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How Pinball Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Doo Doo doo doo,
0:16
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry Doo and this is stuff you should
0:18
Speaker 1: know the podcast. What is that? Oh? Yeah, I thought
0:25
Speaker 1: you're making pinball pings and no bells and whistles. No
0:31
Speaker 1: sounds like Vegas. Vegas like one big pinball machine. It
0:34
Speaker 1: is that you've been to walk through those casinos. Yeah,
0:37
Speaker 1: you just made my neck muscles tight. Now, man, I
0:40
Speaker 1: hate Vegas. I like Vegas. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't.
0:44
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to live in Vegas or
0:46
Speaker 1: like go to Vegas every weekend or anything like that.
0:49
Speaker 1: But going to Vegas once a year, once every couple
0:53
Speaker 1: of years, that's fine with me. Yeah, not for me.
0:56
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been a bunch and I'm just I'm done.
0:59
Speaker 1: Oh you're one with Vegas. That's what you're saying that
1:01
Speaker 1: I don't see any reason to go back. I guarantee
1:04
Speaker 1: somebody you want to see will have some sort of
1:06
Speaker 1: residency out there, and you will be back in Vegas.
1:09
Speaker 1: When I'm like sixty. Yeah, like pavement will have a
1:12
Speaker 1: residence valleys. That's exactly I think, what's going to happen. Well,
1:17
Speaker 1: then you'll find me in living in Vegas, my friend.
1:19
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, see I got you back on
1:21
Speaker 1: the Vegas train. But that sound. Yeah, it's like a
1:24
Speaker 1: million pinball machines that take your money faster than pinball machines. Yeah,
1:29
Speaker 1: and that was an early worry about pinball. Actually, as
1:33
Speaker 1: we will soon see because I say, chuck, let's dive
1:36
Speaker 1: right into the history of pinballs. So pinball machines actually
1:41
Speaker 1: find their lineage back in the nineteenth century. There were
1:45
Speaker 1: um things called or what were they? I want to
1:49
Speaker 1: say Bagat machines, but that's not correct. The table, Yes,
1:54
Speaker 1: the Bagatel table, thank you. Um. They were basically a
1:59
Speaker 1: cross between pool and pinball. He used a pool que
2:03
Speaker 1: and everything, and they sucked and nobody liked him. I
2:06
Speaker 1: think it looks pretty cool, does it? It looks I'm
2:09
Speaker 1: boring to me? Well, I mean it's if you're used
2:13
Speaker 1: to modern gaming, is not gonna thrill you, but look
2:18
Speaker 1: kind of neat. So the Bagatel table was there, it
2:21
Speaker 1: was in place, and in the thirties a guy named
2:24
Speaker 1: monte Redgrave came along like, you can't not say that
2:29
Speaker 1: guy's name like that. Um. He came along and said,
2:32
Speaker 1: you know what, people just invented a spring. How did
2:35
Speaker 1: you say his name? Again? Montague, like he's on lad
2:40
Speaker 1: on um um and uh. He came along and said,
2:44
Speaker 1: somebody invented a spring recently. I'm gonna add it to
2:48
Speaker 1: this bagatel table make it less sucky. And then all
2:52
Speaker 1: of a sudden we have the the what did he
2:55
Speaker 1: call it, the ball shooter, which makes sense, that's what
2:59
Speaker 1: you call it. And now we had the first introduced
3:03
Speaker 1: mechanism of pinballs. Things are starting to take shape a
3:06
Speaker 1: little bit here. Yeah, but you didn't stick a coin
3:09
Speaker 1: in the game. What you would do is kind of
3:11
Speaker 1: like pool tables these days at a bar. You would
3:13
Speaker 1: go up to the keeper of the balls and say,
3:16
Speaker 1: here's some money, give me my balls, and let me
3:19
Speaker 1: go play the game on the bagotel table. Yeah, and
3:24
Speaker 1: he would go, you know it sucks, don't you, And
3:27
Speaker 1: you would say, yes, but it's the eighteen thirties. Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: and if I play really well, then I can win
3:32
Speaker 1: free drinks and cigarettes. And they said, exactly, can you
3:36
Speaker 1: see a little twelve year old, winning cigarettes and then
3:39
Speaker 1: going back to play more bagatell Sure, so this is
3:43
Speaker 1: the way it went for many decades. People were miserable
3:47
Speaker 1: until the nineteen thirties, and there was this enormous explosion
3:52
Speaker 1: of innovation and pool table re um in the thirties. Yeah,
3:57
Speaker 1: like just almost everything that you think of and you
4:00
Speaker 1: think of a pool, a pool um. We've been saying.
4:03
Speaker 1: I've been saying pool table just for the last like minute.
4:07
Speaker 1: Why didn't you correct me? I thought you were talking
4:09
Speaker 1: about bull tall I'm talking about pinball. Anyway. In the
4:12
Speaker 1: thirties there was a huge explosion in pinball, pinball or yeah,
4:17
Speaker 1: and um, everything that you think of when when you
4:20
Speaker 1: think of a pinball machine, almost all of it came
4:23
Speaker 1: about in the thirties. Coin operation, the back glass, the
4:28
Speaker 1: thing that has like a kiss or Hugh heff neuron
4:31
Speaker 1: it or something like that stands up off of the
4:34
Speaker 1: playing field. The table um electric well, I guess an
4:40
Speaker 1: electric current running through it, legs um, the tilt mechanism, bumpers,
4:48
Speaker 1: uh sounds yeah, score keeping. And then first, of course
4:55
Speaker 1: I think I said bumpers, did I not? I don't know. Maybe,
4:58
Speaker 1: And then most of all, most wortaintly chuck was. The
5:01
Speaker 1: thirties led to a huge surge in popularity because you
5:05
Speaker 1: had the Great Depression and pinballs were cheap entertainment that
5:08
Speaker 1: were wide, widely available. You notice the one thing we
5:10
Speaker 1: didn't say though and all that innovation, what flippers, Because
5:15
Speaker 1: still up until nineteen seven, you just bumped the thing
5:22
Speaker 1: to make the ball move. Yeah, there were no flippers,
5:25
Speaker 1: which seems very counterintuitive to pinball. And the flippers really
5:30
Speaker 1: changed things. They fundamentally changed pinball, not just in the
5:34
Speaker 1: way you play, but in pinball is a game because
5:37
Speaker 1: before flippers, it was a game of chance. It was
5:40
Speaker 1: the same thing as playing like um high low. Basically
5:45
Speaker 1: like you had no way really of manipulating the movement
5:50
Speaker 1: of the ball. Well you shake them sheen, you could
5:53
Speaker 1: without tilting. I mean that's what you did. Yeah, that
5:55
Speaker 1: was how you did it. Even still it the amount
5:58
Speaker 1: of skill it took was minute compared to the skill
6:03
Speaker 1: that could be used. Once flippers were introduced, pinball wizardry
6:06
Speaker 1: and it became a game of skill. Um. And then
6:10
Speaker 1: but before that, the like I said, things were popular.
