Transcript
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast.
Speaker: We are an episode number 35 with me.
Speaker: My co-captain is always Scott Larson.
Speaker: Hey Scott.
Speaker: Uh, let's do, let's get some business out of the way really quick.
Speaker: We got some friends of the podcast that we want to shout out to first, uh, flipping out pinball.
Speaker: If you're looking for those sweet pinball needs, uh, hit up Zach or his wonderful wife, Nicole, many, and they will help you out.
Speaker: Also Brad Hunter of lit frames.
Speaker: I don't know if you listened to the most recent episode of super awesome pinball show, but they were talking up Brad and his sweet frames.
Speaker: And we, uh,
Speaker: We agree.
Speaker: They're fantastic.
Speaker: So if you want to get one of those Franchi prints and put it in a lit frame, hit up Brad.
Speaker: So what are you up to, Scott?
Speaker: Well, I actually almost broke my leg off the other day by putting my foot through a flatbed trailer when I was trying to load a bed up on it when we were trying to give it away.
Speaker: There was a hole in the bottom.
Speaker: And so thankfully, it was just a really bad bruise.
Speaker: I did not break my knee.
Speaker: I did not break my femur and I did not break my tibia and fibula.
Speaker: So I actually got out really lucky with just a bad bruise.
Speaker: Um, and also I bought a Simpsons four player arcade game.
Speaker: And if you have not seen one of those or imagined having one of those in your house, I am surprised I did not bang up the walls, getting it down because it is a beast.
Speaker: Just think of Wizard of Oz, but twice as big.
Speaker: And you showed me the pictures of your leg too.
Speaker: And it's, it's insane.
Speaker: I can't remember if you put on your Facebook, but you got kind of ridiculed for that too.
Speaker: So, you know, it's okay.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: No good deed goes unpunished.
Speaker: Have you been up to anything fun lately?
Speaker: Um, I finally played pinball for the first time in like two weeks last night and I did really well.
Speaker: So that was nice.
Speaker: Uh, we're almost closed on our house.
Speaker: We should be in it by the end of the month.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm jealous that you actually have a walkout basement since I have the stairs of death.
Speaker: Not only to one entry, but two entries to the basement, man.
Speaker: I can go through the garage or I can go the back door.
Speaker: Yeah, I hate you so much right now.
Speaker: Let's bring the guest into this because he has a little more experience with moving a few games because he is involved just peripherally in a tiny, small fringe tournament.
Speaker: So let's bring him in.
Speaker: So we have today on the show, Doug Polka.
Speaker: How are you doing today, Doug?
Speaker: I'm doing good.
Speaker: How are you guys today?
Speaker: So let's give people a little bit of background on you.
Speaker: You've been involved at least for over 10 years in the Pittsburgh competitive pinball scene.
Speaker: You have evolved into the director of Pinberg.
Speaker: You also have a, you're a co-owner of the Kickback Cafe, and you told me you operate 60 games throughout the city.
Speaker: And so that seems like a pretty impressive resume when it comes to pinball.
Speaker: I do my part.
Speaker: A lot of that stuff, it's funny because the route and stuff, that's not my full-time job.
Speaker: But that basically came about because at the time I got into pinball and competitive pinball, like 2007-2008, there were no games en route in the city of Pittsburgh.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Basically, one of the one of the gentlemen, his name is Steve Zumoff, owns a bunch of establishments on what's called the south side of Pittsburgh.
Speaker: It's like the the bar strip.
Speaker: And he asked if I want to put some games in some of his places and did that.
Speaker: And then it's just kind of expanded from there.
Speaker: So, and that seems really interesting.
Speaker: I want to talk a lot about the routing and being able to find ways of getting pinball to the masses.
Speaker: But first, you did talk about it on Pinball Profile and anybody who's involved in Pinberg and ReplayFX, you went through a...
Speaker: Basically, a big decision this year, which I think was heartbreaking for many, but it was, I would argue, from a public health standpoint, I don't think you had any alternatives.
Speaker: Why don't you talk about that and your decision to actually delay Pinnberg for this year until next year?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if your listeners are new to what happened, we're basically canceling replay effects slash Pinberg for this year.
Speaker: And we are going to reschedule for next year, obviously related to the COVID-19 pandemic going around.
Speaker: It basically came down to the fact that because of the stay at home orders in PA and everywhere, and I do understand why those are in place.
Speaker: I'm not complaining.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: we couldn't have any of the techs or anybody really at the facility preparing things for replay, you know, and want to start getting into, you know, two and a half, three months lost to this.
Speaker: The decision was pretty much made for us that we just weren't going to be able to be ready in time.
Speaker: And then it was just a matter of Mark Steinman, who's the director of replay reaching out to all of our, you know, the convention center and the hotels and everybody we had contracts with and, you know,
Speaker: coming to some sort of agreement with them to be able to effectively cancel this year and reschedule for next year.
Speaker: That seems like a pretty tough decision to take, make too.
Speaker: I mean, we're still, you know, we're, we're the nine end of may yet.
Speaker: And, uh, it seems like it's getting more and more divisive on, you know, people should keep move on with their lives.
Speaker: And the other half are like, stay at home.
Speaker: So, uh, was it just because we're still kind of the state we're in that you guys were like, well,
Speaker: we're just going to call it quits for now?
Speaker: Or was it just, was there tension mounting from outside pressure, I guess, is to put it.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Nobody from, you know, outside.
Speaker: At least I haven't seen any pressure on us to do anything with it.
Speaker: It was more or less of the time we lost in terms for preparation because replay and Pinberg are very, very time intensive things to get ready for.
Speaker: Like when I tell people when replay, you know,
Speaker: for one year ends about a week later, we start the preparations for the next replay.
Speaker: Like that's no exaggeration.
Speaker: Uh, and then, you know, like even up to last year we were, you know, the texts were working, you know, a couple of weeks before the show,
Speaker: they were still getting games ready for the show.
Speaker: Uh, it's really labor intensive as far as getting the games ready and preparing.
Speaker: And quite frankly, we're pretty small organization.
Speaker: Um, replay effects is run by the replay foundation with it, which is a nonprofit.
Speaker: And, uh, we only have five, five employees total.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: and some other people that we contract when we get near the show.
Speaker: So it's a lot of work for, for a small group of people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And lead me through that.
Speaker: So you have exactly what is involved technically to actually get a game ready for for Pinberg, because you're dealing with the best players.
Speaker: And we've talked about this challenges with pinball, the better you are, the longer you play.
Speaker: And so you really have to set up a machine to increase the degree of increase the degree of difficulty, because otherwise you'll have someone playing on it for 30 minutes.
Speaker: Yeah, so Pinberg is kind of unique in the fact that, so there was another event that we're bringing back next year, but we ran before Pinberg existed called the Popper World Championships.
Speaker: The Popper World Championships, when you would come in, you would enter a division suited to where you thought your skill level was.
Speaker: So there was A Division, B Division, C Division, and the last year we ran it, there was a D Division.
Speaker: And you could, so the A division games were insanely difficult, like set up as hard as you could perceivably set them up.
Speaker: B division, not as much.
Speaker: C division, not as much.
Speaker: With Pinberg, it's a little bit...
Speaker: trickier to get them dialed in because number one you're under time constraints so when you come into pinberg you play a bank of four games and those four games need to be done before the next round is scheduled to start otherwise you're going to push everything back uh and pinberg for as much as it is you know the biggest tournament in the world and probably probably the most prominent you know i don't want to
Speaker: I don't want to step on anyone else's toes, but like, Oh, don't be shy.
Speaker: It is the best tournament.
Speaker: Like a lot of people looking, looking forward to it every year.
Speaker: I don't want to sell anyone else short though.
Speaker: Uh, but the thing with Pinberg is, uh,
Speaker: It's largely a casual tournament as well, right?
Speaker: So last year we had a thousand people in there.
Speaker: And of those thousand people, how many of those are hardcore tournament players that travel to every tournament and want to get their butt kicked by a machine when they play it every time they play it?
Speaker: Probably not a lot.
Speaker: Like people come, you know, part of Pemberg is the social aspect of it.
Speaker: And yeah, everyone's there to compete and everyone's there to try and win because winning is obviously more fun than losing.
Speaker: But at the same time, our challenge as directors and my associate TDs is to get the game set up to a point to where they're hard enough to challenge the good players and not let them play forever.
Speaker: but easy enough so that everybody feels they had a fair shake at playing the game.
Speaker: So that's generally the difficult part about setting up the Penberg games.
Speaker: It's not just about making them as hard as you possibly can.
Speaker: It's about finding that good balance between playability and still making it kind of difficult.
Speaker: Well, that totally makes sense.
Speaker: I mean, you don't want people walking away from the tournament going like, this was terrible.
Speaker: Like I hear a lot of people that go for the first time and I can't even fathom it is your first pinball tournament is, you know, Papa is, you know, replay effects and whatnot.
Speaker: And so, but I think it's awesome because I feel like everyone that walks away from that tournament feels they weren't done wrong because the machines are set up so right for their skill level.
Speaker: I don't think anyone else can say that.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's a testament to how much work, you know, and it's not just me.
Speaker: It's the whole team of tournament directors and the people that help us play test games and all that stuff put into getting those games as good as we can.
Speaker: There's always circumstances where people feel the game robbed them or whatever, and there are some games that we figure out
Speaker: a little late into the game that, oh, we set that up way too hard or we set that up way too easy.
