 All right. Hey, everybody. Having a little bit of a technical difficulty here with good things started. I actually was trying to bring on Ryan from Castlemania Games. And he was on a call and then we just dropped calls. So I'm trying to recall him right now. And hopefully, hopefully we could get him back on here and try to set that back up so that we can talk to him here today. As we do our show. Are you there? Can you hear me, Ryan? OK, well, I can't hear anything. I'll leave the call there. It's funny. We've been trying to set this up for the last 10 minutes. We had a little bit of a plan. Let's see. Where is the other camera? So I got that camera camera. OK, so this is let's see if we can get him back on here. We'll just see if he comes back. If he does, he'll show up down there in the corner where the opposite Sony signal signal signal is. Otherwise, we'll just have to go on and just tread on with the work we're doing today, which is this lovely. That's right. This is probably the biggest. You'll ever see this little PVM screen in action. It's the 5041 Q. All right, so let's just do a quick check here. I see that my audio for my microphone is coming in fine. Everything else looks to be coming in fine. It says on my feedback and it's just I lost Ryan on the call and I'm trying before we just jump into it. I'm trying to call him. So let's just see if we can get him on here. I'll give it a couple more tries before we give up. I'm going to put you back on the main camera here and try to get a call with him because I really did want to have him on and I know his time is limited. So anyway, I'll send him one more DM way. OK, that's what you got to love about live streaming folks. Anything can happen and we're used to it already because what I've got a good good amount of shows kind of under my belt to start with today. So it's not the first time that's technical difficulties, but I'm here to talk to you about this Sony PVM, which was unboxed in yesterday's stream. Hey, Stadia Martz, Master Safer, PO 17, Raceroni, Harry, Martin, overclock wise, Belmont. Just some quick shout outs to everybody in the chat. Hierme Soda, Tony Escobar. Thank you everybody who's coming in today and joining me on this special treat of a show. Excuse me. Again, I'm sorry, I do I do want to just wait a minute and see if we do get a chance to get back online with Ryan really before I start tearing into things. So Web, T-Rex welcome while I'm kind of waiting on him. Maybe I'll find some some charming background music and I do have a little bit of a story I can tell you guys that's happened to me. Oh, let's just start a little playlist of some background music. Oh, look at this how wonderfully Western and make sure it's not too loud. So yeah, he dropped call like right when I hit live. So unfortunately, and then I've called two three times since we haven't been able to reconnect. But anyway, that's how it goes. Sometimes I'm waiting. If he does send back to me, I will of course jump in and we can start the regular program we had planned and just going to keep an eye on the discord call. No, no updated response. I wish I had some better 16 music. Honestly, that's the one thing I didn't prepare for is the background music. Maybe it's a little more jazzy soothing coming up here. But all right. So I went or well today is especially the last day of school supposed to be the last day of school for my kids in elementary school and middle school and I had picked up my daughter from school yesterday and she was fine. But she went outside and was playing around the background music or background music playing around in the backyard. And she she came back inside and I noticed that one of her eyes was really red and so super red and I put some eyedrops in there with her and she went to bed and she woke up this morning in her poor thing. Her whole her whole right eye was completely swollen shut. So she didn't get to go to school in the very last day of school, which is probably like the only day most kids are excited to go back to school. So she I had to go rush over to a clinic with her this morning. Of course, they told me she had pink eye and it was going to both eyes. So she's upstairs home with me. But really interesting thing about this like story is that I had to I had a plan this morning. I'm supposed to travel and I needed to get some new tires put on my SUV, which is an Audi and it has like a really odd tire tire size and they always have to special order it. But this time I kind of needed them quick. I need a new set. So I go to this tire shop locally. I call them they can get the set on and they got them on today already. But I made the appointment for them to put the tires on this morning. It's like I'll be there. I'll drop this Audi off to you guys this morning and I said maybe I do it before they opened up. So I go get my car and well at first I had to take my kids to the clinic with my wife and I was like well over over here. Why don't I just drop the car off to the tire place. So we did that and I go in the tire place and again this is like me a new customer. Okay. First impressions. I go in. There's nobody working in in the little office, right? No one in there. It's empty. They have like an advertisement wall behind the desk and it's really modernized in there but a little shop area and then you can see over into the work base which they probably have five work base that they do all kinds of auto servicing not just but their tires they're called tire. So they're called something tire. So I go in there and I'm waiting for good. I don't know three or four minutes just standing there and then finally I see a bunch of guys starting to walk around in the shop base and you know I'm just looking I'm like oh well these guys are probably just the techs you know the mechanics because they all look like they've been working on machines all day so they are and it's only I mean there's nine in the morning at this point 915. So I finally see a bunch of them start to get together and one of them comes out and he's like the scrawny looking one and he walks out and he sees me standing there and he just starts coughing like crazy. He's like and he goes like his young guy to probably 20s. He's like excuse me and then he leans over the garbage can and hawks a huge loogie into it and then he's like so we're going to get this off your truck. That's what he says to me and I'm like what what are you even talking about and and he looks at me like I'm crazy and he's like what are you here for and I was like I had a tire appointment to get new tires put on my car and he's like oh well hang on hang on and this other guy walks in and he's like not much better than this other guy hey buddy how's it going how you doing dude and I'm like hey I'm I'm okay he's like look what are you for him like I had called about the tires for the Audi and he's like yeah yeah I've been waiting for you and I was like yeah my kid at pink guy what can you say I gotta I had to come I came a little late and he's like I need for about an hour like okay you know you take the put the tires on it and but I was really like nervous to drop my car off to him after the way they started I was like I really want to buy and I mean these are not cheap tires this tire for this Audi is like a lot of money we're looking at like I think they're like I don't even know I haven't paid the bill yet I mean installed they're probably like 4500 bucks apiece I don't think they're 500 that's not true they're gonna be about 400 apiece I bet installed and with taxes and everything but I was like what the heck you know I'm a new customer I'm coming by this expensive tire and you send out the crazy people so anyway I haven't got the car back yet so we'll we'll see what happens when I go get it and I know that race asked me if I and hey shot out to Abe's games and skates Cody dragon rude Stephen Schneider and race listen I know that we always talk about Costco on like Twitter and I went there but the problem is is they didn't have this size in stock they will they only had two in I have to leave and by a certain date and this was the only place I could pretty much get it right away done I mean one of a few but less CD than the other ones I thought maybe I was wrong and we'll see hopefully they at least put the tires on because it'll be pretty unsafe if they didn't yeah not I hope