Transcript
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast.
Speaker: It is what is today?
Speaker: Today's October 3rd, dude.
Speaker: I'm already losing it.
Speaker: It's October 3rd.
Speaker: We're on episode 19 and who, wait, I was supposed to introduce.
Speaker: You were supposed to introduce.
Speaker: Who do we have on the show today, Josh?
Speaker: Thank you for correcting me, Scott.
Speaker: I appreciate that.
Speaker: Some people have named him the most handsome man in pinball, mostly his wife and his children.
Speaker: Other people have said he's the most business man in pinball, which is probably true.
Speaker: But a lot of people know him as the man that likes to kick the horn's nest.
Speaker: Today, we've got Zach Manny with us.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Thanks for the introduction, guys.
Speaker: Josh, Scott, how's it going?
Speaker: We're all fired up.
Speaker: I have my vitamin water zero and I'm slightly caffeinated with an Excedrin on board.
Speaker: So we are good to record right now.
Speaker: Oh, watch out.
Speaker: You're like a rebel over there with your Excedrin.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's crazy, right?
Speaker: Only elective drugs.
Speaker: Things are going crazy.
Speaker: Now I'm on maybe my, probably my 14th Pepsi.
Speaker: I'm ready to go guys.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: I'm joking.
Speaker: I'm joking.
Speaker: Well, and we'll probably have more energy than usual just because we're actually recording during the day instead of, it feels like every time we record it's freaking midnight.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I may get a cameo from about three kids who come downstairs.
Speaker: Hey dad, what are you doing?
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: So Zach, thanks for coming on.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: I listen to you all's podcast.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: You're every two weeks now?
Speaker: I listen to every one of them.
Speaker: Yeah, basically, we're the Surprise U podcast.
Speaker: We record when we can, and it ends up being anywhere from one to two weeks, really depending on our schedules and also the news that's come out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's been a blast listening to all of your guests that you've been able to secure.
Speaker: Quite impressive list of people.
Speaker: That's why I wondered and questioned whenever you asked me to come on.
Speaker: I thought, really?
Speaker: I mean, are you guys at the bottom of the barrel already?
Speaker: You had Elwin, you had Chris Hutchins, really?
Speaker: Me?
Speaker: All right, I'll do it.
Speaker: Well, what's funny though, is like when I first started before I even had Scott come on board, I messaged you and gave you my little six minute blip.
Speaker: And I was like, I know you're a busy man.
Speaker: You're probably doing your, your thing right now at work.
Speaker: You just give me a listen when you got a chance and send it back and you send it back.
Speaker: You're like, dude, this is fantastic.
Speaker: I'll come on anytime.
Speaker: So I was like, well, crap, we got to have Zach on sometime.
Speaker: Cause he put his faith in us and look at us now.
Speaker: Hey, that's a humble brag alert.
Speaker: I'm just saying right now, I love it.
Speaker: I'll get behind that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But no, seriously, thanks, Zach.
Speaker: We appreciate that.
Speaker: Always.
Speaker: Now that we got you on, you've done so much.
Speaker: Why don't you kind of introduce what you do?
Speaker: It's funny because a couple of weeks ago we had a guest on that we thought everyone knew and someone chewed us out for not properly introducing who they were.
Speaker: So will you kind of tell us who you are and what your background is?
Speaker: I would say that number one, first and foremost, I'm a pinball guy with a family and some friends.
Speaker: That's who I am.
Speaker: I got into pinball, I don't know, four or five years ago and fell in love with it.
Speaker: Everything I do, I put way too much into it and I get very obsessive.
Speaker: So quickly I owned numerous pinball machines and then I met a guy in Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker: who is now my best friend, Greg Bone.
Speaker: We started a YouTube show called Straight Down the Middle of Pinball Show.
Speaker: For those listeners who haven't seen, check us out there.
Speaker: We do reviews, top 10 lists, interviews, exclusive promos for manufacturers.
Speaker: You name it.
Speaker: It's not family friendly.
Speaker: So please, whenever you press play, be prepared.
Speaker: So we hung out.
Speaker: We were best friends.
Speaker: We were doing that.
Speaker: And then we met a friend.
Speaker: His name was Jeff Patterson.
Speaker: Jeff Patterson later started running This Week in Pinball.
Speaker: This Week in Pinball is an editorial site that gives you up-to-date information on everything pinball.
Speaker: And we became good friends.
Speaker: And so much so that we started doing the Twippy Awards with him, the yearly annual pinball award ceremony.
Speaker: I'm doing a podcast for him now as a co-host of This Week in Pinball podcast.
Speaker: And then I bought a pinball distribution business.
Speaker: And so now...
Speaker: My nine to five or really my nine to nine, if you will, is answering calls, selling pinball machines, supporting pinball machines, making media on our flipping out pinball stream.
Speaker: That's another new thing that we are doing this year with the special one late guys, Ken and Bill up there in Chicagoland area.
Speaker: They're streaming every week for flipping out the newest machines on the market.
Speaker: And yeah, so my goal is to every quarter have something new that maybe pinball media hasn't seen.
Speaker: That is quite the rap sheet.
Speaker: That's crazy to me that it just started because you got into pinball and it's just snowballed into this.
Speaker: I don't know how you do all this.
Speaker: This is ridiculous.
Speaker: I have a family and my wife already complains every two weeks thing.
Speaker: So I can't even imagine if I was like, honey, I'm coming home.
Speaker: I'm going to do a YouTube, a podcast.
Speaker: I'm going to own a pinball business on top of all that.
Speaker: And we'll do a stream once a week as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, the only way I've been able to do any of this, I promise you, is because my wife, I literally, I think she is a saint.
Speaker: She's the most wonderful person I've ever met.
Speaker: And I was lucky enough to find her.
Speaker: And she's been with me since the seventh grade, which is really weird.
Speaker: So she's grown to love my antics and annoyed by them at the same time.
Speaker: So, you know, she's terrific.
Speaker: Now,
Speaker: There were times where I was expending so much energy on pinball media that I wasn't receiving really anything monetarily speaking.
Speaker: So it became a little questionable why I was putting so much time into it.
Speaker: I mean, passion only goes so far, right guys?
Speaker: So, so that's when my wife and I talked to our friends, the previous owners of flipping out pinball.
Speaker: And we asked if,
Speaker: they ever hung up the hat if they'd be willing to sell.
Speaker: And now my wife and I, who was, she was never into pinball before.
Speaker: She's now, she's not much of a pinball player, but she loves the aesthetics of pinball, the collectability, the sales of pinball.
Speaker: So she and I now have a mutual interest where we, we did not have before as strong as this.
Speaker: So it's, it's actually pinball has brought my wife and I closer together in a weird way.
Speaker: So here's a question for you on, um,
Speaker: Being the distributor, you're also basically the mechanic.
Speaker: And you have to troubleshoot all these things.
Speaker: Now...
Speaker: This is something I've gone on and on about being able to, either from the distributors or from Stern, to have some sort of clinic to say, hey, by the way, these are the main things that you need to know how to fix.
Speaker: I've told this story before.
Speaker: My friend was a mechanic for Toyota, and they actually sent him to a school to say, hey, this is how you do all this stuff, at least the common things anyway.
Speaker: How did you learn how to work on the games and how do you learn how to maintain all these games?
Speaker: Because that's a broad range on all these new machines to be able to troubleshoot them, get them to be tuned in or dialed in on site.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that, again, when it comes to my wife, I wouldn't be here without her.
Speaker: Same with my friends.
Speaker: The reason I know how to work on some of these machines, or at least at the very minimum diagnose some of the problems, is because I've went through a lot of pinball machines because I have a little obsessiveness where I want to play something, want to play something, and then I can't afford some of these guys filling up a basement, so I had to sell it and buy something else.
Speaker: I want to play it, want to play it, sell it, buy something else.
Speaker: And I have my best friend since kindergarten.
Speaker: I'm like a super loyal guy.
Speaker: I stick with people.
Speaker: So my best friend since kindergarten, his name is Schmitty.
Speaker: He lives close to me and we hang out several times a week.
Speaker: He is the handiest person I've ever met.
Speaker: Like he is the next hep.
Speaker: Like this guy, he fell in love with pinball at the same time I did.
Speaker: So now he's restoring machines.
Speaker: And I always have him kind of...
Speaker: helping me out, if you will, if I can't figure out something.
Speaker: Or I have buddies up in Indianapolis, Bud Somerville, one of the best restorers in the country too.
Speaker: He's up there routing games nonstop.
Speaker: He's helping me.
Speaker: If you have a network of people that you do well by, they will do well by you.
Speaker: But it only works if it's reciprocal.
Speaker: So I just try to treat people really, really well so that if I ever need help, they're there for me.
Speaker: Well, I can totally relate to that too.
Speaker: And I totally agree with you.
Speaker: It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Speaker: You can only get so far without other people's help.
Speaker: When I was in a band and we were touring the country, you could only do so much before you had to rely on other people.
Speaker: And it was funny, we were in Oklahoma City one night and the guy, he pulls all the bands together and he says, hey, I got two from Oklahoma, two from Utah, mix and mingle.
Speaker: Change number or exchange numbers.
Speaker: And we're like, Utah, who the crap else comes from Utah to Oklahoma.
Speaker: And we met some of our good friends, the black hounds down there.
Speaker: And so, I mean, you can only do so much.
Speaker: When we were having troubles trying to get bands to come to Vernal, I'd call up someone that was in the business that I knew that we played shows with or something like that.
Speaker: And he's like, oh yeah, I know those guys.
Speaker: We, we, we partied once.
Speaker: I'll, I'll put it in a favor.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: So I assume it's, it could be like that in pinball, but yeah.