6:12
Speaker 1: Get this um. In the early thirties there were a
6:15
Speaker 1: hundred and forty five companies making pinball machines, and the
6:18
Speaker 1: field became so competitive and ruthless that by the mid thirties,
6:24
Speaker 1: like five years later, there were fourteen. Yeah, and most
6:27
Speaker 1: of those were based in Chicago, which became sort of
6:30
Speaker 1: the pinball capital of the world. And I've never been there,
6:34
Speaker 1: but I bet you anything, Chicago still has a lot
6:36
Speaker 1: of a lot more pinball machines than elsewhere, you know.
6:40
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of like this, researching this
6:43
Speaker 1: made me want to go play pinball, like researching sushi.
6:46
Speaker 1: Maybe we want to go eat sushi. And I was thinking, like,
6:49
Speaker 1: I have no idea where to go to play pinball,
6:51
Speaker 1: you know, and we'll go to my brother's house. Does
6:53
Speaker 1: he have one? He's got three? Oh, I love your
6:55
Speaker 1: brother even more now, dude. He built a whole game room,
6:58
Speaker 1: of course, because that's what my brother does. What does
7:00
Speaker 1: he have he has? Uh F he has a Tomcat
7:02
Speaker 1: F four team, which is the rip off of top Gun.
7:06
Speaker 1: He said, there's a lot. There were a lot of
7:07
Speaker 1: rip off games for a while, of movies and actual
7:10
Speaker 1: movie time games. Uh. He has black Hole, but not
7:14
Speaker 1: the movie. Another rip off game. I would love that.
7:19
Speaker 1: Uh And those are both kind of old school. And
7:20
Speaker 1: then he has a Jurassic Park, which is uh newer.
7:24
Speaker 1: I think didn't they have like a t rex that
7:25
Speaker 1: comes down and eat your ball? I can't remember. I
7:29
Speaker 1: feel like all three of them. But yeah, and he
7:31
Speaker 1: also kicked this. He took an old um video game
7:36
Speaker 1: like stand up video game console and removed all the guts,
7:41
Speaker 1: got a computer screen and um computer and hooked it
7:45
Speaker 1: up in there too, where you can play all the
7:47
Speaker 1: old school games, you know, those programs they have now,
7:50
Speaker 1: and change the screen vertically so it just looks like
7:53
Speaker 1: a regular arcade game. And you can go up and
7:56
Speaker 1: play Frogger and Space Invaders and Scott Bite me over
8:02
Speaker 1: and it's all free. That's so awesome. Man. He's like,
8:06
Speaker 1: um Ricky Schroeder and silver Spoons or something. But growing up, yeah,
8:10
Speaker 1: pretty much. Um. And I think the reason why I
8:11
Speaker 1: don't play more pinball over there is because, um, we're
8:14
Speaker 1: always playing ping pong. Yeah that's a game of skill,
8:18
Speaker 1: and I love ping pong. But I'll try and get
8:20
Speaker 1: in a pinball game. Man. I want to play some
8:22
Speaker 1: pinball so bad. Let's just go out to Roswell dude, Okay,
8:25
Speaker 1: do it right? Now. Uh, and I if I, if
8:28
Speaker 1: I collected pinches, it would definitely be mid mid seventies
8:32
Speaker 1: and mid eighties. From me, I would think, yeah, you know,
8:35
Speaker 1: all the bells and whistles and all that, the new
8:37
Speaker 1: fangled bells and whistles. They're fine, that's cool. But I
8:40
Speaker 1: like a not so old that it's like electro mechanical,
8:44
Speaker 1: but not so new that it's like nothing. But like, um,
8:47
Speaker 1: you know, plasma screens and stuff like that. Well, we're
8:50
Speaker 1: in the middle. Sure, I'm the same way. My favorite
8:53
Speaker 1: game of all time pinball wise, um, favorite game ever, gallagha,
8:59
Speaker 1: but favorite game pinball wise was Adams Family Pinball. And
9:03
Speaker 1: then I learned in this article that is the top
9:05
Speaker 1: selling game of all time from yeah, I think it
9:09
Speaker 1: was either Bally or Williams put that one out and
9:12
Speaker 1: they sold more than twenty thou units of it. Dude,
9:15
Speaker 1: it's awesome and it didn't surprise me. And like, I
9:18
Speaker 1: have no iffinity for the Adams Family, but it's the
9:20
Speaker 1: best pinball game I've ever played. And when I saw
9:23
Speaker 1: it was number one, I was like, well, of course
9:24
Speaker 1: it is, because it's the best one. You don't like
9:26
Speaker 1: the Adams Family, No, I mean, I like it fine,
9:28
Speaker 1: but I don't. I didn't play it because of the movie.
9:30
Speaker 1: I played it because it was an awesome pinball game.
9:33
Speaker 1: And they had one of them all not them all
9:36
Speaker 1: the bowling alley near me in Athens Bowling Alley. That's
9:39
Speaker 1: where I could probably go find a pinball machine. Huh yeah,
9:44
Speaker 1: or maybe not. Sadly, I'm starting a quest, all right,
9:48
Speaker 1: um so telling you let's go to my brother's house
9:51
Speaker 1: because we can have a scotch okay. Uh So. Anyway,
9:56
Speaker 1: seven is when they finally invented the flipper. D Gottlieb
9:59
Speaker 1: Company introduced a game called Humpty Dumpty, and that was
10:03
Speaker 1: where what most people say that the first modern game
10:08
Speaker 1: came about. It took at the level flippers, all the
10:11
Speaker 1: innovations of the thirties and out of flippers and boom
10:13
Speaker 1: you've got pinball, not pool table pinball pretty much, although
10:19
Speaker 1: the flippers weren't the same. It was the nineteen fifties
10:22
Speaker 1: the same person and came up with spot bowler, and
10:25
Speaker 1: that was the first modern arrangement of flippers, right, and
10:28
Speaker 1: they were longer with that introduction or else a little
10:33
Speaker 1: later on. The first flippers they introduced were Um, they
10:36
Speaker 1: were shorter. Yeah, and they didn't face this. They faced
10:41
Speaker 1: in reverse of the way they face now. It was weird.
10:44
Speaker 1: It was like they were working it out beta pretty much.
10:49
Speaker 1: So it's funny that they introduced flippers in because by
10:53
Speaker 1: the time flippers came around, pinball was illegal and most
10:57
Speaker 1: of the major cities in the United States, Um, and
11:00
Speaker 1: have been for several years. I never I think I
11:03
Speaker 1: had heard this once and forgotten it. But pinball was
11:07
Speaker 1: totally outlawed because they equated it to gambling because it
11:10
Speaker 1: was not a game of skill, which and I guess
11:13
Speaker 1: because you got prizes. Yeah. Um. Mayor Lea guardia Um,
11:18
Speaker 1: who you will remember from the Burlesque podcast, was a
11:21
Speaker 1: bit of a moralist, although he was a wet politician.
11:25
Speaker 1: He was in favor of repealing prohibition. He hated pinball,
11:29
Speaker 1: hated it. He he thought it was a mafia racket.
11:32
Speaker 1: He thought that it robbed the quote pockets of school children,
11:36
Speaker 1: the forms of nickels and dimes came to them as
11:38
Speaker 1: lunch money. And he got an outlawed in New York.
