# Episode 45 - Pinapalooza, Pinbot, and Cuphead **Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2017-10-09 **Duration:** 70m 55s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-45 --- ## Analysis Dennis and Tony discuss their recent gaming activities, new pinball machine acquisitions, upcoming pinball expo news including JJP's Game 4 announcement, and their experience at Pinapalooza 6 tournament. They cover Pinbot availability, Highway Pinball's Alien shipping status, and JJP's rumored Pirates of the Caribbean or Toy Story title, expressing skepticism about the wide-body design choice. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Jersey Jack Pinball will announce and reveal their Game 4 at Pinball Expo, and it will be playable — _Dennis states 'Jersey Jack Pinball or JJP is expected to...I believe they have confirmed they will be announcing and revealing and I believe for play'_ - [MEDIUM] JJP's Game 4 is rumored to be either Pirates of the Caribbean or Toy Story, with Pirates being the predominant rumor — _Dennis: 'The ongoing rumors that I'm aware of are basically two, that it's either Pirates of the Caribbean, which seems to be the predominant rumor, or it's Toy Story'_ - [MEDIUM] JJP's Game 4 will be a wide-body machine — _Dennis states: 'I have also heard, supposedly it has been rumor mill confirmed repeatedly that whatever version it is, it will be another wide body pin'_ - [HIGH] Highway Pinball's Alien machine has begun shipping — _Dennis: 'The company, Highway Pinball, has said now that it is shipping, that they've actually put it on a ship'_ - [HIGH] Dennis acquired a 1990 Gottlieb Silver Slugger pinball machine from near St. Louis — _Dennis describes purchasing and transporting the machine: 'it was about an eight and a half hours round trip to go get this not very valuable pinball machine'_ ### Notable Quotes > "Dialed In is easily my favorite Jersey Jack game by... Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's great. I really like how it plays." > — **Dennis**, N/A > _Indicates Dennis's strong preference for JJP's standard-body Dialed In over their wide-body designs, relevant to his concerns about Game 4_ > "Does anybody really want a pirates of the Caribbean pen? Does anybody actually care about Pirates of the Caribbean anymore?" > — **Tony**, N/A > _Expresses skepticism about the rumored Pirates of the Caribbean theme choice for JJP Game 4_ > "I don't think it's there so But we'll see. They're trying to make good. They're trying, but I'm going to agree. I think that they'll get this machine out to the people with the pre-orders and maybe a few more." > — **Tony**, N/A > _Pessimistic outlook on Highway Pinball's long-term viability despite shipping Alien_ > "I'm going to say it's probably because it was already in development. But, I mean, seriously, Dialed In is their best game from a gameplay perspective by a country mile. Why in the world would you go back to doing wide bodies?" > — **Dennis**, N/A > _Expresses frustration with JJP's reported decision to return to wide-body design after the success of Dialed In_ > "There's a reason why when most people start talking Jersey Jack, They talk about the quality and they talk about the look. And then when it comes to the gameplay, it tends not to be up near the top." > — **Dennis**, N/A > _Critique of JJP's gameplay design philosophy and attribution to wide-body format choices_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer announcing Game 4 at Pinball Expo; rumored to be Pirates of the Caribbean or Toy Story | | Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; pinball collector and enthusiast who recently acquired Silver Slugger | | Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; gaming enthusiast discussing pinball market trends | | Highway Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer with Alien machine now shipping; facing financial sustainability concerns | | Todd | person | Owner-operator of Big Daddy Enterprises; hosts Pinapalooza 6 tournament with ~90 playable pinball machines | | Pat Lawler | person | Mentioned in context of JJP's design direction; referenced as potential advocate for standard-body designs | | Eric | person | Dennis's brother-in-law; participated in head-to-head pinball tournament at Pinapalooza 6 | | Phil | person | Tournament director at Pinapalooza 6 | | Pinball Expo | event | Upcoming industry event where JJP is expected to reveal Game 4 | | Pinapalooza 6 | event | Local pinball tournament and gathering hosted by Big Daddy Enterprises featuring survival and rotation tournament formats | | Big Daddy Enterprises | company | Operator of Pinapalooza event with large pinball machine collection | | Silver Slugger | game | 1990 Gottlieb pinball machine recently acquired by Dennis; features spinners, drop targets, saucers, and multi-ball | | Dialed In | game | JJP standard-body pinball; praised by Dennis as their best gameplay design | | Skylab | game | Single-player EM pinball machine owned by Dennis; being sold due to low play frequency | | Sharky's | game | Pinball machine in Dennis's collection; Tony indicates it may be his favorite in Dennis's lineup | | Superman | game | Pinball machine in Dennis's collection | | Tri-Zone | game | Pinball machine used in Pinapalooza 6 survival tournament; Tony scored poorly on it | | Pinball Arcade | product | Referenced as platform for digital pinball games | ### Topics - **Primary:** JJP Game 4 announcement at Pinball Expo, Wide-body vs standard-body machine design philosophy, Highway Pinball Alien shipping and company viability, Pinapalooza 6 tournament experience and formats - **Secondary:** Dennis's Silver Slugger acquisition and collection management, Pinbot secondary market availability and pricing, Jersey Jack Pinball game design and gameplay quality concerns, Theme licensing trends (Pirates of the Caribbean, Toy Story) ### Sentiment **Mixed** (0.45) — Dennis and Tony are positive about Pinapalooza event experience and Dialed In's gameplay, but skeptical/pessimistic about JJP's Game 4 design direction (wide-body), Highway Pinball's viability, and the Pirates of the Caribbean IP choice. Balanced enthusiasm for pinball community events against market concerns. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Highway Pinball facing sustainability challenges despite Alien shipping; pricing concerns raised (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'I still don't see how highway is going to survive all of this...they're asking as much as jersey jack asks on the low end' and Tony: 'I think that they'll get this machine out to the people with the pre-orders and maybe a few more' then 'fold up' - **[event_signal]** Pinapalooza 6 tournament successfully executed with rotation and survival formats (confidence: high) — Tony describes smooth execution by second/third rounds despite initial flow issues and large machine collection - **[design_philosophy]** Community concern about JJP returning to wide-body design after successful standard-body Dialed In (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'Why in the world would you go back to doing wide bodies?' and 'There's a reason why...when it comes to the gameplay, it tends not to be up near the top' and attributes this to wide-body choices - **[licensing_signal]** Skepticism about Pirates of the Caribbean as pinball theme choice despite existing Stern Pirates machine (confidence: medium) — Tony: 'Does anybody really want a pirates of the Caribbean pen? Does anybody actually care about Pirates of the Caribbean anymore?' and Dennis: 'This is not a franchise that deserves more than one pin' - **[community_signal]** Dennis acquires Gottlieb Silver Slugger; focuses on collection curation and machine rotation (confidence: high) — Dennis discusses acquiring Silver Slugger, moving Skylab to garage for sale, stacking machines by height due to OCD - **[announcement]** JJP confirming Game 4 announcement and playable reveal at Pinball Expo (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'Jersey Jack Pinball or JJP is expected to...I believe they have confirmed they will be announcing and revealing and I believe for play' - **[rumor_hype]** JJP Game 4 rumored to be Pirates of the Caribbean or Toy Story, with Pirates being predominant speculation (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'The ongoing rumors that I'm aware of are basically two, that it's either Pirates of the Caribbean, which seems to be the predominant rumor, or it's Toy Story' - **[business_signal]** JJP Game 4 likely wide-body due to prior development commitments rather than strategic choice (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'I'm going to say it's probably because it was already in development' as explanation for wide-body return --- ## Transcript Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is October 8th, 2017. It is episode 45. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to be talking to you about the normal pinball and video games this go-around. Mm-hmm. Yes, but first we're going to talk about introductions. Tony, it's been two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. Yes, what's been going on? Some of the stuff we're going to talk about later, so I'll leave that off, like the Penapalooza, I'll leave that off and stuff because we're just going to talk about that later. Right. I've been in a weird gaming mood lately. What do you mean by weird? Where I haven't really wanted to play anything at all. and which is like we talked last episode the two weeks prior I barely played any games except for like Cold Waters and now I went like the full week after our first week after our last episode I don't know if I played anything and then I got Cuphead which we'll talk about later and I got Sleeping Dogs which I've just barely started but it seems like an interesting little game and I've been playing some Stellaris and Overwatch but game wise that's about all I've done and even there I haven't been playing a whole lot of any of it I've been spending a lot of time reading listening to some audio books because I've really gotten into a couple of them so I've not just been listening in the car or when I've been doing mindless tasks at work I've actually been listening to them after I got home and I've also been reading some comics and stuff. Oh yeah, and I've started since the season finale of season three of Rick and Morty was last week, I've started re-watching all three seasons of Rick and Morty. Yeah, I've never seen that. There's a couple hours. You should. You'd enjoy it. I'll consider it. I've tried to cut back on the cartoons I've watched because I ended up in a hole where they were just consuming so much time to keep up with that I scaled them all back. No more Family Guy, no more Simpsons. It's all, all of it Slash away. Yeah, but the difference is, is unlike Family Guy and Simpsons and all of that, Rick and Morty's fun. Mmm, bold words. It's also, it's also really short all in all. The seasons are all between like 10 and 13 episodes. Just let me know when Venture Brothers has a new season. that's all I really long for oh man um I think that we can ignore that I think that one's done did things happen no that's the thing nothing's happened I would be amazed if it ever hit again I mean that would be like there's a couple other shows that hit like that and never really came out well Venture Brothers other than perhaps season one to season two, there have always been years between the seasons. It's always felt weird. Like they give up every time and then it comes out. No, I'm completely wrong. Season six came out last year. Yeah. I thought I'd seen something. Not that, not that long ago. Um, yeah. And they left ready for continuation. I didn't see any of season six. I've only seen season five. No, I think I've been four plus years since. No, but no. Well, and that's, that's how Rick and Morty is. I mean, Rick and Morty's got typically several years between episodes. I mean, season one was 11 episodes, and it started in December of 2013. And season two was 10 episodes that started in July of 2015. And season three was 10 episodes, and it started on April Fool's Day of this year. but there was just that one episode, and then they didn't show anymore until September, and it's done now. The last episode aired last week. Okay. So they're the same way. They've got several years between seasons. What have you been up to? Not a lot. Since I've done very little. Work-wise, been pretty busy. So I actually have the next few days off, and then I'm taking all of next week off. Mostly, I have too much vacation. I was going to take this next week off entirely, but I have to do the budget meeting. So I couldn't really rationalize. Well, I couldn't take Friday. So it was like, okay, well, I need at least a day of prep. But most of that's hammered out at this point. So given all of that, I haven't been doing too much because I've been just exhausted afterwards. I've been doing my Gems of War because they did that title update a few weeks ago. So I've been doing the Gems of War. I'm going to talk a bit more about Mafia 3 because I'm deep enough in it when we get to the video game segment. And I have also done a bit of Overwatch, mostly just arcade, Mario, Mystery Hero type stuff. And let's see. Other than that, not a whole lot. So I guess I'll – well, let me throw out first a correction from the last episode. when I was talking about Zacharia Pinball, the video game, I mispronounced Zacharia. I kept saying Zacharia. And I had two different people write in with two different pronunciations. So one said it's Zacharia, one said it's Zachariah, but acknowledged that Zacharia is also seen as acceptable. I have historically used Zacharia, and I started thinking I was emphasizing the wrong syllable for some reason. So I'll probably go back to Zacharia, which, if it works like Spanish, your I would sound like an E. So I'm guessing Italian is related enough that that's probably the more authentic version. But regardless, we're going to start saying Zachariah instead. And as people probably heard before they got to hear the lush mellow tones of Tony's voice welcoming them to the show, we have new intro music. Been over a year with the old intro. I actually had complaints about the old intro. People would actually walk up to me and tell me they didn't like the intro. and I would ask why, and then the answers were usually, I don't know, I just don't like it. So anyway, so it's new. So now it's chiptune, and they'll probably not like it either because it's still too plucky and upbeat. Too happy. That's my theory, yeah. Haven't you seen a movie trailer lately? You take a happy, upbeat song, you slow it down, you drop the octave a little bit, and you make it really creepy and sad. That's the thing right now. The pilot of that show, Inhumans, I think it was Inhumans, yeah. And they had two or three of the songs done that way in the pilot. I was really annoyed with how edgy they were trying to be. It's like, come on. Why don't you just steal from John Woo and do Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but just gritty and dark, instead of just playing it authentically in an offset scene, a la Face Off style. See, I liked it in the trailer for Age of Ultron when they did it with the Pinocchio song. Yeah. I liked that. That was one of the first times I really noticed that thing. Well, it's a fad now. Yeah, it's a super fad now. And that's a super lame. It is. It is. No, no, I'll agree with you. I liked it then. I thought it was really cool then in that one thing. It's like, oh, that worked really well. But now everybody's doing it. Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah. And every once in a while it works. But more often than not, it's just like this doesn't actually help it out at all. So. No, I agree. You're right. 100% right. Have you also seen the, I know this is completely off topic. That's all right. The first thing lately where you're watching, like you go on to YouTube or somewhere to watch a movie trailer, and the first like 10 seconds of the trailer is showing like multiple fast snippets from elsewhere in the trailer and telling you what the trailer, what the, it's like a pre-trailer trailer. It's like a trailer for the trailer. Have you seen that? No, but I think the only recent trailer I've seen is for the next Pacific Rim. Okay, yeah. I watch a lot of trailers because I like watching trailers for movies. And I've noticed a lot of them now, they'll have this thing where they have a pre-trailer trailer. It's like the first 10, 15, maybe 20 seconds of the trailer will show little snippets from two spots in the trailer with a big thing saying what the trailer's about. I didn't know that I just clicked on the trailer for whatever movie I clicked on. And then the trailer will start up in actuality. And it's like, well, that was really weird. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why they do that. No, I hadn't seen that, though. Next time I come across a trailer like that, I'll send it to you. Yeah. Give me a link so I can check it out. Last intro thing was I did go and pick up a new pinball machine yesterday. So, yeah. Yeah. This one had been listed for a while, for a few weeks. It was a silver slugger kind of near St. Louis. And just with as busy I was with work, I thought, oh, you're going to sell it before I have an opportunity. I reached out to see if maybe they'd ever come to the area. And as listeners probably recall, I've been watching for a Gottlieb street level for a while, either Silver Slugger or Hoops. I was keeping my eye out for both. And so anyway, it was still for sale. And since I had Monday through Wednesday off, I was like, OK, I actually have a window here where I could probably do that run. because it was going to be about a eight and a half hours round trip to go get this not very valuable pinball machine. And so anyway, Saturday worked for them. And so I went and deal went really well. There was, I mean, it was listed as working. I mean, it was, the balls were out of it. It was like in a communal place. So some people were messing with it since the owner had less been there. So put the balls in. some of the coils weren't firing someone had unplugged a wire out of the backbox so he troubleshot all that the functionally i knew one of the pops wasn't working when we tested it and when i got it back i see one of the coils at some stage and it's life overheated and melted plastic in it so it's