Speaker: But one of the other nice things about Pinberg is the game doesn't necessarily have to stay set up the same way throughout the whole tournament because you're only playing against the people you're playing against for that one round.
Speaker: So if we do encounter a game that is playing exceptionally difficult, you know, that we didn't anticipate or a game that is playing exceptionally easy, we can always make adjustments in between rounds to that game as well.
Speaker: Yeah, and that reminds me, we talked to Bowen last year and he had talked about tournament pinball and his point was, I don't really care about the people who are winning because they're going to have, you know, they're competitive players.
Speaker: They come to all these tournaments all the time.
Speaker: And so if it's plus or minus, they're going to roll with the punches just because they like competing.
Speaker: He's like, I'm worried about the person who is 999th on the list.
Speaker: out of a thousand because you still want them to enjoy their time playing, even if they are not up on stage.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: And I can tell you, we put as much thought into the lowest ranked player having a good time as the, you know, as the Keith Owens of the world, having a good time.
Speaker: And that's why also like, you know, we, we, you can 20% of the people that enter Pinnberg win something.
Speaker: You know, we pay out 200 spots, which is, you know, a lot if you've been to any other tournament.
Speaker: And it's all about, you know, when people come and spend their money and for something like Pinberg, you're you're also taking a chunk of people's time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you're taking Thursday, Friday, Friday.
Speaker: and Saturday if they make the playoffs.
Speaker: So a lot of people are literally planning vacations around this event.
Speaker: And I just want to make sure that when you come in, you know, besides the tournament, you know, we also have everything else over in the show to offer.
Speaker: But I want to make sure that everybody feels like they got their money's worth for what they paid to enter, no matter where they finished, whether they finished, you know, first overall or 1000th overall, they still had a good time.
Speaker: Considering when you talked about competitive pinball in Pittsburgh, around Pittsburgh, you said there really wasn't much to play.
Speaker: So lead me through how did Pinberg become what it is?
Speaker: Because obviously you had Papa there.
Speaker: And so you had at least some sort of competitive pinball foundation, but it has exploded to...
Speaker: a thousand spots or over a thousand spots and you're still having more demand for it.
Speaker: So how did you build that scene if you didn't really have any place to play?
Speaker: So it actually started as the brainchild of Bo and Karens and Mark Steinman, Pinnberg.
Speaker: This round of Pinnberg.
Speaker: There were actually Pinnbergs in Pittsburgh years ago that didn't run like this one did.
Speaker: So modern Pinnberg, we'll call it.
Speaker: So we were running the Papa World Championships in Carnegie at the Papa facility there.
Speaker: And the basic thought was it would be, you know, because...
Speaker: That was a big facility and it cost a lot of money just to keep there.
Speaker: Why don't we use this collection again?
Speaker: And Mark and Bone put their heads together and came up with the mixed era match play format that we currently use for Pemberg.
Speaker: Basically almost the same thing we're doing right now.
Speaker: A couple of things have changed.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Immediately, you know, the first year it didn't sell out till I think a few weeks before the event.
Speaker: And it was only maybe 100, 120 people.
Speaker: But every year since then, it seems like the sellouts just get quicker and quicker and quicker.
Speaker: And honestly, most of that is because of word of mouth.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: the people really enjoy the match play format and the way the tournament is run.
Speaker: We try and run it as professionally as possible.
Speaker: So I think that adds to it as well.
Speaker: And, you know, it just every year, it just sells out quicker and quicker and quicker.
Speaker: And it doesn't seem to, doesn't really seem to matter how many spots we add or, or, or what we do to try and like, Oh, maybe this will make a few people, you know, stay out of it or whatever.
Speaker: Just the, the demand for it is, is unbelievable.
Speaker: And we're really grateful for that.
Speaker: Well, that's got to put a smile on your face too.
Speaker: I mean, honestly, that's awesome that you've added more and more spots every year.
Speaker: And it's like it sells out faster and faster.
Speaker: It's even got to the point where pinball media is talking about it.
Speaker: Like, oh, last year was 45 seconds.
Speaker: This year it's like 15 seconds.
Speaker: And everyone's telling each other, you know, don't fret.
Speaker: You can do this and that.
Speaker: You know, make sure you're on the waiting list and refresh the 15-minute mark.
Speaker: It's like everyone's learned the Konami code and they're like, we've got to input this now.
Speaker: So that way if you really want to get in, you do this, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, so it's just become, it's a little bit of a pinball holiday almost.
Speaker: The most stressful day for some people is like the day that Pemberg tickets go on sale.
Speaker: Because, you know, we hear both sides of it that day.
Speaker: We get the people that are super excited that they got in, and then we get the people that, you know, have been shut out because of the...
Speaker: the unbelievable demand for it.
Speaker: When we started doing Pemberg at Replay, we actually, that was the year we went to 600.
Speaker: And I remember, I distinctly remember sitting down and having conversations with Bowen and Mark about like, how far do we think we could, you know, push this?
Speaker: Because we moved into the convention center, so space was no longer an issue.
Speaker: And I think Bowen was the first one to say, you know, this is going to hit a thousand people.
Speaker: And like, I was like, there's like,
Speaker: competitive pinball isn't that big.
Speaker: There's no way we're ever going to get a thousand people in there.
Speaker: So to hit that,
Speaker: milestone and actually see it sell out as fast as it did last year in 2018 when we went to a thousand people it was just it was you know like i said we're very grateful and it's it's flattering that so many people put their faith in our organization to run a high level tournament that they're going to come and spend their money and they're going to you know because most people are traveling they're going to spend that money to travel or whatever to come and enjoy something that we're doing
Speaker: That is challenging, though.
Speaker: You have so many games.
Speaker: And you mentioned last year on Buffalo, you said you have 600 games.
Speaker: Is that still about where you are?
Speaker: So last year, I think at replay, we had close to 700 total games.
Speaker: And that would, you know, because we get people locally that lend us games for the show.
Speaker: And, you know, Stern brought in a bunch of games last year for us.
Speaker: Papa itself, the actual replay foundation, we own almost, I think we're just over 600.
Speaker: I think we just hit the 600 mark last year is the number of games that we actually own.
Speaker: I contribute a lot of my games to the show as well.
Speaker: Like anything that I don't have out on location goes to replay sometimes in Pembroke, sometimes in the free play area.
Speaker: Last year, I think after it was all said and done between all the games that we rotated in and out off the show floor, whatever we used over 400 games in Pembroke alone.
Speaker: So that actually begs the question, a lot of these games, are they being played regularly?
Speaker: Because if they're at your storage facility, if you're firing something on every six months or so, how do you know it's still going to keep playing?
Speaker: So our techs basically shortly after one replay ends, I developed the banks for the following year.
Speaker: So we'll shuffle the games around.
Speaker: We'll maybe try and include some games we couldn't include before, you know, trying to keep because, you know,
Speaker: to go into probably more detail than anybody wants to know.
Speaker: Once we get the game set at headquarters, the techs will start going through them one by one.
Speaker: And a few months after they start going through them, we start to hold basically play testing sessions.
Speaker: where we'll invite a bunch of people over.
Speaker: We'll play.
Speaker: Basically, we'll do a strikes tournament there because we can group people in four groups of four.
Speaker: Because with the EMs, you need to make sure and do the players kick over, do all the score reels work.
Speaker: And then the people that come to the events...
Speaker: Basically, as we're running the event, we'll come and tell me, well, you know, this light is burned out or this wasn't working or that wasn't working.
Speaker: And then we'll we'll compile a bunch of notes and then the text will go back and revisit those games.
Speaker: So they are sitting there, but they also get played.
Speaker: Another thing we do during that is we'll time each round and we'll time how long each game takes for like the groups to finish.
Speaker: And I actually have a spreadsheet with four years of data for how games are set up and how long they'll play.
Speaker: So that when I create new banks, I can actually kind of judge how long that bank is going to play based on actual, you know,
Speaker: actual data I have as opposed to, I don't think that's a long playing game or that's a long playing game.
Speaker: So at this point, making the banks has become easier than it was when we first started doing it, just because I have the years and years of data now.
Speaker: But they sit there, but they also don't sit there.
Speaker: That's a really long way to answer that really simple question.
Speaker: Well, I think that makes sense because if I show up to Pittsburgh in January, I can't just call you up and say, hey, I want to go to Papa.
Speaker: you know, that that's just not really that type of, it's not like the, um, you know, it's not like going to Logan's arcade or, or sunshine laundromat or something like that.
Speaker: It's, it's not right.
Speaker: It's not, it's not a retail location.
Speaker: We do do Reynolds and there's a couple of tournaments, uh, like New York city pinball championships, Levy and his team leveraged us last year to bring a bunch of games up there.
Speaker: And we were going to do it this year, but sadly it was, it was canceled.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So we do some game rentals.
Speaker: We do game rentals around Christmas a lot for businesses in the Pittsburgh area.
Speaker: The Pittsburgh Penguins rent games off of us for some of their theme nights.
Speaker: So we do stuff like that as well.
Speaker: But the games sit there, but we kind of make sure they all get played regularly.
Speaker: Yeah, well, that's good.
Speaker: It's like a car.
Speaker: You can't just let a car sit because otherwise it's not going to work.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If we just pulled all the games out and brought them into the convention center and turned them on, I can only imagine what a nightmare that would be.
