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Ep 35: Pinburgh with Doug Polka
33 Plays5 years ago
Episode 35 is here! Everyone has questions on their mind about Pinburgh and we have the guy to answer those questions! Doug Polka joins us to talk about their decision in cancelling Pinburgh 2020, what it takes to run the event, and the biggest question of all...what happened to Scott's leg?!?!
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Transcript
Introduction & Shout-outs
00:00:06
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast.
00:00:08
Speaker
We are an episode number 35 with me.
00:00:11
Speaker
My co-captain is always Scott Larson.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey Scott.
00:00:15
Speaker
Uh, let's do, let's get some business out of the way really quick.
00:00:18
Speaker
We got some friends of the podcast that we want to shout out to first, uh, flipping out pinball.
00:00:23
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.
00:00:29
Speaker
Also Brad Hunter of lit frames.
00:00:32
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.
00:00:38
Speaker
And we, uh,
00:00:39
Speaker
We agree.
00:00:40
Speaker
They're fantastic.
00:00:41
Speaker
So if you want to get one of those Franchi prints and put it in a lit frame, hit up
Scott's Arcade Adventures
00:00:44
Speaker
Brad.
00:00:44
Speaker
So what are you up to, Scott?
00:00:46
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.
00:00:55
Speaker
There was a hole in the bottom.
00:00:56
Speaker
And so thankfully, it was just a really bad bruise.
00:00:59
Speaker
I did not break my knee.
00:01:00
Speaker
I did not break my femur and I did not break my tibia and fibula.
00:01:04
Speaker
So I actually got out really lucky with just a bad bruise.
00:01:08
Speaker
Um, and also I bought a Simpsons four player arcade game.
00:01:13
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.
00:01:23
Speaker
Just think of Wizard of Oz, but twice as big.
00:01:26
Speaker
And you showed me the pictures of your leg too.
00:01:29
Speaker
And it's, it's insane.
00:01:30
Speaker
I can't remember if you put on your Facebook, but you got kind of ridiculed for that too.
00:01:34
Speaker
So, you know, it's okay.
00:01:35
Speaker
It's okay.
00:01:35
Speaker
No good deed goes unpunished.
00:01:37
Speaker
Have you been up to anything fun lately?
00:01:40
Speaker
Um, I finally played pinball for the first time in like two weeks last night and I did really well.
00:01:45
Speaker
So that was nice.
00:01:47
Speaker
Uh, we're almost closed on our house.
00:01:48
Speaker
We should be in it by the end of the month.
00:01:50
Speaker
So,
Meet Doug Polka
00:01:51
Speaker
okay.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:51
Speaker
I'm jealous that you actually have a walkout basement since I have the stairs of death.
00:01:55
Speaker
Not only to one entry, but two entries to the basement, man.
00:01:58
Speaker
I can go through the garage or I can go the back door.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, I hate you so much right now.
00:02:04
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
Doug's Pinball Journey & Pandemic Impact
00:02:16
Speaker
tournament.
00:02:16
Speaker
So let's bring him in.
00:02:18
Speaker
So we have today on the show, Doug Polka.
00:02:21
Speaker
How are you doing today, Doug?
00:02:24
Speaker
I'm doing good.
00:02:24
Speaker
How are you guys today?
00:02:26
Speaker
So let's give people a little bit of background on you.
00:02:29
Speaker
You've been involved at least for over 10 years in the Pittsburgh competitive pinball scene.
00:02:36
Speaker
You have evolved into the director of Pinberg.
00:02:39
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.
00:02:48
Speaker
And so that seems like a pretty impressive resume when it comes to pinball.
00:02:52
Speaker
I do my part.
00:02:53
Speaker
A lot of that stuff, it's funny because the route and stuff, that's not my full-time job.
00:02:59
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.
00:03:11
Speaker
So...
00:03:12
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.
00:03:20
Speaker
It's like the the bar strip.
00:03:23
Speaker
And he asked if I want to put some games in some of his places and
Pinberg Setup Challenges
00:03:27
Speaker
did that.
00:03:27
Speaker
And then it's just kind of expanded from there.
00:03:30
Speaker
So, and that seems really interesting.
00:03:32
Speaker
I want to talk a lot about the routing and being able to find ways of getting pinball to the masses.
00:03:39
Speaker
But first, you did talk about it on Pinball Profile and anybody who's involved in Pinberg and ReplayFX, you went through a...
00:03:49
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.
00:04:00
Speaker
Why don't you talk about that and your decision to actually delay Pinnberg for this year until next year?
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:08
Speaker
So if your listeners are new to what happened, we're basically canceling replay effects slash Pinberg for this year.
00:04:17
Speaker
And we are going to reschedule for next year, obviously related to the COVID-19 pandemic going around.
00:04:25
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.
00:04:33
Speaker
I'm not complaining.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:35
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.
00:04:46
Speaker
The decision was pretty much made for us that we just weren't going to be able to be ready in time.
00:04:52
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,
00:05:04
Speaker
coming to some sort of agreement with them to be able to effectively cancel this year and reschedule for next year.
00:05:11
Speaker
That seems like a pretty tough decision to take, make too.
00:05:13
Speaker
I mean, we're still, you know, we're, we're the nine end of may yet.
00:05:17
Speaker
And, uh, it seems like it's getting more and more divisive on, you know, people should keep move on with their lives.
00:05:23
Speaker
And the other half are like, stay at home.
00:05:25
Speaker
So, uh, was it just because we're still kind of the state we're in that you guys were like, well,
00:05:31
Speaker
we're just going to call it quits for now?
00:05:33
Speaker
Or was it just, was there tension mounting from outside pressure, I guess, is to put it.
00:05:40
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:05:41
Speaker
Nobody from, you know, outside.
00:05:44
Speaker
At least I haven't seen any pressure on us to do anything with it.
00:05:49
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.
00:06:00
Speaker
Like when I tell people when replay, you know,
00:06:05
Speaker
for one year ends about a week later, we start the preparations for the next replay.
00:06:09
Speaker
Like that's no exaggeration.
00:06:12
Speaker
Uh, and then, you know, like even up to last
The Growth of Competitive Pinball
00:06:15
Speaker
year we were, you know, the texts were working, you know, a couple of weeks before the show,
00:06:20
Speaker
they were still getting games ready for the show.
00:06:23
Speaker
Uh, it's really labor intensive as far as getting the games ready and preparing.
00:06:29
Speaker
And quite frankly, we're pretty small organization.
00:06:32
Speaker
Um, replay effects is run by the replay foundation with it, which is a nonprofit.
00:06:37
Speaker
And, uh, we only have five, five employees total.
00:06:43
Speaker
Um, um,
00:06:44
Speaker
and some other people that we contract when we get near the show.
00:06:47
Speaker
So it's a lot of work for, for a small group of people.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:51
Speaker
And lead me through that.
00:06:52
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.
00:07:04
Speaker
And we've talked about this challenges with pinball, the better you are, the longer you play.
00:07:09
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.
00:07:21
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.
00:07:32
Speaker
The Popper World Championships, when you would come in, you would enter a division suited to where you thought your skill level was.
00:07:37
Speaker
So there was A Division, B Division, C Division, and the last year we ran it, there was a D Division.
00:07:42
Speaker
And you could, so the A division games were insanely difficult, like set up as hard as you could perceivably set them up.
00:07:52
Speaker
B division, not as much.
00:07:53
Speaker
C division, not as much.
00:07:55
Speaker
With Pinberg, it's a little bit...
00:07:57
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
00:08:21
Speaker
I don't want to step on anyone else's toes, but like, Oh, don't be shy.
00:08:25
Speaker
It is the best tournament.
00:08:26
Speaker
Like a lot of people looking, looking forward to it every year.
00:08:29
Speaker
I don't want to sell anyone else short though.
00:08:31
Speaker
Uh, but the thing with Pinberg is, uh,
00:08:35
Speaker
It's largely a casual tournament as well, right?
00:08:39
Speaker
So last year we had a thousand people in there.
00:08:42
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?
00:08:55
Speaker
Probably not a lot.
00:08:57
Speaker
Like people come, you know, part of Pemberg is the social aspect of it.
00:09:02
Speaker
And yeah, everyone's there to compete and everyone's there to try and win because winning is obviously more fun than losing.
00:09:08
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.
00:09:21
Speaker
but easy enough so that everybody feels they had a fair shake at playing the game.
00:09:27
Speaker
So that's generally the difficult part about setting up the Penberg games.
00:09:32
Speaker
It's not just about making them as hard as you possibly can.
00:09:35
Speaker
It's about finding that good balance between playability and still making it kind of difficult.
00:09:41
Speaker
Well, that totally makes sense.
00:09:42
Speaker
I mean, you don't want people walking away from the tournament going like, this was terrible.
00:09:46
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.
00:09:54
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.