Speaker: I don't call in favors.
Speaker: I don't have to do that, I guess.
Speaker: And that, when it comes to answer your question about fixing things, that's why it's so important to have a good relationship with the manufacturer that you distribute for.
Speaker: So people like Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball.
Speaker: Of course, every machine potentially is going to have some issues.
Speaker: This is like the most complex toy that a person can buy.
Speaker: So these guys are really good.
Speaker: Their customer support's really good.
Speaker: So if you have a good relationship with them,
Speaker: You can call them, you can text them and figure out what's going on so that the customer gets taken care of really quick.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, I, my, my first game was Simpsons and I knew nothing about pinball.
Speaker: I bought it on a whim, mainly for the theme.
Speaker: And I thought this would be fun.
Speaker: And I, I,
Speaker: I had this weird loud sound that happened every once in a while.
Speaker: And I, I had no idea what it was.
Speaker: And I emailed, I emailed Stern and it's like, Hey, my, my game's making this weird sound.
Speaker: And they said, yeah, that's the knocker.
Speaker: I'm like, Oh,
Speaker: Okay, but this is a game that's been like, you know, for them, it was 15 years old or whatever it was at the time.
Speaker: And they still were actually responding to someone who knew nothing about pinball.
Speaker: So absolutely, that service side is so important on something so complex.
Speaker: Because how many times do you go, especially on location, you go to a game...
Speaker: And you look down and the flipper is not working or the rubbers are off and no one wants to play that game.
Speaker: That's the bottom line.
Speaker: And then one of the most important reasons to have distributors in pinball, sometimes we forget the importance, is that so a situation like that, if you were to buy that from a distributor and you called them and they walked you through that, that's one less thing that Stern Pinball has to stop and take time to deal with.
Speaker: The distributor would walk you through that process.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guarantee they don't, they, they,
Speaker: Stern does not want to deal with me in the middle of Utah on how to change a rubber.
Speaker: They're happy to.
Speaker: I promise you that.
Speaker: I know they could, but they would love it to outsource that because they want to be making the games.
Speaker: They would love to have you guys involved.
Speaker: That's why I love Chaz.
Speaker: Have you guys ever talked to Chaz over at Stern Pinball?
Speaker: Not yet, no.
Speaker: Oh, it's the best.
Speaker: Like he is the most calm.
Speaker: It doesn't matter what question you ask.
Speaker: No matter if it's silly or the most complex, he'll always pause and be like, uh, well, let's talk about that.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, let's walk through this.
Speaker: And the calmest composure ever.
Speaker: I just, I love that guy.
Speaker: First step, is it plugged in?
Speaker: I love the tech support.
Speaker: They always start with that.
Speaker: Oh, gotta love that.
Speaker: Is it plugged?
Speaker: Okay, so what was your first game?
Speaker: Well, one, what's the one game that you wanted when you first started getting into pinball that hooked you?
Speaker: And two, what was the first one you bought?
Speaker: The first one that hooked me as an adult willing to buy a pinball machine was the Wizard of Oz by Jersey Jack.
Speaker: I seen it at a licensed psychologist.
Speaker: So I was at a conference in Louisville, Kentucky, went by Zanzibar.
Speaker: Shout out to Zanzibar and Ants over there.
Speaker: I went over there to grab some lunch and I was like, oh, crap, like these look like really nice pinball machines.
Speaker: And I realized that.
Speaker: wow, people, they're still making these things.
Speaker: And it just blew me away with that 26 inch screen with all the dynamic toys and the play fields on it.
Speaker: And then I went and looked, looked it up, how much it would cost.
Speaker: And I thought, oh, well, yeah, this is a, it's a rich man's hobby.
Speaker: So I settled on a local operator was selling just a crummy old Jurassic park by data East.
Speaker: And I purchased that for, uh,
Speaker: Probably a couple hundred more than I should have.
Speaker: And I had to figure out how to fix pinball machines.
Speaker: So that's when it that's when it all started.
Speaker: And right now, if you give me the choice, the option between all people are going to hate this.
Speaker: If you gave me the option between owning a Jurassic Park data east or a Wizard of Oz, give me the Jurassic Park.
Speaker: Why is that?
Speaker: Is it pricing or what is it?
Speaker: No, I just enjoy Jurassic Park, the way it shoots, and the play a lot better than I do Wizard of Oz.
Speaker: It seems a little bit like a different game.
Speaker: So I have a Wizard of Oz, and I'm actually staring at it right now.
Speaker: And it seems more like that's the pin if you really want to get really good at it and spend...
Speaker: 30 minutes to an hour if you're really that good and you can get over the rainbow that's it's this journey pin which seems to be what uh what jjp is focusing on they're focusing on these ultra deep rule sets these ultra deep long playing games and if you're playing with jurassic park that that's a keith's a tournament guy and so he wants a game that people will put at home
Speaker: But his main focus is also, I want a game that is well-rounded, tournament play, and is a lot of fun, even in shorter increments.
Speaker: And I've been accused of being a JJP fanboy because I just love JJP games.
Speaker: Wizard of Oz might be one of the greatest games ever made.
Speaker: It always kicks my butt.
Speaker: It always frustrates me.
Speaker: So some of my favorite games, like Willy Wonka,
Speaker: People don't know it, but that's one of the greatest games ever made.
Speaker: I own that and an Ellie and I own Pirates of the Caribbean Ellie.
Speaker: And I play those things more than any person should play a pinball machine.
Speaker: So I love them.
Speaker: Yeah, I am actually on the short list of if they ever go back to making a JJP Pirates, then I want to get one of those because it's a different game.
Speaker: It's so different.
Speaker: Eric did such a great job of doing something new in a genre that everybody's already felt like has been established and really felt out.
Speaker: When Eric came out with that design, it really was something different.
Speaker: It wasn't a smoother flowing game.
Speaker: This is a completely different approach to what would be considered a standard game.
Speaker: Oh, it's really nuts too thinking that we fall into the pin side complaining and different things like that.
Speaker: But really what we need to all consider, we are in one of the golden ages, if not the golden age of pinball.
Speaker: We have some of the best rule sets that have come out ever in pinball.
Speaker: Some of the innovation and the LCD integration and the techniques in this game or in these games, it's the best out there.
Speaker: It's the best.
Speaker: We are so lucky as a hobby right now to be rocking and rolling with Stern rolling out, heck, four, five, six pinball machines a year, Jersey Jack rolling them out.
Speaker: Chicago Gaming Company, they're like, okay, I know what you like.
Speaker: We're just going to remake it and make it even better.
Speaker: American Pinball, I mean, you hear them, all these companies making pinball in 2019.
Speaker: I can't get enough.
Speaker: Oh, I totally agree.
Speaker: It's the second renaissance is really what it is.
Speaker: Now, the difference between this renaissance and the Bally Williams renaissance of the 90s is that was descending.
Speaker: But now we seem to be ascending.
Speaker: And so with Bally Williams of the 90s, it was basically Guns N' Roses of the hair metal bands.
Speaker: They were the last big hair metal band, and it was a glorious sunset.
Speaker: And that's what it felt like Bally Williams was in the 90s, where you could tell that things were changing and Williams was going out just because the climate was not supporting pinball.
Speaker: There is room for new games, for new things, and the market is expanding as opposed to contracting.
Speaker: It's such an amazing time to be in pinball.
Speaker: Yeah, it's amazing to me what is going on in the industry, and it feels exciting to be in pinball, really.
Speaker: It doesn't feel like we're dying.
Speaker: I'm really excited by everything that's coming out.
Speaker: Oh, I totally agree.
Speaker: And like we've said before on the podcast, I mean, just think about 10, 15 years ago, the state of pinball was in.
Speaker: I mean, right now it's like, if you don't like the game that's coming out from Stern, it doesn't matter because the next one's probably just going to be just as good or better.
Speaker: Well, you don't have to feel like there's only one game.
Speaker: This is the challenge with having – before it was, okay, well, there's two games a year, and that's the game that's coming out.
Speaker: Now it's, well, I only have the money for one of these games, and so I have to choose which one of these great games to play.
Speaker: But it also feels that, hey, if that game's not for you, that's fine because there is another one.
Speaker: And basically that game that's not for you, guess what?
Speaker: That's for someone else.
Speaker: So they're trying to fill all these different markets without saying, hey, I want the 45-year-old guy who played it in the 90s and now has a pinball room.
Speaker: I mean, that's still the sweet spot in the market, but there's so many other ways of tapping into it.
Speaker: Well, not only that, though, it's also like – it's like – let's rewind the clock like 15 years or 10 years.
Speaker: It's like we're coming out with Monopoly.
Speaker: And you're like, eh.
Speaker: We're coming out with Rollercoaster Tycoon.
Speaker: Eh.
Speaker: We're coming out with – But that's the thing, though.
Speaker: That's special when lit.
Speaker: That's the special when lit documentary where I started getting excited about pinball.
Speaker: And then I found that on Netflix and I watched and I was like, oh man, did I get into it at the wrong time?
Speaker: Cause this seems like it's going to die.
Speaker: It's, and if you watch that, it looks like the apocalypse of pinball.
Speaker: And, um, it's, there's another one that I watched right at the same time.
Speaker: It's called the way of the puck, which is about competitive air hockey stuff.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And in many ways, I felt like... Really?
Speaker: Competitive era hockey?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: No, it's actually a really fascinating documentary.
Speaker: And I watched it right at the same time.
Speaker: And it's super niche.
Speaker: Because the amazing thing about pinball is that...
Speaker: it's being driven by technology.
Speaker: It's like golf, right?
Speaker: When you're playing golf, what drives golf is Callaway.