11:42
Speaker 1: And once it was outlawed, he ordered like really dramatic raids. Yeah.
11:45
Speaker 1: Right after Pearl Harbor. He said, you know what we
11:48
Speaker 1: need to do. The Japanese have just bombed us. We
11:50
Speaker 1: need to get rid of these pinball machines. And so
11:53
Speaker 1: let's go round him up, uh like in a raid style.
11:57
Speaker 1: Let's smash him with sledgehammers. Let's dump him in the river.
12:00
Speaker 1: What they did, they dumped them in the river after
12:03
Speaker 1: they smashed them. That's a very New York nineteen forties
12:06
Speaker 1: thing to do. Exactly. I bet you there's still pinball
12:09
Speaker 1: machines down there, if anyone's brave enough to get into
12:11
Speaker 1: the East River. I don't think they are. We should
12:15
Speaker 1: say also give a shout out to Popular Mechanics, who, um,
12:19
Speaker 1: we're working off in part really awesome article. They came
12:23
Speaker 1: up with eleven things you didn't know about pinball history.
12:26
Speaker 1: Um So, from the forties until the mid nineteen seventies,
12:32
Speaker 1: if you wanted to play pinball in New York City
12:34
Speaker 1: and Chicago and l A most cities in the US,
12:37
Speaker 1: it was illegal. Um you had to go to a
12:41
Speaker 1: pornography shop basically and go behind the curtain and play pimball.
12:47
Speaker 1: Is that weird? It's the weirdest thing we've ever said
12:51
Speaker 1: on this show. Until the mid nineteen seventies, and like
12:53
Speaker 1: there were still raids and pimball operators. Little five year
12:58
Speaker 1: old Chuck, Yeah, I would have been dropped off at
13:00
Speaker 1: a porn shop to play pinball, which I'm sure your
13:03
Speaker 1: parents would have been happy to do. Well they did,
13:06
Speaker 1: and I played pinball. I didn't look at nudy people.
13:09
Speaker 1: Did you really know what I was gonna say? Man,
13:11
Speaker 1: he just blew my mind. No, no, And get this,
13:15
Speaker 1: The city of Oakland, Oakland, CALIFORNIAWN, just this past July
13:20
Speaker 1: overturned an eighty year ban on pinball. Free the pinballers. Yeah,
13:26
Speaker 1: good for them. Yeah, so pinball's band people are still
13:31
Speaker 1: playing it like crazy. Um And apparently the manufacturers realized
13:35
Speaker 1: this as well, because they're still innovating and adding and
13:39
Speaker 1: making new games and machines and all sorts of stuff. Yeah.
13:42
Speaker 1: Well this is after World War Two, that where things
13:44
Speaker 1: really slowed down, obviously because of the war effort. Pointball
13:47
Speaker 1: was big. Dent was put in pinball manufacturing too. Yeah,
13:51
Speaker 1: like everything else. And then after the fifties it took
13:53
Speaker 1: off again, and it also became kind of a symbol
13:56
Speaker 1: of rebellious youth. In this popular mechanic starticle points out
14:01
Speaker 1: like the Fons played a lot of pinball. I never
14:04
Speaker 1: considered that from Tommy Um, from the Who's Tommy the
14:08
Speaker 1: Pinball Wizard? And Tommy both kind of rebellious, like stick
14:13
Speaker 1: it in your ear LaGuardia. Yeah. I mean, it seems
14:16
Speaker 1: silly now to think about that. But when Tommy came out,
14:18
Speaker 1: it was illegal, so pinball was sort of uh yeah,
14:22
Speaker 1: I guess it was just the rebels. Yeah, you're anti
14:25
Speaker 1: authoritarian if you played pinball, it was just an image
14:28
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. And then the Great Simpsons quote side show,
14:31
Speaker 1: Bob said television is ruined more young minds than pinball
14:34
Speaker 1: and syphilis combined. That one flew right over my head
14:38
Speaker 1: when I heard it the first time. I just thought, oh,
14:40
Speaker 1: that's silly pinball, right, But I didn't think about like
14:43
Speaker 1: moral turpitude. Yeah. I didn't get that one either, but
14:47
Speaker 1: I do know. So luckily, pinball was still widely available,
14:51
Speaker 1: albeit in the backs of pornography shops UM. And the
14:55
Speaker 1: reason we say luckily is because somewhere along the way,
14:59
Speaker 1: a young man in I think in his early twenties
15:01
Speaker 1: named Roger Sharp, who is a magazine editor, UM, was
15:06
Speaker 1: called upon to save the pinball World at a New
15:11
Speaker 1: York City council meeting. Yeah, they finally said, hey, City council,
15:14
Speaker 1: can we get a hearing on pinball machines? You guys
15:17
Speaker 1: are being ridict because it's a bicentennial of this country
15:19
Speaker 1: and we need pinball. It's as American as America gets
15:24
Speaker 1: as pornography. So they said, sure, we'll have a hearing.
15:29
Speaker 1: Because their intent was to prove that it was a
15:31
Speaker 1: game of skill and not chance, which was the whole
15:33
Speaker 1: rub in the first place. They brought in there a
15:35
Speaker 1: pinball wizard. Game of chance is gambling? Sure, LaGuardia had
15:38
Speaker 1: a point, well sort of. I still don't get it.
15:41
Speaker 1: But this law was obsolete because they added footperson now
15:44
Speaker 1: as a game of skill, but the law was still
15:46
Speaker 1: around basically. So they brought in their pinball wizard Sharp
15:50
Speaker 1: and um. They brought two machines because if one broke down,
15:53
Speaker 1: they wanted to have a backup, and some jerk councilman
15:57
Speaker 1: when he went to play the game, said no, no, no,
15:58
Speaker 1: no no, why don't you play the their game, the
16:00
Speaker 1: backup one. Yeah, the backup game. And Sharp started sweating
16:04
Speaker 1: because he was like, oh, I'm not very good at
16:05
Speaker 1: that game. Yeah, he never played it before. I'm a
16:07
Speaker 1: master at this one, but he was a pinball wizard,
16:09
Speaker 1: so I believed in him. Yeah. Well I didn't know
16:11
Speaker 1: what happened, did you. Did you see the the documentary
16:16
Speaker 1: Special Windlet. No, Oh my god, it has footage of this.
