out 30,000 games in nine months.
00:26:19
Speaker
And we were, you know, we were filling up the casinos and, you know, we got to the point we weren't innovating and we were getting squeezed and build materials and metals and everything else.
00:26:31
Speaker
And I used to go to the trade shows in Vegas and I would look at these slot machines and I go, oh, my God, they're feeble, right?
00:26:39
Speaker
The lighting, the sound.
00:26:40
Speaker
And one of our good customers, Hans Kloss at Ballywolf,
00:26:45
Speaker
became president of Bali when Alan Mase had some issue, I think, if I recall, he got busted for trying to bribe somebody in New Orleans or something.
00:26:53
Speaker
So, you know, he came in and was running it and I went out and visited with him.
00:26:56
Speaker
I was like, why don't we put sounds in a slot machine?
00:27:00
Speaker
Why don't we put displays?
00:27:02
Speaker
We actually mocked up a firework display.
00:27:06
Speaker
Brian Schmidt did some sounds and they actually adopted it onto a Valley game years before Williams ever came out with the dot matrix and their slots, you know, 15, you know, seven years later, the Valley actually had it.
00:27:18
Speaker
They just, they had a guy who just had no creative vision, who was their head of engineering.
00:27:25
Speaker
And, you know, as the business started to decline and shrink and, you know, Sega had purchased us at that point in time.
00:27:33
Speaker
And, you know, I met with Mr. Nakayama about, you know, he asked me if I'd consider helping in the gaming side of Sega at the time.
00:27:40
Speaker
I had been approached by Bally at that time.
00:27:45
Speaker
It was run by like Joel Kirschbaum and Kutz the Caesar and a few others in like 98.
00:27:50
Speaker
And Williams was starting to make inroads.
00:27:53
Speaker
as they were pivoting their business into slots and they were doing like the atom, not atom sound, it's monopoly.
00:27:58
Speaker
And they had some sounds and some better graphics and I GT really was not equipped to make that change.
00:28:05
Speaker
And I met with them in like 98 as well.
00:28:08
Speaker
And we didn't really go anywhere.
00:28:10
Speaker
And about a year later, Williams is starting to make more inroads and they reached back out to me again and flew back out to Reno and
00:28:19
Speaker
It was a pretty big jump to go back at 40 years of age and totally change your career.
Transition to Slot Machines
00:28:24
Speaker
But there was a skill set that both I had because I looked at a lot of the things where they were.
00:28:30
Speaker
I mean, at that point in time, Sega was already at a million polygons a second, right, with Virtual Fighter.
00:28:36
Speaker
And I'm looking at this company going, oh my gosh, there are 32 pallets and 256 colors.
00:28:43
Speaker
Well, that was 1981 Williams video game hardware.
00:28:47
Speaker
I mean, literally there were 20 years behind the time.
00:28:52
Speaker
I mean, they were still breaking down pallets to try and make colors work when the rest of the world's, you know, you know, doing VGA color graphics.
00:29:02
Speaker
So, um,
00:29:05
Speaker
I joined them.
00:29:06
Speaker
I didn't think the business was big enough to financially support both Gary and I. Though, when I left Gary, I still helped him get Harley Davidson, helped him get Austin Powers.
00:29:18
Speaker
As a matter of fact, the artwork for Austin Powers was done by Romy Vasquez, who was an artist at IGT.
00:29:25
Speaker
I don't know if you guys knew that or not.
00:29:28
Speaker
I didn't.
00:29:30
Speaker
Gary was kind of in trouble, was having trouble getting art terms.
00:29:34
Speaker
you know, we have had an artful partnership and collaboration for the 20 years since I left the company.
00:29:41
Speaker
You know, I love Gary and I love what we built and would do nothing but help him in any way I always could.
00:29:49
Speaker
And, um,
00:29:52
Speaker
But the business wasn't big enough to support both of us at that time.
00:29:55
Speaker
And I give Gary great credit.
00:29:57
Speaker
I mean, he went through some really tough times with that company.
00:30:00
Speaker
The business really cratered a few times.
00:30:03
Speaker
Dave Peterson came in as a wonderful partner for Gary.
00:30:06
Speaker
He's a great guy, brought a discipline that Gary didn't have in certain aspects of the business, had a different vision of the collectible hobby component of the company, and became a great partner for him.
00:30:20
Speaker
And
00:30:21
Speaker
you know for me um i was very fortunate i was able to use you know my skill set my ability to you know walk into a very big company that was very slow i mean they had a uh a system that if i wanted to put a sound in a game we i'd have to do an engineering request the people would have to assess the work and fill out a report
00:30:48
Speaker
of what the work would be.
00:30:49
Speaker
Now, it may take them an hour to do the report for a task that would take them five minutes.
00:30:55
Speaker
could have done the task yeah but you know 12 times over uh so we we had to change some things there i remember being uh being there once and saying to an engineer you know i need a you know i want a sound when you land on the first symbol and this is the second symbol that's also in that pay table the second sound and if you if you miss then you know a losing sound or a winning sound or if you don't get the symbol you don't on the first one you don't make a sound
00:31:25
Speaker
And if you get it on the second and third, but you can't possibly win it, you don't play the sound.
00:31:29
Speaker
And, you know, someone looked at me and said, well, that'll take us like about six months or six weeks to do.
00:31:33
Speaker
And I said, well, you know, from a code standpoint, logic standpoint, it should take you about six hours, maybe.
00:31:39
Speaker
And if you can't get it done, I'll find somebody that can get it done.
00:31:44
Speaker
And for some miraculous reason, it was done in about four hours.
00:31:48
Speaker
Oh.
00:31:48
Speaker
Six months.
00:31:50
Speaker
And that's when everything changed at IGT and got much better because there became, you know, fortunately, I've been around enough hardware, software, hardware development, mechanical engineering development that these disciplines and being a hands-on manager
00:32:08
Speaker
allowed me to cut through the crap and say, let's just get it done.
00:32:11
Speaker
And if you can't figure it out, let me help you figure it out.
00:32:14
Speaker
And, you know, it became, you know, ITT became a phenomenal financial success.
00:32:20
Speaker
In the first several years I was there, I think, you know, our stock went from $14 a share to maybe $200 a share.
00:32:28
Speaker
Nice.