not pulling the pop bumper so i've already got that on order and that's it everything else was functional i've got a few other cosmetic things yeah they uh it's heavily mylar so there's some mylar bubbling on it, but the art looks good because it's got all that mylar everywhere. So, yeah, I mean, it plays now even without the pot. You just don't get as much play up there, obviously. So it's weird. It's a weird game. I haven't measured it. I wonder if it's a little narrower than a typical standard body, actually. It's like, what would appeal to someone like me who does not like wide bodies? The opposite. I need, like, anorexic bodies. Anorexic body. Has it entered? have you figured out where it's going to go into your lineup? Because I know your lineup was pretty much full. Yes. Well, Skylab's in the garage now. Oh, you moved Skylab to the garage? Yep. I'll probably list it for sale soon because I don't see much point in keeping it in. It was my first, but you know how sentimental I am, which is maybe not as much. Not as much as... A little. I suppose a little. I have photos of it. I'd rather it go to someplace that it'll get played but you know the fundamental problem with sky lab besides that i don't think the gameplay is very interesting on it is it's a single player so whenever i have anyone over we never play competitive games on sky lab yeah a multiplayer em would not have that problem like if i had a grand prix it would have had better contention than sky lab i know nick's spoken about this of nick's north american pinball tour about the value and the enjoyment that you get out of the multiplayers often can offset the added complexity that you might be able to see on the logic side of an EM in the single player realm. Because it could keep track of things from ball to ball because you didn't have to keep track for separate players. Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, that's sort of the, if I, I just, I'm logical about it. I go off of what's the quantity I put in time-wise and I play Skylab the least, followed by Superman. So it's just, it's just math, simple math. So, yeah. We'll see. I still need to fix it. It's got an intermittent reset issue. I need to clean a few more switches. I think it's just gunk. You know, I worked on it a little bit. It got a little better. I just need to go in and sterilize the entire score reel that controls that. Otherwise, it's probably ready to go. So, yeah. It's already in the lineup. And, of course, I stacked them by height because OCD. So, it's between Sharkies and Superman. is where it fits. It's a little bit shorter than Sharky's, by like half an inch. So, I guess, that's it for intros, so we can move on over into the pinball segment. And yes, I know that was pinball, but that was just about picking up a pinball game. I've put in a number of games on it already. It's odd. You can see sometime. It's a 1990 game. I'll play it at some point. Maybe. I don't know. It ain't no Sharky's, that's for sure. Sharky's was... Sharky's, I'll be honest, Sharky's surprised me. You got Sharky's, I'm like, okay, whatever. It still might be my favorite game in your lineup. If not, it's close to it. There's a thread, last I looked, fairly near the top. I looked earlier this week on Tilt Forums, where people were talking about Sharky's and about how good it is versus how it's perceived. And I did not start that thread. So, yeah, it's just one of those games. And this one, the neat thing about Silver Slugger from what I've played of it so far is even as stripped down as, you know, I have the flyer for the game where they're talking about how it was going to be less than the last Gottliebs. They were cutting their prices. That was the strategy. You know, this was going to be the deal to satisfy the operators that were tired of how expensive pinball machines were getting. Ha, ha, ha. They could see today's world. The thing about it is there's so much to shoot for. I mean, it's got three spinners. It's got bank of drop targets, two opposite banks of stand-ups. It's got two saucers, kind of like firepower saucers, to shoot for. It's got three-ball multiball. So it's got a real skill shot where you have to do a top lane plunge, but you can't move it. And if you overshoot it, it will orbit around. And if you undershoot it, it will orbit around. so there's actually quite a bit of substance to this game and when you look on Pinside actually I think all the written reviews are fairly positive of it, which is part of the reason why it was at the top of my list. That and Hoops Hoops which doesn't have the weird Gottlieb mystery hole problem that a lot of Gottliebs have but Hoops is a lot rarer Hoops is off the list now. Actually my wish list on Pinside is blank. I got tired of getting alerts for Walking Dead I can watch for those anytime yeah and then there's nothing else that's that I had Lord of the Rings since 2012 in that list but again they pop up all the time for $6,000 I'm just tired of seeing them I'm not going to spend that so it's just yeah I mean there are a few things you know I don't I don't put pin bot for example on the wish list anymore because they're just too many that come up for sale I'm always watching for a pin bot there actually was a pin bot in the area for a thousand bucks with non-working flippers And I checked again when I was hanging back from St. Louis, and it was already sold, and I see it already listed for twice the price from someone else. So I'm sure it's the same machine. Of course it is. But them's the breaks. I can't scoop up every deal. Still, that would have been impressive for you, two machines in one day. I didn't have enough cash to pick up that pinball. It was at the point where my dad and I went together to go. We did a road trip to go get the Silver Slugger. We're going back. And it's like, so how much was that pin bot listed for? And it's like, I think it's a thousand bucks. It's like, well, I got 300 in my wallet. What do you got? I got $122. Do you think he'll take 422? It's like, uh, probably not. Well, we could call him. Let me second see if the ad's up. No, it's down. He sold it. Oh, well. But yes, it was contemplated. It's always contemplated. You never know if they're desperate enough to get rid of it. Maybe, maybe they won't slam the phone on the receiver when you, when you don't even offer them. half of what they ask for. So pinball segment. All right. Quick news. I just put this in. I figured probably should cover. There hasn't been a lot of news, which is good. I'd rather talk about the more fun stuff. But I just thought I should note pinball expo. It's coming up rapidly. The only buzz I aware of and I have not been following the expo threads so I may be totally off base on this But the only buzz I am aware of is that Jersey Jack Pinball or JJP is expected to Actually I believe they have confirmed they will be announcing and revealing and I believe for play So you can play it just like Dialed In last year, their game number four. Really? Yes. So obviously, if they get it out into production, much like when they got Dialed In into production versus when it was announced, then it would seem like that would be good enough evidence that they've finally gotten past all their production bottlenecks. Do you have any, I don't know if Tony, have you been following or heard any rumors about what the game might be? I haven't been following. I haven't heard any rumors or anything. I'm really surprised because I did not expect anything from them again until maybe an announcement this year, but I more likely not until next year. And I sure didn't expect anything to be playable before next year. We're not with dialed in just rolling. I figured that would be the earliest we could hope to see it because of just how their stuff has worked out. Yeah. I I'm a bit surprised as well. I don't know if this is, if this is a sign of the other than that production's not bottlenecked anymore. I don't know if it's a sign of anything. For example, is this a sign that dialed in is not have the sales numbers that the licensed pens had or anything along those lines. The way they run their assembly line, I'm not going to read too much into it. The ongoing rumors that I'm aware of are basically two, that it's either Pirates of the Caribbean, which seems to be the predominant rumor, or it's Toy Story. Those seem to be the two main speculations. Well, Toy Story's been a rumor for years now. Yes, and some say that Toy Story is still in the works, but that Pirates of the Caribbean is the next license. And so that's just what little buzz I, cause I'm not tracking those threads either, but it spills over into other discussions. And that's the one that most people are saying. I have also heard, supposedly it has been rumor mill confirmed repeatedly that whatever version it is, it will be another wide body pin. So I am disappointed because that will hurt their sales. I just wonder, I mean, does anybody really want a pirates of the Caribbean pen? Does anybody actually care about Pirates of the Caribbean anymore? I know they just put out a new movie, but still. Yeah, there's a new movie, Tony. Come on. That's great, but that's because people see giant franchises, and giant franchises just have to keep