16:20
Speaker 1: It's amazing, amazing documentary. All about pinball, I mean all
16:24
Speaker 1: about pimball is not so awesome documentary there is that's
16:29
Speaker 1: about a specific moment in history and pinball. I haven't
16:32
Speaker 1: seen that one, but it sounds pretty good too. But
16:34
Speaker 1: see Special Winlet amazing um and see Tilt two. It's
16:38
Speaker 1: what's the deal? So um. Roger Sharp's playing, he's not
16:42
Speaker 1: really impressing anybody, and things are kind of going bad,
16:46
Speaker 1: and he decides to do a Babe Ruth call. He
16:49
Speaker 1: pulls back the plunger and before he releases it, he goes,
16:52
Speaker 1: I'm going up the middle aisle here. Yeah, And just
16:55
Speaker 1: so you know, if you've never seen a pinball game,
16:58
Speaker 1: you you pull the plunger, it's shoots the ball up
17:00
Speaker 1: the right hand side through a trough and then it
17:03
Speaker 1: spits it out at the top. And what he was
17:06
Speaker 1: trying to prove is where I'm going to spit it out,
17:08
Speaker 1: and where it's going to start it's descent back to me,
17:11
Speaker 1: It's going to be in a very specific place in
17:13
Speaker 1: the center of the board, not on the left, not
17:15
Speaker 1: on the right, right up the middle. And um, he
17:18
Speaker 1: did it. And apparently right afterwards the city council was like, okay,
17:23
Speaker 1: we'll repeal it, like it's obviously a game of skill,
17:26
Speaker 1: like Roger Sharp single handedly, well double handedly because he
17:31
Speaker 1: was using the flippers. Um, save pinball from illegality. I
17:37
Speaker 1: wonder if they said, yeah, fine, good lord, just it's legal.
17:42
Speaker 1: Get the machines out of here, get this loser out
17:45
Speaker 1: of here. But he is not a loser, because he
17:47
Speaker 1: is currently still the number five hundred and thirty six
17:50
Speaker 1: ranked player in the world. I'm surprised. I thought he
17:53
Speaker 1: went on to be. I think at the time he
17:55
Speaker 1: was number one, which is why they chose him. He
17:57
Speaker 1: probably was, but he's been falling ever since. Man, that's
18:00
Speaker 1: another thing in special win let Man, there are some
18:04
Speaker 1: like really good pinball players. Well, I've got the list.
18:08
Speaker 1: I'll quickly go with the top five, number one in
18:10
Speaker 1: the world as of today, two thousand, fourteen August whatever
18:15
Speaker 1: it is. Keith Lwyn of the USA is number one.
18:19
Speaker 1: U s a Urian ingele Brixton of Swedeness number two,
18:23
Speaker 1: Swedie din Zack Sharp recognize that name. It sounds vaguely familiar.
18:30
Speaker 1: Roger's son. Yeah, he's the number three player in the world.
18:33
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Number four Danielle Celestino Axiarty, what was that?
18:38
Speaker 1: He's Italian, he's before Jorgan Home is also Swedish. He's
18:43
Speaker 1: number five. There's a Canadian at six, a Sweet at seven,
18:46
Speaker 1: then eight through twenty save one are all Americans and
18:50
Speaker 1: number twenties Josh Sharp. So his sons followed in his footsteps.
18:54
Speaker 1: That's great, and are both top twenty ranked players. And
18:57
Speaker 1: I bet Josh is supers jealous. Maybe maybe Josh is
19:02
Speaker 1: also He's like, I want to be a veterin area,
19:05
Speaker 1: so I'm paying more attention to that kind of thing.
19:07
Speaker 1: Maybe so. Um So, pinball was saved by Roger Sharp,
19:13
Speaker 1: and um pinball just kept going on and on. Apparently
19:17
Speaker 1: it had its golden day age. It's widely believed between
19:20
Speaker 1: ninety eight, but it was also huge in the seventies,
19:24
Speaker 1: huge in the eighties, and then video games came along
19:27
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden pinball was like uh, and
19:30
Speaker 1: it started to decline and decline and decline and decline,
19:34
Speaker 1: and all I think we were down to maybe five
19:37
Speaker 1: major pinball machine producers, and by major I mean the
19:41
Speaker 1: only ones. Um no, because I mean it's all it
19:47
Speaker 1: takes a lot of time and effort to manufacture of
19:50
Speaker 1: functioning pinball game. Yeah. So, um, by the nineties there
19:57
Speaker 1: were just a couple left. Everybody was selling off their
20:00
Speaker 1: pinball divisions and there was a company called Bally Williams,
20:03
Speaker 1: which were former competitors that emerged and this is what
20:07
Speaker 1: the documentary Tilt is about. They went to their pinball
20:10
Speaker 1: division and said, hey, you guys are great in the
20:13
Speaker 1: pinball world, but the pinball world sucks. We want more
20:17
Speaker 1: money out of you guys. What are you gonna do?
20:20
Speaker 1: Is that pinball two thousands? Yes, they came up with
20:22
Speaker 1: pinball two thousand. They said, we will give you a
20:24
Speaker 1: chance to save yourselves. Figure out what will revive pinball
20:29
Speaker 1: for they and they came up with Pinball two thousand. Yeah.
20:32
Speaker 1: It's basically a hybrid of video gaming and pinball, where
20:36
Speaker 1: you have a kind of a standard pinball set up,
20:39
Speaker 1: but a video screen that's interactive as the back um
20:43
Speaker 1: backdrop no on the playing field too, so like holograms
20:47
Speaker 1: pop up on the on the playing board and like
20:50
Speaker 1: run away from the ball and interact with the ball.
20:53
Speaker 1: It stinks, though, and no one liked it. Have you
20:55
Speaker 1: played it? I haven't played it, but I saw videos
20:58
Speaker 1: of it and it didn't look like fun, and no
21:00
Speaker 1: one liked it. So the thing is is like this
21:03
Speaker 1: one article I read pointed out like it wasn't given
21:05
Speaker 1: a chance to flourish, Like the idea was great, and
21:07
Speaker 1: the fact that they pulled it off successfully it was
21:09
Speaker 1: really something. Well, they built only two games, right, and
21:12
Speaker 1: I think each one had a few thousand production run. Um.
21:17
Speaker 1: But there was Star Wars episode one, which here's my
21:19
Speaker 1: theory the reason Pinball two thousand went nowhere charge R Biggs. Yeah,
21:26
Speaker 1: the other one was Revenge from Mars and um you
21:28
Speaker 1: can still find those used today. Um. But despite the
21:33
Speaker 1: fact that Pinball two thousand was created, it was it
21:37
Speaker 1: was okay as far as successes go. Um. Bally Williams
21:41
Speaker 1: pulled the plug, which left one company stern. Uh. There's
21:47
Speaker 1: a guy named Michael Stern, I believe, who inherited his
21:52
Speaker 1: father's business and um became the only people making pinball
21:57
Speaker 1: machines in the world. Still. No, yeah, man, had we
22:02
Speaker 1: been have we been recording this two years ago, we
22:07
Speaker 1: would have basically been saying, like, pinball's dead, it's on
22:11
Speaker 1: its last leg. There's one company making it. They've started
22:14
Speaker 1: to lay off their designers because of the economic crisis.
