The Besties - Playing the Silver Ball with Jeff Bakalar

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Russ is left on his own and so he brought his old pal, Jeff Bakalar of Giant Bomb, to talk about another sort of game: PINBALL. Yes, Jeff knows a lot about pinball and is grilled for all his precious pinball knowledge. Jeff's top 5 tables to look out for at an ardcade: Funhouse, Addam's Family, Jurassic Park, Deadpool, Monster Bash. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

jeff this is a reunion yeah i don't know how how many people know that it officially is i've been waiting uh oh how long has it been 20 21 years 26 i believe was the last time we recorded together and we're we're reuniting and i don't know how to deal with it uh it's it's bittersweet um one because the rest of your uh hosts are not here and i was like i feel like i'm kind of getting ripped off in that capacity but also uh i would much rather be with you in person yeah you know because i just want to look in your eyes and so you know you mentioned my other hosts and people might not know this but i actually have known you longer than any other member of the besties and i wanted to ask you how long have you known that i'm i'm a weak frail person i mean the

second i saw you the second i saw you i was like oh dear i hope a big gust of wind doesn't come come along that poor boy yeah i didn't want i didn't want people to think that i i was putting this on for like the besties specifically like this has always been me i've always been very true to myself my very weak self the first time i saw you i was like okay um i'm gonna need to feed that little boy i'm gonna need to put some protein uh on his plate and what happened uh i tried and i tried and your freakish metabolism yeah uh decided look you are going to stay 137 pounds for the rest of your life and there's nothing i can do about it as many times as we have had steak dinners chicken sandwiches uh anything that would add of meat to most humans bones but nevertheless

here you are as frail as can be and i love it i've been studied have you really they still don't know well i you're getting into your later 30s you gotta imagine one day maybe some of this is gonna catch up with you because either that or like i'm a house episode and it's just like that's just who i am sure like uh like the food that travels through your digestive uh track or whatever it is like just enters a different uh dimension yeah which seems like dr house has to solve the case which is like uh hugh laurie will figure out where that dimension is where the protein zone is this is it we're rebooting house and it's gonna be great no but this is great man i i really do miss uh you a great deal um and okay i don't want i

don't know there's no genuine emotion in the intro i'm gonna start the show okay cool my name is russ froschek and i know the best game of the week it's so weird to do that I guess you do it too Jeff do it my name is Jeff Bacalar and I know the best game of the week you didn't have to do it like me that wasn't my Russ impression I just want to I'm offended that I thought that sounded like me

okay so this is the besties it's a video game club that goes all year long and just by listening you're a member and today we have a very special guest in the form of jeff bacalar hello jeff hello russ thanks for having me thanks for doing this one-on-one special podcast and not gracing me with the other besties. This is fine. I'm used to this. I'm used to getting real close to the action, but never allowed inside the club. They specifically knew that you were doing this and that's why they pulled out. So it should be

noted that it wasn't like me scheduling around it. It was just them not wanting to do anything with you. I would expect it from plant. Sure. But but the other two i just can't get on board with now now jeff you are what would you say you're most known for probably the bomb cast right now right at this current moment in time sure i don't even know anymore i've lost all kinds of self-perception yeah uh that's all gone out the window in the last year jeff is over at uh our good friend's giant bomb and uh he's been uh doing video game stuff for for many many years that is very true probably as long i think not quite as long as me but very very close no you you were you were definitely one of the first two people i met in the, in that world. Yeah. And luck would have it that we,

we hit it off right away. And it was just, we introduced each other to each other's parents right away. And that's true. It was very, there was a bonding moment. Yeah. It was really sweet,

but I wanted to talk specifically to you, not about video games. We're going to, we're going to take a bit of a turn this week. Oh, okay. Because enough already with the, like really enough already. to you not about video games we're gonna we're gonna take a bit of a turn this week oh okay because enough already with the like really enough already i know who doesn't wake up every week on a monday and just be like oh video games enough already what more could they possibly do no we're gonna talk about a different sort of game and that game is a game of physics it's a game of skill it's a game of chance maybe okay

maybe and that game is pinball oh bless you russ i knew i knew we were good friends for a reason i knew we were besties for well we'll see we'll see how this episode plays out uh because i have very strong feelings about pinball and we're gonna we're gonna go through it because we've never really addressed it you and i oh boy we're gonna go through it on this episode i feel like i'm being paid and switched right here we go we'll be back right after this okay so jeff you have an extreme passion for pinball specifically such that you own how many tables uh right now in the house i've got got five. You've got five pinball tables. I couldn't even fit one in my apartment. You've got five in the basement, just chilling.

No, not in the basement, Russ. Oh, no. You know Stacy very well. We argue about this all the time. We actually have a pinball room in the house. This is what moving to the Burbs does to you. This is what it gets you. You know, I was raised, there was always that room that like, oh, you go in there and there's nothing really going on.

