# Ep 149: Ep 149: Pre Pinball Expo 2024 with Colin MacAlpine **Source:** LoserKid Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2024-10-11 **Duration:** 97m 26s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/0xMOUBx9 --- ## Analysis Loser Kid Pinball Podcast Episode 149 features Colin MacAlpine discussing the upcoming Pinball Expo 2024 and his role as rules designer for Multimorphic's Princess Bride pinball machine. The episode covers Princess Bride's innovative ruleset emphasizing player choice, narrative progression mechanics, and how the P3 platform addresses past concerns around flippers, quality, and platform obsolescence. Colin advocates for players to reconsider the P3 platform given recent improvements. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Princess Bride will be playable at Pinball Expo 2024 at Justin Wise's booth, with Josh Kugler (lead software developer) giving a seminar and likely presenting his own P3 whitewood — _Colin MacAlpine confirmed Princess Bride's Expo presence and Josh Kugler's seminar_ - [HIGH] Princess Bride features nine selectable story modes across three groupings (Castle, Gilder, Florin), each with attached mini-wizard modes — _Colin MacAlpine detailed the mode structure in rules explanation_ - [HIGH] Princess Bride includes a 'narrative streak' bonus system where completing modes in storybook order grants cumulative end-of-ball bonuses, similar to Indiana Jones or Indy 500 — _Colin MacAlpine explained the narrative streak mechanic in detail_ - [HIGH] P3 platform has received flipper redesigns that Colin describes as 'a world of difference' from older models — _Colin MacAlpine's direct statement about new P3 flippers_ - [MEDIUM] Multimorphic released quality update kits addressing previous P3 and module quality issues, with zero reported failures since implementation — _Colin MacAlpine's claim about quality updates and Jerry's response to community feedback_ - [HIGH] P3 cabinet now supports backward-compatible system upgrades, addressing concerns about platform obsolescence — _Colin MacAlpine and Josh (host) discussed reverse compatibility as a major improvement_ - [HIGH] Multimorphic now offers magnetized slingshot and side target artwork for quick swaps between game modules — _Colin MacAlpine mentioned recent cabinet artwork and magnetized component additions_ - [HIGH] Colin MacAlpine won the Pinberg (not Papa) championship trophy, with High Hand as one of four qualifying games — _Colin self-corrected the trophy name; Josh confirmed High Hand was part of the competition_ ### Notable Quotes > "I wanted to give the player complete control. So you as the player have complete control about which modes you want to play and which order you want to play them in." > — **Colin MacAlpine**, mid-conversation > _Core design philosophy for Princess Bride's mode structure, contrasting with traditional linear mode trees like Ghostbusters_ > "I wanted people to press that start button again, whether it's in your collection at home or whether you're playing it on location. I don't like games that just become stale." > — **Colin MacAlpine**, mid-conversation > _Designer intent for replayability and longevity through varied approaches to modes_ > "There's a lot of breadth, not just depth. It's a matter of how you approach the game." > — **Colin MacAlpine**, mid-conversation > _Explains Princess Bride's design balance between mode variety and player agency_ > "The flippers are totally different. If you played a P3 a long time ago on the old flippers, please, please, please go play on the new P3 because the flippers are a world of difference." > — **Colin MacAlpine**, late-conversation > _Direct address to skeptics about P3 hardware, acknowledging and refuting past criticism_ > "It's like if for some reason you'd written off P3 in the past, give it another chance. And I think you will be not just pleasantly surprised. I think you will be overwhelmed with how much you enjoy playing it." > — **Colin MacAlpine**, late-conversation > _Colin's advocacy pitch for P3 platform to skeptical collectors_ > "If anybody's really like OCD about, hey, I put my final resistance module in, but I've got my weird owl, you know, artwork on the slingshots—you can now swap those out even easier." > — **Colin MacAlpine**, late-conversation > _Examples of recent quality-of-life improvements to P3 platform_ > "Don't invite him over to your house if you want any of your high scores to remain intact." > — **Josh (Loser Kid host)**, early-conversation > _Humorous reference to Colin's competitive skill; establishes his credentials as elite player_ > "There's rhyme and reason to each one of the modes and why we chose to make them the way they do." > — **Colin MacAlpine**, mid-conversation > _Indicates intentional design variation across Princess Bride modes_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Colin MacAlpine | person | Elite pinball player (Pinberg championship winner), rules designer for Multimorphic's Princess Bride, contractor for Multimorphic, guest on Loser Kid Pinball Podcast | | Josh | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, owns multiple pinball machines including Attack from Mars, Simpsons, and others; mentioned having been beaten on high scores by Colin MacAlpine | | Scott | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, interested in aftermarket speaker lights for Stern games, owns machines including Rush, Godzilla, and Jaws | | Loser Kid Pinball Podcast | organization | Long-running pinball podcast celebrating episode 149 pre-Pinball Expo 2024 | | Pinball Expo 2024 | event | Upcoming major pinball industry show in Chicago with expanded convention center space; Princess Bride will be playable at Justin Wise's booth | | Princess Bride | game | Multimorphic P3 platform game recently shipping, designed with Colin MacAlpine as rules designer; features nine story modes, narrative streak bonuses, and dynamic P3 features | | Multimorphic | company | Pinball manufacturer producing P3 platform with interchangeable game modules; CEO Jerry has addressed quality concerns and implemented backward compatibility and flipper upgrades | | Josh Kugler | person | Lead software developer for Princess Bride and other P3 games, former American Pinball experience, giving seminar at Pinball Expo 2024 | | Steven Silver | person | Creative director who collaborated with Colin MacAlpine on Princess Bride rules development | | TJ | person | Designer of Princess Bride's Cliffs of Insanity mechanical feature (ball climbing magnet effect) | | Justin Wise | person | Vendor/booth operator at Pinball Expo 2024 hosting Princess Bride and Multimorphic P3 presentation | | Jerry | person | CEO/leadership of Multimorphic; responded to community quality concerns and implemented quality update kits | | Zach Sharpe | person | Co-owner of Flipping Out Pinball (with Nicole) offering show discounts on games at Pinball Expo 2024 | | Nicole Sharpe | person | Co-owner of Flipping Out Pinball with Zach, mentioned as source for game purchases and potential show discounts | | Flipping Out Pinball | company | Pinball vendor owned by Zach and Nicole Sharpe offering games and accessories, considering show discounts at Pinball Expo 2024 | | Stern Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer releasing aftermarket speaker lights; mentioned games include Rush and Godzilla | | Attack from Mars | game | Pinball machine in Josh's collection; high score set by Colin MacAlpine at approximately 13 billion on first play | | Buffalo Pinball | organization | Podcast/video content creator featuring Kevin Manny and Colin MacAlpine playing through Princess Bride gameplay walkthrough | | Kevin Manny | person | Guest on Buffalo Pinball podcast discussing Princess Bride gameplay with Colin MacAlpine | | Weird Al | game | Multimorphic P3 module game mentioned as example of good license and mechanical features | | Final Resistance | game | Multimorphic P3 module game mentioned in discussion of