Speaker: It's all these, you know, tailor-made.
Speaker: It's all these manufacturers who are making stuff for golf and they want to get you into the new club.
Speaker: They want you to get into the new, you know, the new shafts, the new grips.
Speaker: And so they're actually pushing different ways of progressing the game of golf.
Speaker: Well, in air hockey, you buy a table and you're good.
Speaker: There's nothing else that there are like the dynamo company.
Speaker: They sold it one year and like four years later, they ended up selling it off at a huge loss just because, Hey, you got a pinball or you've got an air hockey machine.
Speaker: The market is tapped out.
Speaker: You already have it.
Speaker: But with pinballs, Oh, you know, I, I have a, so the things that I'm looking for is I have a Shrek and it's a fun family game.
Speaker: And I think,
Speaker: you know what?
Speaker: That Jurassic Park looks really fun.
Speaker: Maybe I'll move this Shrek on to another family who wants a good game for their pinball area.
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: I'll get the new thing.
Speaker: But yeah, I highly recommend checking out the way of the puck just because it's so different.
Speaker: But it's a different vibe than Special Winlit.
Speaker: When you look at Special Winlit, it starts with a graveyard of pinball machines in a field and it ends there.
Speaker: And the only light in there is it's this small group is like, yeah, pinball's not dead.
Speaker: It's still people.
Speaker: They're enthusiasts who get together and do this.
Speaker: And that's why, I mean, that's one of the reasons that, um, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but being part of pinball media, a lot of people turn their nose.
Speaker: Oh, you call it media, but I'm proud to be part of that because if not, if it's not people like us that have podcasts that do promotional videos, uh, that do these events, if it's not people like us, then we're left with documentaries like that to the rest of the world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's why when you hear me being so abrasive when it comes to production or increasing production and broadcasting and competitive pinball, it's not me trying to ruffle people's feathers.
Speaker: It's me trying to find another dynamic way to get the attention of people that aren't aware of pinball.
Speaker: So sometimes I feel like I'm taking one for the team when, yeah, some of the ideas I have are outlandish, but
Speaker: If we don't rule out all of those ideas, we're going to be left with the same old stuff over and over, which we know is not where we're wanting it to go.
Speaker: Or certainly me, I want the most people to play pinball as I can find.
Speaker: Well, that's exactly what Josh Sharp said when we were on the interview.
Speaker: He basically said, we're one generation away from vanishing because all of us, like our generation, we remember pinball on location.
Speaker: We remember going to the movie theater and actually having, hey, pinball machines or, hey, when I was a kid, arcades.
Speaker: You would go to the mall and that was your thing.
Speaker: You went and hung out in the arcade.
Speaker: That was how you spent your money.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Unless we find a new generation, like my kids know what pinball machines are because I have pinball machines.
Speaker: But I guarantee anybody who is into the hobby or at least has a significant foothold in the hobby, they always, when I tell people what I do, they always say, huh, really?
Speaker: And the first question is, oh, well, do they still make those?
Speaker: And the second question is, can I come over and play?
Speaker: Because they've never seen one.
Speaker: They've never actually seen a physical pinball machine.
Speaker: And so it's just, where is that next?
Speaker: I love all the ideas of saying, where is this next generation?
Speaker: The fact that we've been able to see a renaissance in the past few years of barcades where people 21 and older anyway are going to location to play these games is a big deal.
Speaker: We also need to figure out a way of getting these under 21 year olds to be able to be exposed to what this is.
Speaker: And so that's what they come back to
Speaker: That's a tricky thing to do.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It's a tricky thing to do because there are so many options for money and time, especially in kids, that it's really hard to get them.
Speaker: This sounds like I'm a cigarette seller, but we need to get them hooked at a young age on something like this.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's what internet connectivity is going to be really important in the next handful of years.
Speaker: To pull in that new generation that's used to playing multiplayer internet-based gaming, we can get some of those kids doing that.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, yeah, Josh Harp's right.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: 14, 15 year olds can't afford a $5,000 to $15,000 pinball machine.
Speaker: So it's an uphill battle, but I think people like us, I'm up for the fight.
Speaker: I'll keep doing it until I'm blue in the face because I'm passionate about pinball.
Speaker: And this is something I've not found a hobby that I love this much in my entire life.
Speaker: So the one thought I have on all this, though, I think there is something that has been helping us.
Speaker: And I'm going to ask you this question, Zach, because I know how you feel about this.
Speaker: Do you think virtual pinball has helped promote physical pinball?
Speaker: Yes, it has.
Speaker: I'm no dummy.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: If you pick up your iPhone and you know nothing about pinball and you get a free app and you can start playing machines and you realize, oh man, that's a real machine.
Speaker: I can play that physically in real life.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Unequivocally.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Of course it brings people in.
Speaker: I've heard the stories from, I think the, uh, the Buffalo, Buffalo pinball guys told me that they got in with that.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: They got in through a pinball arcade.
Speaker: It's, it's a gate.
Speaker: It's a gateway drug.
Speaker: Where I get a little prickly and turn my nose up is when people call it pinball.
Speaker: Oh, gotcha.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's just not pinball to me.
Speaker: It's a video game.
Speaker: It's like saying, oh, I love driving Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
Speaker: They're so much fun.
Speaker: It's like, really?
Speaker: You have?
Speaker: Yeah, look at my iPhone.
Speaker: I've got this game that I can drive a Lamborghini.
Speaker: Well, that's cute, but...
Speaker: You're not driving a race car.
Speaker: That's not a race car.
Speaker: That's a, I get that, but it also, it helps, it helps with a barrier of that price, that price point.
Speaker: And so I, cause I, I'm kind of right in that same boat is I wanted a pinball machine, but I didn't know where to go.
Speaker: And my first one I really wanted was medieval madness.
Speaker: And then you get on there and you're looking, you're like,
Speaker: This is back before CGC was even thinking about making one.
Speaker: $10,000.
Speaker: $10,000 plus.
Speaker: You're like, I'm looking at a $12,000 machine going, yeah, I'm never going to own this machine.
Speaker: And so you're telling me there's an app on my phone.
Speaker: I can play it for $1.99.
Speaker: I can download the table and go crazy.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And what's crazy to me, have you looked at the – just on Android alone or Apple, you looked at how many downloads there are just for the pinball apps?
Speaker: It's unreal.
Speaker: Five million per app.
Speaker: Some of them are up to 10 million.
Speaker: Even the new Williams app that came out for Zen pinball is already over like a hundred thousand.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: What I would love to see, though, is when you click on that to play it virtually, there should be a little icon in the bottom that says, if you want to play this in real life, here's the closest one.
Speaker: Oh, that'd be awesome.
Speaker: We need more integration.
Speaker: Instead of getting people stuck behind their phone, find a way to get people that are plugged in there to pull them out of that and let them know that this can be played with your hands five miles down the road, 20 miles down the road.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: How depressing is that if someone's playing Ghostbusters on their cell phone and they're loving it and they have one two blocks over at the local bowling alley, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That makes me sad.
Speaker: That makes me sad.
Speaker: That's why it's important to have these location.
Speaker: Location pinball is very, very important, especially some of the, you know, there are some great, uh, there's some great location people and operators that keep these things.
Speaker: Just keep these things wonderfully taken care of.
Speaker: They, they keep them balanced.
Speaker: They keep them clean.
Speaker: They keep the parts in check.
Speaker: Those are the heroes, uh, in my opinion, when it comes to this industry in a lot of ways.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: Well, and like here in Utah, I mean, we're not a pinball Mecca.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: It was hard to- Neither is Southern Indiana, so don't feel bad.
Speaker: But there's a couple of guys that have banded together since the beginning.
Speaker: And they just, Keto's is fantastic to us.
Speaker: It seems like they get the new Stern, whatever it is, it comes out.
Speaker: They put it down there.
Speaker: Granted, they might not do Batman 66 or a little bit of the higher ones, but still, I wouldn't be able to play Jurassic Park any other way.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: There's just games like that.
Speaker: Like I would have never played a black night sort of rage if it wasn't for them.
Speaker: So it's, it's nice for those people willing to take the risk to put the machine out on location to say, okay, I'm willing to let it get beat up, roughed up, whatever it may be.
Speaker: And enjoy not only enjoy it myself, but enjoy it with everyone else.
Speaker: And that's why leagues are so important, right?
Speaker: Not only do we have location pinball, but now we have a place that we can interact.
Speaker: You've got leagues that you can go to that you show up every week.
Speaker: You make new friends.
Speaker: You have something in common.
Speaker: You got competitions to go to.
Speaker: All of this is very, very, very important.
Speaker: But I still think we're missing a couple key elements to bring other people in.
Speaker: We're doing well.
Speaker: It's just if we want to strike while the iron's hot, we've got to do it now.
Speaker: And we've got to do big things to gain general worldwide attention.
Speaker: Well, I think in Utah, that's one thing that's been so good about us teaming up with the local gaming con.
Speaker: Because that's a group that is used to doing stuff.
Speaker: they're either playing board games or they're playing role-playing games or they're playing like the, um, the LARPing or whatever.
Speaker: It's those people are like, Hey, I want to do something.
Speaker: And so we were able to, over the last couple of years, really put a footprint in when people come over and they wander over from these other things like, Oh yeah, well, this is cool.
Speaker: Look, look at all these people probably spend while machines.
Speaker: And that has certainly opened the doors for people saying, Hey, that that's a new thing.
Speaker: I, I like that.
Speaker: Well, it's also helped too.
Speaker: They've put us front and center too.
Speaker: Yeah, they've been promoting it, which is we went from in the corner for a couple of people bringing some machines to really a promotable event.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Other people will call some of my rhetoric grandiose.