00:32:31
Speaker
So you stepped away from pinball for a little bit, but what made you decide to come back and start doing Batman 66 and the Beatles?
Return to Pinball: Batman 66 and The Beatles
00:32:38
Speaker
Well, you know, I had, you know, done slots for, you know, 13, 14 years.
00:32:49
Speaker
took a hiatus when we had a third management change at the company and started with Larry DeMar and some other people, a company called Spooky Cool.
00:33:01
Speaker
And we sold a very, our first game was a disaster didn't do as well as we thought.
00:33:09
Speaker
Brian Eddy worked on that game.
00:33:10
Speaker
It was a big part of it.
00:33:12
Speaker
And what a lot of learnings were had.
00:33:14
Speaker
And then we pivoted into social slots, which, you know, slots is something I knew a lot about at the time.
00:33:21
Speaker
And then, you know, I have a Batmobile.
00:33:26
Speaker
Some people know that or don't.
00:33:28
Speaker
And became good friends with George Barris and really good friends with Adam West and was able to secure the Batman 66 title and get Adam to agree to participate in it.
00:33:41
Speaker
And we ended up deciding the best method was to go back and modify the original game George did.
00:33:47
Speaker
There were some things like that he and I thought we could do better together, change the ramps, change a lot of the rules.
00:33:53
Speaker
Lima did all new rules.
00:33:54
Speaker
And, you know, you know, it was really one of the last projects Adam ever worked on.
00:33:59
Speaker
And the Beatles I pursued for a decade.
00:34:02
Speaker
I mean, literally a decade before I got it.
00:34:05
Speaker
It may be the only million dollar plus license in the history of our business.
00:34:12
Speaker
I was able to secure the brand, finally made a vision that they like.
00:34:16
Speaker
They really like the retro concept.
00:34:18
Speaker
And I really love the game.
00:34:20
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if you've played it or not.
00:34:21
Speaker
It's a bit of a throwback.
00:34:23
Speaker
It's not overly complex.
00:34:26
Speaker
It's for, you know, everybody kept saying to Gary, we were going to do an originally an original play field and original, you know, ramps and everything else.
00:34:37
Speaker
And we're like, you know, this is 60s.
00:34:38
Speaker
Nobody ever made a Beatles game in the 60s.
00:34:41
Speaker
And we looked at, you know, everybody kept going, you know, give us a classic meteor or classic sea witch or classic whatever.
00:34:47
Speaker
And we went back and we said, you know what?
00:34:49
Speaker
Sea witch was a great playing game.
00:34:51
Speaker
But there were some problems with the ball, got stuck behind metal parts, and the orbit was a little clunky, and we needed a magnet to stop the ball on top, and we'll have more drop targets.
00:35:03
Speaker
So we use that as a starting point.
00:35:05
Speaker
Basically, George, we redid the play field.
00:35:07
Speaker
I mean, it's like saying, you know, here's the Volkswagen Beetle, and then here's the new Beetle.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah, they're both Beetles.
00:35:14
Speaker
But they're different cars.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:16
Speaker
And we went back and redid the game and we are very happy with the result.
00:35:21
Speaker
The game is sold out.
00:35:23
Speaker
We have orders waiting for the balance of the very final part of the run.
00:35:29
Speaker
Getting the music was so hard and having it approved by Proy, Paul, Ringo, Olivia and Yoko is no easy task.
00:35:39
Speaker
Let me tell you.
00:35:40
Speaker
And Franchi did an extraordinary job.
00:35:43
Speaker
Both George with the play field and Franchi with the art.
00:35:47
Speaker
I mean, he so nailed it perfectly.
00:35:53
Speaker
And then, you know, there's another project Gary's got that I helped bring to him that he's currently in design with.
00:36:00
Speaker
And then hopefully I'll get Harry Potter for the future at some point.
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:05
Speaker
We'll secure that brand.
00:36:06
Speaker
Because I just finished doing a Harry Potter game for Zynga that I've been working on with Mark Tramiel and a few others for the past four years.
00:36:16
Speaker
Okay, so there's two questions I have.
00:36:19
Speaker
One, so you were saying that Beatles is sold out.
00:36:23
Speaker
Sold out.
00:36:24
Speaker
Or at least the orders are in.
00:36:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:27
Speaker
We have, I think, maybe a final 200 to make.
00:36:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:34
Speaker
And they're all spoken for.
00:36:36
Speaker
I think there's probably a little bit left in the final 200 because we haven't announced 200, but we have orders backed up in the product.
Challenges with Licensing and Production
00:36:45
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:36:46
Speaker
The Beetle store keeps taking orders that we keep promising we'll deliver.
00:36:50
Speaker
Gary's having, like anybody else, container and raw material part problems.
00:36:55
Speaker
If he knows everything from foam to whatever is unavailable.
00:36:59
Speaker
I have three games pending, but I thought Beatles was sold out.
00:37:03
Speaker
So I may reach out and see if I can possibly secure one of those.
00:37:06
Speaker
It is sold out.
00:37:07
Speaker
I think we're going back and making a final run October, November.
00:37:13
Speaker
I think a good portion of them are spoken for at this point in time, but yeah, it's a great game.
00:37:19
Speaker
And, you know, people like John Taffer from, you know, Bar Rescue and a bunch of other good friends have gotten them and they're just, they adore the game.
00:37:27
Speaker
I love the game.
00:37:28
Speaker
It's a great game.
00:37:29
Speaker
I love the game and I actually bought the topper about a year ago with the anticipation of being able to buy it.
00:37:34
Speaker
But there are no more.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, there are no more.
00:37:36
Speaker
So that's why I bought the topper because I was planning on buying it.
00:37:40
Speaker
So I'm going to have to reach out and see if I can scoop up one of those last ones.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, the last available one that I know that was available in the States, I think John Taffer purchased from Bar Rescue.
00:37:53
Speaker
John's a good friend of mine and I helped him find the game, but there are none to be found.
00:38:00
Speaker
So I've noticed since you've done two games with Stern, you've kind of kept Gomez as your designer and Franchi as your artwork.
00:38:09
Speaker
Hopefully on your next project.
00:38:09
Speaker
I helped him get Munsters.
00:38:10
Speaker
I don't know if you know that or not.
00:38:13
Speaker
He did Munsters, yes.