Speaker: What is your favorite bank of four that you have constructed?
Speaker: Oh God, I don't think I could even answer that.
Speaker: There's been so many.
Speaker: Every year.
Speaker: There has to be one that you just laugh at though.
Speaker: You're like, this is either this is hilarious or this is awesome.
Speaker: So Keith Elwin actually created a bank one year.
Speaker: I think it was when we were doing, was it our, might've been our Papa TV Kickstarter or something where you could basically pick your own bank of games with our approval.
Speaker: And I can't remember what Keith's games were like ready, aim, fire.
Speaker: But literally he dragon, he picked like the worst games.
Speaker: He put together a bank that was literally like, like the, the least fun you could have playing pinball bank.
Speaker: I try not to do that.
Speaker: I try and put at least a game or two in every bank that people recognize.
Speaker: The most fun I have is actually picking the games that will be on the final stage, because every year we try and get together and pick one or two games that aren't really known in the community as being great games or great players or whatever.
Speaker: And, you know, showcase them, you know, like Doodlebug or, you know, games like that.
Speaker: And then we like to watch the prices on Pinside go through the roof.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, Andromeda was one of those where Andromeda had heard of it.
Speaker: And then it's like, oh, well, that's what I want to buy now.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a that's a really good example of one.
Speaker: Alien Star was another one.
Speaker: We did that in one of the either one of the early Papas or one of the one of the Pinbergs.
Speaker: Mark picked up that game and he's like, this game is amazing.
Speaker: And then we put it in a finals bank.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden everyone had to have an Alien Star.
Speaker: Whereas like a month before, nobody even knew what it was.
Speaker: Now you had to smile a little bit since last year you put the classic Jurassic Park on stage.
Speaker: Yeah, that was, I think that was Bowen's idea, actually.
Speaker: I think he said, oh, let's do Jurassic Park.
Speaker: And I said, that game's too new.
Speaker: I don't really trust it on the stage.
Speaker: We don't know.
Speaker: You know, we don't know if there's bugs or anything, because that was, it basically debuted at replay.
Speaker: Like, Stuart brought a bunch there.
Speaker: And I said, I don't really trust it to put, you know, that there isn't some kind of flaw.
Speaker: And then there's the competitive thing, like, like,
Speaker: it was the first anybody that had a chance to play it except for keith elwin and zach sharp and you know what if they end up on it then it seems like an unfair advantage but uh yeah i thought it was actually pretty funny he's like no no classic jurassic park and i'm like that is perfect well that's hilarious though because then keith went to indisc and got his butt handed to him on a jurassic park you know so um but do you
Speaker: I mean, bringing it up now, obviously with the game the way it is, you're going to have in the tournament, aren't you?
Speaker: Oh, I love that game.
Speaker: That's one of the best releases Stern's put out maybe ever.
Speaker: I don't like to speak in absolute terms, but it's one of the few games when I step in to kick back, we actually have one there.
Speaker: I almost always play a couple games of Jurassic Park just because I just really enjoy that game.
Speaker: Oh, it's fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm still waiting for for things to loosen up a little bit so they'll either make more so I can get a hold of one or I can buy my friend's LE, which is a mile away, but it's too far away.
Speaker: I need to have it in my house.
Speaker: So let's transition a little bit.
Speaker: Let's talk about Papa.
Speaker: You said that we talked about it before.
Speaker: you are bringing back the original, you know, the Papa tournament, not the replay tournament, the Papa tournament.
Speaker: So you're using similar games and you're having similar players who are going to be entering both of those.
Speaker: So this is your high school essay, compare and contrast.
Speaker: What is the difference between Papa and Pinberg?
Speaker: And give me why you should do one versus the other.
Speaker: I would never I'd never want to pick one baby over the other one.
Speaker: They're both very different, though.
Speaker: Obviously, Pinberg is match play.
Speaker: Everybody's playing at the same time.
Speaker: You're playing against three other people.
Speaker: So you're competing directly with other people.
Speaker: I think that's the biggest draw to that is like you're only competing every round against the three people that are there competing against you.
Speaker: So it's very tangible how well you're doing.
Speaker: Uh, Papa is a ticket based format, which people, you know, Papa has been gone for a few years because we put it on hiatus while we were trying to get replay effects off the ground, because that was a lot of work.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh,
Speaker: A lot of people know the PAPA format, ticket format, as the in-disc format, because that's basically what in-disc does.
Speaker: So you basically, you get a ticket where you play five games, and then the sum of that ticket goes against everybody else.
Speaker: So it tends to be a format that awards consistency versus like a best game format where you play one game and you can play it as many times as you want.
Speaker: You just put your best score and that's the only one that counts.
Speaker: Uh, where Papa is different than replay beyond the obvious match play.
Speaker: Uh, there's generally a bank of, I think the last one we did had 12 games in the bank.
Speaker: We separate out the divisions.
Speaker: So like ABC and D all have their own banks.
Speaker: So you're not playing the same games as the a players.
Speaker: B isn't playing the same games as the a player.
Speaker: So that's a little bit different than I think how in disc does it.
Speaker: Um, so,
Speaker: But it's more of a it's more I think the qualifying is more of a battle against yourself than it necessarily is against everybody else, because it's being able to step up to a game and perform and put up a good score and then immediately do it again and then immediately do it again and then immediately do it again.
Speaker: Whereas Pinberg, you can have a bad game and you can still have a good record for that round.
Speaker: You can take a zero and still have a good record overall for that round.
Speaker: Whereas in Papa, depending on which division you're playing in, if you're playing in A division and you put three bad games on your ticket, that's not going to be your qualifying ticket.
Speaker: It's just not going to have a high enough point total.
Speaker: So they both have their draws.
Speaker: Pinberg, obviously, is on a schedule.
Speaker: So you have to be there at certain times.
Speaker: Pop is more casual in the sense that you can kind of drift in and out as you want.
Speaker: You can come in, play a ticket, then go do something else if you want.
Speaker: So they're pretty different in terms of the format.
Speaker: With it being canceled now, how can people get tickets for next year?
Speaker: Because obviously people...
Speaker: We're so excited for this year and they're already looking to 2021.
Speaker: What can they do to sustain a spot, I guess?
Speaker: And you're talking about Pinberg, right, Josh?
Speaker: Correct, yes.
Speaker: So Pinberg, which is part of ReplayFX, you can go on the website, replayfx.org.
Speaker: And if you already have a ticket to Pinberg, you're already in for this year, you don't have to do anything.
Speaker: If you want to come next year, your ticket is automatically going to transfer over.
Speaker: There is a form on that website if you want to cancel, like if the date change doesn't work for you or maybe you're just in a different financial position than you were six months ago, which is entirely possible given what's going on.
Speaker: You can go and request 100% refund for I think another week or so is how long that's running for.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And tickets are on sale.
Speaker: Our tickets aren't on sale for Pinberg because Pinberg obviously is sold out.
Speaker: But you can go on there and join the waitlist.
Speaker: And as spots free up, we basically contact the people on the waitlist to fill the tournament back up.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And that sounds good.
Speaker: How long is the waitlist right now?
Speaker: Do you know?
Speaker: I honestly don't have the number that's on it currently because I don't manage that part of the website.
Speaker: I know it's at least 200 or 300 people because that's what it was a couple months ago.
Speaker: I would imagine it will grow a little bit too with the fact that there are going to be people that weren't going to go this year but wanted to go next year.
Speaker: And obviously we're not going to be open selling tickets for next year.
Speaker: So they can, you know, jump on the wait list that way.
Speaker: We are looking at ways to see if we can possibly expand the field next year.
Speaker: Can't really promise anything.
Speaker: Like right now, the biggest stressors on us right now are the games and the volunteers we need to do it.
Speaker: So if there's a viable way that we can add people, we're going to try and add people.
Speaker: But we also want to be cognizant of the fact that like we don't want to ruin the
Speaker: we don't want to ruin the experience of the tournament or, you know, you know, cut, cut, cut down on texts or anything like that, just because we can't find them, but we wanted to increase the size of the tournament.
Speaker: So your best bet right now is to get on the wait list.
Speaker: Cause even if we add people to the tournament, they're going to be added through the wait list.
Speaker: So I love the idea of,
Speaker: You can't buy a Pinberg ticket and then turn around and sell it.
Speaker: Who came up with that idea?
Speaker: Because you guys have been doing this for so long.
Speaker: Was that an issue in the beginning?
Speaker: Actually, the biggest issue I remember having the first two years of Pinberg was people would grab a spot and then they would be emailing us the day before the tournament saying they couldn't make it and they wanted a refund.
Speaker: And the biggest problem that that created was that, well, we would give you a refund.
Speaker: Sure, that's not a problem.
Speaker: But now we have holes in the tournament when we knew we also had a lot of demand for the tournament.
Speaker: So we knew we could have filled those holes, but this person wasn't giving us enough time
Speaker: to fill that hole.
Speaker: Also, I mean, I specifically remember, not going to mention who it was, but there was a player who was coming from Europe who called the PAPA facility the morning of Pindberg saying he couldn't make it and wanted a refund, you know, and we're like, well, I would assume you knew this before this morning, being that you live in Europe.
Speaker: So that's why the whole refund situation got put into place.
Speaker: And then as the demand grew to what it was, with having that wait list in place, we didn't want to make it possible for people to skip around the wait list.
Speaker: It really wasn't so much about...