00:10:06
Speaker
I don't think anyone else can say that.
00:10:07
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, and that's a testament to how much work, you know, and it's not just me.
00:10:14
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.
00:10:24
Speaker
There's always circumstances where people feel the game robbed them or whatever, and there are some games that we figure out
00:10:30
Speaker
a little late into the game that, oh, we set that up way too hard or we set that up way too easy.
00:10:35
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.
00:10:46
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.
00:10:58
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.
00:11:13
Speaker
They come to all these tournaments all the time.
00:11:15
Speaker
And so if it's plus or minus, they're going to roll with the punches just because they like competing.
00:11:22
Speaker
He's like, I'm worried about the person who is 999th on the list.
00:11:27
Speaker
out of a thousand because you still want them to enjoy their time playing, even if they are not up on stage.
00:11:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:11:37
Speaker
A hundred percent.
00:11:38
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.
00:11:48
Speaker
And that's why also like, you know, we, we, you can 20% of the people that enter Pinnberg win something.
00:11:56
Speaker
You know, we pay out 200 spots, which is, you know, a lot if you've been to any other tournament.
00:12:04
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.
00:12:11
Speaker
Right.
00:12:12
Speaker
So you're taking Thursday, Friday, Friday.
00:12:15
Speaker
and Saturday if they make the playoffs.
00:12:17
Speaker
So a lot of people are literally planning vacations around this event.
00:12:22
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.
00:12:28
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.
Event Management & Game Logistics
00:12:42
Speaker
Considering when you talked about competitive pinball in Pittsburgh, around Pittsburgh, you said there really wasn't much to play.
00:12:52
Speaker
So lead me through how did Pinberg become what it is?
00:12:57
Speaker
Because obviously you had Papa there.
00:12:59
Speaker
And so you had at least some sort of competitive pinball foundation, but it has exploded to...
00:13:08
Speaker
a thousand spots or over a thousand spots and you're still having more demand for it.
00:13:13
Speaker
So how did you build that scene if you didn't really have any place to play?
00:13:18
Speaker
So it actually started as the brainchild of Bo and Karens and Mark Steinman, Pinnberg.
00:13:25
Speaker
This round of Pinnberg.
00:13:26
Speaker
There were actually Pinnbergs in Pittsburgh years ago that didn't run like this one did.
00:13:31
Speaker
So modern Pinnberg, we'll call it.
00:13:33
Speaker
So we were running the Papa World Championships in Carnegie at the Papa facility there.
00:13:38
Speaker
And the basic thought was it would be, you know, because...
00:13:42
Speaker
That was a big facility and it cost a lot of money just to keep there.
00:13:45
Speaker
Why don't we use this collection again?
00:13:47
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.
00:13:57
Speaker
Basically almost the same thing we're doing right now.
00:13:59
Speaker
A couple of things have changed.
00:14:01
Speaker
And
00:14:02
Speaker
Immediately, you know, the first year it didn't sell out till I think a few weeks before the event.
00:14:08
Speaker
And it was only maybe 100, 120 people.
00:14:11
Speaker
But every year since then, it seems like the sellouts just get quicker and quicker and quicker.
00:14:17
Speaker
And honestly, most of that is because of word of mouth.
00:14:20
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:14:21
Speaker
the people really enjoy the match play format and the way the tournament is run.
00:14:26
Speaker
We try and run it as professionally as possible.
00:14:28
Speaker
So I think that adds to it as well.
00:14:30
Speaker
And, you know, it just every year, it just sells out quicker and quicker and quicker.
00:14:34
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.
00:14:46
Speaker
Just the, the demand for it is, is unbelievable.
00:14:49
Speaker
And we're really grateful for that.
00:14:51
Speaker
Well, that's got to put a smile on your face too.
00:14:52
Speaker
I mean, honestly, that's awesome that you've added more and more spots every year.
00:14:56
Speaker
And it's like it sells out faster and faster.
00:14:59
Speaker
It's even got to the point where pinball media is talking about it.
00:15:02
Speaker
Like, oh, last year was 45 seconds.
00:15:04
Speaker
This year it's like 15 seconds.
00:15:06
Speaker
And everyone's telling each other, you know, don't fret.
00:15:08
Speaker
You can do this and that.
00:15:09
Speaker
You know, make sure you're on the waiting list and refresh the 15-minute mark.
00:15:13
Speaker
It's like everyone's learned the Konami code and they're like, we've got to input this now.
00:15:17
Speaker
So that way if you really want to get in, you do this, you know.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, so it's just become, it's a little bit of a pinball holiday almost.
00:15:28
Speaker
The most stressful day for some people is like the day that Pemberg tickets go on sale.
00:15:34
Speaker
Because, you know, we hear both sides of it that day.
00:15:37
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...
00:15:45
Speaker
the unbelievable demand for it.
00:15:47
Speaker
When we started doing Pemberg at Replay, we actually, that was the year we went to 600.
00:15:52
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?
00:16:01
Speaker
Because we moved into the convention center, so space was no longer an issue.
00:16:07
Speaker
And I think Bowen was the first one to say, you know, this is going to hit a thousand people.
00:16:12
Speaker
And like, I was like, there's like,
00:16:14
Speaker
competitive pinball isn't that big.
00:16:16
Speaker
There's no way we're ever going to get a thousand people in there.
Inclusivity in Pinball
00:16:20
Speaker
So to hit that,
00:16:22
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
00:16:49
Speaker
That is challenging, though.
00:16:50
Speaker
You have so many games.
00:16:52
Speaker
And you mentioned last year on Buffalo, you said you have 600 games.
00:16:57
Speaker
Is that still about where you are?
00:17:00
Speaker
So last year, I think at replay, we had close to 700 total games.
00:17:06
Speaker
And that would, you know, because we get people locally that lend us games for the show.
00:17:10
Speaker
And, you know, Stern brought in a bunch of games last year for us.
00:17:16
Speaker
Papa itself, the actual replay foundation, we own almost, I think we're just over 600.
00:17:21
Speaker
I think we just hit the 600 mark last year is the number of games that we actually own.
00:17:26
Speaker
I contribute a lot of my games to the show as well.
00:17:29
Speaker
Like anything that I don't have out on location goes to replay sometimes in Pembroke, sometimes in the free play area.
00:17:36
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.
00:17:45
Speaker
So that actually begs the question, a lot of these games, are they being played regularly?
00:17:51
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?
00:18:03
Speaker
So our techs basically shortly after one replay ends, I developed the banks for the following year.
00:18:11
Speaker
So we'll shuffle the games around.
00:18:13
Speaker
We'll maybe try and include some games we couldn't include before, you know, trying to keep because, you know,
00:18:19
Speaker
to go into probably more detail than anybody wants to know.
00:18:23
Speaker
Once we get the game set at headquarters, the techs will start going through them one by one.
00:18:29
Speaker
And a few months after they start going through them, we start to hold basically play testing sessions.
00:18:36
Speaker
where we'll invite a bunch of people
Comparing Pinball Tournaments
00:18:38
Speaker
over.
00:18:39
Speaker
We'll play.
00:18:40
Speaker
Basically, we'll do a strikes tournament there because we can group people in four groups of four.
00:18:46
Speaker
Because with the EMs, you need to make sure and do the players kick over, do all the score reels work.
00:18:50
Speaker
And then the people that come to the events...
00:18:54
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.
00:19:00
Speaker
And then we'll we'll compile a bunch of notes and then the text will go back and revisit those games.
00:19:05
Speaker
So they are sitting there, but they also get played.
00:19:09
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.
00:19:17
Speaker
And I actually have a spreadsheet with four years of data for how games are set up and how long they'll play.
00:19:25
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,
00:19:33
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.
00:19:39
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.
00:19:48
Speaker
But they sit there, but they also don't sit there.
00:19:51
Speaker
That's a really long way to answer that really simple question.
00:19:54
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.
00:20:02
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.
00:20:12
Speaker
It's, it's not right.
00:20:13
Speaker
It's not, it's not a retail location.
00:20:15
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.
00:20:24
Speaker
And we were going to do it this year, but sadly it was, it was canceled.
00:20:28
Speaker
Um,
00:20:28
Speaker
So we do some game rentals.
00:20:30
Speaker
We do game rentals around Christmas a lot for businesses in the Pittsburgh area.
00:20:36
Speaker
The Pittsburgh Penguins rent games off of us for some of their theme nights.
00:20:40
Speaker
So we do stuff like that as well.
00:20:42
Speaker
But the games sit there, but we kind of make sure they all get played regularly.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's good.
00:20:49
Speaker
It's like a car.
00:20:50
Speaker
You can't just let a car sit because otherwise it's not going to work.
00:20:54
Speaker
Right.
00:20:55
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.
00:21:02
Speaker
What is your favorite bank of four that you have constructed?
00:21:07
Speaker
Oh God, I don't think I could even answer that.