00:38:14
Speaker
I brought the license to Gary.
00:38:16
Speaker
Okay, awesome.
00:38:17
Speaker
um do you think you'll kind of keep the band together for your next kapow title or your next project or um the next one i'm doing i think there's a different artist on it um i think kevin's working on it but um you know i i'm sure chris and i will do a project or two again in the future okay
00:38:35
Speaker
Cool.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:36
Speaker
I like, I like, you know, I think Chris is just, you know, he's a little bit of a wild man and, you know, I kind of like, you know, and he worked for me at Zynga for about a year and a half too.
00:38:44
Speaker
I don't know if you know that.
00:38:46
Speaker
Um, that's worked for me on the Willy Wonka game we did, but he's, he's really a great talent.
00:38:51
Speaker
So, you know, it's like anything, you know, it's, we try and find the right person that whose skills and passion on the brand is,
00:39:00
Speaker
just right and you know chris was certainly just right but for both beetles and monsters and and uh batman i i did like that you casually dropped in the little tidbit of at some point you'd like to get harry potter that was like that that was like flying by really quickly but i think everybody's antennas went up because i know that's been on the top 10 most requested and it's usually been everybody's gonna get it it's gonna be
00:39:26
Speaker
Well, you've already done a Harry Potter slot machine, correct?
00:39:30
Speaker
No, Harry Potter match three was Zynga.
00:39:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:33
Speaker
So you've already dealt with that license and the people that are involved with it.
00:39:37
Speaker
We have a great relationship with Warner Brothers.
00:39:40
Speaker
Yeah, because there's always been that.
00:39:41
Speaker
This is the longstanding rumor, and I don't know if there's any validity, but this is what they've said, is that J.K.
00:39:48
Speaker
Rowlands doesn't like pinball because she thinks it's gambling.
00:39:52
Speaker
No, I think what happened early on in the license, either somebody said something or somebody did something or she wasn't ready.
00:40:02
Speaker
I mean, there's a Harry Potter license for practically everything under the sun.
00:40:06
Speaker
Right.
00:40:07
Speaker
I would suspect in the future there'll be some softening around pinball for whatever the reason.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think you would sell 15,000 of those.
00:40:18
Speaker
Well, and, you know, sure.
00:40:19
Speaker
I like, you know, Keith to make the game or some of the other designers to do that.
00:40:24
Speaker
So hopefully I'll be able to, you know, work with Gary and collaborate on that.
00:40:29
Speaker
If, like I said, if anybody's going to get the brand, I'm sure it'll be me.
00:40:33
Speaker
Awesome.
00:40:33
Speaker
I'll almost bet on it.
00:40:37
Speaker
So one of the other things we were kind of talking about with you beforehand that we would really like to talk with you now is with your expertise of starting a pinball company with Gary back in the eighties and all that capital and everything like that.
00:40:48
Speaker
Um, how do you want to warn this Scott?
00:40:51
Speaker
I'm
Critique of Startup Pinball Companies
00:40:52
Speaker
trying to think.
00:40:52
Speaker
Well, okay.
00:40:53
Speaker
I, I have,
00:40:54
Speaker
I have pounded on deep root for over a year for the complete lack of professionalism.
00:41:00
Speaker
But I'm just going to say from someone who I have never manufactured a pinball machine, I have never produced anything.
00:41:07
Speaker
I don't know how the pinball industry works, but you do.
00:41:12
Speaker
And so, you know, I'll give you my take on it.
00:41:16
Speaker
First off, I really take my hat off to Spooky Pinball.
00:41:22
Speaker
I take my hat off to American Pinball.
00:41:25
Speaker
I take my hat off to Andrew Highway.
00:41:28
Speaker
I take my hat off to Jersey Jack.
00:41:33
Speaker
It is a very difficult thing to start a pinball company.
00:41:35
Speaker
even with all the hobbyist things the hobbyist hardware and other things because it takes a lot of different disciplines whether it be the discipline of creating a play field programming rules lights having inserts figuring out how to put hard code on or paint something or whatever there's a whole second discipline of just creating a bill of material
00:41:57
Speaker
that drives an MRP system that drives the manufacturing side of getting all those different parts in because you're missing one part, you can't even put it together.
00:42:08
Speaker
The discipline of material management, procurement, quality inspection of the parts that come in because it's so easy to overbend a bracket or have brittle metal or not plate something properly or
00:42:25
Speaker
not to burr a side rail or whatever it is.
00:42:29
Speaker
It's really complex.
00:42:31
Speaker
There's a lot of wire.
00:42:32
Speaker
There's a lot of ESD testing.
00:42:34
Speaker
There's a lot of FCC testing and everything else you've got to do.
00:42:37
Speaker
And when I heard...
00:42:42
Speaker
Bob Mueller talking smack about Gary.
00:42:46
Speaker
He was going to show us all.
00:42:48
Speaker
And I sit back and I go, well, let's see, who has he surrounded himself with?
00:42:54
Speaker
A lot of guys that have been around the pinball business, but really haven't had great success.
00:42:58
Speaker
And Barry hasn't made a game in 20 years.
00:43:01
Speaker
John Norris hasn't made a game in 20 years.
00:43:04
Speaker
I love Dennis.
00:43:05
Speaker
He's made some successful games and some not so successful games like Wheel of Fortune.
00:43:11
Speaker
Like I said, a few years ago, I was running ITT and going, how do you make Wheel of Fortune and not put a wheel on it?
00:43:18
Speaker
right yeah it's duh um and this guy is talking smack about gary and gary doesn't know he's doing like who is this ass clown was all i could think and you know i went back and i did some research and i even had a few people call and talk to him about making an investment in the company i was curious
00:43:41
Speaker
And I told several people, and this is very, very early on, this guy's going to end up scamming people.
00:43:48
Speaker
If you remember, there was a thing called, remember All Me?
00:43:50
Speaker
Do you guys remember All Me?
00:43:52
Speaker
I don't.
00:43:53
Speaker
So like in 1987 or 88, pre-Michael Gottlieb trying to start a pinball company, his dad again, some lady that used to work for Alvin Gottlieb, you can ask Rob Burke about it, some guy
00:44:09
Speaker
lady and it was like a secretary and she's like a church lady.