it's not a shop shop but they did yeah they wouldn't give very far in that car but alright so we're going for about a good 15 minutes unfortunately I think we probably just have to wait for another time with Ryan I'm not I'm not seeing anything back but yeah I wanted to go there first I tried to actually went there twice to double check to make sure because I would have saved probably 200 bucks to and had not to deal with crazy people and Costco says they'll have your tires done you literally walk around the store one time and your tires are actually done alright yeah they don't I used to use discount tire to p017 I'd ever but they don't have them now where I moved to so alright guys let's let's just check it out first off on the main camera again we're looking at we're looking at the Sony PVM 5041 Q and we're going to we're going to do some servicing to it I got a cap kit that I think is going to work for it. So if I go to overhead here let's switch over to that first second this is the same cap kit look at this programs got me always something hang on for a second folks there we go back to where I want to be okay that way you don't have to look at it upside down this is a Superman save on pads capless for the 8041 I did make a change because I just something wasn't right on it like to do this kit and then we're also going to do the which I've already got my tackle box here built with all my replacement parts in here and then I'm going to replace the potentiometers here that control the color on NTSC there and maybe even pal but these need to be changed on the color board to prevent color loss on NTSC or on composite or S video signals and we have to add this little guy between them. We'll talk more about that when that comes. We get to that so again here's the PVM. We had another super close up. I'm just going to grab it here in a second and then I'll probably have to go back to the face can and zoom out a little bit and we'll just kind of work on it here while we tear it apart and that's it not out. So let me go grab this guy and here we are and I just got a text on my phone. Let's see what it says it could be from Ryan or it could be from the Mrs. All right. He says he's back. Let me try to call him. Let me try to call him and we'll see if he can look up with us here. Let me turn my he's asking if it's awkward. Well, I don't really know. Let's see. Let's just try to call him and while we do that I'm going to pause the background music everybody. This is what the fun part is about doing a live show. Right. We've got the monitor here. Now if you wonder what I'm looking at, I'm looking at my discord call. Let's see if I could start the video call. Are you there? Let's see. All right. I think you're here. Excellent. Yes. Okay. Great. This is good. This is good. Let me get you just resituated. Everybody's cool. It's no big problem. We will go over. Well, which one should we go? We should go this one probably now because it's time to look at the pvm and see we had you. I had you where you weren't so large as before, but now we'll just have to speak. He's the smaller. So we'll be the same size because I wanted to zoom in the camera out just to touch. All right. Well, good timing. We welcome in Ryan from Castlemania games and let me turn his audio up just a little bit. Ryan, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. Good to see you again. Yeah. Good to see you too. It's been, uh, it's been almost a year now. Yeah. Yeah. I think the last time we say each other was probably in Connecticut. Yep. That would be absolutely true. I've been doing good since then. There's a lot of people in the chat. Some people came over and, uh, yeah, they were very happy to have you here. So yeah, yeah, we're, uh, right. So yeah, while you were off, I was just killing the time by taking apart the pvm or pulling it down here. But, uh, kind of just look through this thing and before we get too deep into that, we can have a little chat here and set this up like that. So it kind of stays right. There's a good arm rest. It's a little warm, but, uh, yeah. So what's, uh, what's going on with you? Are you going to plan to go to Connecticut again? You think? I am trying to make that happen. Um, that would be great. I would love to go back and if I do, I'm going to stop in. Uh, I'm going to find a New York first. Uh, that's kind of the rough idea for that. And then, uh, drive in that way. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Um, I was talking to a bunch of people. Unfortunately, I'm not thinking it's going to be real tough for me to make it there this year. Um, just because my wife works at a school now and that's like the back to school week right before that for her and my kids. So it's like, oh my gosh. So I kind of had to just wait, make it a last minute thing if it happens during the weekend. Uh, but anyway, uh, what else has been going on? What's you got, uh, what's been happening, you know, over at Castle Mania games lately? Uh, things have been busy. A lot of stuff is starting to show up, uh, which seems to just come in waves, uh, which is great. Um, uh, you know, cause we're able to get a lot of things out and make room and get people taken care of that sort of thing, uh, which we definitely, uh, are looking forward to doing this particular next week we're going into we are, uh, well, a couple of us are going to go down to Vegas for the, um, licensing expo. So I'll be keeping my eye open for opportunities to do some cool things there. Um, I have some ideas. So, uh, you know, it's always a great thing. It's a good networking opportunity and lots of cool things to come, but, uh, yeah, it's over right now. I mean, we're just busy, busy, busy. Every single day, um, literally seven days a week shipping and kidding and assembling and programming things. So it's been kind of a whirlwind of a year so far. We're already in June. Yeah, I know. I feel you summertime is already here. It seems like the year has just like exploded by fast, especially this year. Uh, yeah. So, um, I actually had to laugh because the last time we did get together, I remember you were selling a couple of the games that you had available that were extras. It was, um, I'm looking at the guy air is right. Is that how you say that? Yeah. And, uh, I'm a man, why are the words? Right. And so, yeah, I picked up. I remember picking up a couple of copies of it and then laughing cause you're like, man, uh, was like guy air is sold out in like an hour or a couple of hours. And, and then I looked on eBay and people were trying to basically list them before they left the hotel. I think you were selling them for lower than the prices that they were actually listed for on the secondhand market. Right. Well, that's what we do. So when, um, games come in, uh, that are pre-orders like that or really anything, um, where there's any like limitation around its quantity, um, I'll hold back, you know, a case or two of a given title. And, uh, mostly that's for just warranty, um, type of stuff. And then, uh, once the sufficient period is gone by, uh, we bring them to conventions and we sell them there, um, depending on the inventory level, I might take them to, um, uh, take them to the website as well. But, uh, we just sell them for what we originally sold them for. And, and I know full well that they're going for double, triple, whatever on eBay. Um, so right now, uh, actually tomorrow, uh, the Valus collection shows up and I know that's going to be one that, that that's going to happen to, um, similar to Toplan where, um, it's like a complete box set and who missed it or whatever, uh, they're going to want to get that one later. Um, it's going to, it's going to be tough, you know, but we will be bringing them to, if I go to retro world, we'll be bringing them there. Um, uh, certainly having that Portland, that kind of a thing. Oh, it's just a tough thing. You know, it's with, with those limited pressings of things, but I'm getting ready to go to, um, Portland as well. Okay. Uh, which getting, getting some of these booths ready, you know, um, is taking more and more time to kind of plan and prep properly. Um, see you've got to get all your, your sign engine, all this kind of stuff. And then if you're going somewhere, um, far away, you've got to think about the logistics of getting your stuff there inexpensively and getting it