# Episode 173 - SE+ for So Many Months

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2022-08-07  
**Duration:** 59m 39s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-173

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## Analysis

Tony and Dennis discuss recent pinball industry developments including Stern's new Home Team feature for Insider Connected, Pinball Brothers' delay of Queen Pinball to October's Expo, Chicago Gaming Company's logistical challenges with Cactus Canyon Remake's LE/SE Plus toppers, and Multimorphic's staffing delays and price increases across their P3 kits.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Chicago Gaming Company is considering shipping SE Plus machines without toppers, then sending toppers separately to customers. — _Dennis reporting from The Pinball Show podcast with Zach Minney; described as being 'considered' rather than committed._
- [HIGH] Multimorphic is approximately two months behind on shipping estimates due to staffing challenges. — _Multimorphic email announcement posted on Pinside; Dennis directly cites the email contents._
- [HIGH] A new Multimorphic P3 order placed today would take approximately one year to ship. — _Official Multimorphic email estimate cited by Dennis._
- [HIGH] Pinball Brothers initially suggested Queen Pinball would be available for play in September but now targeting October's Pinball Expo as realistic expectation. — _Dennis reporting on Pinball Brothers' official communication; supply chain and production concerns cited._
- [MEDIUM] Multimorphic raised wages to $17/hour (up from $15/hour previously advertised) to address hiring challenges. — _Dennis citing Indeed.com job listings reviewed 'a few days ago'; represents recent wage adjustment._
- [HIGH] Stern Pinball's Godzilla game received code updates last week as part of broader LCD game updates. — _Tony directly reports trying out the game; references multiple code updates across all LCD games._
- [HIGH] Chicago Gaming Company's Cactus Canyon Remake LE orders have been waiting nearly a year without shipping due to topper component delays. — _Dennis states 'we're getting close to a year since this announcement' and LE people may wait 'another one, maybe two years.'_

### Notable Quotes

> "And honestly, I'm sure a lot of people are really appreciating it because, at least for me, I'd always just log back into the site. I mean, I have my phone with me, but I don't usually have Stern Pinball on my main load screen."
> — **Tony**, ~5:00
> _Explains practical appeal of Stern's Home Team feature eliminating QR code login friction for casual players._

> "So you pay as much as an LE. Yes. And then you get an SE. Yes. And maybe someday you get the topper to get your SE Plus. It costs as much as the LE."
> — **Dennis**, ~25:00
> _Captures frustration with CGC's problematic SE Plus shipping strategy without toppers at LE pricing._

> "Like they very much recognize that they're running into a problem with not getting any SE Plus and LEs out. And as you know, this is pinball, the hype doesn't last forever."
> — **Dennis**, ~30:00
> _Underscores market reality that delayed release kills consumer enthusiasm for games._

> "I don't understand what it is about this topper that's making it so difficult to get... What's in these toppers? Do they have the graphics cards? The same ones that were used for crypto mining or something?"
> — **Dennis**, ~32:00
> _Expresses community bewilderment at CGC's inability to source topper components; references supply chain parallels (Stern F-150 chip shortage)._

> "I mean, I have a storage shed. Or, hey, I have a you-store-it rental place that I can keep 15 machines in."
> — **Tony**, ~45:00
> _Highlights distributor logistics constraints when holding incomplete games awaiting components._

> "A year to get a P3 order isn't going to do them favors to get more P3 orders. No. But maybe they shouldn't be taking more P3 orders."
> — **Dennis**, ~85:00
> _Critiques Multimorphic's order management strategy; suggests they should pause new orders during backlog crisis._

> "I'm hopeful that with their hiring issues, they can get back on track with where they wanted to be. It has been a rough time to hire people across the board."
> — **Tony**, ~70:00
> _Acknowledges broader labor market context for Multimorphic's staffing struggles; shows industry-wide hiring challenges._

> "I'm not surprised at this. I was actually surprised that they seemed more inflation-resistant than the other manufacturers for a while."
> — **Tony**, ~77:00
> _Notes Multimorphic's previous pricing stability and questions reasons for first major price increase._

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Stern Pinball | company | Released Home Team feature for Insider Connected (QR-free multi-profile login); updated all LCD games with code last week; Godzilla receiving ongoing updates. |
| Chicago Gaming Company | company | Struggling with Cactus Canyon Remake LE/SE Plus topper sourcing delays; considering shipping SE Plus without toppers; LE orders waiting nearly a year. |
| Pinball Brothers | company | Developing Queen Pinball; initially suggested September availability, now targeting October Pinball Expo; facing supply chain constraints. |
| Multimorphic | company | Announced two-month delay due to staffing challenges; raised wages to $17/hour; P3 new orders now ~1 year to ship; increased prices on all kits by $300-500 effective Sept 1; has sufficient parts inventory. |
| Pinball Expo | event | October 2022 event; Pinball Brothers targeting Queen Pinball availability; traditionally major sales opportunity. |
| The Pinball Show | media | Podcast featuring Zach Minney discussing CGC supply chain and production challenges. |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; office manager dealing with birth certificate requests; plays Godzilla pinball, Fall Guys, watches EVO fighting game tournament. |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; not on manufacturer email lists; researches pricing and industry announcements; provides manufacturing/logistics analysis. |
| Zach Minney | person | Distributor for CGC; appeared on The Pinball Show to discuss Cactus Canyon logistics challenges. |
| Gary Stern | person | Stern Pinball leadership; quoted in interview about F-150 chip shortage impacting production. |
| Weird Al Yankovic | person | IP for Multimorphic P3 game module; received large software update with new modes. |
| The Super Awesome Pinball Show | media | Hosts tailgate event with CoinTaker; Queen Pinball was potentially planned for this event before delays. |
| Nap's Arcade | organization | Covered Pinball Brothers Queen delay in detail; Dennis references their article. |
| Pizza West | organization | Location with Toy Story pinball; Dennis mentions it has wizard mode accessible to players. |
| 403 Club | organization | Local pinball venue where Dennis plays; he has missed attending multiple times due to work and EVO tournament. |
| EVO | event | Annual fighting game tournament; Tony watched Dragon Ball FighterZ top 8, stayed up until 12:30am exhausted. |
| Cactus Canyon Remake | game | CGC product; SE, LE, SE Plus versions; LE shipments delayed indefinitely due to topper component sourcing; nearly 1 year since announcement. |
| Queen Pinball | game | Pinball Brothers in-development title; delayed from September to October targeting. |
| Godzilla | game | Stern Pinball game; received code updates; Tony still attempting billion-point score, waiting for Mechagodzilla mode. |
| Toy Story | game | Stern Pinball game; wizard mode accessible to location players; available at Pizza West location. |
| Fall Guys | game | Free-to-play game Tony plays; completing dailies without season pass. |
| Multimorphic P3 | product | Modular pinball platform; new orders take ~1 year to ship; price increases on kits $300-500 starting Sept 1; includes Weird Al, Heist, Cosmic Kart Racing, Lexi Lightspeed, Cannon Lagoon modules. |
| Insider Connected | product | Stern Pinball's digital ecosystem; new Home Team feature stores up to 8 player profiles on Spike 2 machines; eliminates QR code scanning for login. |
| Pinside | media | Forum where Multimorphic email announcement was posted (not verified as official by Dennis). |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Supply chain and manufacturing delays, Pricing increases across pinball manufacturers, Logistical challenges with incomplete product shipments
- **Secondary:** Stern Pinball Insider Connected ecosystem expansion, Labor market tightness and wage pressure in manufacturing, Consumer sentiment on pre-order trust and transparency, Boutique vs major manufacturer production capabilities
- **Mentioned:** Hype cycles and market interest decay during delays