rolling and living forever now. That's the new movie meta is once you get a franchise, you don't do a trilogy. You do a universe, and you build just never-ending stories, and you start making side stories that take place in the same universe, and everything just keeps going forever. So that's how all that stuff is anymore. Well, I think your point is well taken. I don't know how good the new movie is. I've seen the first three, maybe? I've seen the first three. And this was number five? I think so. As I recall, I think we actually had that conversation on an episode at one point about it. Oh, gosh. Well, we're trying to remember if it was four or five episodes. Okay. Well, all right. Let's just move. We'll move past that. No, I mean, as a theme, I agree with you. I don't think it's a winner. But then again, I also think that Jersey Jack has never picked a winner theme when they've chosen themes. I mean, Wizard of Oz is a timeless classic, but there's nothing about it, I think, that particularly lends itself well to a pinball machine. No, I agree. Hobbit is a timeless classic. Unfortunately, it's based on a pretty bloated set of films. I mean, again, if you're a huge Hobbit fan, but who's going to be a huge Hobbit fan from a movie perspective? I don't see how because the movies were nowhere. I mean, they were definitely not Lord of the Rings. That's for sure. No, they're bloated. They're bloated. It's not that the acting's bad or anything, but they're not great films. They're not legendary films. and even if the new Pirates movie is a decent Pirates movie, I have a lot of trouble believing it will ever be seen as being as good as the first Pirates movie which is a good movie. The first one is. And the thing that makes it really weird is that there's already a Pirates pinball machine and this isn't the Star Wars franchise where you can understand why there are 20,000 different versions of Star Wars out there. Right. This is not a franchise that deserves more than one pin and it's not like well again i think this sort of we saw these comparisons with the hobbit lord of the rings is one of stern's best white star board set pinball machines one of their best pinball machines they ever made on review wise it's still in the top 10 on pin side last i looked and it's so and then hobbit of course got compared to that and what is hobbit but a slower not as good Lord of the Rings. Honestly, it doesn't play at all like Lord of the Rings, other than you could say they both are basically fan layouts. I mean, I say basically because Hobbit does have a third flipper, but it's worthless. Well, I mean, to be fair, Hobbit is as much less of a pinball machine than Lord of the Rings as the Hobbit movies are less than the Lord of the Rings movies. Yeah, that's a good comparison. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. That's a good comparison. And the issue with, so anyway, but Pirates, Stern's Pirates, it's a good game. It's not one that I want to own, but the ship toy is perhaps their best toy they ever did when branded as Stern Pinball. It just, it looks cool. There's a lot to shoot for. It feels full. It's a bit of a long player, but, you know, sometimes you want a long playing game. And so they're going to be compared to that. Now, if they do their lowest model as $8,000-plus, then I'm sure Jersey Jack can stick in more stuff than Stern's Pirate of the Caribbean ever had. It's not that they can't win the bling war. Jersey Jack can always win the bling war. I'm going to say it's probably because it was already in development. But, I mean, seriously, Dialed In is their best game from a gameplay perspective by a country mile. Why in the world would you go back to doing wide bodies? I don't know, man. Dialed In is easily my favorite Jersey Jack game by... Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's great. I really like how it plays. Yeah. So anyway, I'm going to assume it was already in the works. But if they're thinking they just did a standard because Pat Lawler wanted to do a standard, they're going back to these wide-body designs. I don't know. I mean, I'm not the super master knowledge of all the pinballs out there, but I'm telling you something. There's a reason why when most people start talking Jersey Jack, They talk about the quality and they talk about the look. And then when it comes to the gameplay, it tends not to be up near the top. And I think it has to do with the fact that they keep going with the wide bodies. But, you know, it's their choice. So there's that. And then the only other little bit of quick news I thought I'd note is the Alien pinball machine. We talked about that. Maybe it was shipping. Maybe it wasn't shipping. The company, Highway Pinball, has said now that it is shipping, that they've actually put it on a ship. and that it is now in an ocean surrounded by water. Sailing through the Bermuda Triangle. They didn't quite say it that way. It will vanish and it will never be delivered. In the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a big ocean. Iceberg, right ahead. Knowing how things have been going with this company, that is probably what will happen and the ship won't be insured. Of course not. It won't be insured. It won't be insured. so anyway we may hear about some unboxings and such as time goes i still don't see how highway is going to survive all of this i just don't think they're putting out machines fast enough but and with them wanting two grand or whatever more per unit now for any new purchases it's just it's just not an attractive unit i mean they're i think they're asking as much as jersey jack asks on the low end for a game and it's just not i just don't think it's there so But we'll see. They're trying to make good. They're trying, but I'm going to agree. I think that they'll get this machine out to the people with the pre-orders and maybe a few more. But I am hard-pressed to see this machine or there being another machine from them. I could be wrong, but I just have a hard time believing it. No, that's my angle as well. I can imagine that maybe they can right the ship enough that they're actually able to, perhaps for even a decent period of time, produce aliens, sell aliens. Maybe they recoup their investment on alien or don't lose money. And then I imagine they fold up and just leave all this. But we'll have to see. Best of luck to them. So, Penapalooza 6. Tony, tell us about what a Penapalooza 6 is. Pen and Palooza 6 is a local gathering of pinheads. Okay, local-ish gathering of maybe regional? Not quite regional. What would be between local and regional? Legional. Legional gathering of pinheads that has pretty much every game you could want to play. maybe not every game you could want to play but man it is such an impressive collection i had a ton of fun i entered the tournaments i know you and eric didn't and nobody else went with us uh this time around but the tournaments this time was the survival tournament like we've talked about in the past um i did poorly in the survival tournament i had three straight house balls on tri-zone. It was the worst score possibly imaginable. And most everybody else was easily doubling and tripling on their first, my total score on their first ball. It was terrible. It was terrible. I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed for myself. I mean, I don't claim to be some great pinballer, but I was embarrassed. It was such a bad score. And then the main tournament was a pinball, pinball, pinball tournament where it amounted to, there was a selection of machines. Everybody started playing. And when you, I know I'm going to get this backwards. I played it and I know I'm going to get this backwards. when you won on a machine you left the machine and got in line to go replace somebody else who had won on a different machine and if you lose on a machine twice in a row you would leave instead of the winner and that's how it kind of rotated through and the whole point of it is to basically play and win games as fast as possible because the overall winner is decided by the person with the most total wins. And I did really bad. I did so terrible. Oh god, it was disgusting how terrible I did. But it was fun. I had a lot of fun. What did you think of the format? Because I've never played a format like this. Once everybody... Once it got figured out, when it started it was kind of a cluster like you would expect with any format where not very many people, it's not a format you normally play by the time. Cause it was three rounds. Each round was 75 minutes. By the time second round started, everything was locked in pretty good and it was flowing pretty smooth. But for the first part of the first round, um, it was a little slower than you would like. And there were trying, there were some hiccups and mistakes and, and try things getting backed up and the line being longer than it needed to be. Cause we were, people were like, Oh, who needs to go here and this and that. But it worked out. By the time we got to the second, things were just flowing along real nice. And the third was pretty good. It was just nice, steady, and fast, except for when you got caught. Some people got caught on some long games on, like, Indy, Anna Jones, and I got caught on a fairly long game on ACDC, which kind of slowed you down, which for a format like that, long matches are like, oh no, this is not what I want. Sometimes you get to a match where it's going slow enough, it's like, man, I should almost just lose this as quick as possible because it'd be better to lose this and get back in play than to keep playing a long game. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I didn't really consider doing it. The tournament director, Phil, did ask, asked pretty hard actually, but on the other pin-up he loses the tournaments, and it's particularly the survival tournament has kept me up so late, far longer than I really want to stay. And I feel obligated to not bail because I also like to try and win. So I decided this time I wasn't going to do that. So Eric, my brother-in-law, who you mentioned, went with us. We decided that we were going to do a head-to-head tournament just between ourselves. And we ran through practically every single game that was available. If it wasn't turned off or it wasn't on coin drop for some of the other contests that were going on, I think we only missed maybe four games or so out of the collection. And as you know, it's a large collection. Pinnapalooza is hosted by Todd, who's the owner-operator of Big Daddy Enterprises. And his collection varies depending on what games he's got in and what games are operational. I'm going to say it hovers at around 90 playable units. and as you noted it's it's quite it's quite an impressive collection oh it's so impressive he's probably got i'd say yeah all the a-list williams games that you would name a number of the b-list ones you would expect uh a number of system 11 titles uh most of the class of 81 from bally uh a lot of the famous ems uh oh yeah we didn't eric and i did not play any single player games. So some of the EMs were out. They were single players. I should go ahead and note that. So we finished off our Pinnapalooza tournament. Not worth any whoppers. No dollar fee for you, Josh. Sorry. Is 39 to 23 in my favor. But Eric did very well on certain segments. So I think he won most of the System 11 games. I won your favorite, Furry Cops. Yay, Furry Cops! And I won Pinbot, which I know annoyed Eric because Eric's favorite System 11 is Pinbot. The only problem is it's also my favorite. And so I had to take that one. I did get to put my initials on one game, Special Force, which was up in the garage area. It's a valley. And Eric, actually, we did play one Coindrop game. I had quarters in my pocket. So we played another System 11 we talked about in our tournament, Transporter the Rescue. It's not a particularly common System 11 game, so a lot of people haven't played it. But Todd does have one. And Eric just destroyed that machine. That one, someone had put up over 8 million points and won the cash box for the night. That was one of the little contests. But Eric had the second highest score, at least off of the sheet of people who had written down high scores. And he got to put his initials in on it. And I just let him play the replay after that because he did so well. And he beat my score on his second game as well. I just, I could not. It's not that I didn't get anything going, but he went into multiple multiballs, and it was just like, holy crap, Eric, try and win. Try and win that box. So that was definitely his best game of the night. I think he also won most of the Stern games because Todd does have a few of the newer Sterns like Ghostbusters and ACDC, Aerosmith, things like that. and the interesting thing to me is it just shows you just how many different pinball machines have been made and are out there Todd with his vast collection he and I only have one game in common and that's Superman and Eric almost beat me on Superman it was so close because I was trying to spell Superman but one of the switches I think was intermittent so it wasn't registering one of the Superman letters and it was a lane it was a lane feed so I did not do that shot until my third ball and then I realized I can't spell Superman. Well, there are other scoring strategies, but I would have done them from ball one had I realized this. So I drained out and Eric had a higher score than me and he finished his ball and then we saw another key difference between my Superman and Todd's. His is on five ball. So I win because I knew what to do after that point. And Eric loses. Therefore, I am better. I think as I'd seen it, I'm pretty sure his back glass is in better condition than yours. His back glass is immaculate. It's amazing. Best Superman. I thought it was a reproduction. And then I looked really close at it. And it still it got one of the things I seen that Superman repo glass before The thing is most of the actually in any repo I seen I don see the mirrored paint I don know if it just too hard to do or if that not compliant with the EPA at this point or something But I never see mirror paint on repo. And I talked to Todd later on and no, it was the glass he got with the game. So it's like, yeah, no, his glass, incredible. I would gladly take his glass away from him. But play field wise, I'd say the conditions are pretty similar. But yeah, that glass is stunning. Absolutely stunning. So I think he's been trying to sell that Superman, Tony. So if you're ever interested, check it out. One of these days, I will have a pinball machine. It won't be today. Will it be Superman? I don't know. It'll be dependent upon what's available when I stop having more important draws on my money. Yes, very much so. Oh, things just didn't cost money. Oh, I know, right? Oh, yeah. Speaking of money, Project Pinball Charity, which we are a sponsor of, they are running another sweepstakes. They do sweepstakes all the time to raise money to put pinball machines in children's hospitals and Ronald McDonald houses. And sometimes I participate in them. I have as well. Yeah, that's right. The thing that's noteworthy is they are actually – usually it's for Stern, which is not surprising because there are so many Sterns to choose from. And so sometimes they're premiums and sometimes they're pros. They are actually running one now for Total Nuclear Annihilation, which we've talked about and we both like a lot. So I just thought I'd sort of plug it here. They're selling 200 tickets, $70 a ticket. There's a link in the show notes if anyone wants to go and support the charity. A reminder that sweepstakes are sweepstakes, and so they are not tax deductible. So it's just because you have the chance to win a prize, not to be giving tax advice to people. But I know it confuses people sometimes because they are, if you were to donate directly to them, it is tax deductible. But I like to keep people on the right side of the IRS by George. So FYI, I don't know how many tickets were sold. When I looked, I was the first ticket bought. Currently, it's 18. Plenty, plenty to go. So it's not usually a big rush, especially when it's the higher dollar amount. Yeah, this is running until the 29th of December, or 200 tickets are sold, whichever is first. Okay, well, no, this says 22 sold. Normally, and I have not looked at the details of this particular drawing, usually there's a provision that they may extend the deadline if they don't sell out all the tickets. And if all the tickets aren't sold, they refund the money so that they don't have to give away a machine they can't afford. So there are provisos for all those scenarios. But Project Pinball Charity is a well-vetted charity. We know there have been issues. We've talked about issues with other charities or at least one other charity and their inability to properly run a drawing. But Project Pinball, they're well-documented. They're very transparent with their money. and you can go and confirm easily the number of pinball machines they've placed. I think they've seeded something on the order of 25 in various facilities for children. So it's a good cause if you are interested. Yeah, I'm probably going to get on this one because I love that game. Yeah, and I can't ever really justify buying one new. So it's like, well, you know what? I mean, the odds are terrible, but not lotto terrible. So it's like, and regardless, the funds go to a good purpose. one that I support and we support as a podcast through a variety of mechanisms, such as this promotion. Exactly. So let's go to the last pinball thing, which is our System 11 tournament. Which is our sadness. Holy crap, am I pissed. Okay. Okay, so sad is weak. No, sad is accurate, but you know what? Here's the thing, because I didn't put this – I don't think we've been promoting this one on Reddit or anything, have we? I don't think so. I haven't posted it on there. So I usually include a link when I promote the show on Twitter. You know, it's on our Twitter feed. We put it on our Facebook page, put it on probably Tilt Forms and Pinside. I think I can include a link when I link to the episode. These people, these maybe listeners, but regardless, pinball people, we have been betrayed. That's what has happened. There has been betrayal. So we need to go over the round two results. There were three upsets that happened. The first was the nine seed, which was high speed, beat the eight seed, Diner, with 68.9% of the