back. Actually, um, took a whole bunch of stuff to, um, the Milwaukee classic gaining Expo, which was the last week in a March kind of weekend leads into the very beginning of April. And I actually just received a lot of my booth signage, uh, back from freight. So that, that was a little bit of a learning curve on that one. I'm glad I didn't have anything that I needed to bring that stuff to right away. Um, traveling across the country to set up a booth can be a little bit of a challenge, but that particular convention, I would highly recommend. Yeah. The Milwaukee one. Okay. I want to ask this Portland to run for its money. I think I had more fun. Yeah. More fun at the Portland or excuse me, the Milwaukee, um, classic gaming because it's a, it's a, um, it's, it's at least has the footprint of, um, Portland in terms of square footage, uh, but they've got so much extra stuff going on that once the vendor floor is closed, it's, it's, they've got the free play arcade stuff going on, but they've just literally got like a party going on on all levels of the convention center in every room you dive into. It's like they're featuring some, you know, type of aspect of our culture, whether it's like there was bands doing covers of, uh, video game soundtracks or, uh, there were rooms where people were demonstrating products, you know, um, things that they were working on or developers that were working on things. So it's kind of like every corner you went around with something cool going on. Um, and you know, that was cool. And also to the fact that it was connected to the hotel so you can kind of like leave the vendor floor, get changed, freshen up, whatever. And then you're, you didn't really leave the convention. You're still there. You just go back downstairs and it's still you're still there. Uh, so really nice setup there. I highly recommend that one. That's cool. I've not, um, the one, I've just gone to basically a couple of conventions and I only go, uh, last year I went to two and that's like the most I can almost schedule. How many, how many are you going to now? You'd say during the year then like how many will you go to in 2023? In 2023, I'll have gone to a CES, which is really more of an industry focused convention. It's nothing like what I just talked about at all. Um, it's, it's really there for people who have, have like a business reason to be there. Uh, there is some media presence there. Um, but you don't really, there's no like fans of like gaming or really anything. Uh, going on there because CES covers really everything. Um, they have a gaming hall, but they also have a hall for new vehicles coming out. They have a hall for home automation and they have a hall for 3D printing, so on and so forth. Then it takes up the entire like Vegas for it's not in one building. It's in all of them. You know, pretty much there's something going on with CES. Uh, so that's a big one that's in January, um, then we went to Milwaukee in March, um, planning to go to retro world in August and then Portland will be, um, in October and that's probably it for this year. Although I do have, um, a little bit of a different schedule planned for next year because I want to start getting, um, visiting some of the states like in the South, like Texas, um, Southeast, um, you know, I want to go to like too many games, Southeast game exchange stuff like that as well. So we'll just see. Yeah, the other one, uh, well, the one I've done the most is in where I used to live around Nashville, Tennessee area. And actually I was laughing because it was excited, kind of started off as something a little bit smaller, more focused on like pinball and arcade. And, uh, then each year they keep adding more and more and more, um, stuff. And even this year I noticed where like my life in gaming was announced that they were going and, uh, a couple other people that I do know, the normal people we see and I was laughing. I was like, Oh, I didn't even know you guys were going to be at this show. Usually it's not, there might be one or two other people, uh, that I see at that show that comes to it from out of town, but they're trying to grow. I saw, I imagine there's a bunch of other that, that kind of a, uh, event. Some of those still seem to do really, really well for like foot traction. Right. I mean, have you seen there? So do you think there's still a lot? I mean, noticed a lot of people. I know it's probably not crazy levels, but what do you think about Milwaukee? Was there a lot? Like I'll always love people around. I mean, I mean, it was just like I say, um, like with Milwaukee in particular, um, everywhere you looked like constantly there was the presence of the convention. Um, as far as tenants goes, um, you know, everyone talks about Portland as like the big retro gaming expo in the US. Um, and it is, uh, but I really feel like Milwaukee is right up there too. Um, and, uh, you know, so it's, it's nice that geographically there's something major like that, um, closer, you know, to the Midwest and the East Coast for people. Um, but I wanted to also say with regards to the one that you were talking about in Tennessee. I mean, that's how these things start. Um, and it's good to get out there and support those, uh, conventions that are just getting going, uh, because it's us in the community that keep them going. Um, so even if they don't have, uh, guests from out of town in the first couple of years, you know, it's good to just get out there and support them. And also it's like a completely different, um, vibe really. Um, I think if you're going to your local convention, because, uh, like here in Seattle, oddly, we don't really have a gaming convention in Seattle, despite the fact that we're in Nintendo's backyard. We're in Microsoft's backyard. Um, if there's tons of game developers and companies that are all over the city, yet we have no real gaming convention. Um, we have Pax West, which is a major, like kind of corporate, um, you know, convention, which is awesome. Um, and we're lucky to have that. And then we have, um, there's one in a, in a suburb of Seattle called, uh, Renton. That's the name of the city. And they do something. I think it's called like Renton City Retro or something like that. Um, and that one's kind of coming up. But what's cool about it is you have this, like different network of people that you, you correspond, like a lot of my friends that are in the local, like gaming community, you know, I know them very well because I know them in person. Uh, but they're a different crowd than, than what you might, how you might like hang out, enjoy a show at a Portland or at a Milwaukee. This is all different. So it's, it's cool to build those local connections as well. Um, and I would say if there's something like that coming up in your area supported, I kicked around the idea of trying to get my own, uh, start one of my own that's really gaining focused, you know, that's, uh, that would be something like this. So we'll see. Yeah, I've, I've, uh, that's a good topic. I've actually thought about what if there was something like that and, um, I thought if there was something where we could actually make it more special where, you know, with a lot of the people we know we could offer. Imagine if there was like specific almost like seminars available from people that are only going to be at a show like that is going to come from somebody within the industry that kind of knows the value of that and how to almost push that together. Like my idea was again, like something that, for example, you'd have a classroom where you could go in a session of where I would do something on a CRT or somebody like, you know, if you get lucky, you could have Voltar come in and do a console something and, but anybody, you know what I mean? Like something really cool like that would, would I think do well, but it's hard. That's a lot to like invest into and a big idea kind of. Yeah. Well, start out small. Yeah. Bring in one or two people out if you can or just use your own like set of tools, what you have at your disposal and like let it grow. We'd kicked around the idea of demoing, you know, discharging, um, your CRT before you work on it and stuff like that, you know, obviously there's some like liability stuff that you have to consider. But if you were showing it and doing the Bob disclaimer of, you know, the chances