### Sentiment

**Negative** (-0.62) — Frustrated tone regarding manufacturing delays, supply chain issues, and pricing increases. Dennis expresses general discontent ('I hate pinball'). Tony is more philosophical and hopeful about industry challenges. Both express skepticism about CGC's topper sourcing difficulties and the viability of shipping incomplete games.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Multimorphic order backlog at 1-year shipping window; raises question about whether they should pause new P3 orders until caught up. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'A new P3 order. Today would take approximately one year to ship' and 'A year to get a P3 order isn't going to do them favors to get more P3 orders.'
- **[business_signal]** Multimorphic staffing delays cascading into broader production delays; 2-month slip with expectation of further delays before improvement. (confidence: high) — Email announcement: 'two months longer than anticipated' staffing ramp; 'expect the delay to actually get worse but only for a couple more weeks.'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Dennis expresses frustration with pinball industry delays and logistics ('I hate pinball'); Tony more measured but skeptical of pre-order model sustainability. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'I just... I mean, I hate pinball. Just to put that out there' and 'the whole kind of murky background and stuff when it comes around specifically new in box pinball purchasing and stuff I'm uncomfortable with.'
- **[industry_signal]** Multimorphic wage pressure evident; Indeed listings show $15/hour → $17/hour increase; reflects broader hiring difficulty across industries. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'they now have a listing... at $17 an hour' up from $15/hour; Tony: 'It has been a rough time to hire people across the board.'
- **[market_signal]** Product launch delays eroding consumer interest in Cactus Canyon Remake; hype cycle decay observed. (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'The ship has sailed. A long time ago' regarding Cactus Canyon enthusiasm; 'the hype doesn't last forever.'
- **[market_signal]** Multimorphic using price lock-in deadline (Sept 1) as cash injection strategy; pressures existing consumers to commit deposits ($500 per kit). (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'this, I think, is a reasonable way to inject more money into the company. It gives you that nice little shot. Gives you the deposits.'
- **[market_signal]** Multimorphic raising P3 kit prices $300-500 per module starting September 1; coincides with wage increases to $17/hour and hiring costs. (confidence: high) — Weird Al +$500, Heist +$500, Cosmic Kart +$400, Lexi Lightspeed +$400, Cannon Lagoon +$301; Tony notes 'money has to come from somewhere.'
- **[product_strategy]** Pinball Brothers' Queen Pinball slipping from September to October Pinball Expo; supply chain constraints cited. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'a realistic expectation would be that you will be able to play it at Pinball Expo... second half of October.'
- **[product_strategy]** Cactus Canyon Remake LE/SE Plus has been delayed nearly one year; toppers unavailable; manufacturer considering shipping incomplete units. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'we're getting close to a year since this announcement and these orders for le's' and 'they were indicating September might be too aggressive.'
- **[product_concern]** CGC's strategy of shipping SE Plus games without toppers and sending toppers separately creates logistical nightmare; unprecedented in pinball industry; distributor tracking systems unprepared. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'It's just not the pinball model to send out games and then send out the other half of the game later' and 'CGC is not doing this all themselves. They use a distributor network.'
- **[supply_chain_signal]** Topper component sourcing crisis at CGC preventing LE/SE Plus shipment; nature of supply shortage unclear; parallels to Stern's F-150 chip shortage. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'Chicago Gaming Company has been unable to get everything that they need to build the toppers' for 'months now'; 'I don't understand what it is about this topper.'
- **[technology_signal]** Stern Pinball introducing Home Team feature for Insider Connected enabling multi-profile local storage on Spike 2 machines, reducing QR scanning friction. (confidence: high) — Tony: 'It's super simple. You just go into the settings and you load them in' and 'it was super slick, and it worked really well.'

