Do you like Classic Game Room Then more Classic Game Room, blood, and chow. Engage Disco. Back down here at Fellum Fermentation in Pittsburgh to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Classic Game Room by playing pinball. Cold beer in my hand. Gonna do it right. Got my Magneto shirt on and my pinball skills. Marginal.

Welcome to the 25th anniversary Classic Game Room Special. The show debuted on November 11th, 1999. It’s been 25 years, you can’t tell it all. And today I’ll be taking a look at X‑Men The Pinball Machine from Stern. It’s a great game. Let’s check it out. The Uncanny X‑Men. It’s about time. I love the X‑Men. And I also really like this game. I’m not just being nice.

This game is unique and beautiful. The playfield is gorgeous and it plays really well. This is the newest pinball machine from Stern featured on an internet video game review show. Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen and thanks for celebrating the 25th anniversary.

The Sentinel looks like a smiley face. See, now that you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. I’m here filming at Velum with Doug, who’s the owner of Pittsburgh Pinball, the company that runs these machines, and Doug’s hooking me up, taking the glass off so I can put the camera in there. But all the scores you’ll see are legitimate. I’m not reaching my hand in there. I did do that for John Wickhead, but that game’s really hard. I stopped the ball and rolled up a bunch of… don’t tell anyone.

But I have some questions on this one. I noticed that the best way to score points is by smacking the ball over and over again into the sentinel’s face, right Yes. My question is, why didn’t they design this game Bride of Pinbot style with Psylocke This is missing, in addition to Psylocke, two very important X‑Men. Do you know who those X‑Men might be

Possibly they were featured in a Classic Game Room review like 25 years ago. Geez, that wasn’t even alive 25 years ago. Yes, you were. Where’s the Lush and Potty Mouth Fighting for freedom while swearing and throwing beer bottles.

Shut up. X‑Men, the Lush is back in action. Except this is like the new Lush. The more civilized Lush. The old Lush would have thrown beer bottles at his enemies. The new Lush will not waste a seven‑dollar glass of beer on any bad guy. Sorry. This beer is to savor while playing pinball and making endless Psylocke jokes. How do you design an X‑Men pinball machine and forget to put Psylocke on there Did you not read the X‑Men

She’s the most powerful X‑Man because she can stare at people with a pensive, pouty expression. That’s really all it takes. We’ve got Professor X over here watching over the X‑Men. I’m so proud of myself, I just came up with it. The best TV show I’ve seen in the last year is X‑Men 97, so very happy to see this. I’ve always loved the X‑Men, but this show kind of reignited my passion for how truly awesome they are. The Avengers just suck. The X‑Men are where it’s at.

My absolute favorite part of this machine, the best design element, is without a doubt this. Look at that. It holds your beer while you’re playing pinball. Like Wolverine can’t do that. At least not well. Look at it. It’s still there. I can’t handle this suspense.

Seriously, look at that. Me neither. Whoa. Whoa, now it’s in the turtles. And now it’s going to me. It makes the points happen. Game for the blinky thing, you piece of shit. This is great. I love this and I hate it at the same time. Shoop. Can’t say his name. The only person that can say Bishop properly is Bill Paxton.

Alright. So this is the dreaded ramp. What happens is instead of the ball going down here, it gets stuck in here and this thing bounces over there. Maybe over there. If you’re lucky, the ball rolls around down here and then comes over to this flipper. Then you have to hit it up into this thing, this little ramp, around here, and then the ball is back in place.

Game Room 25th Anniversary Special. I’ll kick this off with some footage that I shot in 2023 and did not use. This is footage of a convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the Music City Multicon, and some of the rough footage that would have gotten into Classic Game Room 2085 Season 2. So sit back and relax. Enjoy.

In my dailies. And I love this shot. This is exiting West Virginia. And just look how the GoPro wide angle captures this bridge. This is so cool. Love that. Just the little things like that. That’s gonna work really well in a final edit. Music.

You know the more I keep staring at her the more I’m starting to second‑guess myself. Does she really have four eyes or have I just had a few too many Doesn’t matter. I’ve missed you, Robotron. I’ve missed you so much. And now you’re home, right where you belong. Now is the time on Classic Game Room when I… whoops, I gotta put…

Shadows, tape, old equipment. Filming on tape was a pain. Editing systems were a pain. But it was fun. The season two set, Heyzoos, the kid’s puppet, Bird Week, Defender with birds, Lighthouse, GameCom, the Classic Game Room camera. Shooting on tape, playing it out into the editing system, all of it. Now you just shoot on your phone and upload it to YouTube or TikTok. Back then it was work.

The Anthony Daniels interview was shot with this. All the pinball videos, most of the stuff before the warehouse. Not the warehouse, sorry, before the storage locker. In the storage locker we had this crappy Panasonic camera. It shot on memory cards, which was actually terrible compared to this. This was a better camera, but the tape was a major pain because you had to play it out of the camera into the editing system, but it did a good job. Back in the old days, there’s a blast from the past.

The first Game Room from 1999 was shot on Betacam SP. Looks like my crappy handwriting. Shot it November 7th, finished it on the 11th. And I talked about this in the history of Classic Game Room book. The early From USA Live concept was live. That’s why it’s in the title. Everything was meant to be live. Before anyone called it live streaming, we were broadcasting it live starting in August of 1999. And then quickly the live thing phased out because the edited videos were what people watched.