00:21:09
Speaker
There's been so many.
00:21:12
Speaker
Every year.
00:21:13
Speaker
There has to be one that you just laugh at though.
00:21:15
Speaker
You're like, this is either this is hilarious or this is awesome.
00:21:19
Speaker
So Keith Elwin actually created a bank one year.
00:21:23
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.
00:21:34
Speaker
And I can't remember what Keith's games were like ready, aim, fire.
00:21:38
Speaker
But literally he dragon, he picked like the worst games.
00:21:42
Speaker
He put together a bank that was literally like, like the, the least fun you could have playing pinball bank.
00:21:48
Speaker
I try not to do that.
00:21:49
Speaker
I try and put at least a game or two in every bank that people recognize.
00:21:54
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.
00:22:09
Speaker
And, you know, showcase them, you know, like Doodlebug or, you know, games like that.
00:22:13
Speaker
And then we like to watch the prices on Pinside go through the roof.
00:22:16
Speaker
Right.
00:22:16
Speaker
Well, Andromeda was one of those where Andromeda had heard of it.
00:22:20
Speaker
And then it's like, oh, well, that's what I want to buy now.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's a that's a really good example of one.
00:22:27
Speaker
Alien Star was another one.
00:22:28
Speaker
We did that in one of the either one of the early Papas or one of the one of the Pinbergs.
00:22:34
Speaker
Mark picked up that game and he's like, this game is amazing.
00:22:36
Speaker
And then we put it in a finals bank.
00:22:38
Speaker
And then all of a sudden everyone had to have an Alien Star.
00:22:42
Speaker
Whereas like a month before, nobody even knew what it was.
00:22:45
Speaker
Now you had to smile a little bit since last year you put the classic Jurassic Park on stage.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, that was, I think that was Bowen's idea, actually.
00:22:56
Speaker
I think he said, oh, let's do Jurassic Park.
00:22:58
Speaker
And I said, that game's too new.
00:22:59
Speaker
I don't really trust it on the stage.
00:23:02
Speaker
We don't know.
00:23:02
Speaker
You know, we don't know if there's bugs or anything, because that was, it basically debuted at replay.
00:23:07
Speaker
Like, Stuart brought a bunch there.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I said, I don't really trust it to put, you know, that there isn't some kind of flaw.
Ticket Policies & Future Expansion
00:23:13
Speaker
And then there's the competitive thing, like, like,
00:23:16
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
00:23:42
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?
00:23:48
Speaker
Oh, I love that game.
00:23:49
Speaker
That's one of the best releases Stern's put out maybe ever.
00:23:55
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.
00:24:02
Speaker
I almost always play a couple games of Jurassic Park just because I just really enjoy that game.
00:24:08
Speaker
Oh, it's fantastic.
00:24:09
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.
00:24:20
Speaker
I need to have it in my house.
00:24:23
Speaker
So let's transition a little bit.
00:24:24
Speaker
Let's talk about Papa.
00:24:26
Speaker
You said that we talked about it before.
00:24:29
Speaker
you are bringing back the original, you know, the Papa tournament, not the replay tournament, the Papa tournament.
00:24:36
Speaker
So you're using similar games and you're having similar players who are going to be entering both of those.
00:24:42
Speaker
So this is your high school essay, compare and contrast.
00:24:46
Speaker
What is the difference between Papa and Pinberg?
00:24:50
Speaker
And give me why you should do one versus the other.
00:24:56
Speaker
I would never I'd never want to pick one baby over the other one.
00:25:00
Speaker
They're both very different, though.
00:25:02
Speaker
Obviously, Pinberg is match play.
00:25:04
Speaker
Everybody's playing at the same time.
00:25:06
Speaker
You're playing against three other people.
00:25:08
Speaker
So you're competing directly with other people.
00:25:10
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.
00:25:18
Speaker
So it's very tangible how well you're doing.
00:25:21
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.
00:25:33
Speaker
Uh, and, uh,
00:25:35
Speaker
A lot of people know the PAPA format, ticket format, as the in-disc format, because that's basically what in-disc does.
00:25:42
Speaker
So you basically, you get a ticket where you play five games, and then the sum of that ticket goes against everybody else.
00:25:49
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.
00:25:58
Speaker
You just put your best score and that's the only one that counts.
00:26:01
Speaker
Uh, where Papa is different than replay beyond the obvious match play.
00:26:06
Speaker
Uh, there's generally a bank of, I think the last one we did had 12 games in the bank.
00:26:11
Speaker
We separate out the divisions.
00:26:13
Speaker
So like ABC and D all have their own banks.
00:26:18
Speaker
So you're not playing the same games as the a players.
00:26:21
Speaker
B isn't playing the same games as the a player.
00:26:23
Speaker
So that's a little bit different than I think how in disc does it.
00:26:27
Speaker
Um, so,
00:26:27
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.
00:26:47
Speaker
Whereas Pinberg, you can have a bad game and you can still have a good record for that round.
00:26:54
Speaker
You can take a zero and still have a good record overall for that round.
00:26:57
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.
00:27:07
Speaker
It's just not going to have a high enough point total.
00:27:10
Speaker
So they both have their draws.
00:27:13
Speaker
Pinberg, obviously, is on a schedule.
00:27:15
Speaker
So you have to be there at certain times.
00:27:17
Speaker
Pop is more casual in the sense that you can kind of drift in and out as you want.
00:27:21
Speaker
You can come in, play a ticket, then go do something else if you want.
00:27:25
Speaker
So they're pretty different in terms of the format.
00:27:30
Speaker
With it being canceled now, how can people get tickets for next year?
00:27:35
Speaker
Because obviously people...
00:27:36
Speaker
We're so excited for this year and they're already looking to 2021.
00:27:40
Speaker
What can they do to sustain a spot, I guess?
00:27:43
Speaker
And you're talking about Pinberg, right, Josh?
00:27:45
Speaker
Correct, yes.
00:27:47
Speaker
So Pinberg, which is part of ReplayFX, you can go on the website, replayfx.org.
00:27:53
Speaker
And if you already have a ticket to Pinberg, you're already in for this year, you don't have to do anything.
00:28:00
Speaker
If you want to come next year, your ticket is automatically going to transfer over.
00:28:04
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.
00:28:19
Speaker
You can go and request 100% refund for I think another week or so is how long that's running for.
00:28:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:27
Speaker
And tickets are on sale.
00:28:31
Speaker
Our tickets aren't on sale for Pinberg because Pinberg obviously is sold out.
00:28:35
Speaker
But you can go on there and join the waitlist.
00:28:38
Speaker
And as spots free up, we basically contact the people on the waitlist to fill the tournament back up.
00:28:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:46
Speaker
And that sounds good.
00:28:49
Speaker
How long is the waitlist right now?
00:28:51
Speaker
Do you know?
00:28:52
Speaker
I honestly don't have the number that's on it currently because I don't manage that part of the website.
00:29:00
Speaker
I know it's at least 200 or 300 people because that's what it was a couple months ago.
00:29:06
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.
00:29:17
Speaker
And obviously we're not going to be open selling tickets for next year.
00:29:20
Speaker
So they can, you know, jump on the wait list that way.
00:29:25
Speaker
We are looking at ways to see if we can possibly expand the field next year.
00:29:29
Speaker
Can't really promise anything.
00:29:31
Speaker
Like right now, the biggest stressors on us right now are the games and the volunteers we need to do it.
00:29:37
Speaker
So if there's a viable way that we can add people, we're going to try and add people.
Supporting Pinball During the Pandemic
00:29:42
Speaker
But we also want to be cognizant of the fact that like we don't want to ruin the
00:29:46
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.
00:29:59
Speaker
So your best bet right now is to get on the wait list.
00:30:02
Speaker
Cause even if we add people to the tournament, they're going to be added through the wait list.
00:30:07
Speaker
So I love the idea of,
00:30:10
Speaker
You can't buy a Pinberg ticket and then turn around and sell it.
00:30:13
Speaker
Who came up with that idea?
00:30:14
Speaker
Because you guys have been doing this for so long.
00:30:16
Speaker
Was that an issue in the beginning?
00:30:19
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.
00:30:36
Speaker
And the biggest problem that that created was that, well, we would give you a refund.
00:30:40
Speaker
Sure, that's not a problem.
00:30:41
Speaker
But now we have holes in the tournament when we knew we also had a lot of demand for the tournament.
00:30:48
Speaker
So we knew we could have filled those holes, but this person wasn't giving us enough time
00:30:53
Speaker
to fill that hole.
00:30:55
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.
00:31:15
Speaker
So that's why the whole refund situation got put into place.
00:31:20
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.
00:31:31
Speaker
It really wasn't so much about...
00:31:34
Speaker
people making money off scalping tickets or anything like that.
00:31:37
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.
