Episode 1 - Lightning Flippers

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Alan and Alex discuss the curious case of the Williams lightning flippers that were developed and used on a few games in the early 1990s.  Learn about the history of them, what games came with them, and why they're extremely divisive amongst pinball players.  We give our takes and opinions on them, and chat about what other games that didn't come with lightning flippers might be improved by installing them with some occasional swearing throughout. 

Transcript

[00:00:18.840] - Speaker 1
Alright, welcome to the Inaugural Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan. I'm one-half of Wedgehead, a pinball bar in Portland, Oregon, and joining me as my co-host, Alex, the Waterboy. What's your relation to Wedgehead? Why are you on the official Wedgehead podcast?

[00:00:40.250] - Speaker 2
I'm just a really big fan and conceited enough to listen to myself talk every week. This is why I'm here. But yeah, happy to be here. Yeah, looking forward to this.

[00:00:51.780] - Speaker 1
All right, so our first episode, we're going to talk about lightning flippers. And for those that don't know, lightning flippers were something that happened in the early 90s. Each flipper bat was one-sixteenth of an inch shorter than the standard three-inch flipper, which means that the combined gap is now one-eighth inch wider, right? Yeah.

[00:01:18.680] - Speaker 2
Okay. A significant difference that you'll hear many people complain about.

[00:01:23.300] - Speaker 1
What's funny is when you hold the bat up, I have a picture on our social media that you can look up, but I took the bats and I held them on top of one another and you can see the difference.

[00:01:40.380] - Speaker 2
It's so hard, though. Just with the rounded edges of the flipper bats, I have one sitting in this room, and visually, they really... It's hard to spot the difference. If they didn't have the big, embossed lightning bolt on the top, I don't think anyone would ever catch it. You'd just think the game was being mean that day.

[00:01:57.210] - Speaker 1
Yeah, that is the interesting part because, well, one, the lightning bolts are badass. Yeah, very cool. I like that they are molded.

[00:02:06.360] - Speaker 2
It's cool that they gave them a name. They didn't just call it... They made it established thing rather than it just being the Europe flippers or something, which.

[00:02:15.810] - Speaker 1
We're into. Which I think is what they officially called them in manuals. Oh, they did? I believe that that's how they put it on parts logs and in some of the manuals. It's like EU flipper, short for EU flipper. But I think the standard nomenclature is lightning flipper because of the lightning bolts on top of them. The history of them, the lore is that there's a French distributor was touring the Williams factory and got to play some games that were still in development. The famous one is FishTales. He said that he liked the game, but that it played too long for the French market. Apparently, in the '90s, Europe was a bigger market than the US.

[00:03:09.650] - Speaker 2
Which, yeah, it's nuts to imagine.

[00:03:11.890] - Speaker 1
They got games first, and I heard figures where they estimated as Europe was 60 % of the market.

[00:03:21.420] - Speaker 2
Okay, yeah. So it makes sense that they would cater to them and take the big distributor seriously?

[00:03:26.360] - Speaker 1
It's fascinating because in today's time, I can't imagine anybody getting the clout to be like, This game is too fucking easy.

[00:03:38.340] - Speaker 2
Well.

[00:03:39.640] - Speaker 1
Yeah. I've been screaming about it for- To change the actual design.

[00:03:41.910] - Speaker 2
Of the game? I'm pretty sure there's some story with Jersey Jack because before he started JJP, he was a big distributor of Sterns. I think he was part of the reason they made Family Guy and Shrek as a dual theme because he didn't think Family Guys would sell in big enough numbers and he wanted a family-friendly alternative.

[00:04:00.870] - Speaker 1
Oh.

[00:04:01.110] - Speaker 2
Interesting. Yeah, that was when Stern was struggling, so I think they were open to input because when did that game come out? That's right before 2008, which is when they almost died. Yeah, it is funny when the manufacturers actually appreciate customer input, though.

[00:04:18.720] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it was such an on-location business and clearly pinballs become, We're in your house and you have five pinball machines here. Right? And that's becoming common.

[00:04:33.280] - Speaker 2
Yeah. It's now the home buyers are driving the market at this point.

[00:04:37.420] - Speaker 1
Yeah. What happens is people play pinball, they're like, This is dope. Then they get online and they're like, What game should I buy? It's immediately like, Let's go.

[00:04:50.450] - Speaker 2
Buy a game. Yeah, prior to playing anything for more than a few games, there are on Facebook groups or pinside asking which stern they should go drop seven grand on?