Speaker: people making money off scalping tickets or anything like that.
Speaker: It was more, here are the people that got in line and we want to make sure they have the opportunity to get a ticket and not just because they know somebody.
Speaker: And we didn't want people just hoarding tickets because they would just give them out to whoever.
Speaker: We wanted to make sure there was at least a process in place so that even if you missed out on tickets, if you went and jumped on the wait list, there's still a pretty good shot you're going to get in.
Speaker: That's still awesome though, because like prices nowadays for pinball and whatnot, I mean, obviously you've seen they've went up just a little bit.
Speaker: So I wouldn't put it past anyone to buy up all the Pimber tickets and say, right now, if you want to get in, I will sell you a ticket.
Speaker: Yeah, like a reseller website.
Speaker: It's like they do for concert tickets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In the past, we actually one year, I want to say it was three or four years ago, we were doing a fundraiser for Path of Play, which is a charity that Mike Primo runs up in Canada, deals with helping autistic kids and their families through playing board games and pinball and video games and that kind of stuff.
Speaker: But we actually auctioned off
Speaker: a pair of tickets.
Speaker: And I think they went for like $500 or something at the time.
Speaker: Like it, we all, it was all donated to charity and it was through us.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, if, if we left an open market, I'm sure people could market up secondhand and still sell it.
Speaker: And more power to them if they do that.
Speaker: But we just wanted to make sure we had an official process for which you had to go through.
Speaker: And we also want to make sure that people aren't being exploited.
Speaker: The cost of the event is this, and this is what we want you to pay to get in.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think that's nice that it doesn't make it a, uh, it's not an exclusive, um, thing.
Speaker: It's like it, I, if you really want to, you can save up some money and you can pay for the ticket.
Speaker: It's not cost prohibitive.
Speaker: It may be easier for some people than others, but if you are a, it doesn't matter if you're a high income person or low income person, if you really wanted to, you could budget for the, uh, you know, the a hundred dollar entry and the 125 ticket, you can do that.
Speaker: And
Speaker: you're not going to be limiting it to just people who have higher paying jobs.
Speaker: And so I really like that.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, that's obviously part of the discussion about going back to making it a tournament for everybody as opposed to a tournament for few people.
Speaker: You also have to balance, you try and balance the need between demand and making it unobtainable for people to be able to afford to come do it.
Speaker: Because, you know, honestly, and we've had these discussions, could we charge $250 for just a Pinberg ticket?
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: And we probably sell a lot of them.
Speaker: But it's not really...
Speaker: something that we want to do.
Speaker: We want to make sure it's attainable for most people that want to come and experience this at least once.
Speaker: To the other side of that, we've actually had conversations about if we could find bigger and bigger sponsors for being able to cut the price to make it less to get in, if we could find sponsors to help repopulate the prize pool with money that we would be losing because of that.
Speaker: That hasn't happened, of course, but we can always dream.
Speaker: Not yet.
Speaker: Okay, there's two things I really want you to do, though, is I want you to tell when the tournament is going to be next year so people can start looking at their calendar.
Speaker: And another thing I want you to talk about is considering this was a...
Speaker: This is a big decision.
Speaker: There's a lot of financial fallout ramifications, but there should be ways that people merchandise or things that they can buy to help offset this because it's not like you guys are making money this year.
Speaker: And so could you cover both of those things?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: The dates for next year, first of all, are August 12th through 15th, 2021, of course.
Speaker: The reason those dates were picked was basically because the convention center, because so many dates have been pushed to next year, they had a very small selection for Mark to be able to choose from.
Speaker: So it's later in the year than it.
Speaker: It's usually around the last weekend in July to the first weekend in August.
Speaker: It's later than it's ever been on its current schedule, but that's why it is the August 12th through 15th.
Speaker: If you want to support the replay foundation outside of that, honestly, one of the biggest things you could do is if you don't have your ticket just to get into the show for next year, go buy that.
Speaker: Now you can go buy that.
Speaker: Now, you know, the cost is, uh,
Speaker: I think it's $100 for a four day pass.
Speaker: And that obviously helps us out greatly.
Speaker: We also have an online store at replayfx.org if you want to go and buy a t-shirt or something like that.
Speaker: If you have the ability to do that right now and you want to support the Replay Foundation, go buy a t-shirt, go buy a ticket to the show.
Speaker: Those are really easy ways that, you know, and you can still get a little bit of something back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Other passive ways you can support our foundation, let's say you're not in the position to spend any money right now, which I know there are a lot of people that are probably in that position.
Speaker: Go to YouTube.
Speaker: Watch some of our videos.
Speaker: We get a little bit of income from every time somebody watches a video.
Speaker: We also have a...
Speaker: Twitch stream, Papa TV Pinball.
Speaker: Every Tuesday night, we're actually right now we're showing replays, but a lot of our gang is in there chatting up with viewers because right now we can't go into our warehouse and film new stuff.
Speaker: But those are two ways that you can also help the Replay Foundation without actually spending any of your money.
Speaker: Well, those videos, I mean, are fantastic.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: That is how I found a better appreciation and love for this hobby.
Speaker: It's through Bo and Karen's doing tutorials for pinball machines that I was playing on the pinball arcade on my phone.
Speaker: And so it was awesome to type in and it was like, well, you know, I want to see the getaway and wow, there's a video for it, you know?
Speaker: And so I encourage anyone, if you want to learn more about a pinball machine or see some wonderful exploits, one of my favorite is the shadow.
Speaker: When Bowen starts blowing it up by the left orbit to the inner loop, he's always hilarious watching it.
Speaker: Where are all these points coming from?
Speaker: Holy cow.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Bowen and Mark basically collaborated on the tutorial things.
Speaker: It was actually Mark Steinman's idea.
Speaker: to create, we also have a huge database of gameplay videos, which are just literally a top-down shot of somebody playing a game.
Speaker: And the reason that those started was because when we started doing our YouTube stuff and we started filming games, there wasn't a lot out there.
Speaker: Like if you wanted to watch some obscure game or maybe, you know, you saw a game for sale on Mr. Pinball classifieds and but you'd never seen it before and you didn't know if it was any good.
Speaker: We wanted to provide kind of a reference like you could do a search on YouTube and here's a video of somebody playing it.
Speaker: And then, of course, Bones tutorials are fantastic.
Speaker: Like he's he's literally I couldn't think of anyone better to do those because it's entertaining.
Speaker: He's funny, and obviously he knows a lot about the games.
Speaker: Unfortunately, those are also on hold being filmed right now because of everything going on.
Speaker: But our Papa TV producer, James Coons, actually has some ideas for us to add a few bells and whistles to the upcoming ones once we can start filming them again.
Speaker: Okay, I'm going to do a confessional right now, and I hope you find this hilarious.
Speaker: So I ran into a neighbor that owned a Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Speaker: And I'd watched tons of the tutorial videos with Bowen.
Speaker: Well, I look up and you guys have one for Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Speaker: And I'm like, sweet.
Speaker: So I start watching it and it's not Bowen.
Speaker: And I'm like, who the crap is this guy?
Speaker: And it's Keith Elwin.
Speaker: And I'm just like, man, this guy doesn't...
Speaker: I don't know who he is.
Speaker: He's kind of bland doing this video.
Speaker: Like he's no bow.
Speaker: And like, it's so funny to look back now and like, oh my goodness, that was Keith.
Speaker: That one.
Speaker: But back then, like, who the crap is this guy?
Speaker: Like, who do who does he think he is?
Speaker: OK, well, and is Keith really good at pinball?
Speaker: I'm not really sure.
Speaker: I just, I don't know.
Speaker: I never heard of the guy before.
Speaker: No, yeah, but, and there's lots of that stuff out there now, so that's kind of what's great about it, right?
Speaker: It's like there's so many people that do streaming, and there's so many people that stream tournaments, and there's people that make their own, you know, rule video breakdowns and stuff.
Speaker: Like, it's a completely different world from when
Speaker: you know, 10 years ago when we started doing this stuff to like, you can find, you know, you can almost type in any pinball machine name into the YouTube search and find some kind of video about it, which is, which is awesome.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It is totally awesome.
Speaker: The only video I have not liked, and this has nothing to do with you guys, is The Amazing Spider-Man by Gottlieb.
Speaker: That was one of my first pinball machines.
Speaker: I started watching that video, and the whole video is just tap passing.
Speaker: It's just doing the passes back and forth up to the alleys.
Speaker: I'm like, what the crap is this?
Speaker: I can't do that.
Speaker: This video is pointless to me.
Speaker: It's the dumbest video ever.
Speaker: So I want to talk a little more about the tech support you guys have.
Speaker: Obviously, you know how to have a machine that is well run and well tuned in.
Speaker: And tell me a little bit, is it possible for you guys to start?
Speaker: This is my big bandwagon that I'm trying to get people on board to be able to have like a library, at least a searchable library of, oh, you know what?
Speaker: If you're getting into pinball and you've never taken the glass off and you've never gone underneath the hood, these are the top five things you need to start with.
Speaker: So this is level one type of maintenance stuff.
Speaker: Well, here's level two.
Speaker: Well, here's maybe a level ten that you want to know the other stuff.
Speaker: Have you considered trying to do that and maybe recording some of those things so people can start maintaining their own games?
Speaker: So actually that ties in a little bit with the logistics of what it takes to run Pemberg.