Speaker: They might say, we don't even want this.
Speaker: Why does he keep saying this kind of stuff?
Speaker: We don't even want this.
Speaker: So there's another area in the industry that
Speaker: doesn't mind if it grows.
Speaker: They don't care.
Speaker: They like that it's small.
Speaker: They like that they have a few friends in it.
Speaker: They don't want it to get overexposed and too big because then it loses some of the magic about it.
Speaker: So we can't make everybody happy, but my aim is to make it as big as I can with my big old mouth and my big old presence.
Speaker: Well, in my personal opinion, I think we're past the point of hiding it under the bushel if you –
Speaker: would say that term just because with Disney investing into pinball machines with their themes, we've seen more and more and more pinball machines cropping up in Disney movies.
Speaker: I mean, they're not themed machines, but I mean, the toys in Toy Story four lived in a pinball machine.
Speaker: Captain Marvel,
Speaker: They had space invaders up on the scroll ship, and they destroyed – it was front and center.
Speaker: I mean, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: They even had a little girl walk over and point it out.
Speaker: And I think it helps drive their business because they want you to buy the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Speaker: They want you to buy whatever Disney-themed products that they've licensed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only thing that I have a problem with right now, it's a good point you bring up, Josh, but the only issue is that when the outside public thinks of pinball, what's the first thing they think of?
Speaker: The who.
Speaker: Pinball wizard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When was the who hot?
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: 1978.
Speaker: That's the problem.
Speaker: Whenever Toy Story, it is on Toy Story, it's nostalgic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just old.
Speaker: It's retro.
Speaker: It's in an antique shop.
Speaker: So every time we see a commercial that debuts a pinball machine, it's always bells, it's chimes, it's EMs.
Speaker: So what I would like to see us as an industry to do is to really push that this is a physical video game.
Speaker: Like this has as much rules as a video game, but it's actually physics here.
Speaker: Like you, this is a sport and a video game all at once.
Speaker: No longer are there bells and chimes.
Speaker: This is a big 27-inch TV screen with a wizard mode that is so hard to attain that it's like that final mode on your favorite RPG or your favorite first-person shooter.
Speaker: That's, I think, what we need to be pushing to the masses more than just, yeah, they still make pinball machines.
Speaker: They were hot back in the 60s and 70s.
Speaker: We need to kill that idea.
Speaker: I was going to say, I think that's what was so easy for me to transition from video games to pinball machines is because I'm really into like Assassin's Creed.
Speaker: Love, love Legend of Zelda.
Speaker: Those nonlinear games where I can do whatever I want.
Speaker: I can explore the machine or the game itself.
Speaker: You can do that with a lot of pinball machines.
Speaker: If I do this,
Speaker: I get this in return.
Speaker: This is my reward.
Speaker: And so it wasn't hard for me to transition.
Speaker: And I do agree with you.
Speaker: I think we need, there's bigger markets we could tap into.
Speaker: And I think that's why it's so important for like Deadflip, what he's doing, going out to TwitchCon and stuff like that.
Speaker: Absolutely, yes.
Speaker: Because we're getting in front of the, I think the most, the audience that will more than likely accept, hey, we need to start doing this.
Speaker: And what's important about Jack Danger over at Deadflip too is he's offering something that I'm really big on.
Speaker: And whenever you're selling a product and those are your margins, you're making money off of that product, if you're doing it right, you're never selling the product.
Speaker: You never are.
Speaker: I'm not selling the Guardians of the Galaxy pinball machine.
Speaker: I'm selling the association of what you feel when you have that, when you own that, when you reach that wizard mode.
Speaker: That's what Jack Danger at Dead Flip does.
Speaker: He is iconic in that he is a character.
Speaker: You're signing up to be part of his team because he is a pinball player.
Speaker: So I love movements like that where we got Jack Danger going across the world or he's pitching new show ideas.
Speaker: I think that is what those are the kind of things that pinball really, really needs.
Speaker: They're going to buy Jack Danger because they want to be
Speaker: what he is and what he represents more so than the pinball machine he's playing.
Speaker: You get them sold on Jack danger.
Speaker: They start buying pinball machines because they want to be part of what he's a part of.
Speaker: Yeah, the biggest thing that will transition from the retro nostalgia is the new screens that are in there.
Speaker: I'm so impressed with the way that Stern has integrated a quick tutorial.
Speaker: Hey, put coins here.
Speaker: Hey, push this button.
Speaker: Hey, this is how you do it.
Speaker: Because a lot of people don't understand even how to start a pinball machine anymore.
Speaker: It's almost that you have to put the money in and have it auto launch because they don't even know how to launch the ball, which is so crazy to me.
Speaker: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker: That's why they put that lockdown bar button on there a lot of times.
Speaker: It's flashing and kids want to hit it.
Speaker: Push here.
Speaker: Yeah, it's so – that was the thing that I felt when I played Sword of Rage the first time.
Speaker: I thought, this feels like a video game.
Speaker: And this will be easily identifiable for any young person to come up and say, oh, I do this, I battle a monster.
Speaker: Okay, I got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, Rube, a question.
Speaker: When you're playing, you said you wanted to play, what did you say?
Speaker: Assassin's Creed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So when you go and you wanted to play Assassin's Creed and you fell in love with that, what are you playing for?
Speaker: Like, well, what's the purpose?
Speaker: What do you enjoy about that game?
Speaker: What keeps you coming back?
Speaker: So the joke with gamers is we're completists.
Speaker: We have to complete everything in the game.
Speaker: And Assassin's Creed gives you that.
Speaker: There's a lot of climb to this point.
Speaker: It's really stupid, frivolous stuff.
Speaker: Climb this chapel and we'll count it off your guidebook of, hey, you climbed here.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Achievements.
Speaker: Yeah, it was achievements.
Speaker: Upgrades.
Speaker: If you will, it was exploring the story.
Speaker: It was, uh, it was just exploring the game.
Speaker: That's the nice part about Assassin's Creed or like legend is old is my all time favorite.
Speaker: So that's, I just, I remember you guys talking about that.
Speaker: I love finding something and then sharing that with other people.
Speaker: Oh, you can't find this.
Speaker: This is how you do it.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: And then what you guys like Mario too, right?
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: That would be a,
Speaker: That would be a take my money now if they had a Zelda game or a Mario game, because it is perfect for what I'm looking for.
Speaker: And I know this is a little niche because it's just it's what a 45 year old guy with kids is interested in.
Speaker: But my kids, if they saw a pinball machine that was Mario themed, that would be an LE by today.
Speaker: But what do you play in Mario for, Scott?
Speaker: Because it's... What are you trying to do?
Speaker: What do you enjoy about that game?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: My kids just love the excitement, the feeling like, hey, Mario is doing this.
Speaker: And it's that connection to that world, that theme, which is why having a themed pinball machine is so important.
Speaker: Because you're identified with something.
Speaker: There's...
Speaker: the reason why Lord of the Rings is such a great pinball machine is because you are buying that.
Speaker: I am getting involved in the storyline.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And it's the same thing.
Speaker: I Mario, it's fun.
Speaker: It's really, it's just these small interactions.
Speaker: And, you know, we, we, we play Mario cart.
Speaker: We play the, the super Mario maker and all that.
Speaker: And my kids love doing that.
Speaker: And they play the Mario Odyssey just because it is this, it's this Pixar esque world that you are interacting with.
Speaker: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker: And when I tell people that, I use Mario oftentimes as an example to prove a point in that you're trying to rescue the princess.
Speaker: You're trying to defeat the levels.
Speaker: You're trying to beat Bowser.
Speaker: Now, what people never say is, I play Mario to see how many coins I can collect.
Speaker: And whenever, whenever, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Whenever people bust my chops, because I get it all the time, you guys about, oh, he's not a tournament player.
Speaker: He, he says he's chasing the magic.
Speaker: He's trying to get through modes.
Speaker: We're trying to win.
Speaker: We're trying to chase points.
Speaker: I equate it to that.
Speaker: I think to sell pinball to the masses, we need to sell it as storytelling, as completing wizard modes, as completing different challenges, as collecting things, as sharing things.
Speaker: That's why sometimes people take me negatively because they think, why don't you care about points?
Speaker: Why don't you care about competition?
Speaker: Because I'm trying to expand pinball and I think it's somewhere else.
Speaker: I don't necessarily think it's stuck chasing points sometimes.
Speaker: I am 100% with you on this because when I play a game, no, I am 100% on this because when I play a game,
Speaker: I literally don't care about the points.
Speaker: I really don't because what I want to do is so I had a I had a buddy who came over.
Speaker: Actually, this is an interesting story.
Speaker: A guy messaged me on.
Speaker: He messaged me on Pinside and said, hey, I'm going to be at BYU recruiting for my for my job.
Speaker: Is there any pinball around?
Speaker: And I said, well, there's, you know, I told him about Keto's.
Speaker: I told him about some local things.
Speaker: And I said, you can even just come over to my house if you want.
Speaker: And so he came over and the funny thing is I assumed that he knew me by stumbling on the podcast or something.
Speaker: He had no, he had no idea who I was.
Speaker: I, I just asked him, he's like, well, I just started.
Speaker: And again, that's not me saying that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm famous or I'm anybody, but I just assumed when someone messages me, it's because they have, you know, and he's actually from your area.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: I assume that it was because he had listened to us.
Speaker: He's like, oh, I'll be out in Utah because we talk about Utah all the time.
Speaker: And so he had no clue.
Speaker: And so he came out and he played the game.
Speaker: And so I just started playing the Stern Pirates game.
Speaker: And I was explaining the rules to him.