vote. That's not an upset. That was expected. High speed is the better game. It counts as an upset because of the seeding, but I completely agree with you. This was a logical outcome. The next upset was the 13 seed, Space Station, beating the four seed, Earthshaker, with 53.3% of the vote. That's kind of shocking. I am surprised that it did. Obviously, it was very close, but I did vote for Space Station because I think Earthshaker is overrated. But by a lot, obviously. I've played a fair amount of both, and I prefer Earthshaker. And I can understand people. See, I can understand people preferring Earthshaker. I don't think it's very fun to shoot. But I get that from the layout, other people would have a different reaction. It's one of those agree to disagree sort of things. but I see the perspective. So while I don't think it's a four seed game, if someone says it's in the top 10 for them, I totally understand. This is what I don't understand. Also a 53.3% spread. So it was close, but the 12th seed mouse and around beat pin bot, which was the fifth seed. What a bunch of crap. I don't understand it. I think people know your hatred and voted specifically to anger you. That's despite me. That's me. I think, I think that was all troll spite votes right there. I don't know. But you liked Pinbot more than Mousing Around also. Oh, yeah. No, I don't like Mousing Around at all. I definitely went Pinbot. This is just – I'm discontinuing the contest. Well, let's not go that far. I'm turning it off. You know, I could have flipped this and just said that Pinbot won with 53.3 and had the same complaint and masked it all. But my honesty, my honesty has resulted in this. And these privileged Mousing Around fans have mucked up the whole contest. It doesn't make anyone want to see the end of it. But I think it's unanimous that we shouldn't continue it because there's no point because Pinbot has already fallen. Did you really think Pinbot was going to take the number one slot? No, I didn't, but I thought it would beat stupid Mousin' Around. Well, I'll agree with you. I thought it would beat Mousin' Around, but... No, I didn't expect it. Actually, someone had asked me on Pinside, and I said I thought Pinbot was going to be in trouble this time. I just thought it would lose in the next round. Well, maybe not the next round, because I thought originally it was going to be up against Earthshaker, and apparently it wouldn't have been. But anyway, no, and we will continue. Obviously, I'm joking. Other than that, those of you who voted for Mousin' Around, you are wrong. I mean, again, this is not a case like Space Station Earthshaker where I can see the other perspective. You have just chosen wrong. Some people just choose because that cat dreaming about a busty mouse, that's what it is. Actually, it was you. We were talking about it, and you were like, yep, it's the back glass. And you know what? I think so. And that's sad. A sad state for pinball. But we will march on, and we will honor this poor decision as we have honored all poor decisions in the past. Only other thing on round two I thought I would note is the largest margin of victory was actually Whirlwind, which is coming in at the number one seed. It beat the 16th seed at 14 Tomcat with 75.6% of the vote. That's not a surprise. No, it's not. So round three matchups. We're down to four matchups at this point. We got Whirlwind is going up against one of your favorites, High Speed. Well, that's going to be obvious. High Speed's the better game. I see. I disagree. I'm a big Steve Ritchie fan, but I think Whirlwind is one of Lawler's best, if not his best game. And I would actually favor Whirlwind in that scenario. But I definitely see the appeal of this high speed. I think you're right. I think Whirlwind will win the matchup. I will be voting for high speed because I love high speed. Understood. And I wouldn't fault anyone for choosing high speed over Whirlwind anyway. Okay, how about this one? Mousing Around is going against Space Station. I don't know. Two games you didn't think were going to last. We could probably just disqualify those two and just give whoever the next round would be against them a bye. But, yeah, no, it's – I'm going to go with Space Station. Yeah, I'm going to Space Station. Madison has to be put – put it in the trap, feed it some decon. It's time. It's time to get rid of it and its little droppings. I'm not going with Space Station just because of the pin bot thing. I think Space Station is a better game than Mousing Around. I do as well. But if the only reason you would support Space Station is out of hate, I will take that hate. Use it. Use it. Use it and crush this rodent. Third matchup. Yes. It's going to be Elvira versus Banzai Ron. This one could be close for people. I really enjoy Banzai Ron. Banzai Ron did a lot of things that I thought was awesome. I think Elvira will win. I'll be honest, when I sit down and vote, I'll probably flip a quarter. Because I like both these games. A lot. Interesting. Very objective of you. Very Harvey Two-Face also. Okay, final matchup. Taxi is going up against Black Knight 2000. That's another tough one. I think I will go with Taxi. Yeah. I like Black Knight 2000 a lot, but I really enjoy Taxi. I agree. I like how the rules integrate a bit better Black Knight 2000 the upper playfield just gets a little too repetitive great sound package and light show but I just I think Taxi is just a better game overall okay well those would be the round 3 matchups link in the show notes I'll put the links up everywhere I normally do I guess since I can't figure out which one of them was the group of traitors that sabotaged this entire thing holy cow and so with that said we're out of the pinball segment so it's time to hop on over into video games i suppose and i guess i'll open with a transitional one pinball fx3 uh the sequel to pinball fx2 you know big shock very creative name uh it's out it released after our last episode uh you can't import tables from the prior version well that's good that's i don't know if that really affects me much because I don't think I have any tables on Pinball FX 2 because... I thought you did on your phone. Yeah, I do on my tablet, but I don't know. Will that translate across? Because I never got it to translate across to my computer. I don't know if it'll translate across, but I think Pinball FX 3 may be available on your tablet, and then you'd be able to download the tables into it. Into that. Yeah, that might work. Yeah. I don't know if that version's out yet or not, but there's no reason for me to think that they're not going to do all those different platforms like they normally do because it's a pretty good travel game. That's why I did it mobily because I put a lot of time on my tablet in it there for a while. I think it is still bound by system type because I have a few games I got with a humble bundle for Pinball FX 2 for the computer and I don't think those imported on my Xbox. Hard to know. I don't think I bought them twice. I try not to buy things twice but i might have it was one of the star wars packs so it could have been you know at cheap at cheap enough prices i don't care but anyway uh the the main notable things that i just wanted to point out besides that it's out there is there are a lot of different mode options that they've added into the new version so you can play in different ways they have challenges now and they have tournament modes now which pinball arcade had tournaments but but pinball rfx3 did not but now they're you have like challenges will be like high score with just one ball Go for a score with one ball. And they've also added RPG elements. So as you do things like hit the pop bumpers, you might get a perk that you can equip, which will give you more points when you're in the pop bumpers. So you can actually use power-ups and such. So it's very different from traditional pinball, but this is a video game version, and they've incorporated a lot of interesting features, I'd say, to give you different ways to play the game. So anyway, just wanted to let people know that it is out there. The next game I thought I'd go ahead and jump into is one I've been playing. I put in a little bit of time on Pinball FX3, but not much. Mafia 3. I brought it up on the last episode, but I wasn't very far along in it. I'm still not particularly far, but I am after the first what I call major plot twist in the game. So I've done a number of missions at this point. It's a lot of fun. Looks really good. The driving feels okay. I'm not on the super realistic driving mode. I'm keeping it fairly arcade style. The cover-based mechanics feel pretty good. I wasn't. Sometimes games don't pull that off very well, and this one seems to have done it pretty competently. There's been a higher degree of stealth emphasis than I've expected with you wanting to avoid conflict rather than necessarily get into a shootout sort of thing. That may change up as you get better equipped throughout the game. And the story has been pretty good. It's sort of set in what we're going to say is New Orleans. It's renamed, but you've got this. You're sort of in the black mafia, I guess, is the concept, and you're up against some other crime families. And