[00:05:00.780] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:05:01.940] - Speaker 2
Which is- It's a very different market than it was in the '90s.

[00:05:05.650] - Speaker 1
Which is fascinating. But back to Lightning Flippers, they listened to the distributor and they made a bunch of games, which I think at first were only supposed to go to the European market. They developed these shorter bats. And what happened was they just had these bats. They got too many. I don't know what it was. They had them, right?

[00:05:35.470] - Speaker 2
That classic- That's the classic pinball. Anytime we can't explain a decision made why I manufacture, it's like, Well, they had.

[00:05:41.060] - Speaker 1
Leftover parts. There's a fucking box of them, right?

[00:05:43.970] - Speaker 2
It's like, Why? Why? Someone must have decided. I mean, someone up the line must have decided these games are better with the lightning flippers, right?

[00:05:53.940] - Speaker 1
Yes. Well, let's say the games that came with them are Bram Stoker's, Dracula, Fishtales, Popeye, Doctor Who, and apparently... And all those games shipped from the factory in the US as well with lightning flippers. Apparently, Black Rose only shipped to Europe with the lightning flippers.

[00:06:22.180] - Speaker 2
That'd be a mean one with lightning flippers on it because it has that ramp right up the middle that rejects.

[00:06:26.360] - Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, that'd be brutal. Or that.

[00:06:28.030] - Speaker 2
It's a whole. There's a shot right in the middle.

[00:06:29.310] - Speaker 1
Though that rejects. Yeah, there's that cannon shot straight up the center.

[00:06:34.230] - Speaker 2
Funny.

[00:06:34.540] - Speaker 1
Those are the games that came from the factory. The argument is they're very divisive. They're divisive because players hate... Well, bad players hate them. Because it'll make it really hard to save a ball going down the middle.

[00:06:57.940] - Speaker 2
Yeah, like we were joking about earlier that eighth of an inch difference really is noticeable when you're playing the game. More than noticing it missing, I would say when you play a copy of those games with the full-size flippers retroactively put on, you realize how easy it becomes.

[00:07:17.200] - Speaker 1
Yeah, the.

[00:07:18.120] - Speaker 2
Way- Maybe I'm jumping ahead in the conversation.

[00:07:20.230] - Speaker 1
No, I think you're right. Yeah, we're here to talk about how you feel about lightning flippers, how I feel about them, because I know that you and I are pretty much on the same page, but it's like, I think that we're the minority, maybe. Yeah, maybe.

[00:07:35.570] - Speaker 2
I don't know.

[00:07:36.690] - Speaker 1
It'll be interesting.

[00:07:37.880] - Speaker 2
It's hard to tell because within our friend group, we've beat into everyone's head that lightning flippers are awesome and these games are unplayable without them. But if you get outside of our small group, you see a lot of fish tales on location and at homes with full size flippers in them. Same with the Bram Stokers. Those are the two games that shipped with it that I have a lot of experience with. And both those games are horrible when they're set up too easy. Totally. Because the rules fall apart, their shallow rule sets and making a game play too long when the rules aren't there to back it up just makes a bad pinball machine.

[00:08:12.750] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I agree. I think that... Because both of those games don't have wizard modes. Most of those games were starting to have wizard modes in the early 90s. But FishTales, Bram Stoker's, they have things to do. But if you can just loop Super Jackpots or monster fish over and over and over again, it just becomes a very boring game. I think a lot of people that play, say, FishTales in particular and think this game sucks is they play a copy that's just really easy. Our we have the factory lightning flippers on them, and it's fucking hard.

[00:09:08.020] - Speaker 2
Yeah, it's.

[00:09:08.500] - Speaker 1
A hard game. It's fucking hard, and it's fun. It's awesome.

[00:09:11.120] - Speaker 2
Yeah, it is awesome. You never get sick of that shitty music when you're only hearing it for a minute at a time. When you go play one that's set up easy with a loose tilt and long flippers on it and you're playing it for 30 minutes, you're going to start finding all the flaws in the game. That's not shortcomings of the game. I guess I would like to know more of the history if the software decisions were made after they put the landing flibbers on there, or if it's just a happy coincidence that the shallow games got them.

[00:09:42.040] - Speaker 1
Here's my argument, because I'm an evangelist for lightning flippers. I think that they're... The games they came on should always have them. Especially Doctor Who.