of, you know, or not zero and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, like you're saying having like workshops kind of like, you know, they actually had one at Milwaukee. And I apologize. I don't remember who it was that was might have been a game dad who has a YouTube channel. Pretty sure it was him. He was doing one where you would bring is like a Game Boy Advance, I think bring your own Game Boy Advance and he'll have the kits there to mod it and they were doing I don't know what they were doing screen mods or consoleizing or they were doing something like that. But everyone that went into that demo at workshop left what they fully modded Game Boy Advance and you know, it's like one of those things where you're going step by step through it. If you get stuck, you know, you have people there that can help you. So they had all the stations set up for everyone that wanted to sit there and mod their console. So like that, like you're saying it's a little like tighter focused on what it is that we do and our corner of this hobby would I think do really well rather than just the pop culture as a whole approach. Yeah, that's so that's that was the thing about the I noticed this show that I had been working with for years. It went from being like one kind of con to like game con to video games to multi con because it's trying to draw in. They don't exactly know they're getting a bunch of people and like one year they tried to do an outdoor DJ booth. But this is in like late October in Tennessee at night and outside. It's windy, cold and rainy in October most of the times and even if it's dry, it's usually chilly. So it was it was a bad idea that night of the year. So I give them kudos for like dropping some of those things and changing and trying and bringing in new people. And but the experience to me of going in there too and and actually getting to go and do like shows. It's almost like a stand-up comic routine or something. You get to see kind of how an audience. If you get one to show up to a class you're giving how they react, what you could do differently. And then I know it's helped me because it's like the last one I was able to go in and really do a crazy hands-on one where I was, you know, just opened up the CRT and just spin the yoke around and mess with, you know, an image and people would just look at it and talk about it a little bit as a big but because but the thing like you say is most of those situations are you get one hour to do the class maybe 45 minutes to an hour and then it's like it's got to be over. So you can't even you can't make it too detailed. A lot of times on the bigger cons but yeah, maybe something where you have more time to sit down doing a whole course level of things that would be multiple hours. It would be great. Basically, I think where a lot of this conversation that we're having outcomes from is the last couple of retro creates, which is basically a meetup of us. In the case last year where we we basically was the the pre show before retro world Expo, which is I think a great way to do it to have something like that where you're not like like constricted to a panel because somebody else has to like come in in 30 minutes you got to somehow cram what normally takes you a couple hours to get through when you're doing this. In your shop you got to like condense it down like that and you don't get that interactivity to maybe do something where the schedules not as densely packed and have that going on. It'd be great to get people like shank out there and actually just start cutting some wee motherboards and you know Yeah, yeah, it'd be cool to like watch him do it and see see kind of that setup process that he takes to like figure out, you know, mark everything out figure out where he's going to cut and what he's going to do and sets you know what I mean all that kind of stuff I think kind of gets in people's heads about like you know, like he can plan something to death. I think a lot of people run into that who want to get into like modding something or doing whatever. It's like I've got to have all these tools. I've got to have all this stuff not realizing that a lot of us just started out with the the Kessker iron that Voltar showed us and just kind of sprinkled and added things from there but you just got to get going so to like watch somebody do it and see like oh really you just need a couple of things and you can get this project going watching somebody do it where you can stop and ask questions because you know as much as we try to anticipate questions when we're writing out a process we don't think of some of the things we take for advantage or for granted rather you know what I mean so that interactivity would be a cool approach to something like this. I think we should do it. What do you think Steve? Yeah, we'll see. Well, I mean I've got a look I've got locations but again it would be on the East Coast here. Yeah, that's fine. And it's like most of the contacts in this kind of yeah within a lot of people in New York City area and I don't yeah, I don't know if that's why you're going there and starting from there for that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, I haven't I haven't gone to Brooklyn video games or or any of that stuff and you know I know a lot of the crew you know the New York crew but I haven't I've never even been in New York in my entire life. So really yeah so I figure I mapped it out if I do go there which I'm planning to do so start out in New York and then I could go through Philadelphia and hit and then get to Connecticut. So I think that would be a good little trip. So would you rent a car in New York or would you like take public transit? I'd rent a car and then just return it at the rental and Connecticut. Okay. That's what I did when I went to Milwaukee because earlier this year when I went to Milwaukee I went to Milwaukee drove around the city checked it out but really I went down to Chicago. Okay. Checked out the Chicago video game stores met up with some people spent the day at the HD Retrovision Lab and headquarters there which was about 10% business and 90% me and Steve just playing video games the shop but a lot of fun and that's cool. I have not seen Steve since like the first time we all met back in pre COVID at the first meetup which which is funny the kind of reminisce I'm back on that hotel don't wear almost right. Yeah, that was that was an interesting one because it was technically in Connecticut or excuse me Kentucky. It was like Cincinnati Kentucky or something right like right on the line yeah you'd go outside and look around and there was nothing around of you. Yeah. You know it was one burger place. That was it. Uh-huh. Yeah, it was definitely kind of out there but it was it was a cool it was a cool starting point but I hadn't seen Steve since that first time and a couple guys since then so but I had imagined since you guys do business together you talk to them more often. I talked to to Nick the most but I do talk to Steve pretty frequently as well but like I say even then you know it's mostly not about work stuff when we get to chatting it's just the same kind of nonsense we banter about on Twitter but yeah. Be on a phone call or text or whatever. What? Yeah. What what kind have you gotten any new now? You know I used to talk to you more about CRT stuff not so much the last I feel like six months what have have you been getting any new CRTs at all or just not even just just still got the stuff you have there at the shop in your house. Yeah. Like three or four pvms and pvms don't remember the skews off of the top of my head but the ones I have are used for the 129X card and the 68X but it does become this thing where you well you know I mean you one leads to another right so it's actually just over at Super Genie's house he's the guy that does the G comp and G SCART switch and he's got amazing collection had no idea he's a huge PS1 guy he's got tons of his one stuff and like just really cool like he's got a complete set you know and when I say complete I mean every region everything wow insane but he's got some different monitors that he's looking to sell so I might be picking up a couple at least one more oh yeah yeah so a big one or a small one couple small ones okay yeah I'd like to get something that I can put up on my actual bench where I do a lot of my