22:18
Speaker 1: Some of those designers went on, some of the Stern
22:20
Speaker 1: Vets went on and founded a company called Jersey Jack,
22:24
Speaker 1: and for the first time in many many years, there
22:27
Speaker 1: are more than one pinball manufacturer. There's too, right, but
22:32
Speaker 1: the competition has caused Stern to go back and rehire
22:35
Speaker 1: some of the people they laid off, come up with
22:36
Speaker 1: new designs, and um they are there's a pinball renaissance
22:41
Speaker 1: and nascent pinball renaissance just beginning to bud that could happen. Well,
22:47
Speaker 1: pinball is definitely a sort of an end thing now. Um,
22:51
Speaker 1: if you're super cool and you have some money, then
22:54
Speaker 1: you might have a pinball machine in your house like
22:56
Speaker 1: my brother. Um. It is a Apparently Sterns ratio of
23:02
Speaker 1: home sales to commercials sales has risen from thy percent
23:07
Speaker 1: to six of their total sales. So the market now
23:11
Speaker 1: isn't for arcades, because what are those. The market is
23:14
Speaker 1: for the person who has enough money to buy a
23:17
Speaker 1: pinball machine. You don't have to Well, yeah, if you
23:21
Speaker 1: want a new one, it's gonna cost you, But if
23:23
Speaker 1: you want like a vintage one, it's I mean it's
23:28
Speaker 1: hundreds still. I mean that's a decent amount of money,
23:31
Speaker 1: but the high like the Adams family wants less than
23:33
Speaker 1: five thousand. Man, that's the one that you need in
23:36
Speaker 1: the house. Yeah. So, um, I think my brother actually
23:39
Speaker 1: refurbished his. I think, I think I'm right. I think
23:42
Speaker 1: they weren't even working and he was able to fix them. Um. Yeah,
23:46
Speaker 1: I imagine you can get him for way less because
23:48
Speaker 1: these are like fully refurbished, like polished, ready to go
23:52
Speaker 1: one um and a lot of them are starting to
23:56
Speaker 1: come from overseas because the demand in intege collectors UM
24:02
Speaker 1: items are like is rising so much that like seventy
24:05
Speaker 1: of them come from overseas. They're re importing them back
24:08
Speaker 1: to America. Well, and it's big in Europe because I mean,
24:10
Speaker 1: as evidence from that top ten, h two or three
24:13
Speaker 1: of them were European Swede Swedes look at them. So
24:17
Speaker 1: we'll get into how pinball actually works right after this.
24:24
Speaker 1: All right, So we've talked a lot about the history
24:26
Speaker 1: of pinball, which is way more interesting than I thought
24:28
Speaker 1: it would be. But um, we haven't talked about the
24:32
Speaker 1: game because I assume everybody has played pinball. But if
24:36
Speaker 1: you haven't, we're gonna break it down. Yeah, and it's
24:38
Speaker 1: actually it's pretty simple if you really think about it.
24:41
Speaker 1: There's two real components to the game. Now ever since
24:45
Speaker 1: time before, you seven flippers in the ball. Uh yeah.
24:49
Speaker 1: Everything else is just kind of ornamentation or whatever. But
24:53
Speaker 1: to play pinball, you need flippers and the ball because
24:57
Speaker 1: the point of pinball is too score points using the
25:01
Speaker 1: ball bouncing off of obstacles and all that stuff. And
25:04
Speaker 1: then to prevent the ball from going down the drain
25:06
Speaker 1: using the flippers. That's right there, you got flippers in
25:09
Speaker 1: the ball. That's right. You've got your flippers, um, typically
25:12
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the playfield, which is what it's called,
25:15
Speaker 1: directly above the drain on both sides. Um. A lot
25:17
Speaker 1: of games you'll see now have other flippers on the
25:20
Speaker 1: upper right and upper left that also do fun things,
25:24
Speaker 1: um like flip the ball. But you know a lot
25:28
Speaker 1: of times the ones at the top will flip it
25:29
Speaker 1: into the very special chamber where you can score tons
25:31
Speaker 1: of points. We'll get to the scoring here in a minute. Um,
25:35
Speaker 1: And you basically want to propel the ball up with
25:36
Speaker 1: your little plunger and then all the bumpers and ramps
25:40
Speaker 1: are there to score your points. And um, it makes
25:43
Speaker 1: a lot of noise, it's a lot of fun, and
25:46
Speaker 1: that's beIN ball. Yeah, I mean that's it for me.
25:50
Speaker 1: This article on how stuff works pointed out, like you know,
25:52
Speaker 1: when you're talking about scoring, which we'll talk about later,
25:56
Speaker 1: that's like doesn't mean anything to people who are playing pinball,
25:59
Speaker 1: most of us, because I'm just trying to keep the
26:01
Speaker 1: ball from going down the train. Um. But the way
26:05
Speaker 1: that pinball's arranged, as you get better and better at it,
26:07
Speaker 1: you'll learn that, Um, there are all sorts of combinations
26:11
Speaker 1: and tricks and stuff that you can do to really
26:14
Speaker 1: score some points. We'll get to that later on. I
26:16
Speaker 1: get ahead of myself. That's right. The ball itself, if
26:20
Speaker 1: you want to just talk hardware, it's one and one
26:23
Speaker 1: sixteen inches in diameter. It's steel in a ways, about
26:27
Speaker 1: two point eight ounces and can reach speeds up the
26:31
Speaker 1: ninety miles an hour when you see that thing shoot
26:33
Speaker 1: out of a one of the little chambers that will
26:36
Speaker 1: come back at you. It's going really fast, and that
26:40
Speaker 1: is um. Sometimes it will use magnets underneath the table too,
26:44
Speaker 1: because since it's a steel ball, you'll sometimes see a
26:46
Speaker 1: game that has like a like a spinning disk, like
26:49
Speaker 1: a vortex in the center of the table that will
26:51
Speaker 1: start at any given moment and it can catch your
26:54
Speaker 1: ball and keep your ball there with its magnet just
26:57
Speaker 1: sort of spinning in place, which is no good or
27:00
Speaker 1: it could be super good, depending on what you're after. Uh.
27:03
Speaker 1: Sometimes they do use a ceramic pinball called the powerball,
27:06
Speaker 1: and it is lighter and faster and immune to magnets.
27:10
Speaker 1: So a lot of times when you'll have multi ball
27:13
Speaker 1: going on, some of those other balls are ceramic, and
27:15
Speaker 1: that's when things get crazy. So as the ball is
27:19
Speaker 1: going around the table, um, it's hitting the bumpers, it's
27:22
Speaker 1: hitting the targets, and they're sending messages to them. Well,
27:27
Speaker 1: if it's post seventies six game to the motherboard that's
27:31
Speaker 1: keeping track of your score and all that jazz, and
27:33
Speaker 1: you've only got the three balls, that's that's a game. Yes,
27:37
Speaker 1: But there are circumstances where you can get more which
27:40
Speaker 1: will tell later. So Chuck, there's also another component you
27:44
Speaker 1: don't have to have to play pinball, but all pinball
27:47
Speaker 1: games have it now. It's called the black box. And
27:50
Speaker 1: if you look at a pinball table, you've got the
27:53
Speaker 1: field right, Yeah, the playfield, which is the board that
27:57
Speaker 1: has all of the bumpers and the stuff and the
27:58
Speaker 1: flippers and everything on it. And then at a right
28:01
Speaker 1: angle to that, coming off of it, you've got what's
28:03
Speaker 1: called the back glass. And connecting the two is called
28:06
Speaker 1: the black box. And this is where all of your
28:08
Speaker 1: electronics and your solid state stuff goes. Yeah, your backglass
28:13
Speaker 1: is not only gonna have your scoreboard and your information,
28:15
Speaker 1: Like they'll say things like aim for the aim for
28:19
Speaker 1: the canyon. You know, they'll give you hints and little
28:23
Speaker 1: tricks along the way. Look out for the t rex
28:25
Speaker 1: look out for the t rex um. But it's also
28:28
Speaker 1: to the backglasses where like, if you're walking through your
28:31
Speaker 1: arcade in its that's where you're gonna see, That's where
28:35
Speaker 1: your attention is gonna go. So that's where you see
28:37
Speaker 1: the Playboy models on both sides of you Hefner or
28:40
Speaker 1: kiss looking cool so it's it's sort of an advertisement. Hey,
28:45
Speaker 1: come put your quarters into me. It's shiny, it's colorful.