[00:10:01.340] - Speaker 1
Dracula, FishTales.

[00:10:02.730] - Speaker 2
I wish I had more experience with Popeyes, but I think I've maybe played two games on them in my life.

[00:10:08.630] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I haven't played it much.

[00:10:10.130] - Speaker 2
Those guys over on pops on the East Coast, they are fans of that.

[00:10:13.260] - Speaker 1
Game out there. We're going to have them on and they'll have to defend that. But counterargument is these games were developed with standard flippers. Right. So the lightning flippers on them was a bastardization of the designers intent, right? It's bastardizing Barry Ousler or Mark Richie's design, right? But the way I argue it is, when you play those games, yes, when they're building their whiteboard, they're using the flippers they have. They're not going to create fucking fake flippers and then be like, Manufacture these for my new game. But when they're playtesting it and when they're building the game and they're coding the game, I think they coded it to the shorter ball times.

[00:11:03.260] - Speaker 2
It sure seems that way with the objectives in those games. If that's wrong, if someone writes in and they're like, No, I worked at Williams and the code was complete before they switched those out, I don't care because they're better with the lightning flippers. That's, I think, where I feel with the lightning flippers is they're just a tool to make games that play too long a little bit harder. It's like opening drains or something. You can go some of the audits, you can see how your center drains look versus your outer drains or whatever. If you don't have enough balls going down the middle in between the flippers, you can put lightning flippers on and even it out. It's just one of those things that it depends on how you like your games, I guess.

[00:11:44.790] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I agree. I'm the same way. I want the game to be hard, and I do think that it adds just that little bit of challenge. I don't think that it... I'm of the mind, like you said earlier, I don't think that they make them harder. It just takes an easy game and makes it right. That's how I feel about them. I don't curse at them. I'm not like, These fucking lightning flippers, man. I can't fucking-You can't.

[00:12:15.310] - Speaker 2
Play this game. I want 100 %. If I had known what they were when I first got into pinball, I would have been blaming them for everything.

[00:12:22.490] - Speaker 1
It's a great crutch. It's a great... And in pinball, we're like-.

[00:12:27.040] - Speaker 2
Everyone's looking.

[00:12:27.980] - Speaker 1
For- You're always.

[00:12:28.600] - Speaker 2
Looking for an excuse.

[00:12:29.340] - Speaker 1
The game's leaning this way. It's leaning that way. It's too steep.

[00:12:32.790] - Speaker 2
It's too flat. I think it's in a lot of people's nature to just look for anything to blame. It can't be them. It can never be their fault that they drain. It's always the fucking game.

[00:12:41.170] - Speaker 1
Yeah, and lightning flippers give you that. You get to be like, Dude, I got a six billion score on Bram Stoker's Dracula, and you can't even start mist multiball, right? -yeah, it's just funny because... -on a proper one.

[00:12:59.370] - Speaker 2
-you'reyour Arcade Bar, Wedgehead, is known around the city for being so difficult. And you go look at the games and none of your games are set up intentionally difficult. Almost all of them are just factory settings. The difference is when you go to play other copies of Bram Stoker's, they're set up with full-length flippers and silicone rubbers and stuff. It gives these inflated scores. The people that hold those inflated high scores are the ones that will complain about lightning flippers. They're the ones that actually have the strongest feelings. The casual players, they just think all pinball- They don't know the difference. Right. All pinball is hard for them. They would never even think that the flippers might be smaller. Right. It's funny.

[00:13:40.470] - Speaker 1
Yeah. But they love to hear it, right? Yeah. If they ever find their way to this podcast, they're going to be like, I knew it.

[00:13:48.820] - Speaker 2
I knew that game fucking sucks.

[00:13:51.280] - Speaker 1
It wasn't me.

[00:13:52.880] - Speaker 2
After all. It was those damn lightning flippers. Then they're going to be looking for lightning bolts on every game to play for the rest of.

[00:13:59.250] - Speaker 1
Their lives. Yeah. Now, I wanted to talk about... You got a game, an old EM called Grand Prix by Williams. It's a great EM from the late EM right before they switched over.

[00:14:14.790] - Speaker 2
Is it Steve Kordek? Is that the design? I'm not good with EM designers, so I probably.

[00:14:18.240] - Speaker 1
Should have tried. I didn't look it up.

[00:14:19.720] - Speaker 2
Yeah, we should have done some fact-checking, but yeah.