Shows like Let’s Dance Salsa boardroom and the Game Room were specifically shot for edited video. Nobody was doing this at the time, certainly very few people. So we would have shot the studio footage here, me and Dave, and then edited it and probably uploaded it on the same day. This is what I remember. It was definitely November. I think it was the 11th. Sounds about right. Metal Gear VR Missions and Driver.

Here’s the size difference between a Betacam SP tape and a Famicom game. These things are big and expensive so we reused them all the time. This tape has the Bionic Commando footage and the Fear Effect footage. Bionic Commando was fun because Dave sat down and beat the game in one go one night. He was actually really good. I was terrible.

These tapes have been in storage for quite some time. Sega Rally 2, Syphon Filter, some X‑Men footage. We shot the outdoor footage on Hi‑8. We only had one camera that shot Betacam. This one’s got the voiceover for Wu‑Tang, Star Wars, and soccer. Probably Episode One. Edits for Ninja Golf, the famous Ninja Golf review, and studio footage for Dukes of Hazzard and Contra.

Game Room more useless info. What the hell is that You know what this is Wondering if we were trying to do a new show at the time. It’s from February. We probably had the green screen by February. Wu‑Tang and Pac‑Man. Wu‑Tang and Pac‑Man should definitely team up. That’d be awesome. I like the Wu‑Tang gang. I think I heard years later they did not like it. I thought it was awesome.

It’s been a long time since I played it. I still have a Betacam SP deck but I don’t think it works. I’m still going through tapes here. I edited a site demo. I remember this. It was like a sizzle reel of all our crap from back in the day. It’s also got the Soul Reaver edit. That was a great day. One of the series that never got enough attention. Somewhere there’s a whole tape of Shenmue footage that Dave recorded. Never used.

Here’s one of the ones I was looking for. This has the Herzog Studio footage, but I don’t think we ever completed Herzog’s review. When I ended the show in 2017, I left probably 80 videos incomplete, including Grandia and Phantasy Star 2. I had to part with most of my personal Genesis collection to fund my print business, but I did not sell the few games I had from when I was a teenager, including Herzog’s Zwei, one of my all‑time favorite games. The artist Mark Erickson autographed the cover for me. He also sent me a nice print years ago, which I still have on my wall. Played the hell out of this game.

Some stuff never made it onto the series and probably never will, but one of my personal favorite games is Phantasy Star 2. I recorded a lot of footage and you can see some of that in Classic Game Room 2085 Season 1. I played most of the way through the game. I was going to do a review of this terrific game, but I had to cancel season one at the very end and took the footage with it. That’s a different cartridge which was going to go in season two, but that also had the same problem. Someone sent this years ago right at the end. I never got a chance to play it.

Genesis version, which I liked a lot. Also the Dreamcast version. Somebody years ago sent some still‑unopened Atari games. Beautiful sealed Atari games. Let this one remain sealed. I think I probably have two copies of Pitfall laying around somewhere and a drunk chicken. Here’s a blast from the past just unearthed from storage. The Betacam SP deck that would have been used for the original videos. We might have had two of these. I don’t remember. We also used DVC Pro. So I may be thinking of one or the other. But this was definitely the one from 2008 because of the handles. And I would wheel this thing home. By wheel I mean haul it. It’s like 50–60 pounds. Not too bad with the handles. I haven’t had this thing on in probably 10 years. I think it’s a low chance it’s going to work, but we’ll find out together.

If you ever wanted to know what the end of Classic Game Room looks like, this is it. The Betacam SP deck used 25 years ago. No HDMI. No memory cards. No iPhones. No Bluetooth. And it doesn’t work. I’m not surprised. But it’s fun to look at the old footage. After 25 years, Classic Game Room has effectively ended. It could continue if I made it for fun. Reviews of X‑Men, pinball, arcade games. Casual, inexpensive. But the show can’t survive in the modern era. I don’t know what the future of the brand is.

I’m in the middle of about a hundred other projects. That’s why I have to keep this short and don’t have much time to spend on editing or digging through old footage. But hopefully you’ll continue to see some fun, relaxed pinball and arcade videos. In 1999 we viewed the internet with unlimited optimism. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, bringing the world together. And it’s been hijacked by a handful of companies and a few people and is now used to drive people apart. It just doesn’t… And since anybody can make a video now, you have to try to not shoot video with your phone. Everything shoots video.

Classic Game Room was always a traditionally produced show. It predates my documentary career, but there’s a heavy documentary element in the series run from 2008 through 2018 and through Classic Game Room 2085, which I produced to look like one of my documentary films. Those are expensive. Editing is time consuming. Every internet video loses money at this point. Every podcast loses money. And I’ve got other stuff to do. It’s been a lot of fun and hopefully you’ll see more pinball machines. As long as they keep making pinball, and as long as there’s beer in arcades, there’ll be Classic Game Room in some fashion.

I’ll leave you with a few more shots and keep looking out for new pinball videos. Cheers. Thanks for watching. See you again. It’s plugged in. I have not tried this yet. So if it catches on fire, this will be as much fun to watch for you as it is for me. Probably not that much fun for me.

Anyway, ready I’ll bet you it turns on without a problem. It’s the playing of tape that probably will. That sounds less than promising, but let’s find out. You ready Here’s the inside. It’s still plugged in. I’m going to stick my hand right in. I’m not going to do that. In my expert opinion, I don’t have a clue what to do. So… It’s not plugged in but I’ll turn off the power strip just in case. And if I electrocute myself it should be fun to watch. Do I have anything metal I can shove in there without a ground wire I’m going to try the same approach I’d use to get an Atari game to work. I’m going to blow on it. See, that all looks good. No dead animals in there.