magnetized artwork swaps | | Ghostbusters | game | Classic pinball referenced as example of linear mode tree structure; compared to Princess Bride's player-choice approach | ### Topics - **Primary:** Princess Bride ruleset design and player agency, Multimorphic P3 platform improvements and quality updates, Pinball Expo 2024 preview and gaming availability - **Secondary:** Game replayability and narrative design in modern pinball, Competitive pinball strategy and rule complexity, P3 platform vs. traditional pinball architecture concerns - **Mentioned:** Flipper mechanics and hardware quality in modern machines ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Enthusiastic tone throughout; Colin MacAlpine is praised as player and designer; strong advocacy for Princess Bride and P3 platform improvements; hosts express genuine excitement about Expo and new releases. Slight defensive tone in Colin's P3 advocacy addressing past skepticism, but overall very positive reception. ### Signals - **[product_launch]** Princess Bride is now shipping to customers; units will be available for play at Pinball Expo 2024 (confidence: high) — Colin: 'it's starting to ship. People are trying to get these into their homes or on the line. And it's going to be at Pinball Expo to play.' - **[design_innovation]** Princess Bride features narrative streak bonus (modes in story order grant cumulative end-of-ball bonuses), dynamic P3 screen targets that change mid-game, and player-choice mode selection (nine modes playable in any order) (confidence: high) — Colin detailed narrative streak, dynamic targets changing based on completed modes (Marriage/Mawidge), and shot feature buffs tied to modes - **[design_innovation]** Princess Bride uses P3 wall of scoops in 'Guide My Sword' mode where sword position on screen must align with scoop target; Cliffs of Insanity features ball climbing magnet designed by TJ (confidence: high) — Colin explained sword alignment mechanic and praised TJ's Cliffs magnet design as visual showcase - **[product_concern]** P3 platform previously had flipper, quality, and perceived authenticity concerns; Colin acknowledged old P3 flippers were problematic (confidence: high) — Colin: 'I was one of those. I did not like how the old flippers played' and addressed quality concerns being resolved with update kits - **[sentiment_shift]** Colin and Josh indicate P3 skepticism is being overcome by recent improvements (flippers, quality kits, backward compatibility, artwork customization) (confidence: high) — Colin's extended pitch: 'if for some reason you'd written off P3 in the past, give it another chance'; Josh noted backward compatibility resolved his major concern - **[design_philosophy]** Princess Bride designed for both tournament and casual players via narrative streak incentive (play in order for bonus) AND free mode selection (play any order); Colin emphasizes breadth (many ways to play) over just depth (many modes) (confidence: high) — Colin: 'There's a lot of breadth, not just depth' and discussed buffing modes via shot features to incentivize different playstyles - **[design_philosophy]** Princess Bride intentionally designed to avoid staleness through mode variety, narrative streak incentives, and shot feature buffs that allow varied approaches on replay (confidence: high) — Colin: 'I wanted people to press that start button again... I don't like games that just become stale' - **[manufacturing_signal]** Multimorphic released quality update kits addressing prior P3 and module failures; Jerry engaged with community feedback and made internal/external discussions (confidence: medium) — Colin: 'Jerry went back to the drawing board... they've come out with the quality update kits... There have been zero reports of failures since' - **[product_strategy]** Multimorphic implemented backward-compatible system upgrades addressing platform obsolescence concern; new cabinet artwork, magnetized side target/slingshot artwork for quick module swaps (confidence: high) — Colin and Josh discussed reverse compatibility; Colin mentioned 'cabinet artwork now available' and 'magnetized' components for module swaps - **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo 2024 expanded to full convention center (previously only half), now with maps and organized vendor layout; Josh Kugler seminars scheduled (confidence: high) — Colin: 'they've opened up the whole convention area so it's going to be pretty massive'; Josh Kugler seminar confirmed at Expo - **[content_signal]** Princess Bride gameplay walkthrough available on Buffalo Pinball podcast (Kevin Manny and Colin MacAlpine); Loser Kid episode 149 pre-Expo special with extended Princess Bride discussion (confidence: high) — Colin directed listeners to Buffalo Pinball for gameplay walkthrough; Josh recommended checking it out - **[competitive_signal]** Elite players use two-to-three mode focus strategy in tournaments (maximize points on select modes rather than attempting completion); applies across game types; narrative design should support varied strategic approaches (confidence: high) — Colin and Josh discussed high-end players focusing on 2-3 modes as competitive strategy; Colin designed Princess Bride to support this --- ## Transcript thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 149 i didn't realize we're almost 150 scott that's kind of crazy actually that's what i noticed too i was like oh did did we miss like an anniversary okay truth be told uh we had our 15 year anniversary this year and both my wife and i forgot about it until we saw the well the happy happy anniversary from our father-in-law anyway but this isn't our 15th anniversary this is episode 149 exactly and we have we're doing pre-expo today and there is a ton of games now available if you're buying one of these games scott who are you buying it from uh zach and nicole minuet flipping out pinball and you know what I've really been eyeing is the speaker lights. And I know right now it's been really nice cause they've been, you know, Stern's been releasing those out. And so if you want, I'm going to get up for rush because I didn't get the, the aftermarket one, but now I'm super excited for, uh, for them to come out. And I'm trying to debate, you guys are going to have to let me know, should I get the speaker lights from Stern for Godzilla or should I get the flame ones? No, just something to think about. But also if you want to pick up any game, uh, reach out to them, I know they were actually looking at possibly a show discount. So if you're going to Expo and you're looking for a few hundred bucks off, you may be able to reach out to them. And today we're going to be talking about Expo, and we have an awesome guest on. This is not his first time on Loser Kid. He is a champion amongst men with the Papa Championship Trophy. We've got Colin MacAlpine on today. How are you, Colin? Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to talk about Expo. and just to, you know, I like to correct, make sure it's accurate. So I have a Pinberg trophy, not Papa, which is also, I think, is cool because I think Pinberg is better than Papa, but that's just my whole opinion. Of course, yeah. It is a huge trophy. Whatever it is, it's massive. It is. It is. And you dominated on high hand, wasn't it? Wasn't that the game you took it over the top on? Yeah, that was part of it. That was the second out of four. But that was, ironically, that was the one game that I actually took first on in that four. And then the rest of it was just not, you know, you know, was performing well, but not not first. But, yeah, I'm excited to be here for the, you know, pre 150th episode for the pre expo episode here. OK, I do have to warn you, even though Colin is the nicest guy on the planet and his wife and kids are lovely and super well behaved, by the way. Don't invite him over to your house if you want any of your high scores to remain intact. Do you still have my initials up there? Yeah, I do. Yeah, Attack from Mars. There's no way I'm going to catch that. And I think you, Simpsons, I've currently put Simpsons in storage because I need a break. But yeah, basically, Colin played all my games for about two, two and a half hours. And each one had like a GC from Colin on it now. And so now I have to look at his face or at least his initials every time I play my game knowing. uh you know it's just showing exactly how absolutely exceptionally media mediocre i am at playing pinball okay what did he set your high score on attack for mars at um i think it was like 13 billion or i don't know i what is that is that like you you go higher i don't know josh i'm just saying that's that's a pretty good score legitimately i think he played it once too that's the problem that wasn't even a warm-up that wasn't a let me get used to your game it's uh you know i'm just gonna step up and see what i can do yeah i'm lucky to crack like 1.8 billion on attack from mars and colin's like doing that one-handed yeah it was a it was a good it was a good run there and yeah i think that was the first game yeah ruled the universe on that game so yeah maybe you just haven't set up too easy scott maybe you should have made a little harder for maybe you know i did have the rubber bands perfectly for scott yeah exactly so legit colin is one of the nicest guys on the planet. He also is an amazing rules guy. He knows all the things. Don't you have like a little app that you have like all the things typed out for yourself? So when you're playing a game, you can look it up. It's like, okay, these are remembering what I need to do on this game. Yeah, I can't keep it all straight up in my head anymore. And also because there's so many games out there over the years and also new ones coming out. So, yes, it's not a cool app, though. I'm not that high tech. It's just a Google sheet. And yeah, but it's over it's over 800 lines long now. So, yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of little stuff that I pick up over the years that I put in there. And so that way, when I happen to see a pin again that I haven't played in five years, I can I can pick that up and go, oh, yeah, that's what that's what I'm supposed to do. what makes me chuckle is like the newest games have pretty much like made pin tips obsolete like pin tips is good for like 90s and prior because it's like even 2000s because it's like oh theater of magic left orbit Slash okay that's because the code is like one-tenth of what all the code is now i know but it's like i bet if you want pin tips for godzilla it's like just just don't shoot the wamps but that is important some of the stuff I try to do for some people if they want it I try to develop to like just very novice level three things three things to do most people are not going to play a game that long anyway and so if they have just a couple things to focus on then it gives first off it kind of gives you purpose as you play as opposed to just trying to stay alive. And yeah, you can usually, even though there's like a hundred things you could do in the likes of like Godzilla or you've got Jaws there behind you, Josh. And I think I see a Rush behind you there, Scott. Right there, yeah. Which are just redonkulous. And there's so many deep and nuanced things you can do. But for the average player, they're not gonna scrape the surface of that. So just give them three things to work on. Oh, yeah. Well, and I don't know if it's just your strategy, but I know a lot of high-end players that I have played with. That is kind of the strategy. It's like focus on two or three things, whatever game you're playing on, and just kind of blow it up from there. And if it's not working out, you just go to plan B, which is another two or three things. And so it seems to work very, very well for the high-end players. There's the trade secret right there. If you want to go win some big tournaments, do it. And you're typically not really, Kate, you're not shooting for Volanor if you're in a competitive setting. You're basically looking at which things can I maximize my points on, because that's really what you're competing against. If you're trying to do the game, the completeness, that's a completely different philosophy than a tournament player would have. Yeah, but the one thing I want to emphasize, though, is that there's – I think everybody talks a lot about, oh, well, this is a game designed more for tournament players or this aspect is for tournament players. Let's be real. Everybody is always competing. You're always competing. If you're playing by yourself, you're competing against whatever high score. In Scott's case, he's competing against the high score I left him. But you're competing against your other previous high score you had or your wife's high score, your friend's high score, or just something in your head that, hey, I want to try to get $50 million on this particular mode this time around. And so it's not so much of like thinking, oh, well, that's only for tournament players. The scoring stuff is actually for everybody. it's just what can you and what does everybody really want to comprehend and take the time to learn and just learning even just a little bit you're still going to be able to have knowledge of hey if I put these types of things together then I can do cool things with a score and that helps me in competing with myself or the three friends I'm playing with at my house and so I like to kind of dispel the notion of like that score and getting into even just maybe one layer deep on nuance of score is only for tournament players. It's for everybody. It's just a matter of who you're competing against. Yeah. And that's true. My son, he's always super excited when he enters his name in a game. For sure. And it's totally interesting. Now, I do want to, the reason why we are talking about rules and we're talking about scores, because Pinball Expo is coming up and we are going to talk a little bit about Expo, but because we're already talking about rules, Josh, should we just talk about the reason why we have Colin on? Yes. Because he is – now, are you the main rules guy for Princess Bride? Do I have that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. So Princess Bride, so this is a multimorphic game. So I know most of you are familiar with multimorphic, but it is an interesting concept in that you buy the main console or the – I don't know. Do you call it a console or do you call it the pin? But either way, I call it the cabinet or the, you know, the or the yeah, the platform. OK, you buy that you buy the platform, which is the cabinet. And then, yeah, you can go you can go from there. Yeah. And then you buy these little game modules that you can slide in and out. And so it's in many ways, it's you're getting a lot of games for your buck because with each, you know, with each other game, And if I buy a Rush, I'm buying a Rush. That's it. But if you're buying a P3, then you can buy the P3. And then they have lots of different modules, which are a fraction of the cost of what a standard game is. And so the latest game they have out is Princess Bride. So we want to talk about Princess Bride because the game looks fantastic. Not only that, it's starting to ship. People are trying to get these into their homes or on the line. And it's going to be at Pinball Expo to play. It sounds like there'll be at least one there, right, Colin? Yeah, correct. They'll have one at the – oh, shoot, I'm blanking on the booth. I'll come up with it later or remember it later. But they will be at the Chicago Expo. And also Josh Kugler, who is the lead software developer, so he did a lot of the coding and continues to work on coding for other P3 games. he will be there giving a seminar at the expo so you can go and check that out and then also he will probably be at the booth oh it's at Justin Wise's booth so he will be presenting the P3 so he'll have his there and I think Josh might have his whitewood that he's going to