And it's just like the room. Yes. And now you've just used that room for pinball. I realize when you say the story about the room that nobody goes in, there's a lot of people who are just like, fuck you, rich guy. You have a room that you don't even go in. It's just sort of like. You know, the like company don't even go in. It's just sort of like, you know, the,

the like company room as it were. Yeah. It's like some people call it the sitting room or something like that. And I, you know, I grew up, you know, my,

I, my parents, uh, had, they just had like a couch in there that was very stiff, uh, and like a bunch of pictures and shit. And you would never go in there.

No, it's not to be touched. And then one day my brother and I became And you would never go in there. No, it's not to be touched. And then one day, my brother and I became teenagers. And my dad's like, yo, let's put a pool table in there. I'm like, yeah. Where's that been for the last decade? So we had a sitting room in this new house. And I was like, look, one day.

And I said this in this exact volume that I'm saying it right now under my breath. I said, one day, I'm going to put a bunch of fucking pinball machines in there and then the pandemic started and uh that opened the door for the uh rapid acceleration of that plan just because you were home all the time exactly yeah so you've got five and um i guess we should start at like i want to know where this sort of started for you were you a childhood pinball person and i also want to know what you know about sort of the origins of pinball i know i know you're not an expert expert but certainly you understand that pinball especially in the uh american northeast has like a very weird history yeah i i'm i'm definitely aware of the shattered past that pinball has. And it's like weird association with like mafia illegal gambling. I feel like LaGuardia had a lot to do with pinball.

The mayor, not the airport. they said we're going to name the worst airport in the world after you um so that whole history we could get into but my personal history um i i've been fascinated with pinball uh since i can since my earliest arcade memories there's something about rube goldbergian adjacent shit that has always attracted me where i just loved like that opening scene in in peewee's big adventure where like the breakfast machine like all that sort of stuff following the the the chain of events along and and like you know unpacking the schematics of like figure a hits figure b and figures you know all that sort of, all the cause and effect and the, and the sort of controlled chaos. I've been, I've been really, really, really fascinated by as long

as I can remember. And I been playing pinball since I was probably four or five years old. When I was starting to go into arcades and whatnot in the um in like the early 90s you know you had the most popular pinball game of all time in every arcade right that's adam's family oh sure and no one's made more games uh there's never been more models of a game made than than than that one that's funny because because my immediate thought was the jurassic park game the i think did sega do their data east data the one where you pulled the gun trigger yeah i think that was data east um but adam's family is also very obviously everywhere yeah adam's family is pervasive in a way that you like everyone just sort of knows even some of the call outs even if you spent a a marginal amount of time in arcades in the nineties,

you know what that game looks like and what it sounds like. And that has always been like the one that I've always wanted to own and, and sort of, you know, restore if I need to and sort of have in my life. But I, I, I think that game could,

deserves a lot of the credit for sucking me in in a way that um it became a lifelong passion yeah um real quick just a quick history lesson my understanding of it and i haven't done a ton of research but uh bear with me is pinball was made illegal as specifically in new york because it was decreed that it was effectively a slot machine it was random and because of that it was gambling and therefore illegal the way that it became unillegal was that there was a major basically court case regarding this and to the way to prove that it was uh not gambling was they brought in effectively a pinball expert right to go and absolutely crush and demolish the current pinball game of the time to prove

that it was actually a game of skill and not a game of chance yes yes i'm familiar with that with that tale yeah so i have not experienced that myself because i've always been very bad at pinball but i do appreciate that probably timing has something to do with being good at pinball yes are you trying to say that you are somehow uncoordinated i mean i'm very coordinated with certain things but there's something about pinball that i cannot for the like i see i know i gotta hit the ball at a precise time to get it up in that left corner or whatever and for the life of me I can't consistently do it and I get I mean you know I guess it is a game of inches or even millimeters for that matter and that level of precision I've just never been very

good at so yeah I mean you know and going back to like just to just to unpack that whole like this is an illegal game narrative that like I just don't understand what was going on in the world where people came together and they were just like, look, there's fucking evil pinball machine. Look what it's doing. Sucking quarters or whatever. Pennies out of people's pockets. I mean, you know, with video games, it's the same. Every generation has this. This is the ills of the world right like satan device is inside this machine sure um i also don't understand like

the whole gambling thing because it's not like you were like was there a pinball machine out there that like if you scored really high you won money that's a good point actually yeah no i've never heard of that so so like i don't don't understand, like, what's the difference? You know, anyway, we don't have to spend too much time on that, in hindsight. Incredibly stupid story. I am curious, though, like, we're talking historically. Like, I'm sure you've played, like, very old machines versus very new machines. Yes.