28:49
Speaker 1: It's been money designing those things, and uh, a lot
28:52
Speaker 1: of those have become art. Now they'll remove them and
28:55
Speaker 1: frame them and hang them on the wall, which would
28:57
Speaker 1: be wicked cool, I think it would be. But I'd
29:00
Speaker 1: rather have the actual pinball game. Yeah sure. Um. So,
29:05
Speaker 1: like I said, back in the seventies, they they introduced
29:09
Speaker 1: solid state electronics. Prior to that, all pinball machines were
29:13
Speaker 1: electro mechanical. And at first, when I was researching this,
29:16
Speaker 1: I thought like, well, okay, so solid state took over everything.
29:19
Speaker 1: That's not the case. Solid state took over basically the
29:22
Speaker 1: back class. Everything else is still electro mechanical, or it
29:26
Speaker 1: was up until the very very very recent times, although
29:30
Speaker 1: they still might be electro mechanical. So, um, when you
29:33
Speaker 1: hit a bumper with your ball and it makes it
29:36
Speaker 1: like bounce and vibrate and you get some points, that's
29:39
Speaker 1: because you set an electrical impulse using an electro mechanical
29:43
Speaker 1: assembly to the motherboard, the solid state motherboard that's keeping score.
29:49
Speaker 1: So the motherboard is now keeping score. It's um. Now
29:53
Speaker 1: they can use digital sounds, so they could add speakers
29:55
Speaker 1: to the back glass and all the stuff, but the
29:57
Speaker 1: actual function of the the pinball machine while you're playing
30:03
Speaker 1: is still electro mechanical. Yeah, that's old school. Uh. And
30:06
Speaker 1: there's about a half a mile of wiring in each one.
30:09
Speaker 1: And um, if you come over to my brothers, he
30:11
Speaker 1: will show you the guts. He has his rigged where
30:14
Speaker 1: you can pull down the back back glass look under
30:17
Speaker 1: the hood. Yeah, basically, and you know it just looks
30:19
Speaker 1: like a huge mess of wires and half as a lot.
30:23
Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy. Um does he wear like a chain
30:27
Speaker 1: wallet when he works on his pa? I don't know. Maybe.
30:31
Speaker 1: Uh So the playfield itself, which is what everything is on,
30:34
Speaker 1: is tilted at about six to seven degrees towards you,
30:37
Speaker 1: and it is made of wood. And it's also very
30:40
Speaker 1: old school, you know, so at some point someone makes
30:42
Speaker 1: this like a wood based like cornhole, and it's got
30:46
Speaker 1: holes drilled in it, and it's got stuff painted on
30:48
Speaker 1: it and a bunch of layers of finish to keep it,
30:51
Speaker 1: you know, to protect it and to make that ball go. Yeah,
30:54
Speaker 1: but I mean that's basically it. It's pretty simple. Yes,
30:56
Speaker 1: some of the very newer ones um I guess from
30:59
Speaker 1: the twenty for century replaced the wood playing field with
31:04
Speaker 1: um uh, plasma screens or LCD screens. Yeah, but you
31:11
Speaker 1: know kids today, no thanks, um. But other than that,
31:14
Speaker 1: it's like screws and glue and would it's just it's
31:19
Speaker 1: fairly old school. Yeah, and still like entertaining. Pinball's challenging.
31:24
Speaker 1: That's why you hate pinball two thousand. Huh it was newfangled, Yeah, totally, like, hey,
31:29
Speaker 1: let's take something awesome and make it new for everybody.
31:33
Speaker 1: Like I hate that. You know, it's like taking some
31:36
Speaker 1: classic drink. Like you're a cocktail guy, so you know,
31:39
Speaker 1: let's add you know, let's had some some new oxygen
31:44
Speaker 1: eated something to the Manhattan. You're like, no, Manhattan's perfect.
31:49
Speaker 1: I don't know, oxygenated something. I just hate every Like,
31:54
Speaker 1: some things are perfect the way they are, and I
31:56
Speaker 1: think pinball is one of them. So, Chuck, you approached
31:59
Speaker 1: the pin ball machine, you put your quarters in and everything, um,
32:03
Speaker 1: and you either so you press the start button or well,
32:07
Speaker 1: once you press the start button, a ball should fall
32:09
Speaker 1: into the launch lane, which is the at the back
32:13
Speaker 1: of the launch lane is the plunger and some of
32:15
Speaker 1: the newer games, there's a solenoid which shoots it for
32:18
Speaker 1: you like a like a gun handle, trigger and stuff,
32:22
Speaker 1: instead of the plunger. Very clever, but again I'm into
32:25
Speaker 1: the like the plunger. Um one way or another, you're
32:30
Speaker 1: going to launch the ball. The advantage of a solenoid
32:33
Speaker 1: that launches it for your with the press of a
32:35
Speaker 1: button is that if you are playing a game and
32:37
Speaker 1: you're pretty good and the pinball machine decides it wants
32:41
Speaker 1: to see what kind of a wizard you are, it
32:43
Speaker 1: will send more balls into action. The way it does
32:46
Speaker 1: that these days is by using a solenoid. In olden
32:51
Speaker 1: days before the solenoid, say the eighties, Um, it's a
32:54
Speaker 1: little man inside. Well, you had to pull the plunger
32:56
Speaker 1: back yourself, and that meant you had to take your
32:59
Speaker 1: finger off of a flip for button. K man, Hey man,
33:02
Speaker 1: you better be quick. I kind of forgot about that,
33:04
Speaker 1: or you're dead. Yeah, that's why solenoids. That's the advantage
33:06
Speaker 1: they have. Yeah, I'll take that umu advancement that passes
33:12
Speaker 1: my bar. The solenoid is good. So let's talk about
33:15
Speaker 1: actual pinball play after this message. Chuck okay, scoring in pinball,
33:30
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, If you're a regular shmo like us,
33:33
Speaker 1: we're just trying to keep that ball on the table.
33:36
Speaker 1: But if you are a pinball wizard, then that means
33:39
Speaker 1: you know the game within the game and all the
33:42
Speaker 1: combination shots that you're specifically trying to hit in order
33:47
Speaker 1: to rack up the big, big big points. This is
33:49
Speaker 1: nuts to me. I have to tell you, I didn't
33:50
Speaker 1: even know that this existed until Yeah, I knew. I
33:54
Speaker 1: just you know, like, that's how poor my pinball playing is. Now.