Speaker: So a few years ago, as we expanded Pemberg, we realized we were running out of texts that we could get to volunteer to tech Pemberg.
Speaker: And Eitan Goldman, who's one of the people that helps out with the show,
Speaker: came up with the idea of running basically tech classes.
Speaker: And the idea behind the tech class is we're going to invite people into PAPA.
Speaker: You're going to be taught by our technicians or somebody who's really skilled.
Speaker: There's a lot of collectors in the Pittsburgh area as well.
Speaker: They're going to teach you the basics and then even got into some more advanced things about doing
Speaker: pinball repair.
Speaker: So we would have classes where you could sign up and you could come in and you could take the classes.
Speaker: And we created a bunch of new techs out of it, which is awesome.
Speaker: I know last year that that group started filming some of their work.
Speaker: It's
Speaker: We haven't really followed up on it since then.
Speaker: I know that the long-term plan is to basically create a video library of basic pinball repair.
Speaker: Obviously, with everything going on now, there's not much we're doing in the manner of filming.
Speaker: But as we refine the curriculum for the tech classes, part of doing that is to boil it down to what are the essential things we need to know to put together a video on
Speaker: how to rebuild, you know, WPC flippers or, you know, even something as simple as how do I clean and wax my pinball machine?
Speaker: So that stuff is on our roadmap to create.
Speaker: And I know there's other people out there doing some stuff like that.
Speaker: Like I know that Marco has recently started putting out some repair videos.
Speaker: But the idea behind ours, we're going to be trying to focus on a specific task as opposed to let's dive into this pinball machine and see what's broke.
Speaker: So
Speaker: It's on the roadmap.
Speaker: I don't really have a time frame for when that's going to occur, though.
Speaker: Well, that's still a good idea, though, because when I first got my Amazing Spider-Man from Gottlieb and I'm trying to find videos of repair stuff, there was one that kept reoccurring that I kept finding was most of those Gottliebs had a grounding issue.
Speaker: And so it was hard because a lot of other people had different ways to do the grounding issue.
Speaker: Do it this way or do it that way.
Speaker: And so it's a good idea, especially for those older machines that have specific issues to that machine, that you just go and make that video and say, hey, this is how you do it.
Speaker: Call it good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the danger, if this stuff isn't recorded and preserved, is that it gets forgotten, right?
Speaker: Because, I mean, just facts being facts, even with us being in another golden age of pinball right now, there's not as many techs as there was even 20 years ago.
Speaker: that can actually jump into any kind of machine and fix anything.
Speaker: And our head tech at Papa, his name is Steve Eckert.
Speaker: He's a legend amongst us, and he should be a legend to everybody.
Speaker: He actually came from, he worked for a large distributor called Betsen, and they had games on route, and that's where his experience came from.
Speaker: Every time I talked to that man, I learned something new about fixing a machine.
Speaker: And he's the guy that we leaned on for years and years and years.
Speaker: Even with my own games, something would not be working right.
Speaker: And I'd go to him and I'd say, this is doing this.
Speaker: And he'd be like, well, did you check this, this, this, and this?
Speaker: And he would rattle off four game-specific things on that machine that you specifically have to do.
Speaker: Because he's been doing it for so long, he's got all that knowledge locked up.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: You know, he's one of the people that we had, you know, going to help us do the pinball tech classes.
Speaker: And hopefully we'll be able to get some of that type of knowledge recorded for posterity, because in some cases, once some of that stuff's gone, it's just going to be gone, you know, and people are just going to have to find it out for themselves.
Speaker: Yeah, it seems a little bit like Zach Sharp had talked about the tribal knowledge of pinball in Chicago.
Speaker: And I would imagine the same thing.
Speaker: There's a tribal knowledge on the tech support side that you just get through experience.
Speaker: And unless there's a way that we can pass that on to the current generation or future generations, it's just going to go into the ether.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think we all want, you know, I've gone from, I remember when I first got into pinball, I didn't like to even consider playing older games.
Speaker: Oh, you want to play that EM?
Speaker: Like, really?
Speaker: Like, okay, you know, there's a Twilight Zone over there.
Speaker: Why don't we go play Twilight Zone instead?
Speaker: Because I didn't appreciate what those games had to offer.
Speaker: Now I've kind of 180, and my personal preference when I walk in somewhere is usually...
Speaker: Oh, let's play, you know, let's go play target pool or let's play alien star or let's play cosmic gunfight as opposed to let's play attack from Mars or Twilight Zone.
Speaker: Not that they're not good games, but like it's just a different experience.
Speaker: And it's, you know, I've I personally have gained a lot of appreciation for those since I started in the hobby.
Speaker: And I think that's almost the arc that most new collectors take as well.
Speaker: As I talk to people, you know, they only want to play the newest game, the newest game, the newest game.
Speaker: But then as people convince them to play some of the older games, they realize that there's there's a lot of fun to be had in some of the simplistic natures of it.
Speaker: And like, honestly, quicker ball time sometimes can be a lot more fun than having to wait 20 minutes for your friend to finish his ball on Lord of the Rings before you get to play again.
Speaker: It is funny how that works, too.
Speaker: It's like, I swear, everyone that gets into the hobby always finds the bally's first, the 90s games, or they find new Stearns, Deadpool, Jurassic Park, whatever it may be.
Speaker: And that's the hot stuff, man.
Speaker: You can't convince them otherwise.
Speaker: Like, this is the coolest thing ever.
Speaker: And then as they start developing it, or, you know, getting deeper into the hobby, it's like,
Speaker: they start reverting back to those older games.
Speaker: They start finding the early Stearns that have been overinflated by certain podcasters.
Speaker: Sorry, I just had to say that.
Speaker: And then even those early Bally's.
Speaker: I mean, there's something about 8-Ball Deluxe
Speaker: And it's like most people would hate that game from the beginning because it's like you're shooting a drain monster.
Speaker: But once you start learning those flipper skills and once you start figuring out how to nudge and stuff like that, games like those older games are just fun to do because it's almost like an adventure.
Speaker: Like I get all the new games are like an adventure and immersion and world under glass, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Those older games are just something about the environment.
Speaker: It's just it draws you in and it's just a little
Speaker: It makes the simplicity, but it's wonderful.
Speaker: To me, too, and I've used this when talking to other people, the older games, and by the way, this is not a rant on newer games sucking.
Speaker: I love a lot of the newer stuff that's come out.
Speaker: Totally agree.
Speaker: Definitely a huge fan of the 90s Bally Williams stuff because that was the stuff that was available to play when I was growing up.
Speaker: For me, the older games seem a little bit more personal.
Speaker: As a collector, when I was specifically collecting, I'm one of the people that when I go buy a game, if it has initials carved into the head of it, it makes it more valuable to me.
Speaker: Because I like the history.
Speaker: I like the fact that this thing has battle scars from being on route.
Speaker: And then, you know, how many people played this game in some smoky bar or some arcade somewhere.
Speaker: And that stuff is just like, you can't replicate that.
Speaker: A perfectly restored machine has its own place and its own space in the hobby.
Speaker: I love older games that have a little bit of wear.
Speaker: You've got a little bit of wear around the inserts.
Speaker: And it's just because over the life of this game, this shot has been... Somebody's hit that orbit 10,000 times.
Speaker: And those older games, they just seem more personal to me than the newer games do.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: If that makes sense.
Speaker: Yes, it does.
Speaker: To me, it does.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think there seems to be a less barrier to entry, too.
Speaker: If you see some strange game that you haven't seen that was from the 70s or 60s, you can go up and you can actually understand it quickly.
Speaker: And so there's a steeper learning curve in that you get competent faster.
Speaker: at these older games, but that doesn't make them less challenging.
Speaker: In many ways, it's the same thing as the video games that I grew up.
Speaker: There's a reason why the Nintendo games that I had growing up, they really weren't that deep, but they were super hard.
Speaker: So you still did the same level over and over again because you had to do it perfectly.
Speaker: Now, those games
Speaker: You couldn't do the same thing with modern games because people want different things, but there is some sort of appreciation for the older ones.
Speaker: I totally get what you're saying.
Speaker: So you're telling me that the Beatles isn't making millions of dollars right now off of their pinball machine?
Speaker: What are you trying to say, Scott?
Speaker: I am on the record in saying that I would take a Beatles today because I think it's a great layout.
Speaker: And I actually love every time I played the Beatles, I love it.
Speaker: And so I think it got a bad rap just because it was the extra markup for the
Speaker: for the license but um i haven't seen the game itself game is great really really fun to play obviously it's a it's a proven layout too and the changes they made to the layout make the game better and then that that game's a lot of fun and you're right when you say i think you know in the collector community at least it got a bad rap because it was expensive you know and i'm sure there's a reason for that i did you know
Speaker: For what, you know, people can afford what they can afford.
Speaker: Hopefully nobody's buying something they can't afford.
Speaker: But, you know, I don't think necessarily a price is a reason to dislike a game.
Speaker: I didn't buy one.
Speaker: I have a route and I didn't buy one because I thought it was too much for what I was going to get back when I looked at it from a business perspective issue.
Speaker: But whenever I see one, I'm going to play it.
Speaker: I think it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: Well, what's interesting, too, I decided to go look at the price of one of these up this last week.
Speaker: And those gold editions, so essentially the base one, they're in that $5,000 to $6,000 for the resale of the used value.
Speaker: And I find it interesting that, you know, everyone complains about price and whatnot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't think that's a bad price at all.