bring there I don't know I'm not exactly sure because I'm not involved with the presentation there at expo but yeah I encourage everybody when you're there check it out um it's it's it's just super fun to play if especially you know for most of us i'd say we're most all are familiar with pete with the princess bride but even if you're not familiar with the princess bride or you're you know you were living you know in under a rock and then you know that time period in the early 90s that you uh didn't see it you know go check it out i think it's a it's a ton of fun to play regardless of whether you're like a super fan of the license yeah i know one thing because we we don't have a game here so we're not going to go through gameplay but you did one with buffalo pinball with kevin manny and you so go check out buffalo pinball a great uh great podcast great video and you're going through it with kevin and you're you're walking through the gameplay and so that's just a side note if you want to get go check that out But the one thing that I do have a question, when you're approaching something like The Princess Bride, I would say that most people, if you haven't seen it, then you should shut this off right now and just go and watch it because it's the perfect movie. It really is so great. But the challenge is when you have a movie, there's always a risk of it getting stale. And I think of Ghostbusters where the first thing, the early code was you always did, okay, who brought the dog? And so how do you take a movie that has such a storyline that is so iconic and approach the rule set so you can do different things without it feeling like you're doing the same thing over and over again? Excellent question. So, yeah, actually there was a lot of thought put into that. by myself and also the rest of the team. So the cool part wasn't just me developing the rules, but I was working also with Stephen Silver, the creative director. And then when Josh Kuhler came on board, he has a lot of experience dealing with rules as well with his time at American Pinball. And so, yeah, what we came up with was, you know, you don't have to play, like Ghostbusters has these modes in each of the shots that are part of a tree. And you are forced to play those modes in the order that's listed from bottom to top on each of those shot trees. And so as much as you want it in a movie where you want to take advantage of the fact that there is a plot line, there is a natural story of plot progression and character progression that takes place in the movie or in the book, whatever, comic book, if you will. In this case, I wanted to give the player complete control. So you as the player have complete control about which modes you want to play and which order you want to play them in. So there are different shots around the play field that you get to select from three different groupings of three different story modes. So there are nine in total, and then there are mini wizard modes attached to each one of those. So each little grouping, the castle, gilder, and florin have four in total. So three modes and one mini wizard mode. And you can play them. You can't play the mini wizard modes, obviously. You can't choose those up front. You have to unlock those. But the other nine, you can bounce around and play whichever order you want to play them in. And I wanted to incentivize players to explore both playing them in completely different ways each time they play it. And also I wanted to incentivize them to explore playing modes in the actual order of the story. So the first one I'll explain is where you kind of pick and choose is because we also have shot features. And so there are features like little kind of mini modes based on if you shoot a certain shot enough times, and that can stack and overlay with modes and multiballs. But the element there is if you complete, if you do well enough in one of those little shot features, it will buff or give you some benefit to a particular mode that is thematically tied to that character. So you can then choose and say, okay, well, do I want to play this Buttercup's Nightmare mode right now, or do I want to do the other things first that buff and make Buttercup's Nightmare score more points or make it easier to play? So you can explore the game that way. So there's a lot of breadth, not just depth in terms of like, oh, how many modes and how many wizard modes, whatever. But there's a lot of breadth in terms of how you approach it. And then the other thing that's – I think there are a number of games that do that already. And so I have no problem with borrowing cool concepts and ideas from other games out there. So the other element that you talked about, Scott, as far as when playing games and playing modes in order. So I wanted to incentivize players to consider playing modes in order, but you don't have to start from the beginning. So you could start from the very first mode, which is the shrieking eels. That's the one of the very first mode that we have in the story. Or you could start from, you know, something that's partway through with, you know, with there will be blood tonight if you wanted to. And at any point, if you complete a mode and if you then continue to play the next mode in the storybook order, you earn what's called a narrative streak. And so a percentage of your mode points gets added into your end of ball bonus. And that mode, that percentage grows the longer you make your streak. So if you can cobble together a streak of three modes or five modes that are in the storybook order, then in addition to the natural points you're going to get, you're also going to get this big, big fat end of ball bonus. kind of in the style of like an Indiana Jones, Williams, or Shadow, or Indy 500, where any mode that you play, you get all those points in your bonus, end of all bonus. I wanted to do something in that vein, so that way you have a reason not to tilt. It kind of reminds me, it's like an expanded version of Creature from the Black Lagoon. If you're not familiar with that game and you're listening, you have to spell film. And if you spell it in order, F-I-L-M, you get an extra bonus on top of that. So it sounds like you've taken that and just expanded it into this narrative sequence bonus. That's a really cool concept. I like that. Yeah, so I'm excited for players to explore that. And like Scott, to your point, it gives you a reason to try doing things a different way or try doing things in a different order. And so I wanted to specifically have that. I want people to want to press that start button again, whether it's in your collection at home or whether you're playing it on location. I don't like games that just become stale and it's like, oh, hey, hey, once I've made it to the wizard mode or once I've made it to this mini wizard mode or scored this certain amount of points, it can get boring or old after a time. And so we did a lot of things with the rules and those concepts of the narrative streak and where you can get buffs from other things. So, for instance, like if you play, if you defeat and complete the mawage mode, then the rest of the game, your true love multiballs, instead of a three ball multiball, become a four ball multiball and your scoring gets buffed. And your true love, instead of being a true love and spelling T-R-U-E-L-O-V-E becomes true love multiball and you're spelling T-W-O-O and W-H-U-V. and because the P3 is dynamic and it's green and those targets we can change those targets and how they look and so unlike most pinball machines where those inserts are static and they would have the same spelling every time we can have it and Josh and the rest of the team are able to code it and create the icons that are dynamic that change as soon as you beat marriage is there a to blave it is in there Bluff, obviously. Yes. To Blade is in the Miracle Max mini-wizard pack. Okay. I do want to go through. So I counted these up. So see if I have these right. We have