testing right next to you like I use that one that great made that looks like a CRT yeah talking about I'd like to get something something out there in that kind of footprint size like a nine inch yeah or a bench or something or a ridiculous I mean this the funny thing is this five inch I'm working on it's almost as whoops almost as long as a eight inch it's so long and just as a tiny screen and it has a so this little kick stand which is kind of cool and unique yeah yeah something like that what kind of what kind of inputs does that well so there's the eight inch ones which have actually done like I've I've restored like three or four of them last couple weeks a BBM one and a PBM one and but they have different inputs this one only has composite RGB and component so pretty limited the other one would have like an S video input also the eight inch ones yeah and then but see there's this other one that is the nine inch that is the L series which is like 9L 2 9L 3 those actually have so you could put in the the cards the 129 X cards and those those run off the cards yeah so those might be a good one to get and they're actually new or they have full like menu and it's like the same as the I think one of the ones that you bought for me a few years ago was the 14L or 20L 2 I think yeah that's the one that's in my main setup okay actually actually using that's cool yeah get some more people saying hey in the chat hello hello Felipe hello Bonnie and hello to anybody else has been jumping in we just been kind of chilling talking about convention stuff what's been going on with Ryan and I think before we get too deep into things I know Ryan's up against the time limit so we'll let we'll just probably hang out and chat for like another couple minutes if that's okay with him and then we'll do the majority of the monitor stuff afterwards after we let him off but so yeah if there's anything else I don't know if there's anything else it's like that you have coming up that we should mention I don't know you know if you want you're welcome to talk about it or say it you know yeah I mean like we have we do have another like retro bit release that will be announced soon like this month will be announcing that's about as much as I can say about that you know but we do have some more stuff coming up like that people are like I was saying earlier when we first got going people who are waiting on a vales collection that's showing up tomorrow okay so we're cranking out orders this weekend all the pallets will arrive at our shop tomorrow and you know it'll usually it's like the end of the day when they show up so we'll just kind of get things set up when we when we do like shipments like that we actually reconfigure our shop entirely so I'll be doing that tonight the shop we have intentionally set everything up on wheels so all of the shelving all of them like you'll have like an eight foot long section of shelving just unlock the casters move it out of the way and we like set up like a huge production so you'll have like a couple aisles product that just condenses down okay and we wheel in like this machinery to like it literally like bolts and tapes the boxes for you and all this stuff but it's the only way to get through orders like this because you know there's just so many of these I'm talking about like the the games primarily from like retro bit where you look at literally thousands it's just the same order over and over and over and over again we have to kind of reconfigure the shop for it so so that's what I'll be doing tonight in this weekend and then because saying I'm going to the licensing expo which my main goal there is to work out partnerships with different brand IP owners and it's literally everything you can think of every major brand is there you know I mean like everything you can think of big to small they're there and you can work out deals for using artwork on products so for example the retro game restored and Muramasa like replacement console shells the like the NES and the Super Nintendo ones be bringing some of those to we have some appointments to discuss what artwork could be used on some of those and so you'll get some custom like actually officially licensed branded replacement console shells got a couple appointments that I made as follow-ups from last year's on some publishing stuff so working with people who are using tools like NES maker which you might recall was kind of across from me yeah I remember really cool tool people don't know about NES maker they should check it out where it kind of gives somebody who wants to make again the tools necessary to do that specifically in that case for the NES you have to work your way through the tutorial and like anything learn how to use the software but then after that away you go and so we've had a few people come to the rondo publishing option which is the wholesale kind of different it's you know it's the wholesale hesitate to say arm because it's actually technically a different company but it's the wholesale arm of like Castlemania where a lot of these exclusive things that we've developed in partnership with people or on our own and we're producing those for distribution to game stores which is why for example I would go to New York and write down really I'm hitting a slew of video game stores the whole way down to introduce rondo to them sure but the rondo publishing I'm working with Renee from DB electronics to develop you know properly built and designed PCBs for Genesis SNES triple graphics 16 mega drag Genesis all these games right to basically do our own bit of publishing for more of the indie devs out there and with that we get a license from you know a brand that makes sense for a game where it makes sense you can swap over to it and do an official release of something so that's some of my goals for the show next week that's pretty great so let's I got a couple actually interesting questions here from the chat and I thought we could go and hit some of these up real quick someone Cody dragon rude asked does Castlemania stock ever cave consoles ever you do we should have I think we might have just sold out of the BS premium the BS is the actual console that's meant to hook up your TV where you play like traditionally as like on a console we should have a starter sets and the difference between the starter and the premium set is premium comes with two controllers instead of one and also has to pack in games where I think the starter doesn't but if we're out of those we should be getting more okay but I'm pretty sure we should have those and we do have the ESP which is their handle in stock I know that for sure all right and then cool and Felipe was asking if you had any updates on time sleuths which is a question I actually do get some time yeah time slips yeah so we actually just got those back and I just grabbed the shells for them out of our warehouse and brought them to the shop so what happened on the time sleuth Felipe probably got the email a few weeks back we actually they were built in correctly we had to send them back to the fabricator rebuild and sometimes that happens where it's something we can do we can fix it on the fly like I've had things where a surface mount component was mounted backwards or whatever and I can desolder and solder it back and place myself faster than it would take to ship it back and forth in this case the FPGA was rotated 90 degrees the wrong way and I mean that's like tons of little tiny pins that you're gonna screw that I would screw that up so I just sent it back to the fab and how to read it it was just a ride back so those are probably in the queue for today to be reflashed if not tomorrow but I would expect to see those shipping before next week wow that's okay cool that's one of the items I mean it doesn't take much to prep it it takes just less than a minute to flash them and I'm not doing all that so it's not I don't do literally everything some of this is other people doing it so that'll be prepped and ready and start shipping this week before we leave that's one of the items I have as a it has to be done before I leave item all right great so that's gonna that okay now master safe rest does Castlemania sell ever drives yet is there any plan to ever sell ever drives you think yes we can sell overdrives we have carried them in the past and actually do have some