And I'd be curious to know, obviously, you know, computer screens and shit like that. But the actual mechanics of the games themselves, how drastically they've changed. You know, obviously with video games, you look at fucking Pac-Man or whatever, and you compare that to Elden Ring, there's a bit of a jump. I feel like with pinball, probably not that dramatic of a jump, but I'm sure there is a lot of nuance there. You just sound like a total novice. You just sound like such an uninformed piece of shit you i mean no i'm kidding if i had a choice of

where to spend quarters it wouldn't be a pinball machine well i'm gonna change your mind by the end of this episode uh my dear friend look i guess at its core sure you know maybe the same argument could be said for like there's just a controller? Like pinball has always had flippers for the most part. Sure. It's had pop bumpers, which are those, you know, iconic circular looking target things and usually spinners and spinners are the little gates that a ball goes through. And every time rotation happens, a switch is activated. And that's kind of like the hallmarks of a pinball game

but the leaps and bounds uh of which this this sort of medium has evolved in the last even i think the biggest evolution is probably in the last maybe 15 years but um but yeah like there's there's a lot a lot of differences and and most of it is the entry into the digital electronic and digital age right where you just have a computer controlling a game in a way that speed has taken over and it's just so much of a faster game if you look at games made before the 70s the play field is like almost flat like the degree at which a play field is angled they were designed to be played in a much more flatter surface never 180 degrees right because you just that just wouldn't make sense but sure the incline is not what it is uh now forball machines. Now, a pinball machine, I have my little leveler angler thing, and when I place it between the flippers, the ideal sort of angle is about six and a half to seven degrees. Okay.

Yeah. And that makes for obviously a fast, the ball rolls faster down the slope. It's a faster game. There's much more rubber on the play field, meaning there's a lot more places for a ball to bounce around. There are more balls in games now. Most games have anywhere from five to seven, which- Not during a multi-ball, you mean just in general? No. Sometimes, I mean, the latest Ninja Turtles game that Stern put out had a multi-ball where I think there were like eight and that was too many so they updated the game and i think they brought it back down to five and you just have to throw that ball away no that's the cool thing um god it's such a stupid fucking thing to say ross i fucking it's

just so so tasteless um no so that's the cool thing about uh pinball games now uh any game made i think i guess in like the last 10 years maybe eight years uh they all have uh pcbs with usb ports on them and they can update the code on them so no but but if they removed a ball where's that extra ball going it just stays in the in the trough it just doesn't it doesn't the the game knows not to release it sure and or slash hold it for the multi-ball mode. So you can, with a software update, they call it code updates, you can essentially change all of the rules of the game. Like a programmer can re-alter all of the rules, all of the objectives, the way the lights react. You know, now that all these games have LCD screens on them,

you can completely change all the graphics, the music. I mean... Are people, like, in the way you release, like, a Skyrim mod, are people modding? Yes. That's amazing. So, it's a really good example. So, for the Ninja Turtles one,

which is a really, really good example, they had, like, the theme song redone from the nineties. Sure. And it sounded really good, but you know, there was a very vocal minority of people who were like, no, let's actually just rip out the literal intro from the nineties, a cartoon and just put it in our games. And with that comes people lifting videos and replacing the custom-built ones for the game with original ones from the cartoon, stuff like that. Almost every game has a sort of mod scene

that takes the code into their own hands and sort of updates on a more cosmetic basis, not necessarily the rules or anything like that but you're but how much are you like if it if it is mostly software based these days are you still like you know rolling under the pinball machine like one of those like car fixing things to like adjust i don't know there's still like physical spinners and stuff like oh yeah like you're talking just maintenance right yeah maintenance oh yeah like you're talking just maintenance right yeah maintenance sure yeah like games require maintenance they are they are

designed to take a hell of a beating right because you know up until the pandemic the home ownership it was very much a thing but a lot of games found their found their way into bars and arcades where they would just get the ever-loving shit beat out of them. Yeah. And, you know, these operators would have to, and they still do, this is very much still a thing, they have to go to the games and clean them and wax them and, you know, replace broken bulbs, replace broken switches.

A lot can go wrong with the game when it's out there in the open and people just treat it like a table or whatever it is so are you fixing yourself are you actually calling a guy no so so the cool story about this in my journey um there was a a bomb cast uh slash beast cast i think uh a fan uh really really excellent gentleman uh had a situation come up where he had a funhouse game that needed a home and i'm picturing like a giant scary mouth when i think the funhouse pinball it's the 19th same designer as adam's family yeah it was from 1990 it is pretty much a classic uh as far as you know i've learned to really love the game but uh it was uh a pat lawler jam and pat lawler very very famous pinball game designer he had this game up in connecticut and it was like sitting

in a garage for four years. Wow. And this thing needed a lot of work. So I drove up there. Oh, a little, little fun fact. Ed Boon is the voice of Rudy,

which is the little, uh, you know, a dummy. Ed Boon of Mortal Kombat fame. Exactly. Because this was a Williams, which I believe became Midway,

right? I think that's the connection. I think that's like the sort of thing. Yeah. So you ended up going up there and like hauling this thing down and basically what? You've learned to fix it yourself? So I plug this thing in. I get it home.