the Farm Boy skillshot sequences. We have Shrieking Eels, the Cliffs of Insanity, Battle of Steel, Battle of Strength, Battle of Wits. So obviously that's the Fezzik's Indigo and the Sini. Fire Swamp, Buttercup's Nightmare, There Will Be Blood Tonight. Guide My Sword, Miracle and Magic. By the way, I love that marriage is spelled M-A-W-I-D-G-E. Absolutely. And Storming the Castle. And when you're designing modes. Into the pain. Exactly. I'm not sure I'm familiar with that. When you're designing modes, typically coders will intentionally say, these are the easy modes. These are the middle modes. These are the hard modes. Did you take that approach in this? Not necessarily. We didn't go into it thinking that we wanted to have certain modes be harder than others. Some of them do, and the one exception to that is Cliffs of Insanity. Cliffs of Insanity is intentionally designed to be very easy because we don't want people to miss out on the battle modes. So the cliffs and also because we want people to enjoy seeing that really cool mech that TJ designed where you can see the ball climbing the cliffs on the magnet as you shoot the center ramp shot. But the rest of the modes are all pretty well balanced. There's a lot of difference to them, though. And so I take great pride in how we are able to make each of those modes play and feel very different as opposed to, well, hey, this is just another sequence of flashing shots. There's rhyme and reason to each one of the modes and why we chose to make them the way they do. and we are able to take advantage of some of the P3 unique features, like Guide My Sword uses the P3 wall of scoops where you're trying to shoot into the open scoop, but you have to line up your sword with the scoop that needs to be open by hitting the targets on the side. So your sword then moves on the screen to finally point towards the correct scoop, and then that scoop drops open, and you can shoot it into there. And you have to do that three times. And so the first one is, it's a gimme. The sword's already pointing at the scoop. But if you flail and miss and bump into those walls, then your sword's going to move off of it. So unique stuff like that. And then the other thing that's kind of a cool little, you know, mode that I hadn't ever seen anybody do before. So Shrieking Eels is where Buttercup is in the, in the, you know, in the lake or river or whatever. And there's these, there are eels that are, you know, swimming around her and trying to eat her. And it's a very short mode, a short scene in the movie. That's not long. But I was trying to capture, okay, what's it like when you're in water surrounded by eels that are going to eat you? And so the idea was instead of a traditional mode timer, it's more of like a continuous stacked amount of hurry-ups because you're constantly trying to swim away from these eels that are trying to kill you. And so you have a certain number of shots that are lit and you only have like a 15 second timer to hit one shot. But when you hit one shot, then it adds on quite a few seconds onto that mode timer. And then the shots move around, they have to hit another one. And so if you hit some shots in sequence, you can actually see your mode timer increase up to like 30 seconds. And now you have a lot of time. But the flavor of it is some people get frustrated because they're like, oh, man, that mode felt really short. It's like, well, yeah, because you're surrounded by a bunch of eels that are trying to eat you. They don't give you a bunch of time. And so just trying to create different modes and different feel to modes so it's not just feeling like the same thing and just a different set of shots that get lit up. how do you so i'm thinking about and sorry to to tim sexton but i'm thinking of wick how do you like in that game it feels like some modes like four shots and you're done with the mode and some of it's like 18 shots and you're still playing uh how do you find that balance in the code and in the modes to feel like it's fair and and you're not spending more time on one mode versus another but you're still trying to create that atmosphere create that sense of whatever that mode's trying to portray how are you doing that so we each of the modes you can generally complete somewhere between i'd say in four to six shots in that range and you know but there's also the opportunity for the player if they play it skillfully enough there are lots of those modes where you can, you can keep shooting other shots to, to ratchet up your scoring potential for like the final shot for instance And um you know so that way it it not just feeling like the same So if you do happen to just go lights out and just nailing everything you can choose to cash out and say okay I done with that mode or you can choose to keep playing it. But for your most, I would say 90% plus of players out there, you know, it's just a, hey, they want to get through the mode and enjoy that, you know, see the outro video and see what they're used to in that scene as far as those characters and what they do at the end of the mode. And so in that case, we didn't want to have any of them feel overly long. So I'd say anywhere between four and six shots. Awesome. This game, I'm excited. I'm excited to play this at Expo. What was the gentleman's booth again? This is at Justin Wise's booth, and I apologize. I don't have his business's name up in front of me. I'm looking at a post from Jerry's monthly update post. But if you go and look that up in the vendor booths or whatever, look up Justin Wise, and you can go and find his booth or just listen for the Princess Bride sound. I haven't been to Expo at the new location, so I don't know how easy it is to hear different pinball machines as you're walking around. It's not as loud as Texas. It actually was quite nice. the the environment was like texas but maybe a little more of a vendor feel well in this year they've opened up the whole convention area so it's going to be pretty massive versus what they've i mean even last year they only had half the convention center so i'm pretty for sure they'll have maps and kind of a an idea of where everything's going to be laid out i'm excited i'm so one thing i just want to interject here as far as princess prize i'd love everybody you I'm a contractor for Multimorphic, so I'm not an employee. But of course, I'm going to be biased about a Multimorphic pin, especially the one that I helped design. So my apologies if it sounds like I'm super biased on this. But I want people and players and also people who are considering their next purchase for their pinball collection. if a lot of different people fall into different camps or different categories as far as they're considering something like the P3. And some of them fall in like, well, they wanted a top-tier license or they don't like how the flippers feel or previously there were some quality issues or a claim that like, hey, this isn't real pinball. So my job as a player and the company's job and Jerry's leadership and what he's doing with the company is to convince any of you. Neither of you have any P3 in your collection, so I'd love to be able to convince you as well to consider getting one. But for instance, like the license. Like, hey, now we have the Weird Al. We have Princess Bride. So there are some really great licenses available. If somebody's like, hey, I really want a good license. Mechanically, the stuff that goes on in the back as far as the mechanicals and the toys in the P3, most people would argue like, hey, those are some of the best that have come out in recent years. from the crane and heist and what Weird Al's done and now what we have in Princess Bride. If you played a P3 a long time ago on the old flippers, please, please, please go play on the new P3 because the flippers are totally different. And anybody who did play on those old flippers and had a problem with them, I agree with you. I was one of those. I did not like how the old