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, August 7th. It is episode 173. I am Tony. And I'm Dennis. And, whoa, it's been a couple weeks. What's going on, Tony, before we get into the meat of the matter? Life goes on. Doobie doobie doo. No, not a whole lot has been going. Mainly been super busy with work-related stuff. So we've been pretty involved with that and getting the kids ready for the new school year. Oh, yeah, that's right around the corner. Yeah, it's like next week. Yeah, I saw someone on Facebook whose kid had just started. And I thought, oh, yeah, because in my childhood headcanon, school starts September. Right. Which isn't true. In fact, it wasn't even true when we were kids. But in my headcanon, it's September 1 to May 31st is school. Yeah. No. No. School starts next week. And between the getting everything ready with cross-country and everything else, I have been a very busy, busy person. Mm-hmm. Well, I have been pretty busy with work as well. We have a big federal grant that I'm not even writing for it, but we've been heavily involved with the local participation part. So working on that and then sort of enjoyment wise, I did not go to pinball yesterday at the 403 Club. I've actually missed that a number of times now. Evo, the fighting game tournament's been going on So I've been watching that Which, if I sound exhausted And less fun, it's because I stayed up until 12.30 but I could not get through At that point I was just too tired I could not get through top 8 of Dragon Ball FighterZ, which is too bad Because of all the games they're playing, it's the one I've played But So Anyway, so that's going to wrap up today Otherwise, I've still been playing Fall Guys Doing a lot of the dailies and that To get myself the not quite fancy outfits because I don't have a season pass. I'm a cheap, free player. I'm not a whale. You're a free bird. I'm a porpoise, not a whale. So there's that. And then Godzilla. I've been still trying to get a billion on the Godzillas. I haven't done it, but I think I'm just one good Mechagodzilla away. You're so close. You're on the cusp. I feel like mentally I'm on the cusp. But speaking of mentally, we should probably go right into pinball because that's what the people want. And speaking of Godzilla, let's start with Stern Pinball. So they had a bunch of code. In fact, I think they updated all the LCD games last week. Wow. Code updates for all of them. And the big thing that a lot of people have been talking about and the thing that you and I just tried out a little bit ago before we started recording is the new feature they launched as part of their Insider Connected package called Home Team. Welcome to the home team. Yes. So all it is, for those that don't know, is you can store up to eight Insider Connected accounts on any of your Spike 2 games. And that eliminates the need to constantly have to scan your QR code to log in to earn your achievements and track your progress. So it's super simple. You just go into the settings and you load them in. And then when you hold in the left flipper button a couple seconds before you start the game, it will allow you to choose the profiles and which players they will be. So we loaded yours on because I put mine on a couple days ago. And we tried that out, and it was super slick, and it worked really well. And honestly, I'm sure a lot of people are really appreciating it because, at least for me, I'd always just log back into the site. I mean, I have my phone with me, but I don't usually have Stern Pinball on my main load screen. No. I just have to go there and pull it up. And it's like anything that enhances my laziness, I greatly appreciate. And it had been a while since you had played Godzilla, so you got to see Godzilla power-ups and stuff, features. Because you last played Code .9 or something. Yeah, I hadn't played Godzilla since prior to .94, I know. Yeah. Yeah, it was like March the last time I played Godzilla. I haven't really played much pinball at all between everything going on. I keep missing them and I have stuff going on and I just... And now I've heard we have a Toy Story at Pizza West. That's what I saw on the Facebooks. That's there waiting for us. Did you know that people are getting to the wizard mode on Toy Story? I heard that. I heard it takes, you know, a game. I'm curious if I could do it in a game. Probably not. I don't think I can. I'm not that. And they probably have set it up fairly hard for location play. You would assume. Yes. Because we don't want a Lord of the Rings this. Well, speaking of Lords, let's go to Pinball Brothers, Tony. Remember the successor company to Pilot. They're putting out the Lord Pinball Machine. No. I didn't think. At least we're getting away from Dad Rock. But I went with Lord because of royalty, because Queen Pinball. Which is Dad Rock. Yes. But I was going with a different angle. But it doesn't matter. All right. It is Dad Rock. Initial reports had been suggesting to us that Queen Pinball was going to be available to play sometime this month, September 2022. This is September? Oh, my God. Did I miss something? No. I told you. This is what happens when I'm watching the EVO Fighting Championships here. Time has no meaning to me anymore. All right. So people be nice to me. I'm very tired. All right. So next month. Next month. There was some talk about it possibly being at the super awesome pinball show. I'm hedging now because I was like, I don't know what they're calling their tailgate. I'm going to call it the super awesome pinball show tailgate. It's a thing they do with CoinTaker. They've done it before or at least planned it before. I don't know. The pandemic had done any disruptions. But anyway, so the thought was Queen's going to be at that. And now we're like, I don't know. Or more specifically, it's not we, it's Pinball Brothers. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, everyone. Y'all need to step back some. Or as I saw it expressed, hold your horses. So Pinball Brothers, while suggesting initially that it would be available for play in September, are now saying that that might be overly ambitious and that a realistic expectation would be that you will be able to play it at Pinball Expo, which would be on the second half of October. I'm not going to be at Expo this year. Oh, God, no. But I wasn't going to be at the tailgate either. So I guess it doesn't really matter much to me. But for those of you that maybe were planning to go to the tailgate to play Queen, just be aware that it's not clear. They didn't say it wouldn't be there, but with supply chain stuff, they were indicating September might be too aggressive. And they couldn't even promise. Well, who could? But they can't promise that even October will be made. But that's what they're – it sounds like that's what they're shooting for. Right. That's their target. To try and definitely have it out by Expo, which I get. I mean, that's a prime opportunity to pick up sales. It would be a lot of people experience it at Expo. So that's what's going on with them. NAP Arcade has covered this in more detail than we have and I do have a link in the show notes so people can go and read that article we're flying right along here Tony and since we're flying I think we should go ahead and fly to a company I don't believe we've talked about in a while and that is Chicago Gaming Company makers of the Cactus Canyon remake okay so this one was discussed and was new to me on last week's The Pinball Show which I did with Zach Minney over on The Pinball Network And when we were doing that episode, what came up has been, and I've heard this for a while, CGC has been turning out Cactus Canyon Remake's Standard Edition. And as you may remember, the Standard Edition, they had the Standard Edition, then they had the LE Edition. And then a little bit after that, because we were at Pinball Expo when those were unveiled. Correct. And then, oh gosh, it wasn't that much longer, they announced the Standard Edition Plus, or SE Plus as people call it. And SE Plus is the standard edition, but it comes with the topper that the LE has. It's also priced exactly the same as the LE. But it doesn't have any of the other LE features. You know, the LE had other, you know, typical LE bling. So they've been trying out not SE Pluses, but regular SEs. Here's the thing. People have been frustrated for a while now because, like, the LEs haven't shipped. And the reason that they've said for months now that the reason the LEs have not shipped is Chicago Gaming Company has been unable to get everything that they need to build the toppers, specifically the toppers. I have not heard any other barriers to the completion of the LE. Well, what came out during the pinball show was that because of that, Chicago