00:44:13
Speaker
It was really weird.
00:44:14
Speaker
Um, and some other guy, they showed up at a, at the pinball expo and they were started at pinball company called all me and Claude Fernandez quit stern to go work at all me as their head designer.
00:44:27
Speaker
Now just the word all me, it's all about me.
00:44:32
Speaker
All like A L L M E. All me.
00:44:35
Speaker
Wow.
00:44:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:37
Speaker
And the guy, whatever money he got invested several hundred thousand dollars.
00:44:42
Speaker
Wow.
00:44:42
Speaker
Scammed them all.
00:44:44
Speaker
And I'm looking at this guy, you know, talking about, you know, look, we know John Pompadou is a nice person.
00:44:53
Speaker
And good intentions are one thing.
00:44:56
Speaker
One thing with taking people's money and not ever producing anything for it is another thing.
00:45:02
Speaker
And like I said, good intentions are great, but implementation is another thing.
00:45:09
Speaker
And you go, okay, you know, for whatever reason, there's this, let's not forget Capcom pinball who blew a hundred million dollars trying to go in the pinball business.
00:45:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:20
Speaker
This concept of,
00:45:23
Speaker
Oh, my God, I want Cactus Canyon.
00:45:25
Speaker
You know, Cactus Canyon wasn't any good when Williams made it the first time.
00:45:30
Speaker
And it wasn't collectible then.
00:45:32
Speaker
And it was basically the last gasp of a dying company then.
00:45:37
Speaker
Why somebody thinks it's because it's bad, it's collectible is beyond me.
00:45:42
Speaker
You know, I'm glad you have Kingpin.
00:45:45
Speaker
You maybe have one of them, but it's still fun to play when you try it, right?
00:45:50
Speaker
So when I saw this guy talking smack and talking about what he was going to do, and I saw the couple, you know, look, it's one thing to take money and be trying to pay us.
00:46:00
Speaker
I'm glad Barry got a salary, and I hope Papa Duke got a salary during this period of time.
00:46:06
Speaker
This guy, when I read the, did you guys read the complaints?
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah, we actually read it over last week or last episode where he funded two marriages, one divorce, a place in Kauai.
00:46:18
Speaker
And that was where I lost it because I said, that's not someone who's trying to run a business.
00:46:24
Speaker
That's someone who's trying to fund his extravagant lifestyle.
00:46:29
Speaker
Right.
00:46:30
Speaker
He ran a pyramid scam and he paid first investors back with second investors money while at that time enriching himself personally.
00:46:41
Speaker
And I hope he goes to jail.
00:46:43
Speaker
I feel badly for people that sold their insurance policies or retirees that, you know, had faith in this guy.
00:46:51
Speaker
But anytime somebody tells you they're going to give you 7% guaranteed money,
00:46:57
Speaker
because I'll tell you, Fidelity High Net Worth will not do that for me.
00:47:02
Speaker
You should run.
00:47:04
Speaker
And this guy was scamming.
00:47:06
Speaker
And maybe he thought,
00:47:09
Speaker
And I guess as most scammers do that, Oh, well maybe pinball really isn't that hard.
00:47:14
Speaker
And there's a thousand dollars or $2,000 margin.
00:47:18
Speaker
I'll come up with Raza and I'll sell a thousand and I'll make a 20 million on it.
00:47:25
Speaker
So I want to have, I'll be able to either keep my investors going and keep, you know, paying.
00:47:31
Speaker
And eventually maybe somehow I'll even out the books or whatever, but,
00:47:36
Speaker
Starting a pinball company is really hard.
00:47:38
Speaker
I can go to, you know, Wicco or whoever is the supplier of parts, say, and buy, I can buy flippers, I can buy bumpers, I can buy most parts for the hobbyist.
00:47:48
Speaker
But to go build a thousand games down a production line in Texas where nobody's ever built a gamer or put one of these little metal things on a switch and twisted it just an eighth of an inch so that contact is just right as the ball goes
Manufacturing Challenges in Pinball
00:48:03
Speaker
over it.
00:48:03
Speaker
You've never done that.
00:48:05
Speaker
Or if you've never realized you've got to put those little metal things on the bottom of the flipper and set your flipper and then knock them into the play field.
00:48:12
Speaker
Or if you've never gone through and figured out how to make DuPont Imran actually work as a hard code,
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah, good luck.
00:48:23
Speaker
Anybody with a fraction of a brain could sniff this out.
00:48:29
Speaker
Gary and I laughed about it for the past two and a half, three years because Gary's got tough.
00:48:33
Speaker
He's a tough old bird.
00:48:36
Speaker
Probably his Robert's hurled insults bothered me more than they probably bothered Gary because I'm protective of Gary.
00:48:45
Speaker
But
00:48:47
Speaker
you know, you just knew this guy was gonna, there was no possible outcome where it would be good or they would make something competitive.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:57
Speaker
Period.
00:48:58
Speaker
I mean, just, I saw that piece of crap they tried to show a year ago and I just laughed.
00:49:04
Speaker
What about food truck?
00:49:06
Speaker
I mean, that is a license that I think will sell thousands.
00:49:09
Speaker
You know, I think all me, one of their games was wall street.
00:49:14
Speaker
I'm not mistaken.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:16
Speaker
Yeah, Food Truck is great.
00:49:17
Speaker
It was a wonderful Jon Favreau movie, and I thought it was delightful.
00:49:22
Speaker
Let's just do something that's as inane as we possibly can come up with.
00:49:26
Speaker
Day Trader, that'll be perfect.
00:49:28
Speaker
I can't help them play the game.
00:49:31
Speaker
I heard C-SPAN's really good, too.
00:49:32
Speaker
I heard that do a great thing.
00:49:34
Speaker
Look, I think... Root Canal.
00:49:37
Speaker
Root Canal's the next one.
00:49:38
Speaker
You know, I feel bad for, you know, Barry and Pompidou probably got two years of salary out of it and thought they were going on this magical mystery ride with this guy that was going to.
00:49:48
Speaker
you know, save them.
00:49:49
Speaker
I mean, I, I worked with Barry in 84 and he's a delightful, wonderful person.
00:49:53
Speaker
And I, I wish him nothing but happiness and health in his life.
00:49:57
Speaker
I'm the same thing with Papa Duke.