33:57
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not any good either, But you you is
34:00
Speaker 1: your brother good? So you've seen him, Yeah, he's better
34:03
Speaker 1: than me. So they used this um in this article
34:06
Speaker 1: to use the example of a game called high Roller Pinball,
34:11
Speaker 1: and basically imagine this. While you're playing high Roller, um,
34:16
Speaker 1: you basically want to knock out some icons that are
34:20
Speaker 1: associated with poker. Once you've hit all the icons with
34:24
Speaker 1: the ball or something like that, so there're tiles that
34:26
Speaker 1: you knock down or whatever. Once you've hit them all,
34:29
Speaker 1: you've unlocked a game within a game. Yeah, and I
34:34
Speaker 1: think it starts with poker, and all of a sudden,
34:36
Speaker 1: you're playing pinball while you're also playing poker on the
34:40
Speaker 1: back class. Yeah, so like you're trying to hit a
34:42
Speaker 1: specific thing that will give you a specific card and
34:45
Speaker 1: a poker hand, let's say, And like you have to
34:49
Speaker 1: be you know, you have to You're trying to do
34:51
Speaker 1: this with your flippers game of skill, like we said, right,
34:53
Speaker 1: but at the same time, you're still playing your pinball
34:55
Speaker 1: game too, right, Well, I mean it's part of the game.
34:58
Speaker 1: So like you know, you'll know you've got the cards
35:01
Speaker 1: up on the backglass and I'll say, all right, I
35:02
Speaker 1: gotta hit that bumper to get a king. I'm aiming
35:06
Speaker 1: for that king the whole time. Okay, So if your
35:09
Speaker 1: brain hasn't melted yet, prepare for the finish. Once poker's done,
35:14
Speaker 1: there's like four or five other casino games that you
35:16
Speaker 1: play after that, and you play them in succession and
35:21
Speaker 1: and as you win them, you get closer and closer
35:24
Speaker 1: to this um special play mode called Casino Frenzy. That's
35:28
Speaker 1: what it's called in the high Roller Machine. Yeah, that's
35:32
Speaker 1: after you've won all the game, the poker games not,
35:35
Speaker 1: but yeah, all the games, and so you're playing Casino Frenzy,
35:39
Speaker 1: and that's what's called a Wizard Award where it's like, Okay,
35:43
Speaker 1: this kid's good. Now we're gonna really let them or
35:46
Speaker 1: her up their points by playing a special round. And
35:51
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the field is like flooded with
35:53
Speaker 1: balls and every bumper you hit is worth like hundreds
35:57
Speaker 1: of thousands of points and it's just scary and terrified. Yeah,
36:01
Speaker 1: multi ball is stressful for a guy like me. Same here, man,
36:05
Speaker 1: I just try and keep you know what happens to
36:07
Speaker 1: me and multi ball is I'll usually lose them all
36:10
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Like I can't even hold onto the one
36:12
Speaker 1: because it just it stimulates me too much. I'm like,
36:14
Speaker 1: what what happened? Me too? And I'm like, as long
36:17
Speaker 1: as I've got one, I'm break even. But with um,
36:20
Speaker 1: with Wizard Award functions, um, that's when you start to
36:25
Speaker 1: earn even more points. But imagine having like three or
36:29
Speaker 1: four or five balls on the field and the computer
36:32
Speaker 1: in the machine is telling you, like, hit this combination
36:35
Speaker 1: and we'll give you like twenty million points. And um,
36:39
Speaker 1: if you're even in Wizard Award ball, you're a pretty
36:43
Speaker 1: good pinball player, I would imagine for sure. And that's
36:46
Speaker 1: just the high roller game. But most games have a
36:48
Speaker 1: couple of games within the game that you should look
36:50
Speaker 1: out for and um, that's how you get your free game.
36:53
Speaker 1: If you've ever uh locked up or been super good
36:57
Speaker 1: and gotten um, you know, they'll tell you on the
37:00
Speaker 1: backglass how much you have to have, like replay value
37:03
Speaker 1: thirty million um. And that's what you're shooting for because
37:06
Speaker 1: you want to get that free game, not just because
37:08
Speaker 1: it's a quarter or whatever, but because it's like a
37:11
Speaker 1: big award. You know. It's like entering your name on
37:13
Speaker 1: the in the top ten in Galica. Right yeah, Um,
37:17
Speaker 1: so I didn't understand this. When you get a free game,
37:21
Speaker 1: is that like three free balls or one extra ball?
37:24
Speaker 1: I think it's three. I think it's a full free game.
37:26
Speaker 1: That would make sense. That's why they keeps calling it
37:29
Speaker 1: doesn't like reset R. Yeah. You can also fall backwards
37:32
Speaker 1: into a free game with something called match where I
37:35
Speaker 1: had never heard of this. Every once a while, the
37:36
Speaker 1: computer will just flash like a random number between what
37:40
Speaker 1: zero zero and ninety I think, yeah, multiple of ten
37:44
Speaker 1: and um, if the last two digits of your score
37:47
Speaker 1: at that moment happened to match that number, then you
37:49
Speaker 1: win a free game. It's like a little lotto game.
37:52
Speaker 1: And I think I've gotten a free game that way,
37:53
Speaker 1: because I remember getting free games before. But being like,
37:56
Speaker 1: how did I get a free game? I must, I
37:59
Speaker 1: must have hit the mat. You like just turned into
38:01
Speaker 1: Christopher walking in the dead zone. I saw that not
38:05
Speaker 1: too long ago. That holds up do um. But as
38:08
Speaker 1: far as replay goes, it says that most machines are
38:10
Speaker 1: set so you have to be in the top ten
38:13
Speaker 1: to get a replay, and you can get a second replay,
38:16
Speaker 1: but they have it maxed out at a hundred and
38:19
Speaker 1: fifty of the first, so a double replay is tough. Yeah,
38:24
Speaker 1: I mean you're Tommy at that point, or your last
38:26
Speaker 1: name is Sharp Yeah, I guess so. Um. And then tilt, chuck,
38:31
Speaker 1: you know, tilt, it's synonymous with pinball. Tilt is where
38:36
Speaker 1: you are being well, basically where you've been punishing the machine.
38:40
Speaker 1: The machine says enough, hands off, man, and basically, like
38:45
Speaker 1: we were saying early pinball machines, Um, the only way
38:48
Speaker 1: you can manipulate them before the flippers was to move
38:51
Speaker 1: the machine. You can bump it. So the tilt mechanism
38:53
Speaker 1: has been in place to prevent people from overly cheating
38:57
Speaker 1: by tilting the machine. By it's really the old timey contraption,
39:01
Speaker 1: and I guess it's still in use. It's pretty funny
39:03
Speaker 1: how old school it is. Basically, they have like I guess,
39:05
Speaker 1: like a copper copper wire with a circle on the end,
39:10
Speaker 1: a ring on the end, and dangling in the ring
39:13
Speaker 1: but not touching. It is like a metal ballast, right,
39:17
Speaker 1: and it's connected to the machine. So as long as
39:21
Speaker 1: the ballast is just swinging around freely within the ring,
39:24
Speaker 1: you can tilt as much as you like, and a
39:26
Speaker 1: skilled player knows how to tilt without getting caught, right,
39:30
Speaker 1: it's part of the game. But once you tilt too
39:33
Speaker 1: far and the metal ballast touches the copper ring, a
39:38
Speaker 1: current is formed and all of a sudden it sends
39:41
Speaker 1: that to the motherboard, and the motherboards is tilt. This
39:44
Speaker 1: is your first warning, and apparently most modern games give
39:47
Speaker 1: you two warnings, and then the flipper stop working and
39:50
Speaker 1: you lose your ball, and that's just losing one ball.