Gaming is now considering shipping SE. I'm assuming because they're pretty much through the log of SE orders, but I don't know that. Right. But they're considering shipping the SE Plus games. Now, you might be going, well, Dennis, you said they don't have the parts to build the toppers. The SE Pluses have the toppers, as do the LEs. So why would they do this? Well, the plan is that they were, or the consideration is, they'll ship the SE Pluses without the toppers. And then when they finally get to build the toppers, they'll send the toppers separate. Somehow. I guess. So you pay as much as an LE. Yes. And then you get an SE. Yes. And maybe someday you get the topper to get your SE Plus. It costs as much as the LE. Well, the LE, the people who initially bought in at the higher price point, guys, it is set for another one, maybe two years waiting for their machines to come out. man I hate pinball I was going to ask your thoughts and so thank you for sharing those I struggle with this as a strategy I do think it makes sense if you're done running SEs if you don't have any more SE orders I do think it would be better to get people the playable game and then the topper later than not but I don't understand why you wouldn't give the LE people it first they ordered first if they're only running on one line they'd have to make more changes the se plus has no changes except for the topper they can just keep pushing the line with making zero changes to the line and that's true i i have assumed and it is a total assumption that the le's are built they just haven't shipped them because they're waiting on the toppers but i don't know that's true right i've just figured because i've i've assumed again that they didn't think that they would be i mean we're getting close to a year since this announcement and these orders for le's and my thought was just they had to think they'd have the toppers done before now i mean of all the things to have a delay on the freaking topper right but here's part of the complication so all right so let's say they do let's say they do this couple couple of interesting things one would be another issue that comes up with sending the game without the topper be it the se plus or the le is if the recipient, if it's a long delay for the topper, and the recipient has grown tired of the game, that puts them in an interesting situation when it comes to selling it because they don't actually have everything for it yet. I'm going to just say there ain't no way CGC and their distributors are going to keep a log of the topper recipients and allow people to sell their game and then say, oh, just mail the topper to this new address. Like selling your SE plus a lot. is like people are just going to get stuck with toppers and have to sell them separate, which you could do on the market, sure. But they'd have to sell their game as an SE, not an SE Plus without the topper. Not that CGC needs to worry about that. But one of the things, you know, podcasting with Zach, who is a distributor for CGC, that they do need to worry about is, so logistically, how is this supposed to work? because normally distributors get a purchase, take money, ship product. So are they supposed to keep a log of just the topper people? Do people have to pay the full SE plus price and then get an SE without the topper and then just wait? Oh, I'm sure that's how they'll want it to be done. Is there going to be a partial payment? Will they be allowed to cancel just the topper and convert down to an SE in that case? What happens with the extra toppers then? John Youssi, there's all these questions. And again, this is just what they've been considering. I've not heard that CGC has committed to doing this, but it's getting that bad. Like they very much recognize that they're running into a problem with not getting any SE Plus and LEs out. And as you know, this is pinball, the hype doesn't last forever. and I don't really hear people talking about Cactus Canyon remake anymore. That ship has sailed. A long time ago. As you would expect. I mean, the game is almost a year old since announcement, so the interest isn't going to stay forever. So I just, I mean, I remember seeing the video of the topper. I don't understand what it is about this topper that's making it so difficult to get the, I mean, are they using like the chips from the F-150 like Stern does on their, that's what Gary Stern had known in an interview is that their big problem with what they thought was so smart at the time is they use the exact same chips as in the F-150. And then they thought, well, that means we're going to be able to easily get a hold of them because there are so many made. And now it's like, oops. But who knew? Not forward shipping them without the chips. What's in these toppers? Do they have the graphics cards? The same ones that were used for crypto mining or something? What's in this topper? I don't understand. It's so weird. I haven't heard anyone else struggling to get coils. I'm just trying to... All I remember is it had lights and the arms would go Yeah it weird Anyway I don know I don understand I don really hate pinball Just to put that out there. Nice of you to put a clarifier. People are getting right into it. Go to collectivegamerspodcast.gmail.com and express their hate of you. I'm sure. it's just the whole kind of murky background and stuff when it comes around specifically new in box pinball purchasing and stuff I'm uncomfortable with I feel the sheer number of people who are and I'm the same way with anything else where it's like hey I'm going to drop a huge amount of money on something and I might get it in a few years like like with the Tesla Cybertrucks and the Rivan pickup trucks and everything else. It is a personal pre-order issue that I have when it comes to dropping huge amounts of money on stuff that has no firm dates, no firm protections for the purchaser in it. Yeah. And, I mean, the thing that I feel is going very strongly for CGC is it is a manufacturer that has been around a long time. They manufactured more than pinball for most of that period. But by and large, they've been, even with the pinball, quite successful. But also, much like JJP and many others we've talked about on this show, quite slow. Like, I mean, remember the Monster Bash? Most of their slowness, though, is always like getting the next game out, not so much the production. And everybody's been hit by the production problem. So that's not a CGC. That is a world thing. From boutique to – and in pinball, from boutique to major manufacturer, we've mentioned – they're all struggling in some capacity, it seems. So I get it, but they're clearly – what they're considering to try and deal with this I think makes sense, but there's also a lot of logistical stuff that they clearly have never planned for. I mean it's just not the pinball model to send out games and then send out the other half of the game later. And I get that it's not. It's just a toy that goes on top. But the complication of tracking it, because CGC is not doing this all themselves. They use a distributor network. I think the big issue is, I'm guessing, the big issue is they don't want to shut the line down. Yeah, that would be my guess. So they want to keep the line rolling. And my guess, again, these are blind guesses, but that they have finally burned through the SE orders. Otherwise, I think they would just keep turning out SEs. And as annoying as it would be for people, the rumor mill would get around and be like, oh, gosh, I've been in on an LE for 10 months now. And someone else will be like, well, if you order an SE, you get it in three weeks. Right. So cancel your order and get an SE. I mean, the distributors will probably let you because the LE was seen as such a good bargain and it sold out instantly because the price wasn't that much higher. No, it wasn't. It was really close. And it could be also that they just don't have storage space to keep running the machines. So you keep the line going, keep the machines being made, and then just having almost complete machines sitting on the dock waiting for the toppers to show up and be put in the box to seal them up and ship them. That's going to end up eating a lot of space. Most of these companies, and we've talked about that before, don't maintain massive warehouse space. As far as they're concerned, the distributors are responsible for holding the product, not themselves. Right. But without the toppers. The product's not complete. Right. And again, the distributors, because so many of them, like I don't know how many distributors are just like CGC exclusive, if any. So that space is also being used by Sterns and JJPs and whoever else they're dealing with. Like how many incomplete SE pluses and LEs do you want