00:31:45
Speaker
And we didn't want people just hoarding tickets because they would just give them out to whoever.
00:31:52
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.
00:32:02
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.
00:32:07
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.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah, like a reseller website.
00:32:17
Speaker
It's like they do for concert tickets.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:21
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.
00:32:40
Speaker
But we actually auctioned off
00:32:42
Speaker
a pair of tickets.
00:32:43
Speaker
And I think they went for like $500 or something at the time.
00:32:46
Speaker
Like it, we all, it was all donated to charity and it was through us.
00:32:49
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.
00:32:59
Speaker
And more power to them if they do that.
00:33:02
Speaker
But we just wanted to make sure we had an official process for which you had to go through.
00:33:07
Speaker
And we also want to make sure that people aren't being exploited.
00:33:09
Speaker
The cost of the event is this, and this is what we want you to pay to get in.
00:33:15
Speaker
Right.
00:33:15
Speaker
And I think that's nice that it doesn't make it a, uh, it's not an exclusive, um, thing.
00:33:21
Speaker
It's like it, I, if you really want to, you can save up some money and you can pay for the ticket.
00:33:27
Speaker
It's not cost prohibitive.
00:33:28
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.
00:33:42
Speaker
And
00:33:46
Speaker
you're not going to be limiting it to just people who have higher paying jobs.
00:33:50
Speaker
And so I really like that.
00:33:52
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.
00:34:01
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.
00:34:12
Speaker
Because, you know, honestly, and we've had these discussions, could we charge $250 for just a Pinberg ticket?
00:34:17
Speaker
Probably.
00:34:18
Speaker
And we probably sell a lot of them.
00:34:20
Speaker
But it's not really...
00:34:22
Speaker
something that we want to do.
00:34:25
Speaker
We want to make sure it's attainable for most people that want to come and experience this at least once.
00:34:31
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.
00:34:47
Speaker
That hasn't happened, of course, but we can always dream.
00:34:50
Speaker
Not yet.
00:34:51
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.
00:35:00
Speaker
And another thing I want you to talk about is considering this was a...
00:35:04
Speaker
This is a big decision.
00:35:06
Speaker
There's a lot
The Role of Papa TV
00:35:07
Speaker
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.
00:35:19
Speaker
And so could you cover both of those things?
00:35:22
Speaker
Sure.
00:35:23
Speaker
The dates for next year, first of all, are August 12th through 15th, 2021, of course.
00:35:31
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.
00:35:41
Speaker
So it's later in the year than it.
00:35:43
Speaker
It's usually around the last weekend in July to the first weekend in August.
00:35:47
Speaker
It's later than it's ever been on its current schedule, but that's why it is the August 12th through 15th.
00:35:55
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.
00:36:05
Speaker
Now you can go buy that.
00:36:07
Speaker
Now, you know, the cost is, uh,
00:36:10
Speaker
I think it's $100 for a four day pass.
00:36:12
Speaker
And that obviously helps us out greatly.
00:36:15
Speaker
We also have an online store at replayfx.org if you want to go and buy a t-shirt or something like that.
00:36:21
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.
00:36:30
Speaker
Those are really easy ways that, you know, and you can still get a little bit of something back.
00:36:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:35
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.
00:36:44
Speaker
Go to YouTube.
00:36:45
Speaker
Watch some of our videos.
00:36:47
Speaker
We get a little bit of income from every time somebody watches a video.
00:36:51
Speaker
We also have a...
00:36:53
Speaker
Twitch stream, Papa TV Pinball.
00:36:55
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.
00:37:07
Speaker
But those are two ways that you can also help the Replay Foundation without actually spending any of your money.
00:37:15
Speaker
Well, those videos, I mean, are fantastic.
00:37:18
Speaker
Like,
00:37:19
Speaker
That is how I found a better appreciation and love for this hobby.
00:37:24
Speaker
It's through Bo and Karen's doing tutorials for pinball machines that I was playing on the pinball arcade on my phone.
00:37:32
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?
00:37:41
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.
00:37:49
Speaker
When Bowen starts blowing it up by the left orbit to the inner loop, he's always hilarious watching it.
00:37:56
Speaker
Where are all these points coming from?
00:37:58
Speaker
Holy cow.
00:38:01
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
Bowen and Mark basically collaborated on the tutorial things.
00:38:07
Speaker
It was actually Mark Steinman's idea.
00:38:10
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.
00:38:20
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.
00:38:29
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.
00:38:39
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.
00:38:45
Speaker
And then, of course, Bones tutorials are fantastic.
00:38:48
Speaker
Like he's he's literally I couldn't think of anyone better to do those because it's entertaining.
00:38:54
Speaker
He's funny, and obviously he knows a lot about the games.
Tech Support & Educational Content
00:38:58
Speaker
Unfortunately, those are also on hold being filmed right now because of everything going on.
00:39:02
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.
00:39:12
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to do a confessional right now, and I hope you find this hilarious.
00:39:20
Speaker
So I ran into a neighbor that owned a Ripley's Believe It or Not.
00:39:24
Speaker
And I'd watched tons of the tutorial videos with Bowen.
00:39:28
Speaker
Well, I look up and you guys have one for Ripley's Believe It or Not.
00:39:31
Speaker
And I'm like, sweet.
00:39:32
Speaker
So I start watching it and it's not Bowen.
00:39:35
Speaker
And I'm like, who the crap is this guy?
00:39:37
Speaker
And it's Keith Elwin.
00:39:40
Speaker
And I'm just like, man, this guy doesn't...
00:39:42
Speaker
I don't know who he is.
00:39:44
Speaker
He's kind of bland doing this video.
00:39:46
Speaker
Like he's no bow.
00:39:47
Speaker
And like, it's so funny to look back now and like, oh my goodness, that was Keith.
00:39:51
Speaker
That one.
00:39:52
Speaker
But back then, like, who the crap is this guy?
00:39:54
Speaker
Like, who do who does he think he is?
00:39:57
Speaker
OK, well, and is Keith really good at pinball?
00:39:59
Speaker
I'm not really sure.
00:40:01
Speaker
I just, I don't know.
00:40:03
Speaker
I never heard of the guy before.
00:40:05
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?
00:40:10
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.
00:40:19
Speaker
Like, it's a completely different world from when
00:40:22
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.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yep.
00:40:36
Speaker
It is totally awesome.
00:40:37
Speaker
The only video I have not liked, and this has nothing to do with you guys, is The Amazing Spider-Man by Gottlieb.
00:40:43
Speaker
That was one of my first pinball machines.
00:40:46
Speaker
I started watching that video, and the whole video is just tap passing.
00:40:48
Speaker
It's just doing the passes back and forth up to the alleys.
00:40:52
Speaker
I'm like, what the crap is this?
00:40:54
Speaker
I can't do that.
00:40:55
Speaker
This video is pointless to me.
00:40:57
Speaker
It's the dumbest video ever.
00:41:02
Speaker
So I want to talk a little more about the tech support you guys have.
00:41:06
Speaker
Obviously, you know how to have a machine that is well run and well tuned in.
00:41:12
Speaker
And tell me a little bit, is it possible for you guys to start?
00:41:17
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?
00:41:26
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.
00:41:34
Speaker
So this is level one type of maintenance stuff.
00:41:37
Speaker
Well, here's level two.
00:41:38
Speaker
Well, here's maybe a level ten that you want to know the other stuff.
00:41:42
Speaker
Have you considered trying to do that and maybe recording some of those things so people can start maintaining their own games?
00:41:49
Speaker
So actually that ties in a little bit with the logistics of what it takes to run Pemberg.
00:41:54
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.
00:42:03
Speaker
And Eitan Goldman, who's one of the people that helps out with the show,
00:42:08
Speaker
came up with the idea of running basically tech classes.
00:42:11
Speaker
And the idea behind the tech class is we're going to invite people into PAPA.
00:42:14
Speaker
You're going to be taught by our technicians or somebody who's really skilled.
00:42:21
Speaker
There's a lot of collectors in the Pittsburgh area as well.
00:42:24
Speaker
They're going to teach you the basics and then even got into some more advanced things about doing
00:42:29
Speaker
pinball repair.
00:42:30
Speaker
So we would have classes where you could sign up and you could come in and you could take the classes.
00:42:35
Speaker
And we created a bunch of new techs out of it, which is awesome.
00:42:39
Speaker
I know last year that that group started filming some of their work.
00:42:46
Speaker
It's
00:42:48
Speaker
We haven't really followed up on it since then.
00:42:51
Speaker
I know that the long-term plan is to basically create a video library of basic pinball repair.
00:43:01
Speaker
Obviously, with everything going on now, there's not much we're doing in the manner of filming.
00:43:06
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
00:43:19
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?
00:43:26
Speaker
So that stuff is on our roadmap to create.
Personal Pinball Stories
00:43:30
Speaker
And I know there's other people out there doing some stuff like that.