[00:14:21.820] - Speaker 1
Anyway, it's a classic one. They made a million of them. It's a famous one. It's a Formula One theme.

[00:14:29.730] - Speaker 2
Yeah, very cool art package on it. It's just a really good game.

[00:14:31.940] - Speaker 1
It's a really good game.

[00:14:32.890] - Speaker 2
It's an EM in the entire point as ripping spinners. So best game of all time. Just going to do the chimes over and over. I'm sure my wife is going to.

[00:14:40.540] - Speaker 1
Love it. Yeah, it's hard to argue that. But you took it home and you were playing it. This is an EM where they had modern three-inch flippers on. That's how the game was designed. But your copy has lightning flippers on it. Yup.

[00:14:59.160] - Speaker 2
It's because I didn't notice that at first, and now I'm wondering how easy the game would be with the full-length flippers. Because I've played Grand Prix a bit over the years, but I've never sessioned it a ton, so I don't really have a threshold for what my scores would be on a normal copy or anything. But I think it plays great with this. I'm able to roll it, but it's hard. I don't know, it works really well. It doesn't seem to mess with the geometry of the shots or anything. It's a good argument for putting lightnings on games where you wouldn't consider it normally. Because you and I would never be like, Oh, an EM, that needs- That.

[00:15:35.900] - Speaker 1
Needs.

[00:15:36.920] - Speaker 2
Lightning flippers. Right. Most of these EMs are brutally hard compared to modern games anyway.

[00:15:43.110] - Speaker 1
But this does have modern in lanes, even though it does have a.

[00:15:48.660] - Speaker 2
Gap at the end. Yeah, it does have the cutout, so you can't do too spicy of drop catches or anything. Yeah, it is. As far as EMs go, it is friendlier than something early '70s or '60s for sure.

[00:15:59.590] - Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.

[00:16:00.250] - Speaker 2
Yeah, it's nice because especially that game, now that I'm thinking about it, it doesn't have a way to change the out lanes or really anything you could do on the play field to make the game play shorter. This was really one of the only.

[00:16:15.430] - Speaker 1
Options to tune in. Yeah, it doesn't really have adjustable post on the out lanes like more modern games do. That's the last topic I think about lightning flippers is, in big tournaments, what a lot... What a lot of tournament directors will do is they'll put lightning flippers on games to make them play shorter as part of their toughening up, their tightening of the game, so that you don't get these marathon game sessions. Yeah.

[00:16:49.040] - Speaker 2
What's interesting is you see that a lot of the time. I'm blanking on the name. There's a big arcade that runs a lot of tourneys down in California.

[00:16:56.960] - Speaker 2
Oh, Lynn's. Lynn's, yeah. Lynn's Arcade. Yeah, I'd love to visit Lynns because I think they put lightnings on a lot of stuff. You see it more on Solid States in the tournament sweetheart games anyway. I'm surprised people don't do that more on modern Sterns. But the Modern.

[00:17:13.540] - Speaker 1
Sterns, I guess-Now we're getting to the meat of the issue because I want to talk about games that we would like lightning flippers on. I want to preface this with saying at wedgehead, even though I'm a fan, I keep the lightning flippers on the games that came with lightning flippers. I don't just swap them in. I know lynn's does, and I think that's rad. I really do.

[00:17:43.340] - Speaker 2
I wish we could, but people would- We.

[00:17:47.070] - Speaker 1
Get enough heat as it is, dude. You put a tight tilt on a game, you make the slings pop, and you make the game steep, and people just cry anyway, right? Even though the games are free play, you just play it again. But it's like they already cry. If I put lightning flippers on Godzilla, they'd freak out. People would freak out.

[00:18:11.190] - Speaker 2
I think there is... I mean, like we're talking about matching the difficulty of the game to the depth of the rule set. With some of those shallower games, it makes sense to shorten them up. I think the problem with making a modern stern too difficult or too short playing is that people will complain because they're never going to see a ton of the content of the game. Yeah, because Stern-.

[00:18:36.300] - Speaker 1
They're being coded with modes and modes and modes and multiple wizard modes that they'll never get to see. But those games are coded for how they're set up, which are long playing, very friendly games on average. It's honestly hard to consider aa modern modern game from the last eight to 10 years from Stern that's truly difficult or short-playing. Yeah, I would be interesting.

[00:19:11.280] - Speaker 2
-like maybe Walking Dead. Walking Dead. Yeah, but you're already pre-LCD at that point. That's true. -talking about the last... Because when did they switch to when did Aerosmith come out in 2013 or something. Maybe after that.