to hold on to? Like physically. Right. While you wait for possibly months, months more. Right. And how many of these distributors are operating under the, hey, I've got a warehouse, as opposed to, hey, I have a storage shed. Or, hey, I have a you-store-it rental place that I can keep 15 machines in. Yeah, I mean, who knows? Especially with the pandemic period, games were not staying in stock, were flying off shelves, so to speak, so quickly. you didn't really need storage space is my guess because everything was almost immediately getting shipped right back out if not shipped direct from the manufacturer so anyway very interesting stuff speaking of interesting let's touch on Multimorphic because they had an announcement come out as well since our last episode so this I do have a link in the show notes there was a post on Pinside that claimed I should clarify claims to be contents from an email that Multimorphic sent out I have not seen anyone say that it was inaccurately pasted or anything, but just FYI, I did not get the original email, so I have not read officially the email. You're not on Multimorphic's email list? I'm not. I don't think I'm on anyone's email. Maybe JJP still emails me stuff, but I think I've gotten off of all the lists except IFPA, which like three-fourths of what they send me are ads for companies that are doing deals with them. I need to see if there's an opt-out option because, honestly, I'm getting a little sick of it. See, my big problem is there is somebody whose email address is like my first initial, my last name, plus a number or two that lives in Michigan. And they a lot of times forget to put the number or two in. So I get his recall for his cars. I get all the stuff where he signs up for some email list for some politician or for I'm getting the emails for, hey, you've got this coming in or whatever. And it's like, not me, man. I don't even live in Michigan. Yeah. Yeah, I hate that. The closest I have to that is at work. the phone number we have for the office which goes back to the first executive director in the early 2000s I guess somewhere or maybe it's just people getting confused with doing searches but they think that I am vital statistics and the source of birth certificates so I get a lot of requests for birth certificates it's not too bad anymore it was really bad in the 2000s I remember because I shared office space with the person and so I heard the phone ring all the time I probably get a request a month for a birth certificate though So I try and call them all back and say, here's the actual number. I'll also let you know, here's how much it'll be. Here's how much it will be to expedite it. So we were unable to locate your birth certificate. Here's how many years they have. If you go back further, here's the process. I had someone call trying to find their grandfather's birth certificate. And I was like, okay, well, it sounds like he probably was born after 1905. So I think they'll be able to help you. You're so helpful. I try and be helpful. That's what public service is, is helpfulness. And we're helpful here on the podcast talking about all these interesting things from large and small companies. So Multimorphic, an email announcement. I'm not going to read it. It's way too long aloud. That's why there's a link so people can just go and read it themselves. Here are the highlights that I identified from my read through. So I don't know if you've read the actual email. It's somewhat long, Tony. So my highlights will probably be good enough for you if you have not read it. If these are the highlights, that must be an enormous email. I say I'm only going to touch on the highlights, and I do think I bulleted seven items. Anyway, so first one, Weird Al the Game had a large software update, including some new modes. So people who are into Weird Al, just be aware of that. Second, the Multimorphic team has been glowing and growing. And glowing, maybe. Not like in a radioactive way, but enjoy of getting all these weird owls. I mean, with the temperatures the last few weeks, I'm sure that they've been glowing in the it's way too hot way. That's fine. I mean, they are in Texas. Yeah. That's a fair point. But anyway, so they say that they are close to reaching short-term staffing goals. But the process to reach this point in the staff up has taken them longer than they anticipated, specifically two months longer than anticipated. so because of this they have stated that they are approximately two months behind on the shipping estimates that they had been providing people I assume since the weird owl reveal because that's when the shipping estimate and then if we miss it by six months you can get your deposit back sort of thing they also noted though that they do expect the delay to actually get worse but only for a couple more weeks and then start to shrink and I mean They didn't say why. My guess would be maybe they've got that staff, but they haven't trained them yet. Yeah, that would make sense. So another bullet was they state that they continue to have sufficient parts on hand to do the builds. That's something they have indicated before. Another bullet, a new P3 order. So that's the system. Correct. Today would take approximately one year to ship. That's the estimate, the official estimate. So the official estimate is still faster than getting your Cactus Canyon remake from CGC. Ouch. Ellie. Thank you for adding the Ellie. I'm pretty sure you'd get Nessie faster than a year. Then another bullet point, their full game kits, the pricing on those is going to change. It's going to go higher as of September 1st. But you can lock in the current price up until that date. So they also noted in that that it's going to be a $500 deposit per kit. And that follows the whole non-refundable unless they miss the shipping deadline by at least six months. So just so people might be curious, here's the pricing as I've noted it. They said that the Weird Al module is going to move to $3,500. So looking at the website, that's a $500 increase. Heist is going to move to $3,250. That would also be a $500 increase. Cosmic Kart Racing will move to $3,000. That's a $400 increase. Lexi Lightspeed will move to $3,000. That's also a $400 increase. And Cannon Lagoon will move to $1,800. And that's a $301 increase. And then finally, the last highlight I wrote down was the price of the Rocks and Grand Slam Rally downloadable games have decreased by $200 and are now $199. So pretty big update. Yeah. Do you have any general thoughts or parts of this that you want to explore? I think that I'm hopeful. Let's go with I'm hopeful. That with their hiring issues, they can get back on track with where they wanted to be. It has been a rough time to hire people across the board. I should know I've been trying to hire people for like since April at this point. And the way everything keeps going up, a lot of people are just not going unless you've got a big enough. You have to have a real big salary to bring people in. So the price increases, I'm never surprised by price increases. And I don't, I mean, and I don't follow Multimorphic all that closely. I'm not aware of them having really ever raised the prices on the kits before, though. They're not known for constant price increases. In fact, that was something I know we used to comment on was getting in on a P3 with a game was about $10,000 for a really long time. And that was very, very high in my view when it first came out. And then as the rest of pinball kept inflating, it was like, you know what? But this sort of $10,000 by Christmas is just by virtue of it, everyone moving towards $10,000, making the P3 more and more competitive from a price standpoint. So, no, I don't – I'm not surprised at this. I was actually surprised that they seemed more inflation-resistant than the other manufacturers for a while. And I wondered if some of that came down to the tech. like if you bought enough uh monitors or whatever the playfield screens are made right for example like if that's older technology and like it's not my i believe it's 1080p tech so like if that's no longer expensive anymore or they had enough already stockpiled right that would have been a stock there are a couple ways to kind of inflation proof yourself uh so this having a having to finally go up i don't think that's particularly unusual i also think it makes sense as a strategy if you need more cash injected in. And they're going to need more cash injection because they've definitely had to increase what they're paying the workers. They have to have, or else they would have never gotten anybody. We had discussed their Indeed.com listing at $15 an hour a couple episodes ago, I think it was. And we had noted in follow-up research that they now have a listing, last