00:49:58
Speaker
You know, he's John's just, you know, he's an artist, you know, it was John made neon, right?
00:50:05
Speaker
He made pretty things.
00:50:06
Speaker
He made pretty things, right.
00:50:07
Speaker
He does circus Voltaire.
00:50:09
Speaker
Larry helped him do, uh, uh, the, the,
00:50:13
Speaker
the world cup game kind of sold in Europe, but you know, he's not had a lot of great success, but he's a, he's a nice person, but Robert Mueller, um, he's going to get what he deserves.
00:50:26
Speaker
And, and, uh, and, you know, any of these people that were foolish and parted with their hard earned money to buy this unproven crap without a factory.
00:50:38
Speaker
Well, you know,
00:50:42
Speaker
you kind of get what you deserve sometimes, you know, do your homework.
00:50:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:47
Speaker
And it hurts the pinball echoes.
00:50:48
Speaker
It hurts the ball business, but no, well by a stern, you'll, you'll,
00:50:54
Speaker
You know, no one's going to lose money buying a Stern pinball.
Impact of Global Material Shortages
00:50:58
Speaker
No one's going to have a game that's not going to work, that's not going to be supported, that's not going to have parts, that's not going to have resale value.
00:51:05
Speaker
But you want to go speculate on Atomic Girl Big Bang Lost Railroad, well, I guess buy one.
00:51:13
Speaker
I don't care.
00:51:15
Speaker
It's not really valuable.
00:51:16
Speaker
I think some people were thinking, and some people reached out to us when we were questioning why you would do it.
00:51:22
Speaker
And some people said, I know it was a risk.
00:51:26
Speaker
I said, I invested in it saying that maybe I would get something.
00:51:31
Speaker
But I do feel bad for the people who aren't going to get their money.
00:51:35
Speaker
I think it was a risky investment.
00:51:37
Speaker
It was a stupid investment.
00:51:39
Speaker
You build them when you can, like even I think some of these guys that invest in some of these other companies are still risky.
00:51:46
Speaker
Am I going to get my Hot Wheels car or whatever else it's going to be?
00:51:50
Speaker
At the end of the day, why do you want that game?
00:51:52
Speaker
Because it's probably not going to work.
00:51:54
Speaker
It's going to be unsupported.
00:51:55
Speaker
It's not going to have hardware that's going to be around when a chip goes bad or something and there's no parts for it, I guess.
00:52:02
Speaker
If you want to own a brick you can put in your backyard, I guess that's okay.
00:52:06
Speaker
Or you want to say you own something really special, but there's nothing special about it.
00:52:10
Speaker
That's the funny thing.
00:52:11
Speaker
I mean, I want a game that's fun and works.
00:52:14
Speaker
It doesn't work and it's not fun.
00:52:17
Speaker
But there's that, oh, let's do it without a license.
00:52:21
Speaker
Well, there have been plenty of games made without licenses.
00:52:25
Speaker
Nobody bought Oktoberfest.
00:52:28
Speaker
Nobody bought, really, Black Knight.
00:52:34
Speaker
Maybe you'll do high speed five next.
00:52:37
Speaker
Oh, great.
00:52:37
Speaker
Right.
00:52:38
Speaker
Who cares?
00:52:40
Speaker
Well, they could do fast and furious though.
00:52:42
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:44
Speaker
But I mean, that's, that's my, my point is, yeah, you're buying a pin, but I'd rather buy a car.
00:52:51
Speaker
You know, I, I look at it like a Fisker, you know, Fisker.
00:52:55
Speaker
Oh, I love the Fiskers.
00:52:57
Speaker
They look so pretty.
00:52:58
Speaker
It's going to be a fantastic flower pot one day.
00:53:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:02
Speaker
It looked pretty though.
00:53:03
Speaker
Right.
00:53:04
Speaker
But it's going to brick.
00:53:05
Speaker
They call an electric car that won't drive anymore.
00:53:08
Speaker
It's a brick.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yep.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:10
Speaker
You know, some of these pinballs are just going to be,
00:53:13
Speaker
bricks.
00:53:14
Speaker
So, you know, my recommendation, anybody that's really looking to buy a game, stick with Stern, it'll work.
00:53:23
Speaker
You'll have parts for when it stops working.
00:53:26
Speaker
And it'll have more value when you want to trade it and sell it and get your next game or you get tired of it.
00:53:32
Speaker
You want something new.
00:53:34
Speaker
So, Joe, the other question I have, too, because pinball right now is at an interesting place because of, like you've been saying, it's hard to get materials, especially raw materials.
00:53:45
Speaker
I mean, you can't get foam for sofas right now.
00:53:50
Speaker
You can't get containers.
00:53:53
Speaker
You know, containers were $3,000 to ship something.
00:53:56
Speaker
If I told you $10,000 for a container, you'd go, that's outrageous.
00:54:00
Speaker
If you could get a container for $10,000 right now, you'd be a hero.
00:54:04
Speaker
Containers are costing $25,000 to $30,000 a container.
00:54:08
Speaker
Wow.
00:54:08
Speaker
You know, it's really brutal.
00:54:11
Speaker
And some of these things you can't get except from manufacturers overseas today because of
00:54:17
Speaker
OSHA requirements or requirements around plating of things and, you know, you know, air and water and other quality
Supply Chain Disruptions
00:54:25
Speaker
standards.
00:54:25
Speaker
I mean, when I worked at Williams in 1984, we had a plating room.
00:54:29
Speaker
I mean, the biggest rats you've ever seen in the world in that plating room, but it was a plating room.
00:54:34
Speaker
You know, they'd stamp their own big parts and plate them.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:38
Speaker
So do you think that this is something temporary, though?
00:54:41
Speaker
Or do you think this is something that not only all companies are going to have to adjust for, but do you think pinball is going to have to adjust for the future of pinball?
00:54:48
Speaker
There are a variety of things happening.
00:54:51
Speaker
Petroleum exports are more expensive.
00:54:55
Speaker
because we went through a period of time where we didn't use petroleum, right?
00:55:00
Speaker
And then we had the problem with the Keystone pipeline or, you know, where the colony oil had the cyber attack or Texas shut down for a month because of snow or, you know, so petroleum-based things, you know, which are rubbers and plastics are more expensive.