I plug it in and it turns on. I'm like, holy shit. You didn't even know it turned on? It could have been just like fully busted? Totally. Well, so, you know, I figured, look i figured look i was like hey there's an internet i'll figure this out right like this and and this game is highly sought after like completely uh re restored versions of this game go for like 10 12 000 so i'm like oh i'm like okay this is you know this is this is salvageable i figured

uh and i got a you know i got up there and looked at it i was like okay this seems okay i plug it in it turns on and then i noticed really quickly like oh nothing really works like yeah the flip one of the flippers was broken like everything was just and an evil spirit flies out of the oh it is possessed i still have to figure out how to exercise this thing but um it just went like and just died out god and then again i really have to be super thankful to our community uh people who really reached out and and said like you know there's people out there who are very much into this scene and people who are like hey i'm going to help you i can help you yeah and i learned i basically went from no fundamental understanding of just straight up circuitry right like just how a pcb works and and i went from zero knowledge to uh soldering and fixing switches and fixing bulbs replacing parts components rebuilding

restoring waxing cleaning replacing rubbers which are like all the little rubbery rubber bands on on a play field that allow for the ball to knock around in a real satisfying way and i i essentially brought that machine completely back to life it's fully functional there's a couple things that are still a little weird with it but it is fully functional and playable and beautiful once you replace all these bulbs all those incandescent bulbs with leds and the you know the game just pops yeah it's a beautiful machine now and uh i i it's it was really a labor of love it took me maybe about three months to restore it and um you know it was all through through the help of people in the community and stace is okay with the idea that

this like loud fucking room exists in her house no she's not okay with it you know her she's not okay no she's not gonna say no she so you know look am i i can't play this at all hours of the night right i can't play these games but um you know they're in I can't play this at all hours of the night, right? I can't play these games. But, you know, they're in your house. And after a while, you're like, you know what? Let me try this out. And here's the thing. It's fun.

It's a lot of fun. And especially when you start to learn a game and learn the rules and become super familiar with the game where you're like, okay, I could get better at this. I know the rules now. I could get better at this. I know the rules now. And that's something we absolutely have to get into too at some point here where it's like pinball, the barrier to entry is incredibly difficult because when you go to an arcade, you sort of just,

you don't know what the rules are. You're just hitting stuff around and points are going up, but you don't know what you're doing. Ball can't go down the drain and that's it. So anyway, Stace, you know, has learned to love pinball in a way.

And I don't want to say learn to love pinball in a way i don't want to say learn to love it seems like she was forced she has organically fallen in love with pinball and the great tragedy though is you know i get a lot of games that come in uh i stream them and then they go back out yeah and a lot of the games that have gone back out are some of her favorites so right now she doesn't really have like a favorite maybe aside from fun house. But, but yeah,

that, that's sort of like the, the, the great, the great tragedy of it for her because some of the games, you know, some of them, they're mine,

but some of them I have to return at some point. And yeah, I think we're going to, we're going to go through a, a, your top five in the, in the second half of the show. But I do want to say just for this segment obviously there's a big square footage issue here and certainly you know I've mentioned I live in an apartment more or less pinball is

off the table it's not gonna happen yeah I get but I do feel like a lot of people these days their pinball experience is video game pinball and obviously there's a number of them zen pinball is one of them i know there's like a bunch out there um what is your general feeling how close has a pinball video game gotten to recreating pinball i mean you know you could say not uh we were not played by paid by big big pinball here so it's like it's fine well i am no um look like those games are fine right like those games are pretty good i like the zen stuff i think that's pretty good i like how inventive their tables are i was a really big fan of that walking dead one from a few years ago um but you know i mean it's just like When you you know when you've got It here and you

You know like it's just It's just different there is It is an unreplaceable thing You know it's just like Any sort of You know I guess it would be the same like You have a bowling alley in your house or you have Video game bowling

You know like yeah you know what the the real thing is gonna always really trump that i i just think you know i think it's great for like portable play like i do i do uh enjoy playing the virtual pinball on my switch when i'm on the go back uh in the before times but um for me there is a certain physics um mechanic that these games have never been able to replicate in a way where you're sort of impressed and and you know you you lock into it and that's not to that's not meant as a slight you know i think those developers realize like it is chasing this impossible thing but um i i think there's plenty of really solid virtual pinball out there for sure okay we're gonna take a quick break we'll jump back we've got jeff's faves coming up

and some reader mail stick around okay we're back welcome we're here with jeff bacalar jeff bacalar is obsessed with pinball he He's dedicated an entire room. I'm trying to do the This American Life. Oh, yeah. Oh, like act two, act two. Act two. All right, here we go. Here we go. We're here with Jeff.

Jeff loves pinball. His wife doesn't. No. But I wanted to talk a little bit about some of your favorite pinball machines. We talked about Funhaus, right? Which I'm sure is on your list. But let's see if we can do a top five and we'll see some of these i might have played yeah i mean adam's family got it has to be up there i don't really feel good about like a one two three four no we don't have to order it i understand i think adam's family's up there

even if i think over the years that game because i've played it so much you do sort of like learn all the rules and you're constantly chasing that dragon of like well can i beat 10 billion can i do you know so you know people call it like their grail game like that's the one you want that's still one i will absolutely own one day um you mentioned uh the call outs can you can you remind people what it what is some of the famous call outs from that game oh well anytime any of the the slingshots which are the the bumpers next to the flippers it's like uh it's it's raul julia and uh angelica he used to going like you know gomez tush go like that stuff's amazing there's a home mamushka um sure gameplay mode the vault plays a big uh part of the game so royal julia will call out as gomez like straight

to the vault like that kind of stuff it's just it's just great and even the and what's funny is it's the audio quality of that game as the years go on it leaves a bit to be desired sure uh but there's there's a certain sort of nostalgic you know like lo-fi yeah it wouldn't work if it was like perfect audio right it wouldn't be like the thing you remember i'll tell you this uh so there's a company called chicago game company that has been remaking a lot of classic games. Like they'll get the license for the game and they will remake it one to one. Yeah.