[00:19:22.300] - Speaker 1
Ghostbusters was the last DMD game. Okay. And that game is a short- That game is hard. That game is hard.

[00:19:29.090] - Speaker 2
Yeah.

[00:19:29.670] - Speaker 1
And that has a wider flipper gap. It has the full size flippers, but the gap is a.

[00:19:35.250] - Speaker 2
Little bit wider. Yeah, which is its own thing.

[00:19:38.020] - Speaker 1
Which is creating lightning flipper in and of itself, right? It's doing the same thing.

[00:19:43.310] - Speaker 2
Right. And you see how much people love to blame that wider flipper gap as soon as they learn about it.

[00:19:48.440] - Speaker 1
Oh, my God.

[00:19:49.220] - Speaker 2
They love it. It's just like they'll never... I mean, people will just quit playing that game once they realize there's an actual tangible reason that it's difficult.

[00:19:58.980] - Speaker 1
Yeah.

[00:19:59.600] - Speaker 2
Because before that, I think a lot of people just assume all pinballs the same difficulty.

[00:20:04.910] - Speaker 1
I think when you're starting out, every game feels like every game. You're like, I'm just not good at this. I'm bad. I'm training my balls. I suck at this. Maybe I shouldn't do.

[00:20:17.030] - Speaker 2
This in public. To get this back on the discussion of which games from Modern sterns are actually difficult. One of the first games I started playing when I got into the hobby was Black Knight: Sword of Rage. Yeah, too. Great game. It's a great game. Once you can find shots, it's really not as hard as some people make it out to be. Exactly. But when you're starting pinball and you're hitting posts like crazy, that game punishes you, unlike many other modern sterns.

[00:20:42.730] - Speaker 1
I think at some point, we'll do an episode on Black Knight, maybe the Black Knight series. But you and I both love this game, in the pro in particular. I love Black Knight because it is a game where all the shots are easy, all the shots are backhandable. But when you miss a shot, it'll fucking punish you. Yeah, and that's the perfect Richie. I love that about.

[00:21:10.780] - Speaker 2
A pinball machine. -the perfect, Richie. That's the perfect Steve Richie. Oh, my God. Like motto, right? Yes. It's like the shots you can hit on the fly, the rules set. The rules set to the best Richie games always have a rule set that rewards, hurry ups, and flow playing. Then when you miss a shot, you feel like an idiot because you're either scrambling for control or just immediately drained.

[00:21:29.570] - Speaker 1
Yeah. It's why I like that it makes you hit the three. It's like a throwback to his firepower, where it's like it makes you hit his flail, the target in front of the knight, or his shield, which are all shots you don't want to hit, but you're not going to get anywhere in the game if you don't hit them. I guess we should wrap this up with Black Knight doesn't need them. Ghostbusters doesn't need them.

[00:21:55.360] - Speaker 2
It would probably be cool.

[00:21:56.860] - Speaker 1
It would be cool, right? As soon.

[00:21:58.470] - Speaker 2
As you open that door, it's like, Well, shit. A lot of these games, if you don't care about seeing all the content in the game, which you should never, you really shouldn't. A lot of people feel like, Oh, I can't quit playing this game or whatever. I want to see everything. You don't have to. You can enjoy a game short. You can enjoy it.

[00:22:19.920] - Speaker 1
Oh, my God. Some of my favorite games are high speed getaway. I was like, I could get to Red Line Mania on Ball One. Then it's just like, Can I do it on Ball2 and Ball Two and Ball Three? Can I get 100 loops? It doesn't matter that I've seen the whole game. It's just fun.

[00:22:39.230] - Speaker 2
I'm saying even with the deep rules on Sterns and knowing that they're set up difficult enough that you're going to really struggle to see some of that end game content, I think a lot of the layouts, I would enjoy them more if the games were set up harder.

[00:22:52.640] - Speaker 1
I agree. I will say that Cartes Blanche, the average stern, could definitely use lightning flippers.

[00:23:02.060] - Speaker 2
Definitely, yeah. I don't know, I've got a pair sitting here that I've been meaning to swap on to my Ultraman just to tone that down.

[00:23:09.010] - Speaker 1
That's a good one, too.

[00:23:10.370] - Speaker 2
I don't know, a lot of the games that play long, I think. Ultraman is a good example because there's not that much content in the game. It's pretty easy to see most of everything that's in there at the moment.