Speaker: If I could find one for 52 or 53, like it says on Pinside, which, you know, Pinside's gospel, it would be hard to turn one down.
Speaker: That's a fantastic game.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If someone wants to sell it, contact me.
Speaker: We'll ship it out.
Speaker: Good price and, you know, a nicely loved.
Speaker: I'm actually, yeah, I really am in the market for looking for a Beatles.
Speaker: It looks great.
Speaker: He's a big Yoko Ono fan.
Speaker: She's not in the game.
Speaker: She's not in the game.
Speaker: I hate to disappoint you.
Speaker: She's there in spirit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: In that two of them are dead.
Speaker: Yes, I got it.
Speaker: Oh, I apologize.
Speaker: So Doug, you've got to tell me, you know, you got into this back in the nineties, just as a recreational player and started enjoying the hobby.
Speaker: How did you go from that to overseeing and helping with one of the biggest pinball tournaments in the world?
Speaker: Uh, so I'll condense my journey down as, as,
Speaker: quickly as possible because I'm sure a lot of people have similar stories.
Speaker: Uh, nineties, you know, played in the arcades, fell in love with pinball then.
Speaker: And then it was all about, you know, going off to school and starting a career and doing all that stuff.
Speaker: So pinball didn't exist.
Speaker: Uh, and then it was actually a local player named Al Tomka.
Speaker: Um, we were actually playing poker at the time going around and playing poker a lot.
Speaker: And I went to pick him up or meet him at his house and he had games in his basement.
Speaker: He had pinballs in his basement.
Speaker: And I was like, Oh my God, like,
Speaker: You got pinball machines in your basement?
Speaker: Like, I think he had The Getaway and Twilight Zone and like games that I remember playing.
Speaker: And I was like, this is like the most amazing thing ever.
Speaker: And he's like, oh, yeah, you can buy these.
Speaker: And I'm like, where can you buy this stuff?
Speaker: Like, and this is before the days of, you know, you being able to walk into a distributor and get a pin.
Speaker: And he knew some people and he knew some ops in the area.
Speaker: And he actually helped me buy my first pin, which was a Jurassic Park, a Data East Jurassic Park, which I bought for $600.
Speaker: because stuff was cheap back then.
Speaker: Holy crap.
Speaker: Because nobody wanted them.
Speaker: I mean, it wasn't a big deal to be collecting pins because people weren't really collecting them, but on a really small group of people.
Speaker: And from there, you know, I acquired some more games.
Speaker: He eventually said, hey, you should come out and play in some tournaments.
Speaker: You know, one of the world's biggest tournaments actually in Pittsburgh.
Speaker: And I was like, no way.
Speaker: The first pop I went to, I didn't play.
Speaker: I just walked around the facility for...
Speaker: three days and played every game they had because we had they had like 400 games there and then after that I started playing but I wasn't I never really got into like the hyper competitive stuff just because like
Speaker: For me personally, I'm a sore loser and I know that and I'm very hard on myself when I lose.
Speaker: So I only want to play if it's in a super casual setting.
Speaker: So I kind of stepped back from that and I started volunteering there.
Speaker: I volunteered as a tech for a few years and then that's about when Mark Steinman took over as director and then he asked me if I wanted to come on and help run the events and I was like, heck yeah.
Speaker: So started doing that.
Speaker: And then I put a couple of games on location, like I said, and one of the local bar owners had asked me about that.
Speaker: So I started doing that as well because that was also I was one of the people to help start the Pittsburgh Pinball League.
Speaker: And we were running out of places to actually play because we played on location and just being able to put some more games around the city made.
Speaker: Made it so that we could play some more and grow our league.
Speaker: I remember like the first or second year of our league, we had like seven people and now we're consistently over like 100, 150 people every year.
Speaker: So that's kind of awesome as well.
Speaker: So what game is your go to game right now?
Speaker: My favorite game right now at this very moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jurassic Park is probably the game I like to play more than any of the new games.
Speaker: My go-to for all time, though, is Target Pool, which is an old Gottlieb wedge head that I found.
Speaker: I won't say I found it, but I found the enjoyability in playing it years and years ago.
Speaker: And basically that rose about because when you're down at Papa and you're getting ready for an event, you
Speaker: You're moving stuff around, you're working really hard for a couple hours, and then you'll take a quick break to play a game.
Speaker: You don't normally jump onto a new game, you'll jump onto an old game, because you want to play something and then get back to what you were doing.
Speaker: So that's when I found TargetPool, and it's just...
Speaker: It's a super basic game.
Speaker: It's got the smaller flippers on it.
Speaker: I have a ton of fun of playing that game.
Speaker: It's great to play against other people.
Speaker: You can explain the rules to somebody in 20 seconds and then just go from there.
Speaker: That will forever always be my go-to game whenever I want to play a game.
Speaker: And so now the price of Target Pool just went up by about $300.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We ruined that years ago for that game.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: There was a year when we first started the Papa Circuit where we literally drug that game around to every tournament.
Speaker: Because we used to go to most of the tournaments to either help stream them or help run them.
Speaker: And we would literally drag that game with us everywhere we want.
Speaker: And we would be like, well, we brought a target pool for your tournament.
Speaker: And we made sure it was in like every event.
Speaker: Speaking of your go-to games, Jurassic Park, Keith, with these wonderful ideas of the mini-mode that he's put in there, do you foresee maybe Pemberg or Papa adopting some kind of new tournament based off of this timed five-minute or less tournament mode that he has done?
Speaker: Oh, I absolutely.
Speaker: I think that could happen.
Speaker: We used to run, we called them mini tournaments back in, you know, the Papa days where we do like split flipper or there was some really unique ones that people had created there.
Speaker: Like we had a world cup soccer one where we, we hooked up the flipper buttons to two soccer balls and you would kick these soccer balls to make the flippers go.
Speaker: And, you know, something like the speed runs that are in, like, TNA and stuff like that, I think that, you know, people could absolutely turn those into tournaments.
Speaker: I don't see a reason why not.
Speaker: Like, I don't think there should be...
Speaker: You know, and the IFPA is the arbiter of if you get whopper points or not, but it doesn't mean you can't run a tournament that's not IFPA sanctioned and it will be fun.
Speaker: Like, like something that people run a lot of times now you see is that stall ball format, which is basically just get a bunch of people together.
Speaker: And when you shoot something that holds the ball, you just switch players.
Speaker: And if the ball drains on you, you're out.
Speaker: Like something like that is a lot of fun.
Speaker: Like, I don't see that ever being on a, you know, a thousand person tournament, but like,
Speaker: Playing competitive pinball is inclusive of everything from Pinberg to just playing against your friend.
Speaker: That would be hilarious.
Speaker: That would be hilarious to have a stall ball on the stage at Pinberg.
Speaker: You got one guy.
Speaker: It'd be hilarious.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, if you want to organize it, we can make it happen.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That'll be the Sunday afternoon when they're turning off the lights.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That should only take five days to run.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Now, when you guys move games, you don't take the legs off, right?
Speaker: You just, they're already set up and you just lift them up and move them in, right?
Speaker: Yeah, so for for Pinberg, when we move games, we actually because there's so much to move, we hire a local moving company that we have a contract with.
Speaker: And they basically wheel them on the truck, cover them with moving blankets, strap them in and then bring them to the convention center where we pull them off and then we drop them into place wherever they go.
Speaker: on the floor and get them leveled.
Speaker: It is not the way I would ever recommend anybody move a game.
Speaker: However, I don't think we could do what we do if we had to take the legs off of every single machine.
Speaker: Personally, for collectors, take the legs off your games, fold it up, strap it down.
Speaker: I don't move any of my games like that.
Speaker: So I wouldn't recommend that.
Speaker: Do you have any games in your house right now?
Speaker: I don't have a game in my house.
Speaker: However, there's an Attack from Mars in my car.
Speaker: I just haven't brought it inside yet.
Speaker: Is it set up?
Speaker: It's not set up in my car.
Speaker: You can't play it in your car?
Speaker: It's actually a sad story because one of my locations is closing down because of the pandemic.
Speaker: And he's like, hey, man, you got to come get this because we're not going to continue to operate our business anymore.
Speaker: So I went and got it, and it's sitting in the back of my car.
Speaker: I actually want to bring it in the house.
Speaker: I just have not done it yet.
Speaker: That's certainly heartbreaking.
Speaker: I know a lot of people who are really hurting with this.
Speaker: And just a reminder, seriously, if it isn't within your means, go and sign up for the Pinberg ticket.
Speaker: I just got on the waiting list myself.
Speaker: I was able to log on and do it.
Speaker: And buy your ticket for next year if you can do it.
Speaker: And also buy some swag.
Speaker: Yeah, and even more locally, even if you don't care about the Replay Foundation or competitive pinball or anything, if there's an arcade or a barcade in your area that's currently shut down because of everything that's going on, contact them and see if you can buy a t-shirt off of them or a gift card or anything like that.
Speaker: Because you may not think your $20 is going to help them very much, but when it comes down to, can I pay the electric bill this month when I've got no business coming in?
Speaker: And just beyond even the money coming in, just the physical fact of that, hey, look, here's somebody who took time out of their day and called me and said, hey, can I buy a gift card?
Speaker: Can I buy a T-shirt?
Speaker: Can I buy something like that?