00:43:32
Speaker
Like I know that Marco has recently started putting out some repair videos.
00:43:38
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.
00:43:46
Speaker
So
00:43:47
Speaker
It's on the roadmap.
00:43:48
Speaker
I don't really have a time frame for when that's going to occur, though.
00:43:52
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.
00:44:06
Speaker
And so it was hard because a lot of other people had different ways to do the grounding issue.
00:44:13
Speaker
Do it this way or do it that way.
00:44:15
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.
00:44:25
Speaker
Call it good.
00:44:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:27
Speaker
And the danger, if this stuff isn't recorded and preserved, is that it gets forgotten, right?
00:44:34
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.
00:44:45
Speaker
that can actually jump into any kind of machine and fix anything.
00:44:49
Speaker
And our head tech at Papa, his name is Steve Eckert.
00:44:52
Speaker
He's a legend amongst us, and he should be a legend to everybody.
00:44:57
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.
00:45:05
Speaker
Every time I talked to that man, I learned something new about fixing a machine.
00:45:10
Speaker
And he's the guy that we leaned on for years and years and years.
00:45:14
Speaker
Even with my own games, something would not be working right.
00:45:18
Speaker
And I'd go to him and I'd say, this is doing this.
00:45:20
Speaker
And he'd be like, well, did you check this, this, this, and this?
00:45:22
Speaker
And he would rattle off four game-specific things on that machine that you specifically have to do.
00:45:28
Speaker
Because he's been doing it for so long, he's got all that knowledge locked up.
00:45:32
Speaker
So...
00:45:33
Speaker
You know, he's one of the people that we had, you know, going to help us do the pinball tech classes.
00:45:40
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.
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah, it seems a little bit like Zach Sharp had talked about the tribal knowledge of pinball in Chicago.
00:45:58
Speaker
And I would imagine the same thing.
00:46:00
Speaker
There's a tribal knowledge on the tech support side that you just get through experience.
00:46:06
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.
00:46:14
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.
00:46:23
Speaker
Oh, you want to play that EM?
00:46:24
Speaker
Like, really?
00:46:25
Speaker
Like, okay, you know, there's a Twilight Zone over there.
00:46:27
Speaker
Why don't we go play Twilight Zone
Modern vs. Classic Pinball
00:46:29
Speaker
instead?
00:46:29
Speaker
Because I didn't appreciate what those games had to offer.
00:46:32
Speaker
Now I've kind of 180, and my personal preference when I walk in somewhere is usually...
00:46:37
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.
00:46:46
Speaker
Not that they're not good games, but like it's just a different experience.
00:46:50
Speaker
And it's, you know, I've I personally have gained a lot of appreciation for those since I started in the hobby.
00:46:55
Speaker
And I think that's almost the arc that most new collectors take as well.
00:46:59
Speaker
As I talk to people, you know, they only want to play the newest game, the newest game, the newest game.
00:47:03
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.
00:47:11
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.
00:47:21
Speaker
It is funny how that works, too.
00:47:22
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.
00:47:35
Speaker
And that's the hot stuff, man.
00:47:37
Speaker
You can't convince them otherwise.
00:47:39
Speaker
Like, this is the coolest thing ever.
00:47:41
Speaker
And then as they start developing it, or, you know, getting deeper into the hobby, it's like,
00:47:46
Speaker
they start reverting back to those older games.
00:47:48
Speaker
They start finding the early Stearns that have been overinflated by certain podcasters.
00:47:53
Speaker
Sorry, I just had to say that.
00:47:57
Speaker
And then even those early Bally's.
00:47:58
Speaker
I mean, there's something about 8-Ball Deluxe
00:48:02
Speaker
And it's like most people would hate that game from the beginning because it's like you're shooting a drain monster.
00:48:08
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.
00:48:19
Speaker
Like I get all the new games are like an adventure and immersion and world under glass, blah, blah, blah.
00:48:24
Speaker
Those older games are just something about the environment.
00:48:27
Speaker
It's just it draws you in and it's just a little
00:48:30
Speaker
It makes the simplicity, but it's wonderful.
00:48:34
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.
00:48:41
Speaker
I love a lot of the newer stuff that's come out.
00:48:44
Speaker
Totally agree.
00:48:45
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.
00:48:52
Speaker
For me, the older games seem a little bit more personal.
00:48:56
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.
00:49:09
Speaker
Because I like the history.
00:49:11
Speaker
I like the fact that this thing has battle scars from being on route.
00:49:14
Speaker
And then, you know, how many people played this game in some smoky bar or some arcade somewhere.
00:49:19
Speaker
And that stuff is just like, you can't replicate that.
00:49:23
Speaker
A perfectly restored machine has its own place and its own space in the hobby.
00:49:32
Speaker
I love older games that have a little bit of wear.
00:49:35
Speaker
You've got a little bit of wear around the inserts.
00:49:37
Speaker
And it's just because over the life of this game, this shot has been... Somebody's hit that orbit 10,000 times.
00:49:45
Speaker
And those older games, they just seem more personal to me than the newer games
Doug's Pinball Favorites
00:49:50
Speaker
do.
00:49:50
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:49:51
Speaker
If that makes sense.
00:49:52
Speaker
Yes, it does.
00:49:53
Speaker
To me, it does.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:54
Speaker
I think there seems to be a less barrier to entry, too.
00:49:57
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.
00:50:05
Speaker
And so there's a steeper learning curve in that you get competent faster.
00:50:11
Speaker
at these older games, but that doesn't make them less challenging.
00:50:15
Speaker
In many ways, it's the same thing as the video games that I grew up.
00:50:19
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.
00:50:26
Speaker
So you still did the same level over and over again because you had to do it perfectly.
00:50:31
Speaker
Now, those games
00:50:33
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.
00:50:41
Speaker
I totally get what you're saying.
00:50:43
Speaker
So you're telling me that the Beatles isn't making millions of dollars right now off of their pinball machine?
00:50:47
Speaker
What are you trying to say, Scott?
00:50:50
Speaker
I am on the record in saying that I would take a Beatles today because I think it's a great layout.
00:50:57
Speaker
And I actually love every time I played the Beatles, I love it.
00:51:02
Speaker
And so I think it got a bad rap just because it was the extra markup for the
00:51:08
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
00:51:35
Speaker
For what, you know, people can afford what they can afford.
00:51:39
Speaker
Hopefully nobody's buying something they can't afford.
00:51:42
Speaker
But, you know, I don't think necessarily a price is a reason to dislike a game.
00:51:47
Speaker
I didn't buy one.
00:51:48
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.
00:51:56
Speaker
But whenever I see one, I'm going to play it.
00:51:58
Speaker
I think it's a lot of fun.
00:52:00
Speaker
Well, what's interesting, too, I decided to go look at the price of one of these up this last week.
00:52:05
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.
00:52:11
Speaker
And I find it interesting that, you know, everyone complains about price and whatnot.
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:19
Speaker
I don't think that's a bad price at all.
00:52:21
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.
00:52:30
Speaker
That's a fantastic game.
00:52:31
Speaker
It really is.
00:52:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:33
Speaker
If someone wants to sell it, contact me.
00:52:36
Speaker
We'll ship it out.
00:52:37
Speaker
Good price and, you know, a nicely loved.
00:52:42
Speaker
I'm actually, yeah, I really am in the market for looking for a Beatles.
00:52:46
Speaker
It looks great.
00:52:47
Speaker
He's a big Yoko Ono fan.
00:52:49
Speaker
She's not in the game.
00:52:51
Speaker
She's not in the game.
00:52:52
Speaker
I hate to disappoint you.
00:52:53
Speaker
She's there in spirit.
00:52:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:54
Speaker
In that two of them are dead.
00:52:58
Speaker
Yes, I got it.
00:53:01
Speaker
Oh, I apologize.
Competitive Pinball in Pittsburgh
00:53:03
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.
00:53:13
Speaker
How did you go from that to overseeing and helping with one of the biggest pinball tournaments in the world?
00:53:21
Speaker
Uh, so I'll condense my journey down as, as,
00:53:24
Speaker
quickly as possible because I'm sure a lot of people have similar stories.
00:53:28
Speaker
Uh, nineties, you know, played in the arcades, fell in love with pinball then.
00:53:32
Speaker
And then it was all about, you know, going off to school and starting a career and doing all that stuff.
00:53:36
Speaker
So pinball didn't exist.
00:53:38
Speaker
Uh, and then it was actually a local player named Al Tomka.
00:53:42
Speaker
Um, we were actually playing poker at the time going around and playing poker a lot.
00:53:47
Speaker
And I went to pick him up or meet him at his house and he had games in his basement.
00:53:51
Speaker
He had pinballs in his basement.
00:53:52
Speaker
And I was like, Oh my God, like,
00:53:54
Speaker
You got pinball machines in your basement?