leftover stock that I could list right right away from when we did stock it before that the problem with the ever drive is their expensive items very low profitability so you have to like sink 10 $20,000 into something and then wait three months to make a few hundred bucks so for me I'd rather sink that money into something that's turns quicker it makes more sense financially because it's not a it's like oh you like the like go after things with higher profit it's when you sink all that money into something like that you now can't sink it into other products so you have to kind of like pick and choose because there is a finite amount of money in the coffers right so if I tie it all up and something like that and that means I can't go ahead and bring in like you know more make major hurts Xbox kids or I can't produce another run of GC duals right away you know and those items are just a little a little more like that's what people expect when they come to our store it has been on my radar to bring in the ever drives though and what we do will probably just like we did before go with the they have all these iterations like they have the Everdrive and then the X5 and then the X7 and then the X whatever like all these like tiers and describe the highest tier one generally and roll with that because that's the other thing when you look at the SKU count and you've got to bring in enough to not run out immediately and it's a big investment that just takes time but yeah we will bring them in it's just well I think it's at the same time like you said when no matter what almost size business you are just about you are going to have a limit on what your company can really invest capital in you know you need to manage that to make sure that like you said you're not the price of some of those items is so high and then I don't you know there's a lot of people who want these things they say they want them but I don't feel like it's probably something like you said it takes months to recoup that money when when in the you know you can in the same time use those funds to hopefully move things faster through your business but also provide services that really are unique for your business yeah like we've tended to focus more on mod kids then things like that and those take a lot of capital too so I mean it's just and like not everything makes a ton of money there are items that we do just as a pure like kind of pet well even like this last batch of cheese carts that we did and we're in the process of assembling right now that was a break even you know on those and I knew it going in so I'm not saying like that wouldn't make something like like I don't like live and die by that rule like everything you know but sometimes it's like the GCOM and that has everything to do with the parts shortage parts shortage yeah why the why the price is so high to produce those right now but we were able to produce the GCOM and be profitable but we weren't able to do it with the G SCART so I just made fewer of them than I wanted to I wanted to keep the product relevant I know a lot of people were wanting them and asking for them so we do do that kind of thing stuff we do with like virtual boy you know as much likes and as many retweets and things as it gets it is a lower selling item you know so we stay engaged on things that kind of like matter to me too personally every chance I get to do anything like master system for example I jump at you know we're doing more with the Jaguar which is super niche really that's what we're doing stuff with Humble Bazooka and it's not because that's like a banger of an item it's just because I think it's cool and I want to support products that don't get the huge support that like a Nintendo product might get you know but yeah we've got to sort of like balance all of that stuff because you can't do everything for the sake of doing it you have to stay profitable or quickly find yourself not doing anything yeah I can totally yeah imagine and understand that completely so unrelated to any kind of stock or anything question this was for both of us but I'll put it to you first says what is your favorite or what are some of your favorite games and why and I don't know if that has anything to do with the name of Castlemania anywhere or if that is just a cool not not involved also with that so Castlemania isn't just a cool not obviously to Castlevania it is a game I enjoy playing but I wouldn't say it's my favorite game or anything like that it just happened to be a name that I can make kind of work and it popped in my head that way so like as far as my favorite games go on the NES the first kind of two that come to mind are Rygar and Metroid now Rygar is always going to be like at the top of my list because when I got the NES for the first time we went into Toys R Us and we got the NES and they only had the like a camera was called it's like the challenge set or whatever it was it's just the the system and a controller that's it no game and so my mom said well you can get one game you guys pick just one game and you know at the time so this is 88 probably I think I was 7 we're just looking at the box art and I saw the Rygar box art and I was like a big key man fan you know so I just see this like key man looking like guy sort of like he could fit in that universe I'm like that's the one that's what we're getting you know and I remember it kind of happened to like get my brothers to roll with me on this you know so we got home and Rygar what is the game so for me that'll always be like top of mind but I also remember when one of my neighbors came over and you get the Nintendo NES like everyone's kind of coming over from the neighborhood and like bringing their games you know and one of my friends bought Metroid and it just blew my mind I was just like it had no idea I guess I don't know what I was expecting but Metroid was just I just remember sitting there and it felt like the world was so big in that game and exciting that that's probably Rygar and Metroid I play through every year for sure typically around Christmas for both of them in fact I typically play most gaming in the winter in the summer I go hiking and do other things like that outside of work as far as modern games just to answer from both ends of the spectrum as far as modern games go game series that I every release get to couple of them Far Cry is probably my favorite like open world style games that come out Ubisoft gets kind of a bad rap for like oh big world with a bunch of waypoints on it you know where it's like all these small activities but for me that's perfect because I can kind of come in and out of playing that game and I don't really lose track of where I was because there's all these pins on the map and I can just keep exploring so I like that game and then also always play the Call of Duty's every year when they come out okay but I only strictly the campaign don't do the like multiplayer stuff yeah alright well you know I would go closer I would go on like my experience would be closer towards the end of an era of gaming I have a good fond memory of this one would have been Super Nintendo about 95 so I would have been 11 ish this time and I had helped my one of my best friend at the time move his parents or his mom and his grandma moved to this house from where they lived in an apartment next to us and I remember I helped them all week and their gift was they took me to this store that was called media play which doesn't exist anymore and it was like this huge warehouse style of like best buy pre best buy almost and they said I could get any game in there and I still only had like the Super Nintendo and I went in and I grabbed chrono trigger on the box and I just because I looked at it and first off I was like she said any game and it was the most expensive game it was like it was like 10 or $20 more than the other games that were Super Nintendo games you know this is 95 so there weren't a ton of them left out all over the place and I just remember seeing that I had no idea what it was but it was expensive and it had where you could be a frog on the cover with a sword and I was like I got to try this game out and like that was really the first time I'd ever played any kind of an RPG or anything like that so that was a really fun experience I remember like playing it forever and like getting stuck in