00:55:23
Speaker
um there is a dramatic chip shortage um for a couple reasons a the factories were shut down because people were sick one of the larger factories in malaysia got shut down because they had a water shortage we couldn't and they didn't properly prepare to filter clean or reuse their water a couple company couple did but one of the larger ones did not and then people became ill with covid both in shipping
00:55:50
Speaker
um product and um and working in the ports and get things out of the ports so i mean and it's affecting not just pinball it's affecting i mean you're reading about toyota cutting their production by 40 because they can't get chips but they can't get tft displays or um you know factory is sick or you know covet unfortunately
00:56:14
Speaker
we have not gotten rid of because half of the idiots in the world won't take the vaccine or wash their hands or wear a mask you know somehow it became if we went from public health to political virtue um but internationally it's a problem the other problem that's happened to and you know fortunately i was in london last weekend but you know the eu is closing down all travel to u.s citizens again
00:56:41
Speaker
So where I used to go on a cruise once or twice a year, I've not been on a cruise.
COVID-19: Changing Consumer Behaviors
00:56:49
Speaker
I used to fly a million miles a year.
00:56:51
Speaker
I've been on four airplanes this year.
00:56:54
Speaker
I used to go to Broadway and see shows.
00:56:57
Speaker
I used to go to concerts.
00:57:01
Speaker
I'm not doing any of this.
00:57:03
Speaker
So what's happened now, we are home with some of us still working, working from home or whatever, or PPE money or whatever, with disposable income, sitting in our houses going, you know, gosh, this couch I've been sitting on for years, I've been working at home for a year, it's not as comfortable.
00:57:23
Speaker
Or I need, or all the people, if you can think about the...
00:57:26
Speaker
hundreds of millions of people that all of a sudden needed a laptop at home because the desktop is still at the desk at their office, but they need to be working remotely or the television is in high definition, but now we're home.
00:57:42
Speaker
And by the way, we're not going to movie theaters.
00:57:45
Speaker
You know, our habits changed, you know, Gary's business, you know, you would have thought, gosh, maybe because Gary's not selling to the arcade space.
00:57:55
Speaker
that maybe his business would have gone south like it did more for Eugene at Raw Thrills where people aren't buying giant Jurassic Park gun games, but a pinball machine you can kind of fit at home or even you buy one and it's kind of fun.
00:58:09
Speaker
Let's build a wall.
00:58:10
Speaker
Let's have two of them or three of them or four of them.
00:58:14
Speaker
I'm on the board of a company called Arcade One Up.
00:58:16
Speaker
Are you familiar with that?
00:58:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:58:20
Speaker
However, there's a couple of things I did want to point out.
00:58:23
Speaker
They have some, we were just talking about this earlier because they reached out to us about their little pinball emulator and they talked about coming on and we haven't heard, we've reached out a few times.
00:58:34
Speaker
So we would love to talk to them about the emulator.
00:58:38
Speaker
I'm on the board of directors.
Involvement with Arcade One Up
00:58:40
Speaker
Yeah, we'd love to talk about it because I was just looking at their site today because I saw some images on Tron and I saw some images on Simpsons.
00:58:51
Speaker
And there's a few of those that I'd like to get a hold of.
00:58:54
Speaker
Oh, there's a beautiful product coming from them.
00:58:58
Speaker
They built, Scott, Bachrach, and his team, they're building some
00:59:03
Speaker
Great, great things for your collection.
00:59:05
Speaker
You're going to be very pleased.
00:59:08
Speaker
And, you know, the pinball product's been very successful for them.
00:59:12
Speaker
Well, we would love to talk to someone about the pinball product because I'm serious.
00:59:17
Speaker
I think there's, yeah, my friend who just barely bought a Mandalorian, he's a huge Star Wars fan.
00:59:24
Speaker
And I just, it was his first machine.
00:59:26
Speaker
I helped him get downstairs.
00:59:28
Speaker
And I was even telling him, I'm like, actually, Arcade 1-Up has a...
00:59:33
Speaker
They have a Star Wars emulator that would be fun and it's reasonably priced and you can throw it next to your Mandalorian.
00:59:38
Speaker
Yep.
00:59:39
Speaker
Be perfect.
00:59:40
Speaker
So yeah.
00:59:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good product.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:45
Speaker
How'd you get associated with Arcade One Up?
00:59:49
Speaker
You know, I met their founder at the CES show a couple years ago.
00:59:54
Speaker
And I was in their booth and I was looking at one of their products and one of their sales guys or something came over and
01:00:03
Speaker
Oh, this Joe and Mac game.
01:00:04
Speaker
Have you seen it before?
01:00:05
Speaker
I said, well, I'm the Joe of Joe and Mac.
01:00:10
Speaker
And no, you're not.
01:00:12
Speaker
So yes, I am.
01:00:13
Speaker
So thanks.
01:00:13
Speaker
I met their founder, Scott Bacharach.
01:00:17
Speaker
And he and I chatted and continued to chat and started to build a relationship.
01:00:23
Speaker
And, you know, there are not that many guys that have a memory or a history of
01:00:32
Speaker
of the game business of the past 40 years that probably, you know, probably Eugene and a few others do, but you know, that they can talk reasonably about what was made when and what was successful.
01:00:47
Speaker
I think with some of my success in the business world, licensing world, game world, and maybe my perspective on how to make a company successful, there were some things that I felt like it had some value to their board and they felt so too.
01:01:06
Speaker
So it ended up being a good opportunity for both of us.
01:01:14
Speaker
Fantastic.
01:01:15
Speaker
I think it's great.
01:01:16
Speaker
There's some people who talk about it's not the same as having a classic one.
01:01:20
Speaker
And I was actually... What's a classic one?
01:01:23
Speaker
I mean, I look at a classic Tron and it smells like 30 years of sour beer and cigarette smoke and it's disgusting and it's too big and...
01:01:34
Speaker
This is a really nice product.
01:01:38
Speaker
You described exactly the interaction I had today on the forum because someone posted it and I was going back and forth and I said, actually, I would prefer the arcade one up because people at home have limited space and there's not much you can do.
01:01:53
Speaker
And you can buy this thing for, I think the suggested price is 800 bucks and you can put it, oh, there's one of them right there.