flippers played. But the new flippers are a world of difference, And that's the most important aspect for any pinball player is how the flippers interact. So try it again. And on the quality, I also say, man, Jerry and his team have done an amazing job. They listened to the community. The community came back and said, hey, Jerry, there's these X, Y, and Z of quality issues with your P3 and with the modules. And Jerry went back to the drawing board and went to an intensive discussion with lots of different people internally and externally. and they've come out with the quality update kits. And so if you're worried about the quality, go talk to somebody who has their quality update kit. There have been zero reports of failures since that's taken place. So give it a chance if for some reason you had a quality thing. And then as far as the people that want to complain about it not being real pinball, I don't know what to say to you because it's like it is absolutely real pinball. It is pinball. Yeah. And so my whole thing is I want anybody who's considering it, It's like if for some reason you'd written off P3 in the past, give it another chance. And I think you will be not just pleasantly surprised. I think you will be overwhelmed with how much you enjoy playing it. Now, I'll jump in a little bit because I was more concerned about having a system, a platform that becomes dated. And so if you buy the cabinet and then you're buying new games, we know that other either consoles, video games, or pinball machines, they upgrade. So with Stern, we've had the White Star system. We've had the Spikes. So we're going through all those things. My concern was, well, if you buy this, are you always locked into that? The one thing we found out is that they have incorporated the ability to upgrade your system with reverse compatibility. And so that has taken a lot of concern. That was my major concern with it. Yeah, it's a valid one. buy this and say, well, 15 years later, the technology has advanced and their ability to retrofit the game so you can backwards compatible it and upgrade it at the same time is actually something that would lead me to buy this game. Yeah, I agree. And then the other, there's some other recent additions and changes they've made that like the cabinet artwork now is now available that you can actually put on the cabinet and also So they're now doing front coin door border artwork. So, you know, little things like that. Side target and slingshot artwork is now magnetized. So for quicker swap out. So that way you don't like if anybody's really like OCD about, hey, I put my final resistance module in, but I've got my weird owl, you know, artwork on the slingshots and on the side targets. You can now swap those out even easier. You don't have to get out your screwdriver and take off the plastic and put the new plastics down. So things like that, it keeps it keeps innovating. And, you know, I don't want to overly sound like a like a shill, but I just want I want people to go and enjoy it either on location or consider buying it for their home, because I think there's I think there's a lot of playability and a lot of value to it. And yeah, that's all I'll say about that. So I interrupted you, Josh, as you were talking about getting excited about Expo. So sorry about that. You're good. I'm excited for Expo. This is what I love about Expo. You go out there. There's tons of games, whether it's old or new. There's just a ton to play, and I'm excited. This is one of those games I always look forward to Chicago. This is where I get my P3 fix. This is where I play Weird Al, and I think Weird Al is a wonderful game. I think my only complaint that's ever been with P3 is they kind of hide those upper flippers, and sometimes it's a little hard to gauge. That's one of those things. I've only played a couple of games on it. And so I think maybe if you get more used to it, it becomes more natural to hit with those flippers. And the new, which there's different versions of the, I could have been an older version, Josh. Yeah. The upper flipper kits now. Cause yeah, you're right. The first ones were, they were like, they were hidden. Yeah. And it's difficult to then judge when am I going to flip? Because you can't see the flipper. And so those, so they, they incorporated that feedback. And so, yeah, give it the, The one that Justin Wise will have will have, I think, the newer upper flipper kits. Awesome. I'm excited. And the one thing to consider to this is I just pulled up – so pull up Multimorphic. And really there are 13 game options that are directly from Multimorphic. And I'm just – so Princess Bride, Final Resistance, Weird Al's Museum of Natural History, Heist, Cosmic Car Racing, Lexi Lightspeed, Cannon Lagoon. and then you have some some extra ones that use existing playfields like social apprentice scoop and shoot lexi light speed a secret agent you know so you have these things barnyard um there's also some third-party things so if you really look at it from a package design i have 10 machines down here but if you add up the cost of all those 10 machines it's going to be significantly more than you buying a P3 and getting 10 games. So there is certainly something to be said about, you know what, if you still want to experience pinball, but this can be – pinball is expensive. We all know that. But this can be a nice, easy way of incorporating something like this into your pinball collection. That gives a different flavor, really. Silly question. I don't know if you know this, Colin, or not, But is there like a tester mode? So if like I wanted to make an upper play field and throw it in there and just switch it to flipper mode. So I'm just kind of hitting shots. Is that possible? Like a homebrew? Like Josh, like you making your own? Yeah. You making your own? When I homebrew a third. I don't know how – because I know that – I think it's Nicholas Baldridge that did the drain. Yeah, Nicholas Baldridge did. Yeah, he did drain. I don't know exactly how he started in terms of making that. He then also manufactures that himself or whatever contract manufacturer he uses to make that. So it is a – if you've ever seen the upper third modules, they're substantial. There's a lot going on with any pinball machine, both above the wood play field and below it. And so but there are things that I'm confident that if you wanted to do something like that, I'm just I'm not that type of person that is mechanically gifted to to pull that off. But I'm sure that that type of thing exists as far as, you know, even playing around with that and some type of software basis to to to goof around and try to design your own your own module. if you wanted to go the Nick Baldrige route, or you could do what Ian Ian Harrower has done, and he's designed his Birdwatcher game as one of his first games he developed, which he now has ported it. So actually his game works on, I think, three, or maybe it's four different P3 modules. So if you buy the Birdwatcher game, you can play it on a number. He's ported the code and tweaked the rules, so it works on all four different modules. It's really cool. That is cool. Okay, we're going to transition, but I do want to bring this up. Talk about the theme integration, like the assets that come into Princess Bride. So doing the call outs, like are they captures from the movie? You have a big screen, so you're going to be using a lot of these movie clips. And I know you specifically, you guys wrote the code for Vassini, the Battle of Wits. You did it so you could get that whole code. You didn't want to clip that scene at all, which is a pretty memorable scene in the entire movie. I would say most people can quote it. So tell me about the asset integration and how does that bring you into the pinball world of Princess Bride? Yeah, I think it does what only the P3 platform can do. So in terms of first off the video and all the audio that you're hearing, but specifically the video, whether it's