places and leaving the game for a while and coming back and finally getting through it and that's probably one of the ones I still have a huge fond memory of I did go back probably three years ago and fully beat it every like all the way where you get all the weapons according to the guide because none of that that was a funny thing about stuff too you get games before and you'd if you wanted to you'd have to try to hunt down a strategy guide physical copy somewhere right maybe you could order one somewhere but it wasn't as easy nearly as easy as it is now to even figure out what was going on in the game a lot of times yeah you know on those games so that's an interesting answer because I have never played that game you know and I know it's one of those ones that is heavily you know it's regarded as like one of the better games that era I did play Final Fantasy 2 or Final Fantasy 4 okay but when it came out and that was I mean as far as Super Nintendo time frame goes because I played the original Final Fantasy on the end yes that was a huge I mean and at that point you're like a little more into the like cold what I was talking about before with Ragar and naturally those were like my introductions to gaming but like once you got into it I remember playing Final Fantasy and then we did have the strategy guide we had the Nintendo power official strategy guide and I think that might have been before other companies were even making third-party strategy guides could be wrong and then the when the Super Nintendo came out Final Fantasy 2 came out pretty quick if I recall also the only RPG that I ever level 99 all my characters but that one's one that I've completed Final Fantasy 2 I can even guess like a dozen times at least and I've even played through some of the wrong hats you know of it so that's that's one where I'm like that's one of my favorite games and it's my favorite of the series I have played Final Fantasy 6 that's gonna be most people's answer for me it's 4 but I haven't played Chrono Trigger yet so I know I need to make that happen I did play Secret of Mana during that time though see and that's the thing like Chrono Trigger I only learned about Chrono Trigger after the fact like getting back into gaming again yeah because I've been like it's like that age where I think that you fall off I mean I think you're probably it sounds like a couple years older than me so it's like again we're going through these phases of like I went and gamed like almost to 98 and then I fell off where I kind of got later in the high school college kind of took a break from the majority well I mean I still did game but it wasn't like that was everything kind of you know what you're concerned about yeah for me I played I was regularly playing video games all the way through high school through my senior year and so I graduated in 99 and you know that's when PS1 was out I was playing like Metal Gear Solid, Percidee, Legend of Le Gaia like these games I remember as PS1 games that stand out my mind but right after that like right after high school I think you know like I set up a gaming setup and actually interestingly I was like collecting NES I started collecting NES from pawn shops around that time in 99-2000 but pretty quickly it just took a backseat to other things in life I was in bands and doing music pretty much full-time and going to college and stuff like that so yeah I didn't get back in after PS1 like I did get a GameCube on launch but you know it's one of those things where as a student you do other things I wanted to my habits were still there to be interested in it but I didn't have the time to do it so I think after I bought the GameCube I missed like PS3, Xbox 360 era completely and really the whole GameCube PS2 era I missed most of that and then I got into it after the fact so I bought an Xbox 360 that's my like getting back into gaming console because I got a lot from somebody for a hundred bucks and it was like a 360 Airport controllers and a box of games for a hundred bucks and in that lot was the brand new which just come out was a 2013 Tomb Raider and so that's what kind of pulled me back in was that Tomb Raider reboot that they did which was amazing so I put in all those games and that just kind of sucked me back in at that point it is that's an interesting thing that most of us I think do go through and it's almost like the same exact age it's not so I graduated in 2001 and we played a lot I made my buddies I remember played a lot of N64 for those years until you know PlayStation 1 was a thing but I think more we were still messed around in the mostly on the N64 for like multiplayer reasons and we're really into all the multiplayer games like anything on there and then I remember I had one really really rich friend that was allowed to go launch night to get a PlayStation 2 and I remember we got that after a crazy things happened which I've told that story before I won't tell that again but the we got the PlayStation 2 and I worked at like Walmart at the time in high school like part time and I was calling in sick to Walmart to just go sneak over to my friend's house and I remember playing like Tony Hawk on the PlayStation 2 because it was so amazing and then I sucked I stayed around a little bit in the Xbox OG and that PlayStation 2 era in the first couple years of college because we had another guy who knew how to modify the OG Xbox like way back in the day and we all did that and got emulators on there and that's how we played a lot of old school games and college we still do that through that machine and but like you said then it was like there was this the last three probably years of college when you're you know after the freshman year I just started to get into other things took off gaming completely until I got my job out of college and I went over to like another guy who I had graduated school with and had a similar job title as me in a different part of the country and he showed me this huge flat screen TV with an Xbox 360 playing on it and it was like the original Gears of War and I was just like what the heck is this right it's like high definition you're like so that blew me away and made me have to get a 360 right after that I feel like that was a huge leap that era and we're getting fewer and fewer of those like jaw dropping bleeps right like if at all like we might be at the peak here where it just how much better can it really get you know which is why they're going after these like gimmicky approaches of like doing VR and AR and stuff like that which is cool it really is cool for some games but I don't think that's going to be a platform for gaming as a whole one VR game though that I would highly recommend it's Tetris Effect you never played SVR that is the game that I think best demonstrates it in my opinion but yeah it's around that era when you're like kind of like and for me too that that led into like starting a family and stuff like that and which is kind of also what happened you know like you your kids start to get a little older and you want to show them some of this stuff and that'll pull you back in as well yeah that that definitely does like the moment you try to either introduce your kids to some games and you're of course you know going to think of what you liked probably to try to show them in and I recently went and visited my younger siblings at my mom's house over the weekend with my family and I took the N64 back then because that's all they really cared about and like my sister my younger sister a couple years younger than me she can still like mop the floor with the entire family at Mario Kart and I just can't believe it like she still remembers the best route to go on all the tricky courses where it's like that Yoshi course where there's a hundred it doesn't tell you who's in first everything's a question mark it's so it was it but it was a lot of fun to bring everybody together and then it's like well you know people always rag on the N64 for things which is rightfully so but at the same time it's just fun I think to have a nostalgic kick on that there's some great games on 64 I think the games that stand out in my mind I mean the first one that comes to my mind when I think of like games I'd want to play on the 64 to Star Fox and that one I actually do feel like I remember the different ways to cause you know there's like three