Like they did it for, they're doing it for Cactus Canyon. They're doing it for, they've done it for Monster Bash, which is probably in my top five as well. So I think there might be a day where like that stuff gets remade. Sure. there might be a day where like that stuff gets remade sure um but yeah like uh it's it's definitely got its um you know qualities because of you know it is approaching what jeez it's a 32 year old game by now so but i feel like at that point people would just mod in a filter that makes the audio kind of shitty maybe i i don't see why not like presumably they would do that and and you know we should we should definitely spend a second to talk about like what like just how insane the

the lcd screen art and all that stuff and what it's done for the game like but um just to go back to the favor so definitely adam's family i think jurassic park the new one they made uh i do have that in the house as well that game is just it is unbelievable there's a keith ellen who designed that game who's basically like i'd say the most popular prolific game designer of the moment right now yeah he's just on a tear and this game was sort of his first truly truly strong effort people this one themed after the new movies no so this is weird so this one was themed from the 94 one they only got wayne knight's likeness for it and the likeness and like the the theme that iconic i mean the theme is important sure but like everything else

is like not it's not sam neill it's not gold everything else is like not, it's not Sam Neill. It's not Goldblum. It's not Lord. It's like. Yeah, because I remember in the original Jurassic Park pinball, you'd hear Goldblum going, go, go, go, go, go, go. Yes. And that was like a big, that is very much stuck in my head. So that's, you don't get that.

Yeah, that's not there. But, you know, for the purposes of like the theme, it still sort of works because you do have that iconic score. You know, Wayne Knight's in it enough where you're just sort of like, okay, that's cool. And they re-record a lot of dialogue, you know, and you're sort of like, you know, like there's a whole hacking element. So it's like, it's a unix system you know this like that sort of stuff um but the best part of this game is just how fun it is to play and the

rule set is so strong and some of the shots are truly unique i mean this game came out i think in 18 or 19 and it came out in 19 and um for its time, which is only three years ago, it blew people away with the creativity of shots and whatnot. It really changed the game. And it's wild because this has been happening. Like, there's been very slow but steady improvements in, like, what they can do in and under the play field. improvements in like what they can do in and under the play field and all the gadgets and toys you know have really just exploded uh in a way that is like just just moving at a breakneck speed it's super it's super cool to see that's awesome um okay let's let's see so we've got adam's family we've got jurassic park we've got would you say. We've got Jurassic Park. We've got, what'd you say? Monster mash was one of them. Monster bash is definitely one of them.

Um, I gotta say Deadpool. Oh yeah. Deadpool from two from 2018. It's a super simple sort of layout. It's only a regular two flipper layout, but it has some of the best modes and some of the best shots. And this game plays like butter.

Like anyone can play this game and complete a couple combos and just feel like they are rocking this thing. I don't even know what a combo is. Combo is just basically two ramps or orbits in a row where you- Oh, got it. And the game awards you for things like that.

So the cool thing about Deadpool is I didn't start playing it until a couple years after it released. I also do have this one in the house as well. And apparently when it first came out, people were sort of lukewarm on it. And then this massive code update hit and it completely changed the game

and accelerated it into royalty, like right away. And it's funny, like Nolan North does Deadpool's voice in it. Brian Posehn wrote a lot of it. Like it's got all the pedigree and like it, and it's perfect. I know people are sort of like a little, you know, they kind of roll their eyes with Deadpool stuff, but this game just nails that whole vibe.

And best of all, like it is supremely unique and incredibly fun to play. It's just got so many shots that you're just sort of like, oh, wow, you just have to trust a lot of physics and a ball will do. I mean, these balls are heavy duty. They're like ball bearings. They will attach themselves to rails and and really impress you with with just what's going on in that game like it is a lot of fun to play okay you've got one more to add to your list this is tough because godzilla just came out

and it's it's just another banger um so i would I would, I would maybe put Godzilla there, but I would also, I got to spread the, the love around from different makers. And there's a company called Jersey Jack that put out a guns and roses game, uh, late at the end of 2020. And that is the most,

uh, technically impressive work of art I've ever seen. Like this game, dude, the amount of production value and the amount of just circuitry and wizardry that is going on under the hood of this game. It's Slash's hat involved. I feel like that would be on the board. Of course it is. Yes.

Slash helped design it. Of course he did. Well, he's a be on the board. Of course it is. Yes. Slash helped design it. Of course he did. Well, he's a big pinball fan. Oh, he is. Yeah. And what's funny, it's funny because Stacy was reading his biography and he like calls out pinball like a lot of times in the book. And she's like, no, they weren't joking.