obviously, there's a big emphasis on dealing with racism and such because this is taking place during the Vietnam era, so sort of late 60s, early 70s. So there's a lot of those southern values and such coming into play and the racism that was rampant at the time that you have to deal with. So I like it. It's been very interesting so far. I've only really been getting time in on it during the weekends, so I just don't have a lot else to say at this time. But I'm looking forward to still playing it, unlike Dishonored 2. So I'll keep plugging away. That's what you can do. I mean, it's kind of an open-world game, isn't it? Yep, yep. I can get in so much trouble with open-world games. like yes i i'm gonna try not to spin into into side mission oblivion or or or exploratory purgatory take your pick yeah take your pick because i had that where i i was over 100 hours into fallout 4 and i still hadn't gone to diamond city yet i think the fallout games emphasize the exploration more than most open world games do yeah this has more of a we want to be kind of like gta but with less totally off-the-wall stuff to waste your time with. It's not that sandboxy. Mafia 3 is the toned-down version of GTA where Saints Row is the, well, you didn't go far enough of GTA. Yeah, let's go with that. Yeah, bingo. I like Saints Row. I do too. They each have their own place. But in Saints Row, I also didn't just go around exploring the city all the time. I was just doing stuff. They just had a lot of those weird mission activities. I liked the one where you had to get hit by cars and were ragdolling. Yeah, that was always a good, that was a fun one. I always enjoyed that one. Now, you mentioned at the intro that you've been playing Cuphead. I have. And Cuphead's one of those games that's been on the people's radar for a while now, since what, like 2014 or something like that? I think you're right. That they first started talking about it. And if you haven't seen Cuphead, you need to see Cuphead. You don't necessarily need to play Cuphead If it's not your Some people don't like platformers I'm not a huge platformer guy I think this game is a lot harder for me Than it is for somebody who would be More into the platformer Slash run and gun type player Which I'm not So I'm not that great at them But the art, it's got this beautiful Like 30's cartoon art style And the music is really good It has just such a good ambiance to it. I mean, between the music and the art style and everything, it just feels like something special. The gameplay, it's hard. It's not impossible hard. It's not like super meat boy hard. But it's hard, but not to the point where when something messes up, you're like, well, this is impossible. It's like, okay, yeah, no, I just timed that badly. I'm really bad about stuff like that. like I said a minute ago, I'm not real great at this type of game. You've played Super Meat Boy with me. I'm not very good at this type of game. So you feel that the deaths feel fair Oh yeah it feels fair Every time I died it hasn been me going oh well that BS That crap No it been like no No that was completely avoidable by somebody who actually had skill or played this type of game enough. I mean, I've been playing it not as a sit down and burn through it type game. I've been playing it where I will sit down and fire it up and fight a boss or two, and that's it. I'll spend, you know, half an hour, maybe an hour playing it a little bit just as kind of a downtime right after I get home from work or when I'm getting the kids to bed or something. I'll put a half hour in it or so, and then I'll bail out, and I'll go do something else. Because it's just kind of a fun little thing that I can see where you could blow through it, especially if you were better at these games without it taking you a whole lot of time. But I've been enjoying it, and the whole thing just feels good. The controls feel good. Some of the powers feel like they might be a little bit OP because you can choose kind of your different powers and your different layouts and how things work together. And some of them feel like they might be just a tad OP, but not horribly so. Not enough to help me out anyway other than making things a little bit easier. But no, it's definitely been a surprisingly large amount of fun. So since you've been playing it in sort of spurts, do you have a sense as to how far along you are in it? I have just... I finished the first island. There are three islands and I have been working on... I've only played like one boss on the second island so far so I don't know you could probably knock it out I honestly can't say I think sure there's probably some people out there that could have knocked this game out in a couple hours or whatever but I'm not it I've gotten just over two hours into the game total since I started playing it and I'm sure you probably knocked the whole game out in that amount of time or just a little more, unless it's going to get even harder, which is completely possible that it could jump up to way harder now that I'm off the first island. But it's been fun. It's been enjoyable. I've just, like I said, I've treated it kind of like Binding of Isaac. It's a game I pick up and it's just like I just want something that I can just play for a little bit without getting into the deepness of a 4X game or something like Overwatch or Hitman. I want something that's a bit more casual. I wouldn't call this game casual. I don't really know how to explain it. I've been using it as a relaxation game instead of something that I get really deep buried into because I can play a little bit and then walk away with no problem. So what's it? I mean, you mentioned Super Meat Boy, but in the context of difficulty. Is it a platformer? They call it a run-and-gun. Okay. Which is probably better than platformer. I've always kind of considered run-and-gun type games and platformers a lot alike. But it's like Contra in some ways. Okay. Yeah, I'd use run-and-gun then as the descriptor. It's sort of interesting on the True Achievement site where I do the genre assignment work with a team. We use a definition of run and gun that actually specifies that it includes platforming elements. The big issue is since we're a multi-genre site, I see a lot of submissions from people, especially people who like to track platformer leaderboards, who try and bring in run and gun games onto the platformer leaderboard. and then it becomes a question of okay well are the platforming mechanics heavy enough to warrant inclusion and uh i mean and you know this is all getting into a sort of an aside but in our case the way we do it is we define platforming as you basically need environmental death environmental threats to qualify it so a game like alien hominid would not it just doesn't have enough places where you're alien you've played alien hominid haven't you yeah i think I've played it at somebody's house. It wasn't my place. Yeah, it is. It's a weird little yellow alien. Or Contra is a good example. There are some places where you can fall off and die. Yes. Is it enough to call it a platformer? Depends on your perspective. So it's sort of like that. So Cuphead has a lot of the where there are platforms, but it's mostly to dodge enemy fire. And it's not really about making the jumps. Right. It'd probably just be run and gun. If it's got jumps and such where you actually are platforming, then it's probably both would be how I'd interpret it. Yeah, I mean, thinking about it, it's definitely more of a run and gun because there are platforms whose whole purpose is to let you move to avoid fire and stuff. Like I said, I've always just put those two game styles together. But this is very much... Sure, a lot of people do. thinking about it, it's Contra or games like that is very much what this is. And Metal Slug, kind of like the Metal Slug games, which are definitely run-of-games. That's actually, it's a lot like Metal Slug. It's got a lot of stuff that feels like Metal Slug too. So yeah, it's definitely a run-of-gun. I just... It's been enjoyable. It's a different type of thing. It's kind of weird because most run and guns you have lots of like big open levels where you advance level as and then eventually you fight a boss and in cuphead there are a lot of bosses and just a couple of the actual run and gun levels where you run through where you have to fight through a level the first island had like yeah the first island had two of those but had like five or six bosses. Okay. My understanding was the game, when it was sort of pitched or first programmed, it was just boss rush. It was all bosses. And then later, the run-and-gun levels were tacked on to add more meat to the product. Yeah, no, I've heard it's a game that can probably be gotten through, like I said earlier, pretty quickly. And I've seen some people online that are way, way high-level gamers who blew through it much quicker. than I have. But it's enjoyable. The art's nice. The music's really good. I haven't had a chance to play it co-op yet. I need to get another controller, another wired controller, so I can play it co-op because I think co-op would be a lot of fun. I forgot that it had co-op. It has two-player cooperative. With Mughead or whatever his name