[00:23:21.860] - Speaker 1
Right, and it's long playing. Yeah, right.

[00:23:24.870] - Speaker 2
It's a good one. There's a good reason. It's like if you're getting into the wizard mode often, then it's like, definitely think about setting up the game harder. If you're like us and you're a masochist to some degree, it'll be more fun. Otherwise, it'll give more legs to the game because you're not constantly just beating the shit out of it.

[00:23:41.930] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I lose interest in a game when I walk up to it and just kick its ass.

[00:23:47.590] - Speaker 2
I wish I had considered, when I had a Lord of the Rings, I really wish I had.

[00:23:51.490] - Speaker 1
Considered drawing-That's the game I wanted to bring up. That is the game to me that, man, you might even want thing flippers, right? You might even want those little twilight zones.

[00:24:03.050] - Speaker 2
I saw someone was running a charity tournament. It was a cool idea for a tournament. They kept all the games. It was a private collection, but they put all the games on Coin Drop, and then the Coin Drop was given to charity. Oh, that's cool. I was like, that's a pretty cool idea. But they had a Stars, a Stern Stars, which is a brutally hard game, and they put two-inch flippers on it, like the safe cracker flippers. They put those bats on there. I can't remember the guy said they still dropped a hundred bucks in there. Everyone just kept playing it because it's addicting. To me, that's what pinball... When I got hooked on pinball, it's when the games were beating the shit out of me.

[00:24:38.740] - Speaker 1
Yes.

[00:24:39.040] - Speaker 2
I don't.

[00:24:39.500] - Speaker 1
Know, some of us-Then you feel like you crested. When you finally do a thing. If you tour the mansion on Adams Family, all of a sudden you're like, Wow, I'm a pinball god.

[00:24:55.450] - Speaker 2
This isn't to say that setting up game is easy, especially if it's your own personal game or anything, that there's anything wrong with that. You like playing long games and getting through everything, but I sure wish I saw more games set up tougher because I feel like.

[00:25:10.560] - Speaker 1
You see.

[00:25:10.980] - Speaker 2
Factory more easier. I think personally-You never see anyone make a.

[00:25:13.970] - Speaker 1
Game harder. Except... And even us, we keep it factory, but the reason why we have the reputation we do is it's just tight tilt, because I'm not going to let you thrash a game to steal a high score. We just adjust the slings and we rebuild the flippers. That's the one thing.

[00:25:34.610] - Speaker 2
That I don't think many people realize how much it'll change a game. Oh, my God. If you have sensitive slings, the game will be infinitely more difficult.

[00:25:43.600] - Speaker 1
Every feed from orbits or things that would normally graze past it, if that causes it to firecracker back and forth, that's what makes the game hard. Yeah.

[00:25:56.200] - Speaker 2
To us, we use hard as the same as a synonym for fun. Because to me, it's like that struggle for control that makes pinball, pinball. You go back long enough in pinball, that's really all there was. You go to early EMs, it's a constant struggle for control. You're like, That's the fun of pinball to me. Because that's the ball handling everything. It's not just memorizing anRPG's worth of rules and then making easy shots and getting perfect control of the ball back. There's a place for all of it, I think. So.

[00:26:31.250] - Speaker 1
Well, I think we covered it pretty well.

[00:26:34.520] - Speaker 2
I don't think I ever actually said, munsters. If I was going to pick one modern game that would benefit from lightning flippers, it would be munsters because it feeds down the middle. So you would feel the effects of them. That game has shallow rules. It's underrated. So yeah, someone with the munsters, if you're about to sell it because you're sick of it, put lighting flippers on it and let us know what you think.

[00:26:56.460] - Speaker 1
Damn, that's a good one. I like that one. I would say of the games you're going to see on location a lot, I would say Dead Pool. Yeah. Dead Pool is so easy.

[00:27:10.070] - Speaker 2
That would be, yeah.

[00:27:11.940] - Speaker 1
It's.

[00:27:12.350] - Speaker 2
Got pretty safe feeds because I'm thinking the scoop, Eject, safe, most games anyway, I mean, there's always some variable there. The little Deadpool sometimes wants to go down the middle, and that would aggravate people.

[00:27:25.200] - Speaker 1
I think you should have to fight for control more on Deadpool. I think it plays too friendly, too long. I think it's a fun game that I don't personally want to play mostly because I don't want to be there for 45 minutes.