This dude's actually super into pinball. And he helped design it. And it's obviously got a ton of their songs which you which you do forget a lot of the bangers that that band put out and this game you perform them quote unquote in the game so there's like a mode where you have to put a ball in a scoop and then you enter like performance mode and you have to hit a certain amount of targets to keep the song playing, almost like a Guitar Hero sort of style. So it's so awesome and such a beautiful game. Like a light show that is just intoxicating.

Like you play this game in the dark and you will just melt into it. It is unbelievable. And that's the thing that those Jersey Jack games, they sort of separate themselves from Stern and all the other makers. They make one game a year. Stern makes maybe like three to five a year.

And they put all their eggs in one basket and really knock it out of the park. They're a lot more expensive too. But man, that was a great game. They also did a Willy Wonka game a couple of years ago. That's really awesome too. Is there like an entry, like obviously they're not like cheap, but if someone wants to sort of dip their toe into owning a pinball machine,

is there one in particular that you think would be like the one? Yeah, I think so. We talked about Jurassic Park and recently they put out a version like a sort of entry level version of that game where it's a completely different game but it's a couple thousand dollars cheaper and I think they just call it like

they call it like Jurassic Park Home Edition. Sure. And it's the same size as a regular game but it's much cheaper than a full price game. So I think if you're serious about wanting to dip your toes in that world, that's probably the best place to start. Because price-wise, you are going to be spending upwards of $6,000 to get one of these games in your house. But that Jurassic Park one starts, I think, at $4,600, which is not as crazy.

Yeah, that is not as crazy. Like if you're in that ballpark, you've already decided, like, I am a pinball adjacent freak and i may be ready to do this uh but i think for 4 600 bucks it's a pretty approachable price uh for some people cool okay so thank you jeff that was a good list we have some questions from people okay specifically for you specifically about pinball oh great this comes from chris f genuinely how does one get skilled at pinball it seems like complete randomness and chance whenever i hit the ball with the flipper and does something cool i want to be good but it all just seems like luck of the draw i feel the same way okay so there there's basically two ways to play pinball you know there's like when i you

when like a kid goes up to a pinball machine, like I said earlier, it's just like, don't let the ball fall. Don't let the ball fall. Then there's the way where you have to catch the ball. And you have to hold it. You have to catch the ball. You have to hold it in one of the flippers. Sure.

And decide where you want to shoot. Okay. And that is how you start, right? Like the big barrier to entry, the problem why people have such issues with pinball is because they don't know the rules. And that's completely understandable because how would you learn?

Like these rules are deep, man. It is not just like A, B. There are endless layers of complexity. There's like missions you have to complete. All the objectives are represented with lights on the play field. But now that every game has an LCD screen, it's much, it's laid out in a much better way. There's always going to be something that's flashing. There's always going to be a, a, a shot that kicks off of mode. But to answer the question from the, from the emailer,

it's all about catching the ball and deciding where you want to shoot. Yeah. Once you start doing that and get comfortable with being patient, right? Because patience is a big part of the game. It is the Elden Ring of interactive arcade games. You have to be patient because you have to learn what to do. arcade games. You have to be patient because you have to learn what to do. If you just go crazy and just whack the flippers and just sort of, you know, you're only going to get random success. Sure. And now that you've like played these games a lot, are you still catching or are you just like

letting it, like you have the timing down? So it depends on what the, what I need to do. Like I'm at the point with a game like Deadpool where I've played it so much. And I also know my game so well, like, don't forget these are made on an assembly line and they all have tiny, tiny different characteristics. Right. So like in differences. So because I know my game so much, I'm very good. If I play Deadpool at an arcade, it might take me three or four games before I understand its tendencies and its nuances. Like you're always going to have, you know, a different kind of fingerprint for each game. But that's, that's a big part of it too. It's getting to feel it.

And another reason why just going to an arcade and playing a pinball game like once or twice, you're just going to strike out. Like now I can go into an arcade and play a random game I've never played before and have some success just because I already have trained myself to kind of be patient sure most games i like most games follow a similar sort of formula where it's like okay i know there's going to be a way to lock balls for a multi-ball and there's usually a very accessible multi-ball because don't forget like a lot of these games are in arcades because they want you spending some money on it so there is that element of like let's make this mode fun and accessible and easily unlockable so that there's the attraction to maybe try to get it again and play it again um but you

know there's a certain set of skills that you organically learn when you replay a game over and over and over again and now all the games that have, I've developed this sort of relationship where I can kind of play a little looser. But yeah, like every time I play, I am catching a ball. And every time there's a multi-ball, I'm trying to catch multiple balls because I want to give one flipper a chance to give me that single shot. So I'll catch like three balls on one flipper, leaving the other flipper with one ball. And then you learn how to like transfer balls. And you also got a nudge.

You got to smack this game. You got to lean into it. Okay. This is relevant. This is a good segue to the next question. So this question comes from Jackonian. What are your thoughts on numbing the table as a way to manipulate the ball without tilting the table? Yeah.