is. Mughead because it's Cuphead and Mughead. so I yeah I'd like to give that a try one of these days I'll get another controller and play it that way but well remind me and I'll bring one over sometime because I use a wired controller all the time for steam games yeah no that's what I do because it's not worth the hassle and wired controllers are cheap anymore so well did you have any other video games you wanted to talk about? I know you're not far enough in Sleeping Dogs. Yeah, I'm not far enough in Sleeping Dogs to talk about. I did have one more I should have added. Last episode, when I've been talking about how I just started a game the day we recorded the last episode, I've played that some more, and that is Factorio. I'm up to three hours into Factorio. Have you seen Factorio? No, I don't even think I've heard of it, other than you mentioning it before. Yeah, it's... I guess it's still technically in early access. It's one of those never-ending early access games on Steam. But it's kind of a management type game. You are playing a survivor of a space crash, and you're trying to escape the planet. And basically what you're doing to try and escape the planet is you're kind of being Minecraft-y. You're building stuff. So it's like, okay, I need metal, so I'll build a mine that'll dig out metal. And this is all like a top-down view. And, okay, well, the mine's working to dig out metal. Well, to power the mine, I need coal, so I'll build a mine that gets coal. And you build arms that'll shift the stuff onto conveyor belts to move it to somewhere else where it can go into a factory, and the factory will make things, and then the parts from the factory are shipped onto another conveyor that moves it to yet another factory that uses those parts from a bunch of other factories to build yet something else. So you're basically just creating what amounts to a giant machine of, or a giant factory world that is trying to make things of increasing complexity. So you'll start out and you'll design it, and when you build it, You'll build it and you'll have a, your stuff will work together and make things a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. So you start out with you building things to build up what it starts. And then the way you design and build everything is so it feeds each other so they can keep feeding more stuff. So eventually you'll go, you'll get it. So you've got factories making big things automatically. so you'll just go and pick up the stored stuff that's been stored there and then go on to continue building more factories and building the defensive perimeter because there's alien things that rush the area and this and that. It's fun. It's a lot of fun, actually. I'm very, very bad at it. I think it's just I need more time to get better at it. I am not great at creating the kind of necessary efficient layouts that make your factories work really, really well. I will get there. I might end up having to sit down with a piece of paper and make plans on my piece of paper and think about it before I actually build this stuff more. But so far, it's been a lot of fun. It's been real interesting. It sort of, the more and more complexity, kind of reminds me of Kingdom of Kethlings. Don't know if you ever played Kingdom or World of Kethlings. I think... This sounds much more complicated, though. Yeah, I think I played one of the Kethling games. It sounds familiar. If I did, it was... Yeah, there was no defensive grid stuff or anything, but it was essentially you would build buildings, and then the plot would tell you to build more and more complex things. So you basically had more and more complex blueprints that required more and more resources, and you'd have these little Keflings, and you'd order them around. Yes, it's a lot like that. You'd move around as your avatar, and you were the big giant, and they worshipped you, basically. Yeah, it would be something kind of like that, yeah. Okay. Because this was making me think, gosh, I sure wish there was another Keflings game. Because those were very chill. This sounds like, I mean, first you had spreadsheets in space, and now you've got graph paper. Yeah, I know. That's one of those things why it can sometimes be really hard for me to recommend games to people, because I'm that guy who plays weird games. Like, all the hours I've thrown in lately playing Cold Waters, I mean, I'm up to 84 hours total playtime in Cold Waters so far. and I haven't played it in over a week. It's been almost two weeks since I played Cold Waters and I've got it up to 84 hours played. And I just like weird games. I think that's what it is. Well, they're not hearing about them on any other podcast, so it's good in a way. I only name my boring two-year-old AAA games. I'm just like the shooter on the bro box with his... They're just lucky I don't play Madden. They'd never hear the end of it. Holy cow. I wonder. I wonder if there's a way I can sort my Steam library to show my most played games. I'm pretty sure I know what my most played game is. You have to make your own spreadsheet and track it on your own. Or if Steam doesn't let you, I'm sure there's a third-party site that does it. Yeah. I'm sure my most played game is either Torchlight 2 or one of the Civs. Torchlight 2, I've got 219 hours in. Oh, wow. Yeah. I only played the first Torchlight. I like Torchlight 2 a lot, obviously. Let's see. Sid Meyers, Sid Meyers, Sid Meyers. I've got 220 hours, one more hour into Civ V than I do in Torchlight 2. It was a close thing. That's what it is. I might have to play another hour of Torchlight just to make them match up. Yeah. Yeah. Symmetry. It's all about balance. All about the symmetry. That's true. We'd be proud of you. Well, I think we made it to the end of the show then. Yeah, I think so. All right. Well, as a reminder to our listeners, you can reach out to us, facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're also available via email, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. We're on Twitter and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And I've been so terrible on Instagram. I'm so sorry. I had the perfect opportunity to take a ton of good pictures and video and this and that when we were at Penapalooza and yet I didn't I was so bad I'm not good at social media I'm just not good at it but you're a social media manager I am? Well, glad You're the one who gets to say the Twitch and the whatever gram So you must be I don't really like Twitch at all I use it I use it I don't really like it that much I use it But Instagram I like Instagram a lot more than Twitch I need to start putting stuff up more I need to take more pictures And do more interesting stuff And sharing Anything It's just so sad I've been so – You need to take a picture of you like giving the horns when you beat Cuphead with the victory screen in the background. There you go. With the horns. I've basically written you your entire week's worth of content, right? Yeah. Well, you could do like a thumbs – I mean you have some creative flexibility. You don't have to do my exact pose. I didn't know you were such a Texas fan. Well, I think a lot of our – let me tell you what our analytics say. Texans very important to us Alright look at Morns We gotta keep them happy If I later tell you it's time to roll tide You roll tide We go It's a great movie Actually I keep wanting to watch it Ever since you've been talking about cold waters I keep wanting to put it in because I do have it on DVD Did I mention last time that I went and watched Hunt for Red October You were going to Yeah I went and watched Hunt for Red October It was good I forgot how good the music is in that movie That movie's music is just It's killer I own the soundtrack I've got the soundtrack on CD In my CD box Somewhere in the garage I think I might need to dig it up And rip it to a format that I actually listen to Like 8-track? Yeah, I need to rip it to 8-track That's what I have to do The whole album had to be good with 8-track because you couldn't be skipping around all the time. The other option is to fire up Spotify and just search for Red October soundtrack. Oh, yeah. Good old Spotify. Okay. Well, everyone, obviously we've reached the extent of our content because we've now gone into eclectic movies, which is always a risk with us. Yeah, it is. Man, that would... They're fine. And they tie in so well. Those would be episodes that could last forever. They could, yeah. We could actually do a pretty good movie podcast because we see quite a bit and we have a lot of historic ones that we can pull from. But at least we get to tie them in well with video games. And Pinball. They love these themes. Yeah, there was a Hunt for Red October video game on Game Boy and Super Nintendo. I remember them. I owned the Game Boy one. I did not own the Super Nintendo one, I don't think. I think I rented it. I don't own either of them now. Yeah, it's been a long time. I don't know if I... I think I've got the Super NES games in the basement somewhere, but I have no idea. I didn't own all that many Super Nintendo games. Well, until next time, I'm Dennis. And I'm Tony. So long, everyone. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 0bececf4-f832-48ed-ba4c-5de2e8aa4c23*