Speaker: That actually helps give people confidence that when they can finally open their business up, people are going to come and fill it up again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and let's not sugarcoat it.
Speaker: I mean, we were talking to a couple different people today, and we won't say their business, you know, but they are arcades, and they're in fear of shutting down.
Speaker: They can't hold out much longer.
Speaker: And so please, please reach out to your local arcade, to the local operator or whatnot.
Speaker: You know, some of the operators are in a little bit better position than others.
Speaker: But, you know, if we want to see pinball keep going in the future, we need to support them now at this time of need.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to lose some locations through this and every location lost, believe it or not.
Speaker: I know, like even in even in Pittsburgh, and I know some cities, there are locations that people won't visit because, oh, that operator doesn't keep their games up or whatever.
Speaker: And once again, we're kind of living in a golden age of pinball.
Speaker: A lot of people, at least if you're in a major city, you have a good place to go play well-maintained games.
Speaker: When I started playing on route, you got what you got.
Speaker: So we would walk up to a game and if half the lights were out, you still played it because that was pinball.
Speaker: And while I don't want to say reward people for not taking care of their machines,
Speaker: You know, any game out in the wild that works and people can at least see it to know that pinball still exists and it's still a thing that you can do, that could lead people to, you know, your local pinball league or the barcade that actually takes care of their machines or maybe even into competitive pinball or your local gaming show or whatever.
Speaker: Like, those people you want to bring into your community, you know?
Speaker: It's not...
Speaker: If you don't want to go there and play, it's one thing, but just having a game sitting in a location that the public can see it and potentially play it and access it just lets people know that this is out there.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: I mean, I've heard these horror stories where people are like, well, they never take care of the machine.
Speaker: So I went and bought a bunch of washers from the local hardware stores, shoved them in the coin mech so no one could play it.
Speaker: It's like, dude, don't do that.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Like, I get that your whirlwind, the discs aren't spinning or, you know, the flipper is missing a rubber.
Speaker: So what?
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Let them play.
Speaker: Let me tell you the best thing you can do in that situation.
Speaker: But from my personal perspective, like I said, when we started the PPL, it was super small and there weren't a lot of games on location.
Speaker: So what we would do is when we would go play those games for League, we would write up a list of the things that were wrong with them.
Speaker: We would give them to the bartender or the person that owned that establishment.
Speaker: And we would also tell them, hey, look, there's 14 of us here right now that want to play this game.
Speaker: And we're going to keep coming here.
Speaker: And we want to keep playing this game.
Speaker: Here's a list of things that we would like to see get fixed on this game.
Speaker: Or if you guys can get a new game, that'd be awesome.
Speaker: Because in a lot of bars and stuff, if they're not, you know, geared towards being a pinball bar or something like that, like that's just another entertainment option.
Speaker: And the owner doesn't know any more than the cut he gets from the machine if that game is playing right.
Speaker: You know, as if you're a pinball enthusiast, you know, take it upon yourself to try and educate them.
Speaker: You know, say, hey, look, this is we we are coming here as a group to play this game and eat your food and drink your beer and spend money in this establishment because you have pinball here.
Speaker: We just want to see this machine maintained better.
Speaker: We had a, you know, early on, we had a lot of success with that.
Speaker: Like I said, there weren't a lot of good locations in Pittsburgh.
Speaker: There were just bars with one or two games.
Speaker: And we would come in and we would bring a group of people because we were playing as a league and we would make the list and then we would hand it to the bartender or talk to the owner.
Speaker: And a lot of times with it by the next week when we got out there, those issues were addressed.
Speaker: Because if they know that people are coming in to support their business because of pinball, they're going to make sure that pinball is set up the way that it's going to keep that business coming in.
Speaker: Well, and oftentimes these operators, they don't stop to check because they're there to pick up quarters.
Speaker: They might flip a little bit.
Speaker: But I mean, I've operated pinball machines myself a little bit.
Speaker: And you just don't know if the lights are on and there's quarters in the bucket.
Speaker: You assume the game's working.
Speaker: And so even nowadays, when pinball is experiencing a resurgence, they're making way more money off that jukebox.
Speaker: that's sitting on the wall than they are off of that pinball machine.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So like as somebody who would be concerned about the business of doing that, you know, the, the jukebox not working is a big concern because it brings in $700 a week.
Speaker: The pinball machine that brings in 50, well, it's just not as big a concern because, you know,
Speaker: you know, it's just not bringing in that much money.
Speaker: I only route pinball machines.
Speaker: So we're really focused on trying to keep those up and playing well.
Speaker: But we also rely on our local community to tell us when something's broken.
Speaker: Because like you said, you know, the owner doesn't necessarily know what's going on, you know, unless somebody tells him.
Speaker: So we try and, you know, communicate with the league and communicate with everybody.
Speaker: So when something's wrong, they'll let us know because I'm not in every establishment every week.
Speaker: checking to see if everything's working right.
Speaker: But if someone messages me and says, hey, you know, the slingshots stop firing on this game, we'll make it a point to get in there and get it fixed.
Speaker: Well, and I'll give you a perfect example if I can, just two seconds.
Speaker: I've got a buddy that comes out.
Speaker: He routes pinball machines in my area, but it's like a two and a half hour drive to get out here.
Speaker: And he has a creature from the Black Lagoon.
Speaker: And the game plays perfectly up until you get into multiball.
Speaker: And as soon as you start multiball, the whole game just goes dead.
Speaker: And then you've got to turn it off and turn it back on.
Speaker: And you've lost your game.
Speaker: You're frustrated because you just got to multiball, but you can't play it.
Speaker: Operators aren't going to sit around for 10, 15 minutes to get to multiball to figure that out.
Speaker: So please let someone know.
Speaker: I'm good friends with him, so I have his phone number.
Speaker: So I just text him, hey, get this taken care of, dude.
Speaker: You're not going to make any more money off this machine.
Speaker: Well, it's also when you are vocal about, hey, I like this about...
Speaker: the bar or the or wherever it is, the bowling alley, people will say, huh, people are here because they are they're here.
Speaker: They may not be making as much money on the pinball machine, but guess what?
Speaker: They're selling food.
Speaker: They're selling drinks and people are coming through the door that you wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, almost every time we put a game somewhere, you
Speaker: It's all about, you know, the pinball machine is not going to, you know, I'm not, you're not going to put a pinball machine in the corner of your bar.
Speaker: And all of a sudden I'm giving you $2,000 a month as you're cut from having that pinball machine there.
Speaker: You're going to see a growth as a business because that pinball machine will keep people in here for longer days.
Speaker: And while they're there, they're going to be buying food and they're going to be buying drinks and they're going to be buying other things.
Speaker: They're going to be spending more time in your establishment because it's there.
Speaker: And I mean, that's the same way with most of the entertainment devices nowadays, like the dartboards and stuff like that.
Speaker: Like most places, those aren't bringing in money.
Speaker: But if there's a league or there's organized play or something, then, you know, it's just those people are spending more time in your establishment, which means they're probably going to spend more money.
Speaker: Well, Doug, are there any other topics that you'd like to address?
Speaker: I want to hear more about you putting your foot through the floor of a trailer.
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So no, you don't have to go into that.
Speaker: I'll tell you, we actually, this is, this is a good deed that goes that the universe has a sense of humor.
Speaker: I had this awesome lightning McQueen bed.
Speaker: I wish it were king size because then I would have it.
Speaker: But it was twin size and it was really awesome.
Speaker: Well, my wife decided that my son, who is nine, has that bed.
Speaker: And my other son, who is six, was also in my daughter's room, who is five.
Speaker: Well, that's.
Speaker: He wanted to move over there a few years ago because a little closer in age, they, you know, they would chit chat and play.
Speaker: And so we moved his, it was a crib, but we converted it to a day bed and we moved it into her room.
Speaker: But now they've all grown and he wants to go back and to have the boys room.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: we couldn't keep the Lightning Queen bed because now we have to have two beds in there.
Speaker: So we had to get some bunk beds.
Speaker: So this was her thing that was like, oh, no, it's time to move.
Speaker: And I don't know, I wasn't really on board because I kind of liked the bed.
Speaker: I kind of wished I could have it.
Speaker: But we did find a friend who it's one of our friends, our neighbors who she found and were able to give this bed away.
Speaker: And by the way, this thing is like a tank.
Speaker: If you put an engine in it, you could drive it down the road.
Speaker: And it had an awesome trundle bed too.
Speaker: But since it's so heavy, we had to break it apart.
Speaker: But as I was loading it onto their flatbed trailer, it was one of those old ones that had a wood floor.
Speaker: But you know those trailers, there's like a few that usually have some rotted areas or maybe some holes that they know about because they've used it forever.
Speaker: But since they actually...
Speaker: And I had noticed it there, but I didn't really think much about it.
Speaker: When I was moving that up, I stepped on it.
Speaker: And thankfully, it was big enough that my foot just went straight down through.
Speaker: But I didn't twist or anything, but it wedged around my thigh because I've got linebacker thighs.
Speaker: So it's actually really good because if my legs were smaller, I probably would be singing soprano because that just would have gone straight up.
Speaker: So my leg...
Speaker: fell down straight and just wedged around my thigh.
Speaker: And we had to get some of those flexible cutting boards.
Speaker: So I had to shove them in there so I could get my leg out because it was stuck in there.
Speaker: Cause when we tried to pull, it was like the Chinese finger, finger traps.