[00:27:42.860] - Speaker 2
That's really it. It is a fun game. The shots, it's got those Gomez buttery, very cool shots. It's also got the Gomez tendency to play long because he knows what a lot of people like.

[00:27:54.820] - Speaker 1
No, he definitely errors on that side. He did, ever back when he worked for Williams, too. The difference between Monsterbash and attack from Mars is like, they're both fairly easy, controllable fans, but Monsterbash is way easier. Right. Right, like way easier. I remember that was the first wizard mode I got to was Monsters of Rock. That was the first one playing on location where I was like, Oh, I got there. Oh, my God. Now looking back, I'm like, I get that on Ball One.

[00:28:34.540] - Speaker 2
Yeah, it's funny. I always am embarrassed if I get to a Monsters of Rock without getting all of the instruments or whatever. You're like, Oh, man.

[00:28:43.490] - Speaker 1
What a waste.

[00:28:45.610] - Speaker 2
Yeah, just funny how that goes.

[00:28:48.810] - Speaker 1
Well, I think this was a good first episode. We talked about lightning flippers. I'm sure they'll come up in the future. Oh, I did have one more factoid about lightning flippers that I didn't share. I'll share and then we'll get out of here. Apparently, I couldn't substantiate. This is all like he said, she said on old pinside threadposts. Apparently, whitewater shipped with lightning flippers in the goodie bag in the cabinet. They weren't installed, but they were included.

[00:29:24.170] - Speaker 2
Dude, the rejects from that left ramp would be so much... That would be brutal.

[00:29:29.110] - Speaker 1
I'll just say, full stop, Whitewater is my favorite game. I love that game. I think it's the best game ever made. We can get into that in a later episode. I don't-.

[00:29:41.370] - Speaker 2
You don't.

[00:29:41.780] - Speaker 1
Think it needs them? I don't. Okay, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I have played Whitewater's where they are incredibly easy. I have. To me, that sucks. But the one we have-.

[00:29:59.050] - Speaker 2
Definitely is not.

[00:29:59.870] - Speaker 1
It's.

[00:30:00.140] - Speaker 2
Not easy. I would say yours doesn't need to be any meaner. That's what I think, too. There are games that I think are hard enough.

[00:30:07.270] - Speaker 1
But I will say that if I ever got one for my personal home, I'd fucking put lightning flippers on it, dude. Once you start.

[00:30:14.870] - Speaker 2
Realizing.

[00:30:15.350] - Speaker 1
Every feed. I'm putting lightning flippers on it because it's like... That's another game where it's like I've done everything in it. I've gotten to wet Willies, the 100 million Super Jackpot. I've scored in the billions. I've done the vacation jackpot, and I would love to get one raft away from wet willies and then lose the ball because I couldn't slap save it. I would be like, Huh.

[00:30:43.460] - Speaker 2
Those are the moments that keep you coming back, right? Yes.

[00:30:50.150] - Speaker 1
I'm not going to put it on ours. I just saw that and I was like, I've never seen a single white water with lightning flippers.

[00:31:00.930] - Speaker 2
I would love if some old guy could be someone that actually opened one of them in box, I could tell you. I feel like if that was the case, we would know, but maybe.

[00:31:11.650] - Speaker 1
I know. I don't know. It is interesting. Maybe in the future.

[00:31:14.660] - Speaker 2
I didn't realize any outside of the four games ever came with them. Then you're saying, Black Rose did.

[00:31:20.560] - Speaker 1
Black.

[00:31:21.430] - Speaker 2
Rose did. I'm learning something every day.

[00:31:22.640] - Speaker 1
Well, that's it for episode one. Thank you, Alex, for agreeing to host it in your house with me. Until the next episode, get out on location and play some fucking pinball. Support a local business.

[00:31:37.750] - Speaker 2
Especially if you've got lighting flippers on it, right?

[00:31:39.740] - Speaker 1
Yeah. If your operator doesn't have... If they're a coward that pulled.

[00:31:45.950] - Speaker 2
The-if you play any of those four games and they have full length flippers on them, you go submit a complaint.

[00:31:52.090] - Speaker 1
Formal complaint? No. But go out, play some pinball and location. You'll meet some people, you have some friends and you'll support Local Business, and that's pinball in its natural habitat. So go support it wherever you live. Go find a pinball machine and play it. Yeah. All right.

[00:32:12.890] - Speaker 2
Cool. Have a good one.