Speaker: And I said, okay, there is a hearts multiball.
Speaker: It's a heart multiball.
Speaker: I have never got it because... Oh, I'm already entertained.
Speaker: I'm ready to try to get there.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a really hard multiball just because...
Speaker: It's a death shot.
Speaker: It's between two standup targets.
Speaker: And I've had the game for a few years, really.
Speaker: And so he said, huh, that's interesting.
Speaker: So I started playing with him and we got heart multiball.
Speaker: Like I got it.
Speaker: And I thought I've had the game for a few years and I've actually never got that.
Speaker: And so that's where I said, that's fun.
Speaker: So here's one question I have.
Speaker: Well, by the way, I'm going to give this guy a shout out because we're going to have him on.
Speaker: Um, yeah, his name is, uh, his name is Brad Hunter and what he does.
Speaker: I know Brad Hunter.
Speaker: You know, Brad Hunter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know what you're talking about.
Speaker: Shout out to Brad.
Speaker: Shout out to Brad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he actually, so when we started talking, I was like, yeah, I, I interact with all those guys, uh, uh, with all the guys in your area.
Speaker: And so, so what Brad does is Brad makes these awesome light up signs for trans lights.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he said, Hey, I'll get you one.
Speaker: I'll get you one.
Speaker: You can give it away on the, on the show.
Speaker: I was like, you know, I'd like to have you on.
Speaker: We'll talk about, you know, how you got into doing these, these kitsch things for the sport.
Speaker: But anyway, so it was fun for him to come over and we just met and, and he, yeah, he, he mentioned he knows you and he knows all, all the guys out there, but it was, it was achievement based.
Speaker: So what I'm wondering is,
Speaker: Is there a way of programming that in the game where you can have the score?
Speaker: Because the score is obviously going to be what tournament players are shooting for.
Speaker: And it's important.
Speaker: The score is important.
Speaker: No, absolutely.
Speaker: It's absolutely important.
Speaker: It's a differentiator.
Speaker: It's important.
Speaker: Well, it is a differentiator because if there's – that's one of the reasons why Keith Elwin's games are so great is because he's a tournament player and he knows –
Speaker: Hey, if there's one shot that's worth 50 billion points and everything else is worth a hundred points, it's a one shot game.
Speaker: And so he knows how to spread it around and say, look, I want to make sure everything is worth it.
Speaker: But if you have a way of saying, Hey, here's your score, by the way, this is how close you got to the wizard mode.
Speaker: These are the shots away.
Speaker: And so if you have a way of actually saying like two ways of, of gauging how far you got in the game,
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's fantastic.
Speaker: And I think that that's why we're seeing there being a little bit of an increase in popularity of pinball.
Speaker: It's because the coding is so much more dynamic than it was back in the 90s, back in the 80s, or even further back, is because we are now telling stories.
Speaker: We have the innovation, the technology, the LCD screen work, the animation to tell stories like we've never been able to tell before.
Speaker: We have the assets that we can get from these figures
Speaker: feature length films and these big old blockbuster license that pull somebody in.
Speaker: And then they want this game in their game room or they want it in their basement because they want to see what it's like whenever you get to destroy that witch on wizard of Oz, or they're chasing what it's like to save Xandar.
Speaker: I wonder what happens if you defeat all the monsters to actually get to the castle to fight the black knight.
Speaker: That's, I think, what pulls people in that don't know much about pinball.
Speaker: And that's why people are always saying, oh, you get too caught up on multipliers and stuff.
Speaker: Because I think it diverts the attention away from the sport and the physicality and the physics of what pinball is and why pinball people love it so much.
Speaker: This keeps coming back to my mind.
Speaker: You guys are talking about this.
Speaker: And I wish this was able to stay around.
Speaker: And someone needs to pick this back up and do it again.
Speaker: But did either one of you ever watch Pinball Done Quick?
Speaker: You know, I've heard about it, but I know it was basically the timed achievements, right?
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: So it was basically, I'm going to see it was a speed run on a pinball machine.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: The gamer equivalent is how quickly can I get to the end?
Speaker: I don't care how many things I get.
Speaker: I don't care how many whatever.
Speaker: I just want to make sure that I get, I'm Mario and I get to the end in five minutes.
Speaker: That's all you care about.
Speaker: And you can go see these old videos on YouTube.
Speaker: There's one that blows my mind.
Speaker: Tim Sexton and Steve Bowden did the commentary, which was perfect, but they weren't talking about score.
Speaker: They were talking about, I can't remember who was playing the pinball machine, but they were playing Stern Star Trek.
Speaker: And the objective was to get to five-year mission.
Speaker: And the guy does it in 45 minutes.
Speaker: And it's just, it's mind boggling because you sit there and they're like, okay, he's got this option, this option.
Speaker: And it's just,
Speaker: I could never see a five-year mission on my – I owned that game for over a year and got frustrated, and so I would never get to the end of that.
Speaker: Well, it's like Valinor.
Speaker: You're not going to get to Valinor unless you are a 2% player or you take the glass off.
Speaker: I think if you went from that approach, like I said, pinball done quick needs to come back because if we –
Speaker: The Stern's doing stuff like that already.
Speaker: They're Stern Pro Circuits, I believe, where they'll sit two machines beside each other.
Speaker: And when you press go, you have to attain one goal.
Speaker: And once that goal is attained, boom, you get your point on to the next task kind of thing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So they are doing that.
Speaker: Yeah, they are doing that.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So I think if we got more of that and hyped it more, like you said, I think people, when you start bringing in math with the score, people kind of, oh, but you know, you'd say, Hey, this is the objective.
Speaker: It's freaking hard.
Speaker: They've got to do 15 objectives to get to this final objective.
Speaker: Let's see if they can do it.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Good discussion.
Speaker: It emphasizes the code in the game because people, when I get to a game, I want to see the game.
Speaker: I want to see the wizard mode.
Speaker: I want to get all those achievements.
Speaker: I don't really care too much about the points.
Speaker: And that will allow people who are more into the modern players, I guess, who are more into that achievement base that you were talking about completing a game and
Speaker: And that's the big frustration I have with a lot of tournament approaches for games is because in Twilight Zone and tournaments, and this is what Josh Sharp has talked about, like he has a love-hate relationship with Twilight Zone because he loves it.
Speaker: But really in a tournament setting, it's a three-shot game.
Speaker: It's a hard three-shot game.
Speaker: But no one's ever going to get to in the zone in a tournament setting because you have to do the entire game.
Speaker: And in the tournament setting really undervalues the entire game element of something because it just focuses on the score.
Speaker: So if there's two ways of giving you a score, hey, here's your high score.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Hey, by the way, here's the percentage of the game you saw.
Speaker: That would be Stern and JJP and everybody else.
Speaker: That is a pro tip.
Speaker: Just take that and run with it.
Speaker: I'm not trademarking that idea.
Speaker: Just go ahead and figure out ways of putting achievements at the end of the game so people can shoot for that.
Speaker: I think we're going to see that with internet connectivity.
Speaker: And I think that we're getting the best of both worlds when we have coders like Lyman Sheets, when we have coders like Keith Johnson, Dwight Sullivan, we are getting closer and closer to that.
Speaker: But what have we seen you guys?
Speaker: We have seen it's no longer a one person job.
Speaker: These are teams of developers and coders.
Speaker: Now that's what sells pinball machines more so than
Speaker: Maybe up there with theme, like code is so important.
Speaker: A machine can be made or broken by the code.
Speaker: And that's, hopefully they continue to progress and we see coders continue to put more and more and more.
Speaker: And maybe even an apprenticeship, like we need somebody following around Lime and Sheets.
Speaker: Lime and Sheets ain't going to be able to do this forever.
Speaker: But his mind is so unique to what makes pinball fantastic, both for the beginner and for the most competitive player.
Speaker: Somebody follow around Keith Elwin.
Speaker: Somebody follow around Dwight Sullivan.
Speaker: They're not going to be doing it forever.
Speaker: I think Keith Elwin is definitely the one that's stepping up to the plate right now.
Speaker: Yeah, he's one of our new guys.
Speaker: He's meeting those expectations.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: uh, let's, let's move on.
Speaker: I think we've got me all fired up.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what we'd love too, man.
Speaker: So really honestly, um, if you want to hear about the news, we're, we're going to kind of skip over the news this week and just refer you to this week in pinball.
Speaker: Cause they do the top five and they do fantastic at it and you get to listen to Zach too.
Speaker: So, Oh, thanks for the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, the one thing too, I, I do want to mention news wise, um,
Speaker: Maybe no one's talking about it because it came out on Tuesday, but the gentleman that made Matt Hardy's expedition of gold just teased us with a Ferris Bueller's day off.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: I want this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: That's the movie I love.
Speaker: I grew up on it, which I probably shouldn't have.
Speaker: It's hard not to love that movie.
Speaker: Oh, it's so good.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Did I tell you the time when my dad took us there for a family evening movie?
Speaker: So he took all seven kids.
Speaker: We sit down and we get 10 minutes into it.
Speaker: And the line where he says, I'm not saying Cameron is tight, but if you take a lump of coal, that's when he stood up, walked out of the theater and grabbed me.
Speaker: And we're done here.
Speaker: And we're done.
Speaker: And the funny thing is, I actually have a love-hate relationship with Ferris Bueller's Day Off because all those iconic movies from the 80s that we loved as kids, you look at them from a different light as an adult now.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And you look at Breakfast Club and you thought, man, those kids are so deep.
Speaker: And now I look at it as like, I actually identify with the principal a lot more than I do with any of those kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the funny thing is Ferris Bueller's day off.
Speaker: The guy's a little jerk.