00:53:56
Speaker
Like, I think he had The Getaway and Twilight Zone and like games that I remember playing.
00:54:00
Speaker
And I was like, this is like the most amazing thing ever.
00:54:02
Speaker
And he's like, oh, yeah, you can buy these.
00:54:04
Speaker
And I'm like, where can you buy this stuff?
00:54:06
Speaker
Like, and this is before the days of, you know, you being able to walk into a distributor and get a pin.
00:54:11
Speaker
And he knew some people and he knew some ops in the area.
00:54:15
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.
00:54:22
Speaker
because stuff was cheap back then.
00:54:23
Speaker
Holy crap.
00:54:25
Speaker
Because nobody wanted them.
00:54:26
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.
00:54:33
Speaker
And from there, you know, I acquired some more games.
00:54:38
Speaker
He eventually said, hey, you should come out and play in some tournaments.
00:54:42
Speaker
You know, one of the world's biggest tournaments actually in Pittsburgh.
00:54:44
Speaker
And I was like, no way.
00:54:46
Speaker
The first pop I went to, I didn't play.
00:54:48
Speaker
I just walked around the facility for...
00:54:51
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
00:55:06
Speaker
For me personally, I'm a sore loser and I know that and I'm very hard on myself when I lose.
00:55:14
Speaker
So I only want to play if it's in a super casual setting.
00:55:17
Speaker
So I kind of stepped back from that and I started volunteering there.
00:55:20
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.
00:55:30
Speaker
So started doing that.
00:55:33
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.
00:55:39
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.
00:55:47
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.
00:55:55
Speaker
Made it so that we could play some more and grow our league.
00:55:58
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.
00:56:05
Speaker
So that's kind of awesome as well.
00:56:09
Speaker
So what game is your go to game right now?
00:56:13
Speaker
My favorite game right now at this very moment.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:18
Speaker
Jurassic Park is probably the game I like to play more than any of the new games.
00:56:23
Speaker
My go-to for all time, though, is Target Pool, which is an old Gottlieb wedge head that I found.
00:56:29
Speaker
I won't say I found it, but I found the enjoyability in playing it years and years ago.
00:56:35
Speaker
And basically that rose about because when you're down at Papa and you're getting ready for an event, you
00:56:42
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.
00:56:47
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.
00:56:54
Speaker
So that's when I found TargetPool, and it's just...
00:56:58
Speaker
It's a super basic game.
00:57:00
Speaker
It's got the smaller flippers on it.
00:57:03
Speaker
I have a ton of fun of playing that game.
00:57:05
Speaker
It's great to play against other people.
00:57:07
Speaker
You can explain the rules to somebody in 20 seconds and then just go from there.
00:57:14
Speaker
That will forever always be my go-to game whenever I want to play a game.
00:57:21
Speaker
And so now the price of Target Pool just went up by about $300.
00:57:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:26
Speaker
We ruined that years ago for that game.
00:57:28
Speaker
That's hilarious.
00:57:31
Speaker
There was a year when we first started the Papa Circuit where we literally drug that game around to every tournament.
00:57:37
Speaker
Because we used to go to most of the tournaments to either help stream them or help run them.
00:57:42
Speaker
And we would literally drag that game with us everywhere we want.
00:57:44
Speaker
And we would be like, well, we brought a target pool for your tournament.
Innovative Tournament Formats
00:57:48
Speaker
And we made sure it was in like every event.
00:57:50
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?
00:58:11
Speaker
Oh, I absolutely.
00:58:13
Speaker
I think that could happen.
00:58:15
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.
00:58:26
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.
00:58:38
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.
00:58:47
Speaker
I don't see a reason why not.
00:58:48
Speaker
Like, I don't think there should be...
00:58:51
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.
00:59:01
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.
00:59:07
Speaker
And when you shoot something that holds the ball, you just switch players.
00:59:10
Speaker
And if the ball drains on you, you're out.
00:59:12
Speaker
Like something like that is a lot of fun.
00:59:14
Speaker
Like, I don't see that ever being on a, you know, a thousand person tournament, but like,
00:59:19
Speaker
Playing competitive pinball is inclusive of everything from Pinberg to just playing against your friend.
Tournament Logistics
00:59:27
Speaker
That would be hilarious.
00:59:28
Speaker
That would be hilarious to have a stall ball on the stage at Pinberg.
00:59:32
Speaker
You got one guy.
00:59:33
Speaker
It'd be hilarious.
00:59:36
Speaker
All right.
00:59:37
Speaker
Well, if you want to organize it, we can make it happen.
00:59:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:44
Speaker
That'll be the Sunday afternoon when they're turning off the lights.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:48
Speaker
That should only take five days to run.
00:59:50
Speaker
Yep.
00:59:52
Speaker
Now, when you guys move games, you don't take the legs off, right?
00:59:55
Speaker
You just, they're already set up and you just lift them up and move them in, right?
01:00:00
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.
01:00:11
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.
01:00:21
Speaker
on the floor and get them leveled.
01:00:24
Speaker
It is not the way I would ever recommend anybody move a game.
01:00:28
Speaker
However, I don't think we could do what we do if we had to take the legs off of every single machine.
01:00:33
Speaker
Personally, for collectors, take the legs off your games, fold it up, strap it down.
01:00:38
Speaker
I don't move any of my games like that.
01:00:41
Speaker
So I wouldn't recommend that.
01:00:43
Speaker
Do you have any games in your house right now?
01:00:46
Speaker
I don't have a game in my house.
01:00:48
Speaker
However, there's an Attack from Mars in my car.
01:00:51
Speaker
I just haven't brought it inside yet.
01:00:53
Speaker
Is it set up?
01:00:55
Speaker
It's not set up in my car.
01:00:57
Speaker
You can't play it in your car?
01:00:59
Speaker
It's actually a sad story because one of my locations is closing down because of the pandemic.
01:01:05
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.
01:01:13
Speaker
So I went and got it, and it's sitting in the back of my car.
01:01:16
Speaker
I actually want
Economic Impact & Support
01:01:17
Speaker
to bring it in the house.
01:01:17
Speaker
I just have not done it yet.
01:01:20
Speaker
That's certainly heartbreaking.
01:01:21
Speaker
I know a lot of people who are really hurting with this.
01:01:23
Speaker
And just a reminder, seriously, if it isn't within your means, go and sign up for the Pinberg ticket.
01:01:32
Speaker
I just got on the waiting list myself.
01:01:33
Speaker
I was able to log on and do it.
01:01:35
Speaker
And buy your ticket for next year if you can do it.
01:01:37
Speaker
And also buy some swag.
01:01:42
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.
01:02:01
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?
01:02:12
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?
01:02:22
Speaker
Can I buy a T-shirt?
01:02:23
Speaker
Can I buy something like that?
01:02:25
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.
01:02:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:33
Speaker
Well, and let's not sugarcoat it.
01:02:35
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.
01:02:43
Speaker
They can't hold out much longer.
01:02:46
Speaker
And so please, please reach out to your local arcade, to the local operator or whatnot.
01:02:51
Speaker
You know, some of the operators are in a little bit better position than others.
01:02:54
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.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to lose some locations through this and every location lost, believe it or not.
01:03:08
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.
01:03:18
Speaker
And once again, we're kind of living in a golden age of pinball.
01:03:21
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.
01:03:26
Speaker
When I started playing on route, you got what you got.
01:03:30
Speaker
So we would walk up to a game and if half the lights were out, you still played it because that was pinball.
01:03:36
Speaker
And while I don't want to say reward people for not taking care of their machines,
01:03:41
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.
01:04:02
Speaker
Like, those people you want to bring into your community, you know?
01:04:05
Speaker
It's not...
01:04:06
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.
Improving Player Experience
01:04:18
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:04:19
Speaker
I totally agree.
01:04:20
Speaker
I mean, I've heard these horror stories where people are like, well, they never take care of the machine.
01:04:24
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.
01:04:30
Speaker
It's like, dude, don't do that.
01:04:32
Speaker
Why?
01:04:33
Speaker
Like, I get that your whirlwind, the discs aren't spinning or, you know, the flipper is missing a rubber.
01:04:39
Speaker
So what?
01:04:39
Speaker
Like,
01:04:40
Speaker
Let them play.
01:04:42
Speaker
Let me tell you the best thing you can do in that situation.
01:04:45
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.
01:04:53
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.
01:05:01
Speaker
We would give them to the bartender or the person that owned that establishment.
01:05:07
Speaker
And we would also tell them, hey, look, there's 14 of us here right now that want to play this game.
01:05:12
Speaker
And we're going to keep coming here.
01:05:13
Speaker
And we want to keep playing this game.
01:05:15
Speaker
Here's a list of things that we would like to see get fixed on this game.
01:05:18
Speaker
Or if you guys can get a new game, that'd be awesome.