Speaker: And, and so like I'm sitting out there and, but okay.
Speaker: My day job is I work at a hospital and we work with trauma all the time.
Speaker: And so I was thinking, you know, I could have broken my femur.
Speaker: I could have really screwed up my knee.
Speaker: And I really could have broken my leg.
Speaker: And so of all things, I'm actually really lucky that I just got a really bad bruise and maybe scraped up my ligaments or tendons a little bit, but I didn't tear anything.
Speaker: So that that was actually a good thing.
Speaker: But still, it was like we gave away this bed and I also got a huge leg injury from it.
Speaker: Well, I'm glad you're okay.
Speaker: I'm glad there's no permanent damage.
Speaker: Yeah, just my pride.
Speaker: And yeah, but it's actually a good story out of it, though.
Speaker: It's actually crazy.
Speaker: If you look at the if you look at my Facebook update about two weeks ago, it looks like my leg was attacked by zombies.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I'm not kidding.
Speaker: I have I have a bruise from about, you know, where well, about four inches below your crotch all the way down to your calf.
Speaker: That is the bruise.
Speaker: And it really does look like my legs about to go gangrenous and fall off.
Speaker: Well, I'm glad it's not.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, Adventures in Scott's Life.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I just looked it up.
Speaker: It looks like you got attacked by a shark.
Speaker: I know, right?
Speaker: But did you scroll all the way down?
Speaker: And if you scroll all the way down, you can actually see an update from today.
Speaker: Because I was getting a wart cut off the bottom of my foot, a plantar wart.
Speaker: This is like old person fun stuff where, you know, that's what we do.
Speaker: It's exactly why everybody tunes in.
Speaker: I know, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, but if you look at the last picture, I took that today because my leg was up there and I'm like, oh, I'll show a picture.
Speaker: But it looks like it's actually healing pretty well.
Speaker: So I feel pretty lucky.
Speaker: Well, I'm glad you're recovering.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I, I, seriously, it would make my job horrible because I cannot do my job if I were in a crazy splint or a crazy, like, uh, external fix fixator.
Speaker: Cause that's usually what happens if you really screw your leg up and you can't fix the bone that day.
Speaker: Uh, it's the worst.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: Well, I got to bring up one thing because this is my shtick and everyone's – I'm not going to talk about turtles.
Speaker: We're not going to do the Aquabats, okay?
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Yes, we're going to – okay, Doug, you've got to tell me.
Speaker: Everyone doesn't believe me, but – well, not everyone, just Scott and Dennis Creasel.
Speaker: But – And Keith Ellens.
Speaker: Would you –
Speaker: Well, Keith Allen doesn't know who they are, so I'll give him a pass.
Speaker: So, hey, okay.
Speaker: Dang it.
Speaker: You've now got my train of thought off on something.
Speaker: I'm like, let's not do laundry.
Speaker: Let's do the Aquabats.
Speaker: Anywho, Doug, do you think an Aquabats pinball machine would sell?
Speaker: It would sell to a very small number of people.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: As a general mainstream theme, probably not a good idea.
Speaker: But there would be a segment of the population that would pay for that.
Speaker: So you're telling me we should do it like Beatles numbers...
Speaker: four, you know, like 1900 of them, but we saw them at a pro price.
Speaker: I think it's a win-win.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: I mean, you might need to do, you might need to do spooky pinball numbers.
Speaker: I think even Beatles numbers might be too high for that one.
Speaker: How many are in the band?
Speaker: Cause you could at least sell it to each band member and their mom.
Speaker: Okay, hold on.
Speaker: The current band members or how many has been their whole band?
Speaker: Well, the people who are still with the band that haven't moved on.
Speaker: Because I was going to say, originally as a joke, they started out with 14 people in their band.
Speaker: Okay, well, you started with the joke.
Speaker: And so if you did a pinball machine, that would be a joke.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I'm in for the Aquabats pinball machine, though.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Depending on pricing, I'm in.
Speaker: If you put that on stage at Pinberg, the rarity and the demand for it will go through the roof.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, if anybody wants to sell a pinball machine, let me know.
Speaker: We'll find a way to promote it at Pemberg.
Speaker: Well, awesome, Doug.
Speaker: We appreciate you coming on.
Speaker: There's been a lot of speculation on what not, so we appreciate you coming on and kind of giving us a better idea of what's going on with Pemberg and Papa and all that jazz.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: This has been awesome.
Speaker: You're welcome on the show anytime.
Speaker: Well, thanks for having me on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wish you all the luck in Pinberg.
Speaker: And again, a plug for supporting your local people.
Speaker: They are hurting.
Speaker: Support your local event, whatever that's going to be, and just see if you can pre-purchase or you can purchase swag.
Speaker: You can get on Pinberg.
Speaker: And certainly just again, check out the friends of the show, check out flipping out pinball for all your pinball needs.
Speaker: They got good prices on all of the releases and also check out lit frames.
Speaker: If you're looking for getting a way of blingifying your, your arcade, man.
Speaker: Well, and I want to do a couple more shout outs to while you're at it.
Speaker: Thanks, Zach, many and dense creasel for talking us up two episodes ago about our sharp interviews.
Speaker: It was awesome.
Speaker: I know Scott felt a little awkward being called sexy so many times, but Hey, I appreciate it.
Speaker: I don't mind that.
Speaker: And then also pinball profile.
Speaker: If you haven't listened to their most recent episode or sorry, not the most recent.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: I want to tell a really funny story really quick.
Speaker: Zach told us we should get his mom on for like, not make it a trifecta.
Speaker: We should go for the four.
Speaker: And Jeff Teels had reached out to us like a week, like a week before he's like, just let you know, guys for mother's day, I'm having mama sharp on.
Speaker: And so I'm like, sure, Zach, well, I'll see what we can do.
Speaker: I'm not going to take that away from Jeff, but Jeff, it was awesome listening to that episode.
Speaker: And thanks for having us on.
Speaker: Also final round pinball.
Speaker: They gave us a shout-out.
Speaker: Thanks, Martin.
Speaker: Thanks, Jeff DeLis.
Speaker: You guys are awesome.
Speaker: That was fantastic.
Speaker: If you haven't listened to that episode, make sure the kids aren't around and make sure you don't have speakers on at work because it's definitely explicit.
Speaker: I don't know what else to call it.
Speaker: And then Super Awesome Pinball Show.
Speaker: Christian, dude, you're the man.
Speaker: It was awesome.
Speaker: We're glad that you're enjoying the stuff.
Speaker: That was all Scott's doing, though.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Well, now Christian, Christian and now Christian is Dr. Penn and his wife is Mrs. Penn.
Speaker: So check out her podcast too.
Speaker: But yes, they actually sent me some swag too and sent me some stuff for my wife, which was really awesome.
Speaker: So yes, it's all good in the pinball community.
Speaker: So, well, and they were on that recent episode of final round.
Speaker: Did you listen to that Scott or Doug?
Speaker: I haven't had, I've been home with my kids.
Speaker: And so unless I'm walking around with earmuffs, I can't listen to it with the family around.
Speaker: yeah i haven't listened to it yet either but it's it's in my queue so it's i had a two-hour drive we went i did a heating air conditioning system two hours away anywho it was just funny to listen to this episode because these guys they're playing a drinking game as they're doing trivia pinball trivia and i'm sitting in the van just going it's this is the answer like martin's like what games give you you know award for death saving i'm like
Speaker: Jurassic Park, Last Action Hero, and everyone's like, I don't know.
Speaker: I'm like, come on, people.
Speaker: You're killing me.
Speaker: But it was a great episode.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I get a little enthusiastic when it comes to pinball trivia.
Speaker: Well, you would have won.
Speaker: You would have been the only one left.
Speaker: Well, and I'm like, why didn't they invite us on?
Speaker: And then I realized, oh, yeah, Scott and I don't drink.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go in there with our cream soda or something like that.
Speaker: So if it were the caffeinated ones, I'd be I'd be buzzing all night after that.
Speaker: So that would be funny to have you on Red Bull just bouncing off the walls.
Speaker: My heart would get palpitations.
Speaker: It would be horrible.
Speaker: Anyway, thanks again.
Speaker: Check us out.
Speaker: We have a few good interviews lined up.
Speaker: And so we will try to get that out as soon as we can, just so we can get everybody through this coronavirus sequesterization and play more pinball.
Speaker: Also, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
Speaker: Check us out at LoserkidPinballPodcast at gmail.com if you want to send us an email.
Speaker: If you want to hit us up on Facebook, you can get a hold of Scott.
Speaker: or me, or maybe even Doug, if he's a people person.
Speaker: I mean, he was nice enough to talk to us, so he might be nice enough to talk to you.
Speaker: And Doug, if they want to get a hold of you, how can they get a hold of you or the Replay Foundation?
Speaker: There's a contact us form if you just have a general Replay Foundation question.
Speaker: If you have a specific Doug question you need answered, anybody can reach out to me at dougatpapa.org.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And then we're on Instagram, too, but honestly, we just...
Speaker: posts like when our episode comes out so but yeah I think that does it for us what about you Scott I think that's it my leg is feeling better and I'm still on the hunt for a Beatles machine a Jurassic Park and apparently in Andromeda oh and I might be selling Monster Bash soon so if anyone's interested in Monster Bash hit me up alright thanks Doug thanks for having me on
Speaker: Shut up and sit down.