Speaker: Like he's a he's he is a he's a guy that you really want to get caught because he is he's such a little brat.
Speaker: But for one day, he's a guy.
Speaker: He's a legend.
Speaker: He's a legend.
Speaker: I want to be him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love the, the alternative interpretation though, when they say, what if Ferris is a figment of Cameron's imagination, like his alter ego, like he is not that guy, but he wants to be.
Speaker: Cause if you look at it, he's actually Cameron's hanging out with Sloan most of the time.
Speaker: So anyway, getting back.
Speaker: So you want a Ferris Bueller's day off machine.
Speaker: That's what you want.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I would take one in a heartbeat.
Speaker: I really would.
Speaker: Come on, Josh.
Speaker: You know the right answer when he asked you that is, oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That would be the bonus multiball.
Speaker: That would be the LE multiball that you only get on that.
Speaker: The stolen Ferrari multi-ball.
Speaker: Do you want a gummy bear?
Speaker: They've been in my pocket all day long.
Speaker: They're soft.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Oh, that's so great.
Speaker: So great.
Speaker: And you know that guy that did that Matt Hardy game?
Speaker: He redid the entire game.
Speaker: The plastics, the animation, the sounds.
Speaker: That is a new pinball machine.
Speaker: The theme does nothing for me, but that was quite impressive.
Speaker: So when I saw this on TWiF this week, I was really excited because that is something that I could get behind.
Speaker: Oh, I totally agree.
Speaker: And that's why I'm excited for it is just after seeing Matt Hardy, I'm like, I want to see what else this guy can do.
Speaker: Yeah, that guy needs to be hired by Stern or JJP tonight.
Speaker: Why not Suncoast?
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Salt and wounds, man.
Speaker: I'm so sorry.
Speaker: I apologize.
Speaker: Oh, they've done nothing.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Kick on Dutch pinball.
Speaker: If you're going to kick on someone right now, kick on them.
Speaker: Okay, I'll kick on Dutch pinball then.
Speaker: Okay, no, I'm kidding.
Speaker: Don't kick on anybody, but yeah.
Speaker: No, I'll kick on a skit B. How about that?
Speaker: Cause I really want to think with Buster's pinball machine.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That predator machine looked pretty nice though, but anyway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Alrighty.
Speaker: So if you've, if you've listened to our show before, we've only done this once before when we had Martin from head to head on, but we're going to do it again.
Speaker: We're doing segment steel.
Speaker: I should have had some dramatic music here, but I do not.
Speaker: But instead of me doing my whole tongue thing, that sounded terrible last time.
Speaker: I actually got a prize wheel for this.
Speaker: So you're ready for this.
Speaker: We're going to spin this prize.
Speaker: Well, here we go.
Speaker: Come on green.
Speaker: Ooh, media market trends.
Speaker: I thought we were going to take that off.
Speaker: Oh, nicely done.
Speaker: I'm going to move at one.
Speaker: And yeah, it looks like we landed on entering the pimp all subconscious.
Speaker: Hey, look at that.
Speaker: One of your twip ones.
Speaker: Hey, look at that.
Speaker: I know that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's start the music.
Speaker: So I'm going to do this.
Speaker: Yes, you're going to do this.
Speaker: So Scott, are you familiar?
Speaker: I'm going to explain this to Scott.
Speaker: Cause I don't know if Scott's familiar with this or our audience, but the way it works is we're going to ask Zach questions and maybe he'll even ask one back to us.
Speaker: I don't know, but we're going to ask him questions and he's got to give us the first answer that comes to his mind.
Speaker: Doesn't matter if it's true or not.
Speaker: He's just, he's got to blurt it out and then we all get a good chuckle out of it.
Speaker: So, yeah,
Speaker: Sound good?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Bring it on.
Speaker: Bring it on.
Speaker: It sounds like it's going to be really tough, but I'll do it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: Hey, there's the music.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Ah.
Speaker: All righty, Zach.
Speaker: I feel like I'm home.
Speaker: This feels good.
Speaker: Describe the couch to us since we're at your house.
Speaker: We call it a Shays Lounge.
Speaker: It's upholstered.
Speaker: It's got those little buttons in it.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And it's not leather.
Speaker: It's a nice cloth.
Speaker: Feels good.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: It's cool, too.
Speaker: Like, you flip your pillow over.
Speaker: You got a little cool area, not too hot.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Whisper now to me, Josh.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'm going to whisper to you.
Speaker: Is that background music a little too loud?
Speaker: Just so you know, it sounds a little loud.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We want the ambiance.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'll take care of it.
Speaker: Don't you worry about it.
Speaker: It's making me anxious now.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So here we go, Zach.
Speaker: You ready?
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Elvira's house of horrors is.
Speaker: An Ellie model that I wanted to buy, but they sold out.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: Alrighty.
Speaker: Hey, I lost my music.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Ah, there we go.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We don't want to lose that now.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: My favorite Twippy is... My favorite Twippy is... Go, go, go, go, go.
Speaker: That's Code.
Speaker: Code?
Speaker: Who won Code last year?
Speaker: Last year, Code, I believe, was Keith Elwin and Rick Nagel's Iron Maiden.
Speaker: I think so, too.
Speaker: Yeah, it was.
Speaker: It beat out J.J.
Speaker: Pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker: But, man, that had to have been a tough vote.
Speaker: Oh, I didn't know what you said when you meant, like, Twippy.
Speaker: I was like, I don't know what he means.
Speaker: We'll go with Code.
Speaker: It's not even true.
Speaker: That's my favorite, but we'll go with it.
Speaker: All right, all right.
Speaker: What is your favorite follow up question for 200, Alex?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: My favorite Twippy is without a doubt best YouTube pinball show because Greg and I from Straight Down the Middle have won it twice in a row.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: You're up there with the very limited few, my friend.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jack Danger.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All righty.
Speaker: All righty.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Here comes the next one.
Speaker: Ready?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Market Trends is?
Speaker: The greatest pinball segment in podcast.
Speaker: Ooh.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You know, I actually do.
Speaker: Correct, right?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I do enjoy it.
Speaker: Where's Creasel?
Speaker: Creasel?
Speaker: No, he's busy screen printing T-shirts.
Speaker: Hopefully we can sell some T-shirts on that.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Straight Down the Middle is?
Speaker: A show I do with my best friend and it's changed my life.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: When I think of Jurassic Park, I think of... Movie clips.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: And here's the last one.
Speaker: When I listen to the Loser Kid Pum Ball podcast, I think...
Speaker: Eric Manier and Keith Elwin.
Speaker: Very nice.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I don't like being in that seat.
Speaker: I like standing with my notepad right behind making the person nervous when I see the beginnings of a sentence.
Speaker: I should have brought my notepad and wrote down so we could go back over these because you said we kind of went over them while we were going through them.
Speaker: That's what you think of.
Speaker: That's all true, right?
Speaker: House of Horrors...
Speaker: Yeah, that was true.
Speaker: I mean, that's a game that I am so looking forward to.
Speaker: Anytime a pinball machine comes out, a brand new one, you get the wave, right?
Speaker: The typical wave of, oh my God, I have to have it.
Speaker: I love Elvira.
Speaker: And then, oh my God, why isn't there anything in there?
Speaker: And then, oh, but there's Max and that's cool.
Speaker: Does it shoot it in the trunk?
Speaker: Oh no, it doesn't shoot in the trunk.
Speaker: We hate this game.
Speaker: Oh, we hate it so much that everything's sold out and we can't get it.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So yes, I want to play this game.
Speaker: It's Lime and Sheets.
Speaker: It's Elvira.
Speaker: It's Dennis Nordman.
Speaker: It's art by Greg Freer.
Speaker: It's like, what's there to complain about?
Speaker: This thing looks unbelievable.
Speaker: The price.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a little pricey.
Speaker: It's pinball.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then we went on to Twippy, your favorite Twippy, which you said was code.
Speaker: Is that, well, you said it was not because your favorite Twippy.
Speaker: Honestly, like,
Speaker: What I would want to say is I think the Twippy Awards, and this is egotistical, bear with it, but I think it's game changing for this industry.
Speaker: The first year we did it seemed like a joke.
Speaker: Greg and I were in a basement with bow ties and tuxes on.
Speaker: And then the second year, even poor Ed at TPF that runs TPF, he didn't put a lot of weight into it.
Speaker: Sorry, Ed.
Speaker: And there was support there, but it wasn't support that we thought was warranted.
Speaker: And then whenever we started that main video and there was three to 400 people standing room only, and they seen what our vision was and all the hard work, I think it changed things for our industry.
Speaker: And now we have manufacturers that are promoting their wins.
Speaker: They're looking forward to the acceptance speeches.
Speaker: So we just want to keep growing pinball.
Speaker: So Twippies in general is just one of the greatest things that I'm a part of in pinball.
Speaker: Well, and to go back what you said, I totally forgot the first year you guys just did it on straight down the middle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you just did the bow ties and stuff because last year was so pivotal in my mind because I didn't get to go to Texas Pinball Festival.
Speaker: We ended up watching it from the computer and it just looks so professional.
Speaker: It looked like an award show.
Speaker: And so the year before, I kind of just totally forgot because you guys set the standards.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like people always tease me and like, oh, you're the hardest working.
Speaker: No, it's the thing I said before.
Speaker: It takes everyone.
Speaker: Like the Twippies would not have worked if it wasn't for Joel Reeves that was doing the transitional audio from people going up on stage and back and forth.
Speaker: The IT guy, the announcer that we hired to do.
Speaker: There's so many people, Jeff Patterson, Greg Bone.
Speaker: There's so many people that helped out with that, that I hope that it just keeps growing each and every year.