01:05:21
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.
01:05:29
Speaker
And the owner doesn't know any more than the cut he gets from the machine if that game is playing right.
01:05:34
Speaker
You know, as if you're a pinball enthusiast, you know, take it upon yourself to try and educate them.
01:05:41
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.
01:05:53
Speaker
We just want to see this machine maintained better.
01:05:57
Speaker
We had a, you know, early on, we had a lot of success with that.
01:05:59
Speaker
Like I said, there weren't a lot of good locations in Pittsburgh.
01:06:02
Speaker
There were just bars with one or two games.
01:06:04
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.
01:06:12
Speaker
And a lot of times with it by the next week when we got out there, those issues were addressed.
01:06:17
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.
01:06:26
Speaker
Well, and oftentimes these operators, they don't stop to check because they're there to pick up quarters.
01:06:32
Speaker
They might flip a little bit.
01:06:33
Speaker
But I mean, I've operated pinball machines myself a little bit.
01:06:37
Speaker
And you just don't know if the lights are on and there's quarters in the bucket.
01:06:41
Speaker
You assume the game's working.
01:06:42
Speaker
And so even nowadays, when pinball is experiencing a resurgence, they're making way more money off that jukebox.
Pinball's Community Contribution
01:06:49
Speaker
that's sitting on the wall than they are off of that pinball machine.
01:06:52
Speaker
Yep.
01:06:53
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.
01:07:03
Speaker
The pinball machine that brings in 50, well, it's just not as big a concern because, you know,
01:07:07
Speaker
you know, it's just not bringing in that much money.
01:07:10
Speaker
I only route pinball machines.
01:07:11
Speaker
So we're really focused on trying to keep those up and playing well.
01:07:16
Speaker
But we also rely on our local community to tell us when something's broken.
01:07:20
Speaker
Because like you said, you know, the owner doesn't necessarily know what's going on, you know, unless somebody tells him.
01:07:27
Speaker
So we try and, you know, communicate with the league and communicate with everybody.
01:07:30
Speaker
So when something's wrong, they'll let us know because I'm not in every establishment every week.
01:07:35
Speaker
checking to see if everything's working right.
01:07:37
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.
01:07:44
Speaker
Well, and I'll give you a perfect example if I can, just two seconds.
01:07:47
Speaker
I've got a buddy that comes out.
01:07:49
Speaker
He routes pinball machines in my area, but it's like a two and a half hour drive to get out here.
01:07:54
Speaker
And he has a creature from the Black Lagoon.
01:07:57
Speaker
And the game plays perfectly up until you get into multiball.
01:08:00
Speaker
And as soon as you start multiball, the whole game just goes dead.
01:08:04
Speaker
And then you've got to turn it off and turn it back on.
01:08:07
Speaker
And you've lost your game.
01:08:10
Speaker
You're frustrated because you just got to multiball, but you can't play it.
01:08:13
Speaker
Operators aren't going to sit around for 10, 15 minutes to get to multiball to figure that out.
01:08:18
Speaker
So please let someone know.
01:08:21
Speaker
I'm good friends with him, so I have his phone number.
01:08:22
Speaker
So I just text him, hey, get this taken care of, dude.
01:08:25
Speaker
You're not going to make any more money off this machine.
01:08:28
Speaker
Well, it's also when you are vocal about, hey, I like this about...
01:08:33
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.
01:08:41
Speaker
They may not be making as much money on the pinball machine, but guess what?
01:08:45
Speaker
They're selling food.
01:08:45
Speaker
They're selling drinks and people are coming through the door that you wouldn't have otherwise.
01:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, almost every time we put a game somewhere, you
01:08:55
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.
01:09:02
Speaker
And all of a sudden I'm giving you $2,000 a month as you're cut from having that pinball machine there.
01:09:06
Speaker
You're going to see a growth as a business because that pinball machine will keep people in here for longer days.
01:09:13
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.
01:09:17
Speaker
They're going to be spending more time in your establishment because it's there.
01:09:20
Speaker
And I mean, that's the same way with most of the entertainment devices nowadays, like the dartboards and stuff like that.
01:09:26
Speaker
Like most places, those aren't bringing in money.
01:09:29
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.
Hosts' Personal Anecdotes
01:09:39
Speaker
Well, Doug, are there any other topics that you'd like to address?
01:09:44
Speaker
I want to hear more about you putting your foot through the floor of a trailer.
01:09:48
Speaker
Oh, geez.
01:09:49
Speaker
Okay.
01:09:49
Speaker
So no, you don't have to go into that.
01:09:53
Speaker
I'll tell you, we actually, this is, this is a good deed that goes that the universe has a sense of humor.
01:10:00
Speaker
I had this awesome lightning McQueen bed.
01:10:04
Speaker
I wish it were king size because then I would have it.
01:10:06
Speaker
But it was twin size and it was really awesome.
01:10:11
Speaker
Well, my wife decided that my son, who is nine, has that bed.
01:10:17
Speaker
And my other son, who is six, was also in my daughter's room, who is five.
01:10:23
Speaker
Well, that's.
01:10:24
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.
01:10:32
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.
01:10:38
Speaker
But now they've all grown and he wants to go back and to have the boys room.
01:10:43
Speaker
So,
01:10:44
Speaker
we couldn't keep the Lightning Queen bed because now we have to have two beds in there.
01:10:50
Speaker
So we had to get some bunk beds.
01:10:53
Speaker
So this was her thing that was like, oh, no, it's time to move.
01:10:56
Speaker
And I don't know, I wasn't really on board because I kind of liked the bed.
01:11:00
Speaker
I kind of wished I could have it.
01:11:01
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.
01:11:08
Speaker
And by the way, this thing is like a tank.
01:11:10
Speaker
If you put an engine in it, you could drive it down the road.
01:11:14
Speaker
And it had an awesome trundle bed too.
01:11:17
Speaker
But since it's so heavy, we had to break it apart.
01:11:21
Speaker
But as I was loading it onto their flatbed trailer, it was one of those old ones that had a wood floor.
01:11:29
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.
01:11:38
Speaker
But since they actually...
01:11:42
Speaker
And I had noticed it there, but I didn't really think much about it.
01:11:45
Speaker
When I was moving that up, I stepped on it.
01:11:47
Speaker
And thankfully, it was big enough that my foot just went straight down through.
01:11:52
Speaker
But I didn't twist or anything, but it wedged around my thigh because I've got linebacker thighs.
01:11:58
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.
01:12:07
Speaker
So my leg...
01:12:11
Speaker
fell down straight and just wedged around my thigh.
01:12:14
Speaker
And we had to get some of those flexible cutting boards.
01:12:17
Speaker
So I had to shove them in there so I could get my leg out because it was stuck in there.
01:12:20
Speaker
Cause when we tried to pull, it was like the Chinese finger, finger traps.
01:12:25
Speaker
And, and so like I'm sitting out there and, but okay.
01:12:29
Speaker
My day job is I work at a hospital and we work with trauma all the time.
01:12:33
Speaker
And so I was thinking, you know, I could have broken my femur.
01:12:37
Speaker
I could have really screwed up my knee.
01:12:39
Speaker
And I really could have broken my leg.
01:12:41
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.
01:12:52
Speaker
So that that was actually a good thing.
01:12:56
Speaker
But still, it was like we gave away this bed and I also got a huge leg injury from it.
01:13:02
Speaker
Well, I'm glad you're okay.
01:13:03
Speaker
I'm glad there's no permanent damage.
01:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, just my pride.
01:13:06
Speaker
And yeah, but it's actually a good story out of it, though.
01:13:09
Speaker
It's actually crazy.
01:13:11
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.
01:13:22
Speaker
It is.
01:13:22
Speaker
I'm not kidding.
01:13:23
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.
01:13:32
Speaker
That is the bruise.
01:13:34
Speaker
And it really does look like my legs about to go gangrenous and fall off.
01:13:39
Speaker
Well, I'm glad it's not.
01:13:41
Speaker
I know.
01:13:41
Speaker
Right.
01:13:41
Speaker
It's crazy.
01:13:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:45
Speaker
Oh, Adventures in Scott's Life.
01:13:46
Speaker
It's awesome.
01:13:47
Speaker
I know.
01:13:47
Speaker
I know.
01:13:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:13:49
Speaker
I just looked it up.
01:13:50
Speaker
It looks like you got attacked by a shark.
01:13:52
Speaker
I know, right?
01:13:52
Speaker
But did you scroll all the way down?
01:13:56
Speaker
And if you scroll all the way down, you can actually see an update from today.
01:13:59
Speaker
Because I was getting a wart cut off the bottom of my foot, a plantar wart.
01:14:04
Speaker
This is like old person fun stuff where, you know, that's what we do.
01:14:08
Speaker
It's exactly why everybody tunes in.
Aquabats Pinball Machine & Humor
01:14:11
Speaker
I know, right?