Jackonian says, I grew up playing pinball tables in the 70s, grew accustomed to anything more than a tap would tilt the table. So that is an adjustable thing, too. So if you're playing a game where, like, you sneeze on it and it tilts yeah that is the operator's choice to make that game so sensitive so they're either like hey i want to make this game super hard or they're like i don't want anyone fucking with my game so yeah so a little bit of transparency here the way that works is there is a thing called the plumb bob under the table and it's basically like a hanging sort of pendulum that has a cone shaped piece of metal at the bottom of it and that cone shaped piece of metal can screw can unscrew or screw and lower or raise the height of it around it is a ring an electric ring when that cone-shaped metal touches the ring the game tilts yeah so i take

that off okay and i just leave the peg so if i tilt i've really really moved this thing around yeah i got it there's nothing wrong with nudging a game in fact it is absolutely encouraged that is what pinball is the great thing about pinball is that it's this physical thing in front of you that you can manipulate with with motion with with nudging it so that's absolutely encouraged all i do is is rock these games they're built for it they're meant for it you know the tilt thing is the variable where the sensitivity of it varies game by game but i wonder i wonder what the standard i don't know the i was gonna say like what is like if you're doing a world championship whoever that has the world high score

how would you necessarily know that like presumably there are settings that are like the default settings i'm gonna ask my so i've you know obviously a bunch of friends who work in this world it's just never really come up but i will will ask, I will ask what the standard is. I would imagine for tournament play, there is some sort of like standardized tilt sensitivity and that's what they sort of use as, as the, as the, you know, barometer for it. But, but yeah, nudging all that stuff. Absolutely. It's so funny. I had my uncle over a couple of weeks ago and he's in his 60s and you know he's freaking out with all the games in the house

so he starts playing and he put his foot he like assumed this very organic stance where I was like oh my man's been playing pinball for like four decades he knows what's up he put his right foot on one of the legs

and he used that to sort of nudge i was like oh wow you've got like a perch you've got like a actual grip on this thing with your foot and it was super successful i'm like he was good like he he knew that we what to look out for and the fact that the game will literally say now, like, Hey, shoot the left ramp. Like it's, it's, it's easier now. Yeah. It's more,

it's more, uh, uh, involved, but it's, it's definitely easier now. There's less guesswork. Yes.

Yeah. Um, we have one more question. This comes from Bob. Can Jeff really tell the difference between stock pinballs and his preferred extra shiny special the only the only difference is how they look okay right like the so i was i unboxed i think like a mandalorian game uh last year and the first thing i do is i replace the stock balls with like these ultra shiny chrome balls sure which are sick i mean

like yeah that's the standard right like they're just pretty um and that's really the only reason like the the big joke in the in the industry is like the stock balls are garbage like throw them like almost throw them away you're spending so much money on this game they couldn't include like really shiny nice chrome balls but alas no so and look i usually replace a lot of the flipper rubbers too right away because the stock ones just uh that i can tell i'm bad that i can tell 10 times out of 10 what kind of rubbers on the on the flippers the ball if they're as if they're all chrome no you can't tell have you ever had to replace a ball because it's been used too

much like it turns into a cube i've cracked a couple no um no never i you know you you want to clean them when they start to get scuffed up but that's about it yeah okay um wow that is quite a rundown am i sold on pinball now i still i like it it's fun i'm not sure that's where my first quarter would go but if i were to visit i would definitely spend a lot of time in that room i'm sure wow so wow so that's the best i could get out of you if i came to your house and had access to unlimited free pinball i would maybe take a gander i mean you've made me you've definitely piqued my interest but it is difficult to get like for me to get like super into it because i feel like it's just something that i'm

just never gonna personally like i just i mean until i move it's not that i'm planning on moving i'm never gonna personally have that option in my house but i do think the next time i go in an arcade if they still exist i will be more on the lookout for some of the games you mentioned, Deadpool and the new Jurassic Park, certainly. Well, and that's the thing too, right? Like, I think pinball is way more accessible now because of the rise of all those retro arcades. Yeah. And, you know, near me, there's one that has like 25 games in immaculate condition. It's where I play Adam's family all the time.

Like you can develop that relationship that I was describing where you learn a game thanks to those sorts of things. And I know where you live, Russ, and I know there's access to tons of pinball where you live. That sounds like a threat that you know where I live. No, this is not what I was getting at. I was just saying like you can get it if you want it no no i know um but but that's the thing i think people you know it's sort of like watching you know i've been watching a lot of like elden ring speed runs uh lately and i'm just like what the fuck like what am i what and that's sort of the thing like the appreciation i can get from someone doing such an impossible thing, I've started to see similarities in how I see really, really good pinball players play.

Yeah. portion of Twitch, but like, now that I see that kind of being a thing and watching other people play and just when I stream too, and noticing like people have, I think it's allowed people to understand how, um, you know, how skilled and how interesting these games actually are. I think that's been, that's done a lot in the way of creating this sort of educational awareness about it. And it's, it's awesome. It's, it's been really,

really cool to watch. Outside of your streaming. Are there any other streamers you'd recommend? Yeah. My buddy, Jack, who does dead flip. He goes by dead flip.