01:01:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:59
Speaker
I can't fit a full size arcade in my lobby.
01:02:02
Speaker
Yep.
01:02:03
Speaker
It might be Chels, but, you know, I can fit one very nicely right here and I put it together.
01:02:11
Speaker
They're actually, if you've built one, they're very fun to put together.
01:02:13
Speaker
It's a really nice sense of accomplishment that you can do this.
01:02:18
Speaker
And, you know, when I go back and look at the roadmap of the next 36 months of, you know, really classic arcade games or
01:02:27
Speaker
You know, maybe we'll go back and do, you know, a Robotron that's in the pre-production colors and make a thousand of them.
01:02:36
Speaker
I think what you'll find the arcade one business could evolve a little bit into the collectible space, sort of like a, like a Supreme or a sneaker company where we'll come out with some limited edition versions of things that are special or, you know, maybe signed by Eugene Jarvis or George Gomez or some of these other guys and,
01:02:57
Speaker
Who doesn't want a nice, clean Spy Hunter?
01:03:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:03:00
Speaker
I don't want a smelly, gummed up, dirty product.
01:03:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:06
Speaker
And if you played the Outrun that they made last year, the Outrun's a great little version of Outrun.
01:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, actually, Outrun would be great.
01:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's good to have a racing game.
01:03:16
Speaker
I have a shooter game.
01:03:17
Speaker
It's good to have a racing game.
01:03:18
Speaker
I saw there was a Terminator coming out.
01:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, George D. Cho has gone back and modified the original Terminator gun game.
01:03:27
Speaker
We did Big Buck Hunter a year ago, and the Terminator game looks great.
01:03:32
Speaker
It runs at a pretty good frame rate.
01:03:36
Speaker
If you've seen the touch table we have,
01:03:40
Speaker
Um, that's got, you know, like 50 built-in games and board games and word games.
01:03:45
Speaker
And, um, I mean, it's what a surface table should have been.
01:03:49
Speaker
Um, it's one of the best consumer product of this year.
01:03:53
Speaker
So I think you'll, uh, I think you'll really like a lot of the things that are coming out.
01:03:58
Speaker
I'm really pleased.
01:04:00
Speaker
Definitely.
01:04:01
Speaker
I'm excited.
01:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome.
01:04:03
Speaker
It's fun to be a big part of these things still.
01:04:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:08
Speaker
Well, Joe, we're, uh, we're running up on about an hour and we appreciate you on, um, Josh, anything else that you can think of that, uh, last, last question for Mr. Joe Cameco.
Optimism for Pinball Companies and Community
01:04:20
Speaker
You know, you've been awesome and you've answered a lot of our questions.
01:04:24
Speaker
I feel like there's questions I have, but I don't want to ask out of professional courtesy.
01:04:28
Speaker
Cause I'm like, we're always curious of what's coming in the future.
01:04:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:32
Speaker
But we don't,
01:04:36
Speaker
But we don't want to be giving away trade secrets here either.
01:04:38
Speaker
Exactly.
01:04:39
Speaker
No, but it won't.
01:04:41
Speaker
We're looking forward to things.
01:04:43
Speaker
Yes.
01:04:44
Speaker
Well, the future has not yet been invented, but I'm sure it'll be a good one, as my friend Bob Gale always says.
01:04:51
Speaker
I think Gary continues to build great product.
01:04:56
Speaker
I really have enjoyed a couple of games I've played from Spooky.
01:05:01
Speaker
They're really terrifically nice people up there.
01:05:05
Speaker
I'm really happy for their success.
01:05:07
Speaker
And there's room for lots of people.
01:05:12
Speaker
you know, um, it's nice to see people embrace the hobby and, you know, it's kind of fun to watch people soup their game up or go to Toys R Us and buy a Mandalorian and screw it to the top of their game or whatever it is.
01:05:25
Speaker
And, um,
01:05:28
Speaker
uh fun to see brian eddie back making games again that is fun definitely it's nice and uh you know well you know we'll see how the other guys that have recently made some changes uh do and fair and in a new environment so um it'll be entertaining to see i do have actually one final question for you um are you gonna be going to pinball expo this year
01:05:52
Speaker
I don't think so.
Cautious Approach to Public Events
01:05:53
Speaker
Okay.
01:05:55
Speaker
You know, I told Rob, you know, I'm thinking about it, but with the current Delta variant, even though I've had my third vaccine shot, I've had my booster,
01:06:12
Speaker
I think I can probably wait a year.
01:06:16
Speaker
I may venture to a Raiders game or two, but we are still, my wife and I are still being very careful with our protocols.
01:06:25
Speaker
We still eat outside.
01:06:27
Speaker
Definitely.
01:06:27
Speaker
We still wash our hands abundantly and bring hand sanitizer and wear appropriate mask when we're around groups of people we don't know.
01:06:37
Speaker
We don't get together with unvaccinated people at this point in time because I know nine people that died from COVID of various ages, you know, from, you know, 30s to their octogenarians.
01:06:52
Speaker
So we take it really seriously what has occurred here.
01:06:54
Speaker
And I think right now, it's even hard for me to go to, I think I've been into two casinos in a year.
01:07:05
Speaker
Now our casino business is really robust at Aristocrat.
01:07:10
Speaker
We're doing, you saw the Nevada numbers for the month of July.
01:07:16
Speaker
The gaming take was, I think, maybe the highest ever.
01:07:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:20
Speaker
We'll, we'll, I think personally we'll continue.
01:07:23
Speaker
We, we, you know, we participated in the virtual pinball expo last year.
01:07:28
Speaker
Um, we'll probably, you know, choose to be a little more cautious until, you know, it looks like the Delta variant burned itself out in London, but, um,
01:07:45
Speaker
We'll see.
01:07:46
Speaker
I won't say never, but the likelihood of me making the travel, getting on a plane, going to Chicago, touching a bunch of pinball machines that other people have touched probably isn't in the cards right now.
01:07:58
Speaker
I'll play at home and wish Gary well at that one.
01:08:03
Speaker
What game are you playing at home right now?
01:08:06
Speaker
Oh, let's see.
01:08:07
Speaker
At home right now, I have Beatles, Munsters,
01:08:13
Speaker
Stranger Things, Avengers, and these are all the LEs, and the Led Zeppelin.