01:14:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:12
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.
01:14:18
Speaker
But it looks like it's actually healing pretty well.
01:14:20
Speaker
So I feel pretty lucky.
01:14:23
Speaker
Well, I'm glad you're recovering.
01:14:24
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.
01:14:35
Speaker
Cause that's usually what happens if you really screw your leg up and you can't fix the bone that day.
01:14:40
Speaker
Uh, it's the worst.
01:14:42
Speaker
Oh my goodness.
01:14:44
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.
01:14:50
Speaker
We're not going to do the Aquabats, okay?
01:14:52
Speaker
I'm sorry.
01:14:53
Speaker
Yes, we're going to – okay, Doug, you've got to tell me.
01:14:56
Speaker
Everyone doesn't believe me, but – well, not everyone, just Scott and Dennis Creasel.
01:15:01
Speaker
But – And Keith Ellens.
01:15:02
Speaker
Would you –
01:15:04
Speaker
Well, Keith Allen doesn't know who they are, so I'll give him a pass.
01:15:08
Speaker
So, hey, okay.
01:15:12
Speaker
Dang it.
01:15:12
Speaker
You've now got my train of thought off on something.
01:15:14
Speaker
I'm like, let's not do laundry.
01:15:16
Speaker
Let's do the Aquabats.
01:15:17
Speaker
Anywho, Doug, do you think an Aquabats pinball machine would sell?
01:15:24
Speaker
It would sell to a very small number of people.
01:15:27
Speaker
Yes.
01:15:28
Speaker
As a general mainstream theme, probably not a good idea.
01:15:33
Speaker
But there would be a segment of the population that would pay for that.
01:15:38
Speaker
So you're telling me we should do it like Beatles numbers...
01:15:42
Speaker
four, you know, like 1900 of them, but we saw them at a pro price.
01:15:48
Speaker
I think it's a win-win.
01:15:49
Speaker
Come on.
01:15:49
Speaker
I mean, you might need to do, you might need to do spooky pinball numbers.
01:15:52
Speaker
I think even Beatles numbers might be too high for that one.
01:15:55
Speaker
How many are in the band?
01:15:56
Speaker
Cause you could at least sell it to each band member and their mom.
01:15:59
Speaker
Okay, hold on.
01:16:01
Speaker
The current band members or how many has been their whole band?
01:16:05
Speaker
Well, the people who are still with the band that haven't moved on.
01:16:07
Speaker
Because I was going to say, originally as a joke, they started out with 14 people in their band.
01:16:11
Speaker
Okay, well, you started with the joke.
01:16:13
Speaker
And so if you did a pinball machine, that would be a joke.
01:16:16
Speaker
No.
01:16:17
Speaker
I'm in for the Aquabats pinball machine, though.
01:16:20
Speaker
You know what?
01:16:20
Speaker
Depending on pricing, I'm in.
01:16:22
Speaker
If you put that on stage at Pinberg, the rarity and the demand for it will go through the roof.
Support & Shout-outs
01:16:29
Speaker
I mean, yeah.
01:16:30
Speaker
I mean, if anybody wants to sell a pinball machine, let me know.
01:16:33
Speaker
We'll find a way to promote it at Pemberg.
01:16:36
Speaker
Well, awesome, Doug.
01:16:37
Speaker
We appreciate you coming on.
01:16:39
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.
01:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, man.
01:16:48
Speaker
This has been awesome.
01:16:49
Speaker
You're welcome on the show anytime.
01:16:51
Speaker
Well, thanks for having me on.
01:16:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:53
Speaker
Wish you all the luck in Pinberg.
01:16:55
Speaker
And again, a plug for supporting your local people.
01:16:59
Speaker
They are hurting.
01:17:00
Speaker
Support your local event, whatever that's going to be, and just see if you can pre-purchase or you can purchase swag.
01:17:08
Speaker
You can get on Pinberg.
01:17:10
Speaker
And certainly just again, check out the friends of the show, check out flipping out pinball for all your pinball needs.
01:17:17
Speaker
They got good prices on all of the releases and also check out lit frames.
01:17:22
Speaker
If you're looking for getting a way of blingifying your, your arcade, man.
01:17:29
Speaker
Well, and I want to do a couple more shout outs to while you're at it.
01:17:32
Speaker
Thanks, Zach, many and dense creasel for talking us up two episodes ago about our sharp interviews.
01:17:38
Speaker
It was awesome.
01:17:39
Speaker
I know Scott felt a little awkward being called sexy so many times, but Hey, I appreciate it.
01:17:45
Speaker
I don't mind that.
01:17:46
Speaker
And then also pinball profile.
01:17:50
Speaker
If you haven't listened to their most recent episode or sorry, not the most recent.
01:17:55
Speaker
So yeah,
01:17:56
Speaker
I want to tell a really funny story really quick.
01:17:58
Speaker
Zach told us we should get his mom on for like, not make it a trifecta.
01:18:03
Speaker
We should go for the four.
01:18:05
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.
01:18:13
Speaker
And so I'm like, sure, Zach, well, I'll see what we can do.
01:18:17
Speaker
I'm not going to take that away from Jeff, but Jeff, it was awesome listening to that episode.
01:18:23
Speaker
And thanks for having us on.
Trivia & Upcoming Interviews
01:18:25
Speaker
Also final round pinball.
01:18:26
Speaker
They gave us a shout-out.
01:18:27
Speaker
Thanks, Martin.
01:18:28
Speaker
Thanks, Jeff DeLis.
01:18:29
Speaker
You guys are awesome.
01:18:30
Speaker
That was fantastic.
01:18:31
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.
01:18:39
Speaker
I don't know what else to call it.
01:18:40
Speaker
And then Super Awesome Pinball Show.
01:18:42
Speaker
Christian, dude, you're the man.
01:18:44
Speaker
It was awesome.
01:18:45
Speaker
We're glad that you're enjoying the stuff.
01:18:47
Speaker
That was all Scott's doing, though.
01:18:48
Speaker
So...
01:18:49
Speaker
Well, now Christian, Christian and now Christian is Dr. Penn and his wife is Mrs. Penn.
01:18:54
Speaker
So check out her podcast too.
01:18:56
Speaker
But yes, they actually sent me some swag too and sent me some stuff for my wife, which was really awesome.
01:19:02
Speaker
So yes, it's all good in the pinball community.
01:19:05
Speaker
So, well, and they were on that recent episode of final round.
01:19:08
Speaker
Did you listen to that Scott or Doug?
01:19:10
Speaker
I haven't had, I've been home with my kids.
01:19:12
Speaker
And so unless I'm walking around with earmuffs, I can't listen to it with the family around.
01:19:18
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
01:19:43
Speaker
Jurassic Park, Last Action Hero, and everyone's like, I don't know.
01:19:47
Speaker
I'm like, come on, people.
01:19:48
Speaker
You're killing me.
01:19:50
Speaker
But it was a great episode.
01:19:51
Speaker
Sorry.
01:19:51
Speaker
I get a little enthusiastic when it comes to pinball trivia.
01:19:55
Speaker
Well, you would have won.
01:19:56
Speaker
You would have been the only one left.
01:19:58
Speaker
Well, and I'm like, why didn't they invite us on?
01:20:01
Speaker
And then I realized, oh, yeah, Scott and I don't drink.
01:20:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:05
Speaker
Go in there with our cream soda or something like that.
01:20:07
Speaker
So if it were the caffeinated ones, I'd be I'd be buzzing all night after that.
01:20:11
Speaker
So that would be funny to have you on Red Bull just bouncing off the walls.
01:20:16
Speaker
My heart would get palpitations.
01:20:17
Speaker
It would be horrible.
01:20:20
Speaker
Anyway, thanks again.
01:20:21
Speaker
Check us out.
01:20:21
Speaker
We have a few good interviews
Contact Information & Machine Search
01:20:24
Speaker
lined up.
01:20:24
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.
01:20:36
Speaker
Also, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
01:20:38
Speaker
Check us out at LoserkidPinballPodcast at gmail.com if you want to send us an email.
01:20:43
Speaker
If you want to hit us up on Facebook, you can get a hold of Scott.
01:20:47
Speaker
or me, or maybe even Doug, if he's a people person.
01:20:51
Speaker
I mean, he was nice enough to talk to us, so he might be nice enough to talk to you.
01:20:55
Speaker
And Doug, if they want to get a hold of you, how can they get a hold of you or the Replay Foundation?
01:21:01
Speaker
There's a contact us form if you just have a general Replay Foundation question.
01:21:06
Speaker
If you have a specific Doug question you need answered, anybody can reach out to me at dougatpapa.org.
01:21:12
Speaker
Awesome.
01:21:13
Speaker
And then we're on Instagram, too, but honestly, we just...
01:21:16
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
01:21:53
Speaker
Shut up and sit down.