Okay. He's, he's probably the, the guy. I also watch a Buffalo pinball. I think it's called every now and then. Those are probably the two that jump out, but, it's called, every now and then. Those are probably the two that jump out.

But Jack, he goes by Jack Danger. He actually designed that Jurassic Park Home Edition game that just came out. So he knows his shit? He does. Good dude. Cool. Before we wrap, any other things that you've been playing and or enjoying watching maybe that you'd put in our honorable mentions section? Outside of pinball?

Outside of pinball. Oh, my God. I know. Yes. I've been making my way through Toast of London. Oh, that's with Matt Berry. Yes. I love Matt Berry.

I've not seen Toast of London. Oh, dude. You got to get on that. Yeah, it's a good one. It's just, it is weird in a way that I feel like I'm surprised I had not heard about it before. I had known about the show for a while, but just never really did my toes in it. And then obviously watching What We Do in the Shadows, you're just like, I got to get more of that guy. Yeah, he plays Laszlo on What We Do in Shadows. Yeah. And, you know, his whole like, home like but like i just was like okay i need more of this where can i get

more of this and someone i think lucy james had recommended toast of london to me a really long time ago and i've been stace and i are finally making our way through it and it has led to at least a dozen like you know what you do you do this i do this a lot where i'll pause the the the show because i'm laughing so hard and then i hit like the five second rewind just to like experience it again and again and again until i stop having like that cackle reaction um and i that's happened like a dozen times so far, and we're only through the first two seasons of that show. What is that, on Netflix? Yeah, so the most recent one, we had to buy the couple first seasons, but the most recent one, which I think they called it Toast of Tinseltown, because I think he came to the states, the character did, in the last season.

I think that's on Netflix. I've been watching JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Oh. You've heard about this. I have heard about it, yes. So we started a podcast called Jeff Jeff's Bizarre Adventure where we're doing a three episode per episode recap of that show and that's been a lot of fun. That has something to do with Yes, correct?

The band Yes? Oh, yeah. They do the closing credit credit song they use roundabout yeah and there's one other what oh and i've so i'm such a dick i i had the mandalorian game for close to a year and i never watched the show so i like knew the great music and i knew you know i knew like somehow bill burr is gonna show up yeah sure fucking thing and Amy Sedaris and all these like I was and and then uh I gave you know I had to give the the game back and I just started watching it and I finished the first season and I was like you know what

I'm not a huge Star Wars guy but yeah to me like this is the most fun Star Wars has been a hundred percent agree and honestly I think the second season's even better. And I'll say this, Bill Burr turns in one of the best performances I've ever seen in a Star Wars thing. So you have that to look forward to. So, and I've only watched the first two episodes of season two.

I did the ice spider episode. And I'm just like, there's just so much like monster of the week goofiness going on in that show too, where I'm just like, man, just so much like monster of the week goofiness going on in that show too. Where I'm just like, man, if all of Star Wars was like this, I would probably give much more of a shit. Because I kind of don't. I totally agree. The less it leans into the like mythos stuff, the more interested I'm in it.

Totally. Like it's just not as, it's just better. Yeah. And of course the whole like Jason Sudeikis stormtrooper scene in the finale of season one made me a life. Directed by Taika Waititi, that episode. Yes, just totally made me a Mandalorian stan just because it's like, yo, that actually is the best thing I've ever seen in Star Wars. Yeah, it's very good. There are a couple episodes I'd recommend in Boba Fett

once you finish Mandalorian, but not the whole series because the whole series has some issues. Okay, well, I can live with that. You know, I can live with that. So, yeah, that's what I've been watching. That's good because, like, you know, this has come up a lot. And basically every spare minute of my day, which is not a lot because new babies are a pain in the

ass sure um has gone to elden ring so it's very boring whenever i like share this part of the show so i'm glad that you had a lot of other options um to share that is helpful cool let me thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties karyatic i think is how i'm going to pronounce that ella l bailey m lothar. Lothar, Hypocrisy000, and Just A Good Listening Boy. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. Thank you to Jeff Bacalar for joining us on this very special episode of the besties,

which featured no one else but just me and Jeff. It was a delight. It was a flashback to the 404 days, which I love. Yeah, thank you for letting me talk about pinball. I uh i don't get to do it a lot so i appreciate it my pleasure my pleasure uh next week we have stranger of paradise final fantasy origins i think is the full title something right like that i don't know how i'm gonna feel about this game i've read some interesting things about it makes me more interested than I would be in a normal Final Fantasy game, but we'll see how me and the gang feel

about it next week. Jam was talking about it on the Bombcast, and he's like, I hate this game, but I actually love it. I was like, okay. Yeah, I've heard dumb Elden Ring is how it's been described to me, and I'm kind of into that. That makes me interested. Thanks, Jeff. Where can people find

you? I'm at jeff bacalar on pretty much everything okay great well that's gonna do it for the besties uh because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games yeah i agree besties Besties!