different routes you could take and I knew how to like to do all that that was that was again that I played quite a bit but you got me thinking about something else you know like in that first kind of chapter of gaming before you like take a break you know there wasn't like a modding scene that I was aware of you know and I know people were modding PS ones I don't know if that happened after the fact or what but what we did have was a plug-and-play peripheral called Goldfinger and I don't know if anyone in the chat knows what that is but it plugged into a serial port on the back of your PS one and then you could burn a copy of a game to a CDR and you had to do the thing where you like started the system with like a regular game and then once you saw the splash screen open it and swap the discs and then shut it back real quick that we did have and that was my first introduction to anything like that so that was fun and you might not put the stack of games in your mind some people are saying they did have Goldfingers that's funny yeah that's interesting like kind of like I think when you unlock like whole entire ROM sets and go on things like I don't personally do that you know like on my next station for example I literally just have the games that I have on the next station for convenience and part of the reason is too is like when you have this huge list like you kind of learn this when Napster came out all this other stuff it's like you have so much to choose from it's like Netflix now you wind up scrolling around and never picking anything yeah that's that's a great point and it's it's hard I think you do do yourself a disservice and then you you're like oh I don't know what to pick I never end up picking anything almost kind of thing yeah so what I really like about some of these options that we have now with like Everdrives and different Odieeds is the patches that you can apply to games and play them differently like I was talking about with Final Fantasy 4 they have different ROM acts that you can apply to the game or you can listen to it with different like music like symphony music now right or you can play like an extended version or change aspects of the game that's kind of like what interests me personally and how I use these you know is some of the ROM acts and things like that that people do that's fun yeah that's um my kid my son like he's 11 he likes to try different ROM hacks on the Everdrive cartridges for like Super Mario he'll just sit there and try them forever which I think is funny it's stuff I've never tried but he does actually get into some of them and some of them can be pretty crazy and creative yeah some of those ROM hacks are really good like on Mario the Mario 3 Nicks I don't know if people ever played that but that's a really good one yeah that's I remember seeing so I remember I had a friend who was always trying to come up with some way to like get games you know try to figure out a way this is like so pre-mod it's so he'd always be trying to find something and I remember when we found the guy who could he was a guy this was a guy we went to high school with but he had to we always thought he was like super like straight laced never got any trouble kind of smart but he our senior year he got a girlfriend who was like a year younger than us and within a couple months she was pregnant and we're always like whoa goodness we didn't like I mean I was like what and she so he like finished night schools to graduate early and he went and immediately started working for the cable company and you could go talk to him and he would be do how to modify these Xboxes too and I just remember because like I seen him I've seen him later on and him and the girl are they're still together rather but just great family but they have like they have grown kids and like grandkids now and I'm like you're like whoa I'm not like having young kids is crazy but he's already like grandkids yeah yeah but it was funny that was the first real anything with modifying I remember we tried to you know get things to work on the computer like you know pirated software that was always the thing but that Xbox was kind of the first thing we had that actually worked well I mean the Xbox is essentially a computer and there's a lot of familiarity I think for people and that where they can I mean I won't pretend to know what goes into it because I have no idea but I feel like these other systems we have do it like a little more reverse engineering not say that you don't want with Xbox but to kind of like figure out like how does this thing do what it does and how can we exploit it you know I'm a lot of fun watching the fun vintage gamer movie or movies the little videos that he does were like he'll say like mistakes were made or whatever an exploit was found on a console you know it's funny because some of that stuff goes a little you're still enjoying the breakdown all the same yeah it's interesting some of those ways those early like breaking those early systems the way it was done cool it does have a great way of putting it people were like clipping a leg on the chip yeah like how do you figure that out right somebody figures that stuff out well Ryan I know that we're coming up towards the time when you said you're getting ready to go to another meeting I really appreciate you spending this time with us and coming on today I thank you a lot has any questions or basically if you want to go I know you can follow Ryan on Twitter for sure you can get on his newsletter list so you can be up to date on anything right that you guys have coming out you guys do have that newsletter it comes out once a month right once a month is the plan I did miss a couple of months but I try not to do more than once a month I try to like respect people's privacy and I try to do marketing in a like as least invasive way as possible you know like we do offer like some kind of invasive tools like push notifications and things like that which I reserve specifically for hey there's 30 copies of Wiley Wars you know yeah kind of like last chance invasive like that reserve it for emergency announcements other than that just a monthly newsletter I think covers basically everything yeah and if you need stuff you go check out the store online Castlemania games and again thanks great always to tag out and I'll talk to you behind the scenes later on but I'll let you go I appreciate your time thanks again Ryan we'll get this convention planned out yeah that's what we need to do I know I need to somehow sneak up to sneak in that time when you're up there I really want to go but I just don't know how alright buddy I'm going to hang up on you and I'll stay on the show but thanks again and have a good rest of the day alright alright great excellent so thanks again everybody for being patient with that we got to work out and I appreciate everybody for coming in it looks like we got almost an hour and a half here on a stream and I'm sorry that I actually didn't get time to really service this when I had Ryan on I kind of wanted to use the time to get you know a chat with him and have his opportunity so I'm going to probably change the name of the stream obviously after so it could re-upload and it won't say it's a pvm 5 inch rebuild I'll have to come back and do that obviously tomorrow or something because now I got to go pick up but we could do this another time I guarantee you we'll get it all worked out that's not a problem thanks again to Ryan I know somebody was asking a lot about customer service being pretty vague I really didn't want to bring that up if you have a customer service issue I know Ryan has a customer service team and you go to his website and get more information on how to contact them I don't know the ins and outs of a specific of course transaction you know I wanted to stay more on stuff that was more relevant for everybody but I do know that he has customer service there so if you want to check that out you can thanks again to Ryan thanks again to everybody for staying and hanging out if you want to go back and re-watch the stream after about the first eight minutes is when I get Ryan finally on the line and we chat for a good hour and 20 minutes but that's going to do it for today folks I'll come back and we'll do this 5 inch stream some other time today's stream just be this thanks again for watching