Speaker: So it's not me.
Speaker: It's not just Jeff Patterson.
Speaker: It's a team.
Speaker: It's a whole group of people.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And I've actually handed – not handed out.
Speaker: I've talked to Jeff about some ideas of improvement and something that would be cool to see.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: That's the only way you grow this, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was listening to a gentleman.
Speaker: He said, the problem with the room of all yes men is no one ever evolves and grows.
Speaker: And so I need people to think.
Speaker: So, all righty.
Speaker: You said Mark and Trends is the best segment on pinball media right now.
Speaker: I truly think that is, I think that's correct.
Speaker: And that's me, but I'm, I'm bold.
Speaker: And I think it's, I, I would love to hear another segment that a pinball podcaster is doing this better.
Speaker: Okay, give us a hot tip.
Speaker: If someone wants to buy something before it explodes, what do they get?
Speaker: What do you mean?
Speaker: Like right now, what's the hot thing you should buy, buy, buy right now?
Speaker: What's the hot thing?
Speaker: You're like, you should buy this before it goes up in value.
Speaker: I said it two weeks ago and it was Ghostbusters.
Speaker: I estimated it draining up and right now, it's going to cost you a heck of a lot more to buy a Ghostbusters Pro Premium or LE than it did six months ago.
Speaker: Totally agree.
Speaker: I used to love that segment till I really pissed off Christopher Franchi by saying- How did you make him mad?
Speaker: Because we were doing that flipping out stream and I was like, we did the market trends live and I was like, Munsters, it's in the toilet.
Speaker: Franchi calls up and he's like, loser kid, I'm going to kick you.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: No, he's as bold as they come.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And he, he, you know, he's a big teddy bear.
Speaker: So you got to get his humor to know he was just messing with me, but.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: No, I think there's a lot of people that are doing good podcasts now.
Speaker: That's evolving too.
Speaker: You've got you guys, special one list, lab save.
Speaker: There's so many of them, so many good ones.
Speaker: And look,
Speaker: I'm going to be honest.
Speaker: There's some stinkers out there.
Speaker: It's just the way it is.
Speaker: I wish everyone was really good at this, but some of them are stinkers and that just gives them motivation to step it up a little bit.
Speaker: But there's some great podcasts, great segments.
Speaker: It's just I'm doing what I'm doing because I think it's the best one.
Speaker: I like it just because it gives everybody a niche.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: We know that – hey, I love it when people say, hey, we listened to you and we really liked it.
Speaker: But I also know that –
Speaker: our style may not be your style.
Speaker: And so the beautiful part is, it's just like having so many options out there in pinball right now.
Speaker: There's also so many options for entertainment.
Speaker: And so if we're not your style, go find someone who is, cause I guarantee it's out there.
Speaker: Everybody finds their own tone and we all support one another for the most part.
Speaker: Everybody finds their own tone and that's what works for them.
Speaker: And I'm like you said before, you know, you've got it, you've got to,
Speaker: intermingle with everyone else.
Speaker: I think that we are all different flavors.
Speaker: And so that's what makes all of the pinball podcast.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Because if you don't like my style, you know, we always recommend who we like on top of that.
Speaker: I mean, I mean, special when lit the professionalism that's there.
Speaker: It's crazy on it.
Speaker: Oh, they're killing it.
Speaker: And I couldn't even imagine to do what they do.
Speaker: But the tone is so much different than your show, our show.
Speaker: And it's just my show is a reflection of who I am.
Speaker: A lot of people can do this just for fun.
Speaker: They say, oh, I'm just we're just a couple of buddies recording.
Speaker: That's great for me.
Speaker: My personality will not allow that.
Speaker: If I'm doing something and I don't think that I'm doing it as well as I could be, then I'm failing myself.
Speaker: So I'm I'm always trying to be bold and trying to do something new where that wouldn't work for somebody else.
Speaker: And I think you hit it right on the head.
Speaker: I think at least for Scott and I, we're doing this as a reflection of our personality as well.
Speaker: That's why we're family friendly.
Speaker: That's why, you know, we want our kids relaxed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, all right, moving on straight down the middle is a show that you do with your best friend, Greg bone.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Congratulations on 100 episodes.
Speaker: That is fantastic.
Speaker: Oh, thank you.
Speaker: So I do have to pick a bone with you for a second, though.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Pick a bone.
Speaker: Did you really go there?
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: That was good.
Speaker: That was nicely done.
Speaker: So I'm watching the 100th episode and you're like, oh, let's listen to our friends from the pinball media.
Speaker: And you go through all these people.
Speaker: I knew you were going to go there.
Speaker: And we get to the end of it.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, I guess that's not a big deal.
Speaker: I mean, our video wasn't, I mean, the poor man's pinball podcast was hilarious on there.
Speaker: I was like, well, maybe it's just because mine was just so short.
Speaker: You know, it was only like 10 seconds long.
Speaker: You know what that is?
Speaker: That was me making a mistake.
Speaker: And that was me for probably that among three or four other things that I made a mistake on in that video is what keeps me up at night and what makes me double check it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was hoping you didn't notice that, but yes, I even told Greg once I watched it for like the fourth time, I'm like, oh crap, man.
Speaker: Did you not?
Speaker: I freaking, I,
Speaker: but didn't put them in the media.
Speaker: I don't know what happened.
Speaker: And, uh, he was like, Zach, really?
Speaker: And he's, he's, he's the balance.
Speaker: He's like, really?
Speaker: Are you worried about these guys?
Speaker: Cause they're really not doing it.
Speaker: No, he knows, he knows how much I get into the stuff and he's always trying to calm me down and like level me.
Speaker: That's why he's my best friend.
Speaker: And he's like, Zach, those guys don't care.
Speaker: They know that you didn't do that on purpose.
Speaker: I'm like, yeah, but I need to email.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I'm a bit neurotic, guys.
Speaker: You're totally fine.
Speaker: No, what made me laugh, though, is like, well, it's just a short clip.
Speaker: There was probably a ton of just short clips they put at the end.
Speaker: And that's what it was.
Speaker: And it didn't bother me.
Speaker: But then you're like, there's so many people there.
Speaker: We can't remember them all.
Speaker: And then you start naming everyone.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, cool.
Speaker: He's going to say something.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, dude, he didn't even say our name.
Speaker: What the hell?
Speaker: That's because, yeah, I totally messed up the editing process.
Speaker: Yeah, so.
Speaker: No, you're totally good.
Speaker: I'm trying to think what other mistake.
Speaker: Somebody sent me a video, but I had it in my phone, but I didn't upload it to my computer for edit.
Speaker: And I missed out totally.
Speaker: Those kind of things just kill me.
Speaker: They kill me.
Speaker: I'm a perfectionist.
Speaker: I hate that.
Speaker: No, you're totally fine, man.
Speaker: It really isn't that big of a deal.
Speaker: But I felt bad because I sent this video of we were moving out of the house at that time.
Speaker: And so my house is...
Speaker: bear that's why like it's just my face and i'm just like congratulating you guys and i'm looking at all these videos and everyone has their pinball machines behind them like oh crap there must have been like some kind of we got to show off our collection but i was no it wasn't about that man you you sending a video means the world to greg and i because we've not got a lot of time to hang out you and i never really met in person and stuff and uh something like that just knowing that you support what we're doing even though you don't know us know us um yet uh
Speaker: That's fantastic, man.
Speaker: That's what keeps us going.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So, no, I just wanted to give you a little crap since I could.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: You should.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: I would be upset if you didn't.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, I'm glad you're not upset now.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: I still won't forget it.
Speaker: Moving down our list, when I think Jurassic Park, I think – did you – I can't remember what you meant.
Speaker: I said movie clips.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: That's like the hot thing.
Speaker: Oh, do we have the movie clips?
Speaker: So that's where my mind was.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The only thing I could think of if you got movie clips, I really don't need to see Jeff Goldblum shirtless kind of reclining on my pinball machine.
Speaker: Can I just kind of tell you a secret?
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: Ooh.
Speaker: I really do.
Speaker: Did you actually see the side, the sideshow thing that someone said, oh, this is totally a topper.
Speaker: It's him reclining like shirtless.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How great is that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That would be awesome.
Speaker: But yeah, that just reminds me of Jeff Parsons on, on your guys's episode of 100.
Speaker: We're like, here's my, my desktop screen or my desktop background.
Speaker: And it's Greg all reclined with the shirt open.
Speaker: He's like, people around here really don't get it.
Speaker: Some people don't get our humor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: However, that video of you delivering that machine to Greg was amazing.
Speaker: Oh, thank you.
Speaker: Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Speaker: I watched that and I saw people sharing that.
Speaker: I'm like, you got to check this out.
Speaker: This is awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Those are the kind of things that we think if we can just tap into somebody that's not into pinball, maybe that makes them want to play a pinball machine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Greg looked like a freaking five-year-old on Christmas morning when that thing turned on.
Speaker: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker: That was his reaction because I made him go upstairs.
Speaker: I was like, all right, it's all set up.
Speaker: But before I turn it on, I've got to change some of the settings.
Speaker: I got to get the sound right.
Speaker: I got to turn off all the lights.
Speaker: I want to see your reaction.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: The audience got to see it.
Speaker: It was perfect.
Speaker: It was no better reaction I've seen ever.
Speaker: He's still in love with that thing.
Speaker: He probably plays 20 times a day.
Speaker: Well, even on your guys' review, it looked like every time he reached around just to rub it gently to make sure it was still there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, I've got a bash on this thing.
Speaker: I've got to give my personal review.
Speaker: He's probably already waxed it four or five times.