in the big rectangular movie screen or if it's in like a little circle pop-ups that come up, you can't get that with any other pinball system where the video is literally popping up before your eyes and you're not having to look up at the screen or a screen that's up in the back of the play field or up on the backbox. So all of that is fully integrated. The team did an amazing job of painstakingly integrating it and the timing of things. It was very, very difficult for Stephen Silver and the rest of the team to come up with and figure out, okay, how – splicing together different scenes. So for instance, like on that battle of wits, you have this – it's quite a long scene with all the dialogue going between Wesley and Pizzini and – or he's really the Dread Pirate Roberts at that point. But you have to also figure out like, okay, well, what if a player plays really well and suddenly you need to end the scene because they've gotten to the end. They've done all the shots. They've hit all the things. and so you have to come up with a kind of spice and say we're going to have this part of the scene play out in its entirety until the player reaches a certain point and then we're going to cut to another part of the scene that kind of gets to the ultimate part where he's like look over there and then he takes a drink because now you've hit the shot the goblet shot and he's taking the drink and so finding a way to balance that is really masterfully done But the most critical part is that you're getting to enjoy the scene and that come alive in front of you in addition to the world under glass in the back third of the hill ramp that looks exactly like the hill with Wesley and Buttercup rolling down and the cliffs. And then you have the castle over on the left. And so that type of thing is something that is absolutely integrated. Unlike any other game out there to this point, it really is highlighting, I think, P3 truly coming into its own in terms of – in the past, Weird Al is a great license. And I have Weird Al sitting. I'm looking at it over here. You can't see it. But that was all coming up with graphics and stuff except for one. There's one mode that actually uses the video assets from the music video. but all the rest of it was conceived out of whole cloth, which is awesome. But it's also not like something that's memorable for somebody. They're not going to see nostalgia and see the graphics, the cool graphics that they put on for, you know, Amish paradise and connect to it from a nostalgia perspective because they'd never seen it before. It's just really cool graphics that are associated with that song. In this case, this is the full blown in your face nostalgia. Yeah. And so you're going to get all of that, and you get all the lines. It's not just also playing the lines in perpetuity for every single mode. I know Guardians of the Galaxy does that, for instance, at the start. Right. As you progress, as you hit shots, it then cues the next line. So if you play Prepare to Die multiball, as you get through the final stages of it, you're going to hear the back and forth between Rugen and Inigo as they have that awesome fight scene. That's awesome. Stop saying that. Yeah. The best theme integration, of course, in my humble opinion, because I also helped design the rules for it, is the one-handed swordsman in Battle of Steel, where you have to control both flippers with the left side buttons, and then mid-mode when you're successful enough, you get to switch over to the right side, because that's what they do in the movie. Yep. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. And just a quick plug, if you are a big fan of Princess Bride, which why wouldn't you be, there's an audio book, and that's great. I highly recommend it. It's called As You Wish. It's Cary Elwes, and he actually got a lot of people who were behind the scenes. So if you want even more into the story of Princess Bride, including him totally trashing his foot during filming, which is why he's limping half the time, It's a great book. I highly recommend it. So I can't wait to play Weird Al. I can't wait to play Princess Bride and get more time on it. And I'm really excited to see how P3 has taken to the next level. So that's why I am super excited for Expo this year. Yes. Josh is getting there. Josh is getting there a little earlier than I am. I may. It depends. I'm still on possibly getting Wednesday or Thursday off. If I get Thursday off, I'm going to try to fly in Wednesday and spend a little more time at the event. But I will definitely be there Friday and Saturday. And Josh, you are going to be there Wednesday for sure. I'm flying in Wednesday afternoon. I land at like 4. And Colin, you said you're flying in for the pro circuit, right? But you're not going to be able to be sticking around for most of the festivities, right? Yeah, unfortunately. It's yet another time where I have to miss it. I will eventually get to go one of these days, but I have kids involved with various school activities. And my son is in marching band. It's lovingly referred to as Bantober for the month of October because there's a competition going on every single weekend. And guess what? We're in October. So, yeah, I'm flying home after Stern Pro Circuit and the customer meeting and then flying back so I can be a part of my son's and my family's life here back in Texas. But one of these days I'm going to get to Expo and enjoy that and also hang out with you guys there. So I'm very jealous that you guys get to go back again and enjoy Expo again. And I know you guys have, besides just being there as attendees, you also in different years have really done and been a part of it in terms of some of the fundraising you've done for charity. That's also been really cool. I'm proud of you guys for what you did with that year. Thank you. That was a big undertaking. That was a lot of effort, and that was all Josh, by the way. I was definitely his sidekick. I said, Josh, you tell me what to do. But that was really spearheaded by Josh. um okay josh what are you looking forward to at expo this year there is a ton of games that i'm excited to see one though i'm really curious like i'm intrigued i don't know if i'm excited for it i don't know if i'm appalled by it is the goof this is okay this has got to be the weirdest reveal we've seen in the last uh what i can remember i don't remember anything like this if you don't if you've been living under a rock alice in wonderland's been released by dpx dutch pinball it's not extreme i know that's what that's what some of the other podcasts have been saying and now i've got that stuck in my head exclusive and they're bringing at least three of them to expo and i've got to say okay from the beginning the slow drip feed of like pitchers i'm i don't know if it worked for the company for me it did not i don't like seeing one tiny corner of the game every week for the next eight weeks it just it was annoying to me and then when it finally showed i felt like the trailer was not showing the game which it's like you're trying to sell a game right like i don't understand fully why you're not showing the game and this is here's the thing for me like j-pop maybe i've had some of the illusion taken off because i've been doing this for a while and i've talked to people behind the scenes and the industry stuff like that if you're not very familiar with John Papadiuk he did make some amazing games for bally williams like world cup soccer which i own uh theater of magic circus voltaire these are like very classic games that people love needed tales also details of the rabian knights but a lot of the thing was when you hear designer you think like elwyn he is the leader of a team right like he he is the director he is constantly got his fingers in helping with code stuff like that papaduke was more of he was the designer but from what i'm getting is uh he very much had to be funneled into areas yes like with world cup soccer if you