I looked, which was a few days ago, at $17 an hour. So, again, money has to come from somewhere. Right. And the way it can work as a cash injection is by offering this drop-dead date to lock in the current pricing, it creates a scenario where they're pressuring their existing owners or people who have made purchases but not the entire system with every kit purchase to commit now. And then they get the $500 deposits. So strategically, this, I think, is a reasonable way to inject more money into the company. It gives you that nice little shot. Gives you the deposits. Yeah. $500 per, yeah. Then you can finish off later. So that works out pretty well for you. Yeah. So I think that makes a lot of sense. A year to get a P3 order isn't going to do them favors to get more P3 orders. No. But maybe they shouldn't be taking more P3 orders. Well, yeah. Until they're caught up. So saying that kind of solves the problem. Like, they don't have to stop it, but it also warns you. Like, most people I know in pinball don't wait a year. Right. Well, they do. They end up and they get mad. They don want to wait a year Let phrase it that way And obviously people have been waiting a really long time lately because of all the shortfalls and stuff we talked about earlier in the show impacting all the players But in a normal state of affairs people expect to get the game I mean A couple months. It depends on the manufacturer. Boutiques are given more of a pass because they have smaller production capabilities. They also usually have fewer orders, so it's usually not… Right. I mean, we can go to the extreme of like a spooky where if you get on the back end of a Rick and Morty release or a Halloween release, you know, in those instances, you may be waiting like 12 to 18 months. And this is obviously quite in line with that. With the Stern, people generally, like if they were during a rush or something, they would normally expect to get it within a month. I mean, setting shortfalls aside, that's the typical expectation. Or like what JJP has done with Toy Story. People have been getting their Toy Stories. Right. Because no one's buying them. But, I mean, we're going to. That's partially unfair, but mostly fair. Because of the pricing they set. So, I mean, I like that they're being transparent about that. Do you think it has any fallout? No. I don't think it's going to be. Everybody's been raising costs across the board. The only fallout they're going to see is going to be the normal fallout you would expect, which is they'll get less orders. I think they'll get, like we talked about, they'll get a surge from people who already own P3s now. But that's kind of been the P3 problem, or the problem with the P3 system entirely is it has a much more limited player base because people will buy the new kits, but not as many people are buying into the system as a whole. which Weird Al helped with yeah yeah one of the things I would have been and again I think the email had enough detail so I'm not it would have been interesting I would say to know alright they said how long a new P3 order would be expected to ship but how long would a new playfield kit be to ship because it seemed like and again this is more antidotal but it seemed like they've been turning out Weird Al modules pretty consistently like the modules seem to be going out faster than systems are. Which would make sense. But I'm just kind of curious, like where do the, like if I were to order a Lexi kit today, I'm curious, you know, if I would be wondering like what's the time estimate? You know, if I was in the market for it, I'd just contact them and find out. It brings up, considering how much smaller and how much less space the kits take up, how many do they all just have sitting on a shelf pre-made? Yeah, it's I think I agree with you. I don't think the price increase really has fallout. If anything, I think it gets a surge in purchases from people who already are in on the system. I and I agree with you that the new order estimate on the system of being a year might slow up people potentially thinking about ordering. But honestly, I don't know how aggressive it would be at the we were months and months away since March. from a new game reveal. And as we talked about earlier with Cactus Canyon, hype dies over time. It's how it is. I don't know people that are hyping over Rush anymore like when it came out because it's not new anymore. It's still the newest Stern, but it's not like that initial surf. And so because of that, until there's another new game from P3, I would assume, it sounded like from their email, not in my bullets, but in their email, that they've still been trucking along, getting new orders in. So I don't know what pace that's at, but I assume it will slow with people knowing upfront that it's a year. The only real risk in my view of negative impact, quote unquote, would be the statement that they're now two months behind. Because when we talked about, and I think the last announcement was maybe about two months ago. I don't remember anymore. When they had said they were about two weeks behind. So that in theory could have an impact on people who are already in on a purchase, but if they've not yet reached the estimate plus six months to get their full refund, I don't know that they pull out. Anecdotally, I've heard from three different people. One who has stuck with the purchase, but they're not sure they're actually going to keep the system once they get it. One who transferred their order to someone else, so they're out of their purchase, but they found someone else to deal with the deposit. and then one who indicated they were trying to cancel their order. All of these individuals, I believe, were prior to Weird Al. So there are people who've been waiting for coming up on a year. Oh, yeah. We know people that ordered around Expo last year that don't have their systems yet. That's part of where I look and I see. I know people are getting Weird Al modules. I see them announce them and show them off online. but the P3 systems seem to be, and as you noted not surprising, it's far more complicated than the module the system is the system, plus they're not going to, in my view it would be like the topper thing with CGC they're not going to send, but more so they're not going to send a system without a module what would you do with it? that would really make people mad I would be mad if I had Godzilla and you didn't include the back third in the game I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this? I don't know. It would be weird. So that's probably the only thing. But none of this stuff overall I don't think is particularly surprising. Yeah. Anyway, but we provided the info because people would get upset if we don't cover everyone. Except, you know what? I've never actually had someone write in and get upset if we didn't cover Home Pin. Who? See? Everyone else. It's weird. The word of podcasting is weird. You'll get people that will – I'm not going to whine. We'll whine a little bit. But you'll get people that will get upset if you don't talk about someone. And, of course, I think unsurprising people. Sometimes you'll get people who are upset when you're critical of anyone. Right. The smaller, though, the more vocal. Yes. And Spooky was notorious for that. It was, though it's not nearly as bad anymore. When we first started podcasting, if you said anything critical of Spooky, The emails and the messages were thick and heavy. And we didn't get it too bad on Haggis, but we didn't cover them all that much. But I've seen it on the forums. Haggis is like the new spooky. Yeah. But with them, it's like the Australians are super defensive of it. Everyone wants to have a pulled you up by a bootstrap story. You know, you like to cheer for the underdog. Sure, why not? But we're just telling it like it is. That's how we do it. Anyway, speaking of telling it like it is, Tony, it's time. for rumor corner yes so on this week or this fortnight's rumor corner we are going to do This Fortnite. Because we're every other week. Me and Dennis are going to be the new characters in the next Fortnite. We're not. We're not. But what if we were? How many people would wear our skins? I don't know. That'd be weird. That sounds creepy when I say it. How many people would wear your skin? I'm going to go out on a long-dress suit and say a couple or three people could wear my skin. But that's not talking about the game. Creepy. Yes. That sounds creepy too. And now I'm just thinking of Edgar Suits. Yeah, I see a shambling Tony come up to me in a game. Give me some sugar water. Gotta get my sugar water. I need a Coke. Double cheeseburger and a Coke. Now, I believe on the last episode, our rumor corner was about Jersey Jack Pinball. And I mentioned that