Speaker: He's already changed out rubbers.
Speaker: Like, dude, come on now.
Speaker: And he's getting a premium.
Speaker: Like he loves that thing so much that he just wanted to get a pro until the premiums came out.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: That's actually a smart move.
Speaker: That's a smart move.
Speaker: I've thought about that.
Speaker: He's Cameron's dad off of Ferris Bueller's.
Speaker: He wipes it every day with a diaper and whispers it to him.
Speaker: That's him.
Speaker: He plays with white gloves.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: And the last one, when I listened to Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, I think of, you said Keith Elwin and Eric Meniere.
Speaker: So awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Those are when I associate myself with, you guys have just a very nice style.
Speaker: I know that you guys believe one another.
Speaker: You're friendly.
Speaker: It's just relaxed and it's really nice.
Speaker: And I think that's why you're seeing manufacturers, some of the employees lend themselves to your shows as guests because they're
Speaker: They know that you're going to be respectful.
Speaker: They know that it's a family friendly show.
Speaker: It's the same with like special when lit.
Speaker: Sometimes they get grief for being too safe, this and that.
Speaker: And no, it's just because they're really good people and they're respectful people.
Speaker: And that will pay off as it always should.
Speaker: The funny thing is we're still we still can be critical.
Speaker: We still say what we're thinking, but it's, you know, it just depends on the style and the vibe.
Speaker: But yeah, I don't want people to want to throw cocktail Molotov cocktails at us.
Speaker: So one of my favorite episodes that you guys did, and I'm, I feel so bad for blanking on the guests, but
Speaker: when you were talking about dream themes and you were talking about the legend of zelda and mario who was that who was the guest that you had on and and i was yelling at you guys because you guys had some horrible ideas um oh that was the that was the aquabats episode oh that was the aquabats
Speaker: That was like the follow-up to Aquabats.
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: When Josh said Aquabats, I was like, oh my goodness.
Speaker: What are you thinking?
Speaker: I didn't even know what it was.
Speaker: I had to look it up.
Speaker: I was like, what is Aquabats?
Speaker: Hey, by the way, Josh, the Aquabats are coming to Utah, I saw.
Speaker: Yes, November 9th.
Speaker: Anywho, that's totally off subject.
Speaker: No, if you really want to get Dennis Riles on This Week in Pinball, tell him you want an Aquabats pinball machine.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no.
Speaker: Dennis launched a flamethrower, a creative flamethrower at us.
Speaker: As only the creasal can.
Speaker: Oh, dude.
Speaker: It sunk my little battleship, that's for sure.
Speaker: Actually, the best part about it is it just vindicated everything I was saying.
Speaker: Well, my opinion of his opinion kind of went down a couple notches from there.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: We've got room over here at Team Zack for you.
Speaker: Shots fired.
Speaker: Yeah, you'll have to be like, now my follow-up to The Hobbit is the Aquabats.
Speaker: And just hear the silence from Dennis.
Speaker: I'm a huge fan now.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Love you, Den-Den.
Speaker: Love you, Den-Den.
Speaker: But I could have swore that was Jeff Riviera that we were bouncing ideas off of – because we were talking about video games and how they were successful.
Speaker: Maybe a pinball back in the 80s and stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe it was.
Speaker: You always call them Riviera, by the way, which just makes me think of – it's – at BYU.
Speaker: Well, exactly.
Speaker: The Riviera.
Speaker: Or there's a dive place that all freshmen get to that's off-campus housing, but it's still really cheap, and so it's kind of a dive.
Speaker: So –
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Yes, Jeff Rivera.
Speaker: So, sorry, I'm losing my voice.
Speaker: No, you're fine.
Speaker: Ah, there we go.
Speaker: I think you need to lay down on the concrete on your back.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Can you get some painkillers?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to take a muscle relaxer right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Larson's over there partying it up with Excedrin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Vitamin water.
Speaker: Get crazy.
Speaker: You know it.
Speaker: You know it.
Speaker: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: That covers our entering the pinball subconscious.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Zach, for letting us steal that from your show.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: It was a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's terrifying, but it was fun.
Speaker: Kind of did it without asking, but I figured you wouldn't say no.
Speaker: I like the boldness.
Speaker: You got to be bold sometimes.
Speaker: You got to.
Speaker: Well, like we were talking earlier, you can always say no.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So, well, cool.
Speaker: Is, is there anything else we want to cover?
Speaker: Well, first thing we want to make sure that Zach, Zach, tell us how to reach you, what you do in pinball and how can we get product from you?
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: It's like music to my ears, Larson.
Speaker: You can reach me at a number of places if you're wanting to buy a brand new, sparkly, beautiful, juicy pinball machine like Elvira Premium or Jurassic Park Premium.
Speaker: Willy Wonka, maybe.
Speaker: Flipping out pinball distributes for a number of manufacturers.
Speaker: Stern.
Speaker: Chicago Gaming Company, Jersey Jack Pinball, American Pinball, even like Valley Dynamo, Pitch and Bats, Escaleras.
Speaker: If you want to climb stairs with these heavy things like safes or pinball machines or washers and dryers, we are the exclusive dealer in pinball of Escalera stair climbing hand trucks, and as well as some other distribution.
Speaker: So get a hold of us at zag, Z-A-C-H, at flip, the letter N, outpinball.com.
Speaker: That's an email, or 812-457-9711.
Speaker: You can also reach me at this week in pinball podcast.
Speaker: That's this week in pinball podcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: Let me know what I'm doing right.
Speaker: And if it's something that you guys don't like, and you're scared to tell me, go ahead and email Jeff, let him know.
Speaker: That's our, that's our joke.
Speaker: Cause everybody always emails him when they have issues with me and I love it.
Speaker: And then straight down the middle of a pinball show video series, SDT and pinball at gmail.com.
Speaker: And I cannot say,
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And they don't only just stream these things Monday.
Speaker: No, no, you guys are in chat sometimes.
Speaker: They take live call-ins.
Speaker: We're just like a big old happy family, everybody in chat.
Speaker: It's always like the same 50 or 60 people.
Speaker: We're all hanging out.
Speaker: We're all calling in at the after-hours portion.
Speaker: They have, you know, George Gomez they just had in, Ryan White from Chicago Gaming Company.
Speaker: It's just so much fun.
Speaker: And that thing is about to go in directions in the next three months that is not really being done in pinball.
Speaker: So we're really excited about that.
Speaker: And last thing, of course, I'm the shill.
Speaker: I'm going to plug everything.
Speaker: Right now, what went live this week is a little old place called Silver Ball Swag.
Speaker: It's owned and operated by Jeff Patterson and one of his partners.
Speaker: But you can buy pinball T-shirts.
Speaker: Market Trends pinball T-shirts are going to show up there.
Speaker: That's where you're going to be able to buy it hot off the press.
Speaker: And you can design your own shirts there, too.
Speaker: Like anything cool –
Speaker: Medieval Madness has some cool shirts in there.
Speaker: Attack from Mars, they've got some cool t-shirts.
Speaker: So definitely go out and check out silverbowlswag.com.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: We'll definitely do that.
Speaker: I think that's it.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Well, no, honestly, Scott and I have talked about this before, flipping out the streaming.
Speaker: We love it.
Speaker: We love to just go.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: It's like getting to hang out with all the media, quote unquote, and just shoot the breeze, man.
Speaker: And it's fantastic.
Speaker: It's like it's the in-betweens, all of us guys and gals, in-between of shows.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We can't hang out in person.
Speaker: We can't do a 20 way call every night.
Speaker: So it's once a week, everybody comes in, hangs out.
Speaker: It's kind of, and you, people who don't do pinball podcasts, they come out and hang out too.
Speaker: And they become characters in our little family as well.
Speaker: So please join our family there every Monday night for the most part, seven o'clock central.
Speaker: And I guess that would be, what was that?
Speaker: Six o'clock mountain, six o'clock mountain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Six mountain.
Speaker: Five Pacific.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: You said, you said people that, that don't do podcasts.
Speaker: It just automatically, my brain goes to Dave Fahlgren.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And he's become a character.
Speaker: He's the staple.
Speaker: He calls in every week and he gives us just the weirdest, oddest stories.
Speaker: It's so much fun.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And he sent me a t-shirt because I said the, we're doing something with Wonka.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's just like, and I was like, I tune into the flipping out stream and I'm like to hear the Dave Fahlgren stories.
Speaker: He's like, you get a t-shirt.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love pogrom.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, thank you, Zach.
Speaker: We're also going to send you out a loser kid hat.
Speaker: So I get one of those hats.
Speaker: Look, I've been promoting this thing.
Speaker: You guys, I hope you guys have heard me that you guys have the nicest pinball hat in podcasting and nobody's ever going to get close to it.
Speaker: That, that design is money.
Speaker: You guys nailed that thing.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I will happily wear that hat.
Speaker: We'll do the, like you said, the whole after the game show.
Speaker: We'll get your information and your address after the show.
Speaker: Cool, man.
Speaker: I can't think of anything else to say.
Speaker: I want to thank you guys.
Speaker: I want to thank you guys for allowing me to come on and rant.
Speaker: I'm an acquired taste, as Jeff Patterson says.
Speaker: So it's not easy to get along with me sometimes, but I think we had an awesome discussion here.
Speaker: We brought up things that maybe people don't think about, and that's the name of the game here.
Speaker: And just from the bottom of my heart, I'm appreciative of you guys giving me the time to come on here and chat with you.
Speaker: It was fantastic.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: Can't do it.
Speaker: I can't wait to do it again.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll have to do it again in the near future.
Speaker: Thanks, Zach.
Speaker: Appreciate it.
Speaker: No problem.