39:53
Speaker 1: If you really get upset, if your ball is stuck,
39:57
Speaker 1: or if you're just having a bad day at the
39:58
Speaker 1: office and you pick up the front of the machine
40:02
Speaker 1: and slam it down, that's called a slam tilt. And
40:05
Speaker 1: they have these little leaf switches inside the machine for
40:08
Speaker 1: that and if they touch each other, that means you
40:11
Speaker 1: have really taken things too far, and that is shut
40:15
Speaker 1: it down. No game, not worth taking your ball. They're saying,
40:19
Speaker 1: leave the machine. You're not gonna win any cigarettes doing
40:22
Speaker 1: that exactly. And that's the uh, that's the slam tilt.
40:27
Speaker 1: That's pinball, baby, Yeah, I got nothing else. I don't either.
40:30
Speaker 1: This is very exciting. I'm glad we finally did it.
40:32
Speaker 1: It's been on my list forever ever since I found
40:35
Speaker 1: out it was illegal. Yeah, you're like, oh, I I
40:37
Speaker 1: gotta get into that. But that was like a couple
40:39
Speaker 1: of years ago. I feel like, yeah, when I saw
40:41
Speaker 1: a special winlet, nice man, everybody go see that? Is
40:45
Speaker 1: that on the old Netflix? I believe it is tilt?
40:48
Speaker 1: Definitely is all right. I think special Winlet might be
40:51
Speaker 1: to add that to the former queue, which they had
40:53
Speaker 1: to change because Americans are dumb. What do they call
40:56
Speaker 1: it now? It's not called a list because people are like,
40:58
Speaker 1: what's a queue? Really? Why was it spelled like that?
41:02
Speaker 1: I hadn't noticed that they did that. Oh my goodness, Yeah,
41:04
Speaker 1: I've heard. That's the reason. It makes sense to me.
41:06
Speaker 1: I can't verify that though. Uh well, if you want
41:09
Speaker 1: to learn more about pinball, go check out special when
41:11
Speaker 1: let go check out kill check out the popular Mechanics
41:14
Speaker 1: article we mentioned eleven things you didn't know about pinball history.
41:19
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. And of course check out the article
41:23
Speaker 1: on how stuff works dot Com. Go to the search
41:25
Speaker 1: bar and type in pinball and it will bring up
41:27
Speaker 1: this article. Since I said search bar, it's time for
41:29
Speaker 1: listener mail. Yeah, this is via Facebook. Actually, um, in
41:34
Speaker 1: regards to our more Gallon's podcast, because one of our
41:39
Speaker 1: is it funny? I think it's more Gelan's. But you
41:43
Speaker 1: are literally the only person on the planet that calls
41:46
Speaker 1: it that fine, Um, Tyler Murphy are one of the generals.
41:52
Speaker 1: And the stuff you should know army and Facebook and
41:55
Speaker 1: email friend uh pinged, I guess a doctor end of
42:00
Speaker 1: his name, Chris Wells, and I was like, hey, dude,
42:02
Speaker 1: check this out. Do you know anything about this? And
42:04
Speaker 1: so he commented on there. I was like, hey, this
42:06
Speaker 1: is a listener mail. Can I use it? And he
42:07
Speaker 1: said yes. So he says he's only come across it twice.
42:11
Speaker 1: In both cases they brought stuff in, telling me it
42:14
Speaker 1: was eggs and bugs, eye along with my med technologists
42:16
Speaker 1: reviewed it under a microscope and it was mainly lent
42:18
Speaker 1: and hair follicles. One had some insight that it was
42:22
Speaker 1: not an actual infection and felt relieved. The other was
42:25
Speaker 1: very upset that I suggested otherwise, so he kind of
42:27
Speaker 1: got both ends of the spectrum. I would never treat
42:30
Speaker 1: um with an antiseptic I'm sorry anti parasitic med if
42:34
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was a real infection. The risk
42:35
Speaker 1: of causing harm versus fixing anything it's too high. Anti
42:39
Speaker 1: parasit meds can have all kinds of unwanted effects, from
42:42
Speaker 1: kidney and liver impairment, to lowering the threshold procedure to
42:45
Speaker 1: potentially being carcinogenic themselves. For every case of monsters inside
42:49
Speaker 1: me on TLC that goes undiscovered and later as found
42:53
Speaker 1: to truly have a parasitic infection, there are many more
42:56
Speaker 1: for there is no physical evidence of infection because they're
42:58
Speaker 1: simply not one. Uh. You feel really crappy as a
43:00
Speaker 1: physician though, when you have to tell someone that everything
43:03
Speaker 1: they brought into your office is all dust and lent,
43:05
Speaker 1: that there is no physical evidence for their ailments. The
43:08
Speaker 1: most important thing for a clinician. To remember is that
43:10
Speaker 1: even if this is all in their head or imagine
43:12
Speaker 1: or however you want to word it, the patient is
43:14
Speaker 1: still experiencing it, which is what we pointed out. So
43:18
Speaker 1: you need to try and treat the root cause, whether
43:20
Speaker 1: it be with continued reassurance in second opinion, within reason,
43:24
Speaker 1: or cognitive behavioral therapy or other means. And that is
43:29
Speaker 1: Chris Wells via our buddy Tyler Murphy. Cool. Thanks guys.
43:32
Speaker 1: Who Tyler is a teacher and in the summertime he
43:35
Speaker 1: works at the Big Putt Putt chain Putt Putt. No,
43:40
Speaker 1: that's it's like the Big Adventure Land or what I
43:42
Speaker 1: can't remember what it's called Hire Pirates Cove. Is that
43:45
Speaker 1: a chain? I don't know, it sounds like a chain. Anyway,
43:48
Speaker 1: that's what he does. Since it sounds like fun, It's like, man,
43:50
Speaker 1: I could totally do that would be yeah. Well, thank
43:54
Speaker 1: you very much you guys in uh, anyone else out
43:57
Speaker 1: there who has any further clarification on any episode we've
44:01
Speaker 1: ever done. We want to hear from you. You can
44:04
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You
44:06
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com slash You should
44:08
Speaker 1: know you can Send us an email to Stuff Podcast
44:11
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com and it's always good. Check us
44:14
Speaker 1: out at our home on the Web, Stuff you Should
44:16
Speaker 1: Know dot com for more on this and thousands of
44:23
Speaker 1: other topics because at how Stuff Works dot com