there was a rumor that they actually control the license for the Matrix. To which I think you immediately said Matrix 4. And I immediately then said, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. It's true. Um, and actually we did have, I believe it's Chris Chandler emailed into the show who in response to a comment I had said about, I hadn't seen the latest matrix movie, sent me a video of a guy playing, doing the whole two character thing, uh, about talking about the plans to green light the movie. And he, and he just told me, this is the accurate summary. And so I watched that. I'm like, okay, I'm not sure I'll ever watch matrix for that. But I've got another JJP rumor. Okay. That's right. This one says that Jersey Jack Pinball controls the license to do Top Gun. The new movie has been super successful. It has been. In fact, critically, it's seen as a better film than Top Gun. So this one might be you can't lose for winning sort of scenario. Because if J.J.P. does the sequel a la Toy Story 4, they actually do the superior film. And if they do the original Top Gun, they hit all the nostalgia. So it's win-win if it's true. Because if they do the new one, J.J.P. will put out the pinball for the brand new, just came out in 2022 Top Gun, 20 years after the movie comes out. It's not going to be 20 years. But if they do the original, it's going to be like 40-plus years after the movie. Oh, man. It's going to be 60-plus years after the movie comes out. It's going to be 84 years. Just imagine all the rows throwing Top Gun pinball into the ocean. Yeah. So it can be with Leo. It reminds me of a thing I saw when I was on the Grams the other day where somebody was like, well, yeah, no, that was like 30 years ago. And Tony was like, oh, so the 70s, like, no, 92. It's like, oh, oh, oh, oh. Yeah. That's what it's like for us now, Tony. I feel that a lot. I still sit back and I'll be like, a movie's not old unless it's the 80s or earlier, right? I had a conversation with somebody. Oh, no. And I was talking about seeing The Matrix, the first Matrix. In theaters. And they were like, I've never seen a Matrix movie. Those movies came out before I was born. I'm like, I hate you. Yeah. It's like, and I don't know if it, I mean, obviously every individual is different. But, I mean, we saw stuff that, like, Holy Grail. Right. But that doesn't count. That's like a cult classic. Yeah, but do the kids today watch it? I don't know. I don't know. My kids haven't seen it. I talked to someone, I think it was on a Discord, and I mentioned something, and somehow anime came up. I mentioned a couple of animes. And they had said, oh yes, I've heard of those, but people today don't actually like any of the hand-drawn stuff. So you have to get into the CG era. And then they'll talk classics from the early 2000s. thousands well and the thing is is part of this issue could be with you and me in particular because we watch a lot of old stuff because as you recall i'm not sure that you do recall but you might when i was dating my now wife we went and saw one of the james bond movies i don't remember which one it was. I don't remember which James Bond movie. It was one of the ones that came out in the early 2000s. Man, that's going to be stuck in my head forever. And my wife went with us to go see it. That's where we found out my wife had never watched a James Bond movie before. It's like, wait, what? I had not remembered that. So it's just... It is. Everybody goes and sees things differently, and they watch old stuff differently, and some people don't watch anything old. Some people just sit down and watch The Office for the 15,000th time. That's true. Well, but for JJP, turning it back on theme, Top Gun, actually, I think it's a better pick than Matrix is. I do. I think it's a much better pick than Matrix. Given that the new movie was so successful, and the new Matrix movie is so hated. And Top Gun, actually, in a lot of ways, I feel, probably has stronger nostalgia than Matrix, even though the original Matrix is probably a better movie than Top Gun is. The first one is, but the second and third one were rough. So given all of that, this is a smart one. You know, JJP doesn't... I don't think they typically do bad theme picks, honestly. Like, Pirates made sense. It was based on all of them It was Guns N' Roses is a huge dad rock band That made sense Wizard of Oz I always thought was such a weird choice But I mean everyone knows Wizard of Oz So it is well understood And Hobbit That one was Hobbit's such a great story But I mean they didn't know the movie was going to be bad And they didn't They're not badly made It's just like they're so bloated. And to be fair, I think they thought the game would come out like before all the movies did. So we weren't going to know how bloated it was. But I don't really care necessarily about any of that. I just care whether or not you were room retained. Yeah, I will go with yes. I think Top Gun would be good. I mean, typically if I want that kind of thing, I'll just go. Man, I remember the old NES Top Gun game. I actually had a... Oh, God, I hated that game because I could never land the jet. It's so hard to land the jet. It's hard enough to refuel it. It was. It was so terrible. I actually had an NES plane control flight stick that I played that game with. Oh, okay. Yeah I rented that game a few times Actually that was one of the NES games I actually owned I played it all the time I struggled with refueling And when I get the refueling right then I would crash on the carrier or miss it And the 8-bit music version, the 8-bit Nintendo version of that game. If they do Top Gun, I want their soundtrack to have that little 8-bit version of the Top Gun music in it just somewhere for a second. They could put it on the screen in the back as the minigame to play the NES version. Oh, that'd be great. That'd be amazing. Since they love to use screens, they might as well let us play the NES classic. I wonder if the Weird Al update, since it adds new modes, includes his new song from the Lego Star Wars movie. What's the name of that? They added a drinking from the fire hose thing. No, it's like Scarif Beach Party. Oh. I don't... That wasn't in the summary, so I doubt it. Considering I literally saw Weird Al post it on Facebook this morning, or yesterday, or something like that. Yeah. Because I only look at Facebook once a week. Maybe next week it'll be in the update. I don't know. I don't know. All right. Video games, Tony. What's going on? We have video games. being we are into the august we're finally getting some real deeper looks at the financials for the second quarter for most of these companies that has been released the big ones i caught is from activision blizzard king uh notice i normally don't include king in there but i need to include king in there because based upon the revenue reports from their second quarter of this year, more than half of their revenue comes from the king portion of that. I saw the headline for this. Yeah. Their mobile division is literally more than half of the revenue for Activision Blizzard. Don't you all have phones? Yeah, apparently. Well, and that's the thought, is that Diablo pushed it up. But even ignoring Diablo pushing it up, their overall sales for their PC and console sales are down appreciably. Well, they haven't had a new game in forever. No, they haven't. And that is definitely hurting them. But supposedly, according to a tweet that recently came out, there will be no more public betas for Overwatch 2. I heard that as well. Overwatch 2 will formally launch on October 4th. Okay. That could be huge. A lot of people really liked the initial beta, or the feedback was really good. Right. I didn't try it. I'm just kind of... You're like, it's Activision. You don't... Well, it's not even that. It's just the Overwatch community got so toxic. But maybe the Overwatch 2 community will be non-toxic. I literally had a conversation with my daughter where she's like, no, I just had to quit playing. I got tired of being told to kill myself every game. It's like, good call. Good call. That was sort of my experience with the Rainbow Six Siege community. Like, they do not like trash players. Yes. And I hadn't played it, so I was pretty trash. I think it is a problem that we have with any of these online games. and it's probably part of the reason why I don't play them very much anymore I pretty much play single player stuff, I've been playing a lot of Nova Drift which will hopefully, which is still early access, but is supposed to get a new update here in a little while, adding a bunch of new enemies, but it's just a fun roguelike I love that kind of game Square Enix's financials are out, their net Sales last quarter dropped 16%. Final Fantasy XIV was the only bright spot because their receipts and their number of subscribers keeps increasing. Okay. So basically at this point, at least for this year, it's looking like Final Fantasy XIV is what's keeping Square afloat this year. They are. not surprisingly everything they've dropped on Avengers this year has just trashed and it's not helping I don't think they can save it and they've not made any major their MMO division which is Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XI and a Dragon Quest MMO at this point are a huge portion it's like more than a third of their total incoming profits. Well, maybe they'll be okay once they fully integrate crypto. Maybe. Or we'll see what happens when Final Fantasy XVI drops, whenever that happens. It should be sometime. Yes, sometime. Also, while we're talking business and finances, the Chinese gaming company Tencent, who's the largest gaming producer in the world, they're looking to increase their ownership stakes of Ubisoft. Currently, they own 5% of Ubisoft, and they are looking to take a controlling interest from the Goulamats family, who is the original founders of Ubisoft. 