01:08:25
Speaker
I think my personal favorite right now is, I think, the playfield for the LE Avengers.
01:08:32
Speaker
It's maybe one of the best playfields I've ever played ever, ever.
01:08:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:08:36
Speaker
It's just the flow, the shots, the upshot, the...
01:08:40
Speaker
you know, it's just a really fun game to play.
01:08:42
Speaker
I mean, I just find I lose an hour every time I step in front of it.
01:08:48
Speaker
Led Zeppelin I've enjoyed with the music.
01:08:50
Speaker
The game is really a tight, for me, it's a bit tight and I feel like I'm always banging post on it.
01:08:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:00
Speaker
I have one in that upper flipper shot is really hard.
01:09:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:06
Speaker
I mean, it's just, but I just feel like I'm just always busting post and the ball's always in my face, but I've, I mean, I've had fun.
01:09:13
Speaker
I mean, it's a hard game to play.
01:09:14
Speaker
I mean, I love playing my Beatles game.
01:09:16
Speaker
Um, monsters is really fun though.
01:09:19
Speaker
Maybe a little too much Paul in speech for me.
01:09:22
Speaker
I've always pitched about that.
01:09:24
Speaker
And, um, I've really enjoyed stranger things.
01:09:27
Speaker
Um, people that come to the house and then have the thing fold down and you should,
01:09:32
Speaker
the little projector and everything.
01:09:33
Speaker
I mean, it's a really pretty game.
01:09:35
Speaker
I think the game, um, doesn't get the, uh, the credit it deserves.
01:09:41
Speaker
And I just took it.
01:09:43
Speaker
It's grown though.
01:09:44
Speaker
It's, it's actually become very popular.
01:09:46
Speaker
I, I tell people about it because I think it's a great thing and I tell them definitely get the black, um, the black light mod.
01:09:53
Speaker
Yep.
01:09:54
Speaker
Yep.
01:09:55
Speaker
It's a really fun game.
01:09:57
Speaker
And, um,
01:10:00
Speaker
And then I just took delivery of a Mandalorian, but it's not out of the box yet.
Personal Pinball Collection and Passion
01:10:04
Speaker
Oh.
01:10:04
Speaker
So.
01:10:06
Speaker
We'll come help you.
01:10:07
Speaker
And I think I may have ordered an Ultraman just because I thought it's such a wacky theme.
01:10:11
Speaker
That is a total wacky theme.
01:10:14
Speaker
I'd never heard of it before.
01:10:16
Speaker
Well, we've both been vaccinated, so we'd be more than happy to come help you set up.
01:10:20
Speaker
And I work at a hospital, so I know how to mask up, so.
01:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's like, you know, I pray for our country right now and hope we can steer through it.
01:10:30
Speaker
I mean, I just find it kind of mind blowing that people will readily put horse deworming medicine in their mouth, but won't take the vaccine.
01:10:39
Speaker
So I, I, I, it kind of astounds me, to be honest with you, the, um,
01:10:45
Speaker
yeah i i don't get it either you know okay but you know i you know you could keep reading about these conservative talk show guys and keep dying um and keep going like you know uh what are you all thinking but that's you know we'll stick with pinball tonight but any other questions or anything guys
01:11:04
Speaker
Well, we want to tell you to stick around a little bit because the video is recording on your end and it will upload.
01:11:10
Speaker
So when we stop, just stick around a little bit and we'll make sure we get that.
01:11:14
Speaker
And we definitely want to send you a big box of that.
01:11:16
Speaker
So we'll find out exactly where you want us to send that.
01:11:19
Speaker
Okay.
01:11:20
Speaker
And we'll make sure that you're all hooked up with your Loser Kid gear.
01:11:24
Speaker
Okay, well, thanks for supporting Pinball and talking about it and the enthusiasts.
01:11:29
Speaker
Hey, guys that are out there that play games, I don't care if they're old games, new games, I hope you get a chance to come out and see the facility that got built in Vegas.
01:11:39
Speaker
It looks really nice on the strip.
01:11:41
Speaker
It's very iconic.
01:11:43
Speaker
There's Pinball, big and bright.
01:11:44
Speaker
I give Tim credit for that.
01:11:48
Speaker
Needs a couple newer games in his place.
01:11:52
Speaker
But at least it's good to see people
01:11:54
Speaker
People like pinball still.
01:11:55
Speaker
And, you know, there are very much more to do these days.
01:12:00
Speaker
So enjoy it.
01:12:01
Speaker
Definitely.
01:12:03
Speaker
Well, if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
01:12:07
Speaker
You can also get a hold of us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch, all at LoserKidPinball.
01:12:13
Speaker
Before we wrap this up, though, we've got to hurry and announce our winner from doing the PinQuest Challenge.
01:12:17
Speaker
If you remember, you could set a high score either on World Cup soccer or on Avengers.
01:12:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:23
Speaker
And we had over 85 participants to that.
01:12:26
Speaker
And they said that there was 11 completions on World Cup and 13 on Avengers.
01:12:32
Speaker
So about 10%.
01:12:34
Speaker
Well, no, sorry, that's about 20%.
01:12:35
Speaker
We want to congratulate Clint Reeves.
01:12:40
Speaker
Yeah, Clint.
01:12:42
Speaker
So congratulations.
01:12:43
Speaker
We'll be sending you a hat soon.
01:12:44
Speaker
And we want to thank again, Joe, for being on.
01:12:47
Speaker
Scott, what else you got for us before we leave?
01:12:49
Speaker
I think it's great.
01:12:51
Speaker
Stay safe.
01:12:52
Speaker
And I want everybody to get out there when you're comfortable to play pinball.
01:12:55
Speaker
If you do mask up and definitely use the hand sanitizer.
01:12:59
Speaker
We can all get through this with our mental health in check as long as we're taking safe precautions.
01:13:04
Speaker
And even if that if that's playing at home, that it certainly keeps the keeps the juice running.
01:13:11
Speaker
And I'm going to end it on this.
01:13:12
Speaker
Zach Manny, you're wrong about Star Wars and about Goonies.
01:13:16
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:13:17
Speaker
See you in two weeks.
01:13:18
Speaker
Oh, he says it's a good theme and I say it's trash.
01:13:20
Speaker
Shut up and sit down.