80% of Ubisoft shares are publicly owned. The remaining 20% are broken 5% to Tencent, 15% to the Goulamats. Oh, okay. And they're looking at taking, or at least reports are that they made a substantial offer to take over the Goulamats shares. Okay. So that would put them at 20%, which would be a controlling interest. Right. It would be very difficult for the rest of the public share. No one would do it, but you'd have to have a massive coordinated campaign to stop them getting anything they want. Right. So we'll see how that works out for them, making them even larger than they already are. Talking about Lord of the Rings and Hobbit and all that, the Golem game has been delayed again. Yes, yes. It needs some polish. It needs some polish. They're pushing it back two months, which should still technically drop this year if it doesn't get pushed back again. Right. But at this point, this game is starting to move towards cyberpunk levels of pushback. Yeah, but it's not nearly as big of a game. That's very true, and it wasn't nearly as well looked forward to. Right. So I imagine they'll be able to – it's like open world games always suffer the most. Right. Because they're so susceptible to bugs. So I'm hoping that... I mean, I'm fine with it being delayed. It's not so bad as I just suspect, like, oh, this is becoming vaporware sort of things. Right. But we'll see what happens with it. If it doesn't get out this year, then, yeah, there might be cause for concern. We don't want it to scale-bound itself. Right. And, I mean, again, it's a much smaller game, I mean, compared to something like 2077. Yeah, 2077. So it's not like it's going to be a make-or-breaker thing. That said, talking about Lord of the Rings games, I mean, I really enjoyed the Shadow games. Yeah, I would like to see a third one. I always thought they were – have you won the second one? I don't remember at this point. It's set up for another one. Yeah. So that's where I'm like, come on. I like – I did. And the Nemesis system. The Nemesis system is so good. It does. It feels like – to do a pinball reference – it feels like Stern. and doing that projector, cool projector system for Stranger Things and then never using it again. Right. Why would you do that? Why would you come up with Nemesis system? You used it in the sequel. The sequel is better. It is. And then where are my Orcsies? It's honestly a system that... Where are my Orcsies I've killed eight times and I keep coming back more machine now than Rukai. I've played so many games where a system like that would be... An amazing addition. Yeah, I'm very surprised that it has not been utilized in some other non-Tolkien world. Right. It seems like it'd be so easy to do. I don't know. I don't get it. I don't know. We'll see. Super short video game segment today. My last bit is a little bit of sad, possibly disturbing. The Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic remake. Knights of the Old Republic, I've never played, but it's beloved. It is the best Star Wars RPG. It is great. It is tons of fun. It's got a great story. It's just excellent. So this remake should be easy cash in hand, because it's been a long time since Knights came out. You would think so. This ain't like Capcom, like constantly going back to the well every half-gen. Right. You would think so. I do think so. You'd be wrong. What? The game is currently on pause. It has been indefinitely delayed. The company doing the remake, Asper, has fired the art director and the design director for the game. And the game is on pause while they search for new ones. At the end of June, the company had to do a vertical slice demo of the game for Lucasfilm and Sony. They were not happy. They weren't happy with the game at all. This is a game that the remake has been in production for three years. Oh, wow. And Lucasfilm and Sony did not take it well. So the game is now in pause. and it might not ever make it farther than where it is now. That's just, that's rough. Yeah, I mean, having seen some stuff on the making of games, I will throw out, I'm not a huge fan of when there's a demand for a vertical slice because I think it's a huge waste of time by and large. Saying that aside, clearly the point, though, is to figure out what's, and so it may very well have been warranted. When you said that they released their art and design directors both, I've just imagined someone logging into it, and it's all like that Jesus painting restoration where he got turned into a potato. And I was like, what is this? You were supposed to remaster it. You were supposed to destroy the set, not join them. You just see potato people everywhere. I pictured it as being done as kind of a fall guy looking little they're all beans now what's happening they throw in a bunch of stuff lots of Among Us references the characters going this guy sucks very sassy you are it's too bad I have actually within the last few years replayed the game where they've done the re-release of just the original game with the old graphics not as good controls it's still a fun game it's fun because it's a game that will let you choose your path. Like, you can be a Sith, or you can be a good Jedi, or you can just pretty much ignore the whole Jedi thing and just concentrate on other stuff. Because I remember having one of the most fun runs I ever did in that game was I ran, and I became a Jedi, but I didn't use lightsabers. No. I dual-willed pistols as a Jedi. Uncivilized. And it was great. It was so much fun. Well, if people had fun with this episode, they can email us at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast where Tony can check the message once a week when it logs in. Yes. We're also available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers, which you did Twitch. You Twitched. I did. You Twitched. Mr. Travis Murray of the famed Triple Drain Pinball podcast, which just recently had an episode where they spent over 45 minutes breaking down Godzilla. They call it the triple combo section. I have not yet told them that. I think they should rename it to the sextuple combo because it was twice as long as it should have been. But it's called triple combo because each of them talk about a strategy on how to play the game. But because it's Godzilla, the greatest game ever made, and there were so many ways to play it, that's how long it took. I was like, yikes. I went walking yesterday. Don't worry, folks. I won't tell a walking story. I went walking yesterday to go around and then pick up lunch. It took my entire walk to get through it. That was such a long show. And I don't play at 1X. Yeah. So anyway. But he had been talking about, you know, Dennis, you need to get a billion points. You got to be better than Joel, one of his co-hosts on the show. You got to be better than Joel. You got to get a billion points on Godzilla. And he's like, you need to just stream it. So I think he could watch what I was doing wrong. I streamed it for two hours and 45 minutes. He never showed up. Other people who then came away going, I want to buy this game. As you should because it's the best pinball game out there. I don't think my – my last game was my best, and I think I broke half a billion. Today I almost broke half a billion. I didn't, but I almost did. But nope, didn't get the billion. But anyway. So yeah. So our Twitch, Eclectic underscore Gamers, did actually get used. Yay. Yay. That's great. But we'll be back in a couple weeks. A fortnight in our skin. A fortnight. In our fortnight skins, which are our own skins. Yes. But until then, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 15dfd1d4-d6e6-4f8c-88f1-568e382480a8*