missed our interview with larry demar last year John Papadiuk's dad had some some health issues had to step away larry demar finished that game so it's more in my opinion it's more of a larry demar game than it is a John Papadiuk game you can fight about it i don't care that's my feelings on that here's the problem john decided to make these games after the fact no one's ever been able to reign them in we've had atrocities like you know magic girl and if you you don't know anything about that go google that stuff we're not gonna go down that rabbit hole no we're not so every attempt i i do have to hand it to John Papadiuk though because he started how many companies based like well okay He started Zidware and that collapsed. And then they tried to make Houdini part of American Pinball and then that didn't work out. Then he was picked up by Deep Root and everybody knows my undying love for Deep Root. Yes. And what happened there. And now his designs have kind of been floating around and ended up getting picked up by Dutch Pinball. um and and this was four this is yeah okay so yeah so he's he's like tangentially involved in like an upstart yeah it's four companies though that's four companies granted deep root never really made anything they just took money and ran yeah but but the pin pod the pit oh no the pin bar where's the pin bar the pin bar yeah yeah i will say actually i thought the box was kind of cool the shipping box even though like you know the problem is when you use it you no longer have it so um okay so go ahead oh no my point being is is like at some point in time like you've seen multiple like over the past decade everything he's touched has failed and the games that actually do get made are not really fantastic like if you get your hands on a magic girl i did last year at expo which by the way they might have one this year yeah and then like if you ever played a raza they just there's aspects of the games that just don't work it's like i don't know why they decided to put this in there but it's so frustrating when you've got a ramp that goes all the way to the glass and it's like the whole point of it is like you may or may not get it to the top and if you do you get something cool but it's like ramps shouldn't feel like that there should be the game that should be like that not aspects of the gameplay and you look at this game and the first thing is okay first thing to me is it's so sexualized i didn't know that that was actually alice i saw the foam core originally the concepts in the black and the white and i didn't know if the girl up front was going to be alice if because traditionally alice in wonderland is based off of a seven-year-old girl that goes into wonderland that's what has been in the book this alice is obviously not seven years old yeah she is not seven years old in this one that's for sure And she's not wearing much of a dress. This is a different take on it. This is like Jessica Rabbit went into some odd cosplay mode. Yes. Well, and I get like – so there's – if you're a fan of comic books, there's the Grimm Fairy Tales series, which does take some of like Little Red Riding Hood and makes it more of an adult and it makes it more dark. I get that concept and that aspect. But you're basing this off of a pre-made license, and you're not giving very much context. Well, okay. Now, I'll push back a little bit. The Alice in Wonderland series, it's Lewis Carroll, right? Yes, correct. He did the original book? Okay, I've never read the book. The challenge that we have is that the Alice that we're in, I would say that most people out there have not read the book. but the challenge is a lot of our framing of Alice is the Disney version right and so that could be a little different full context I don know how the Lewis Carroll book is It not adult but it definitely not child Okay. It's solidly in the middle, but it's about a seven-year-old girl that goes down in the wonderland. And there's a lot of drug themes and stuff like that, which kind of present in the Disney version. It just – I'm so confused by like – like even there are stand-up targets with Allison's muff – or Alice's muffins on them that say, eat me. I mean, come on now. Yeah. Really? That's not cool. I'm just like, this is a little – just a little much. Wow. I didn't see that part. You didn't see that part? Okay. Well, there's so much to see, Josh. Like it's – And here's the genius, quote-unquote, of John Papadiuk. we put a spinning disc above the in and out lane because that's exactly where i want chaos is right above oh my god don't get me started on that don't get me started on that and then you put an upper play field that takes up what the top half of the game it's it's more than a third and and then don't get me wrong i love twilight zone i love the play field of power you know the power but it's also a wide body and so it doesn't take up as much uh percentage wise so i'm assuming this is a standard body and then they've taken the power play field and made it huge but because they want times and size oh yeah and and for some odd reason like they don't want you to like they want you to hang out up there so they've made the whole bottom a rubber band so that way you can keep the ball up there but i'm just like this this i don't know just play other John Popadiuk games after bally williams and you'll realize like none of these work so why are we why did dutch take a chance on papaduke when it's been proven time and time and time again it doesn't work and people are just frustrated and they just end up becoming passion projects that people try to fix up later to try to make money off of a broken idea i know i've been ranting there's one there's one idea What you just mentioned. So let's answer the question first. Why would a business like Dutch Pinball choose to do this? And I think there's, in my opinion, it's either one of two things. It could be a combination of things. But it could be because somebody on that team is just really super passionate about those John Papadiuk designs of yesteryear, which are hugely popular. and there's the name cache of those prior titles because there's also a lot of negative name cache around Papaduke and deservedly so over the last 10 years. And they're doing this because similar to Papaduke's companies, he was very good at fundraising. Yeah. He could raise funds. And so if I'm Dutch Pinball, if I'm a business, it may not be a bad business play to do this just because they know that, hey, I can go and sell this and it has this name associated with it and a certain style of look to it that are going to make it sell out very quickly on a certain few hundred. They're not a big company. It's kind of funny they have DPX. It's even like a boutique of a boutique. I mean, so it could very well provide them with the influx of money that they need in order to keep their business going and their business running. So I can't fault them for that. However, to your point on this is just, oh, my gosh, you could have they could have gone a different direction. I mean, let's let's be honest. There's there's certainly a market in the pinball community to sell, you know, sexualized art and, you know, and product to. okay let's just let's be real that that exists well it's what's based off of look at the 60s and 70s art yeah they know their demographic and there's nothing wrong with it even back in special when lit i mean that the guy definitely pushes the sex cells uh yeah and but to your point is it doesn't there's so many other ways they could have gone and still have that that element of a of a sex appeal element to the art, but instead they went like way out in right fields. Like, where did that come from? That doesn't look anything that doesn't evoke any type of imagery of like, oh yeah, that's Alice in Wonderland, except for the, some ridiculously, you know, you know, shredded stockings that she's wearing. You know, that's about the only, you know, crossover you can get out of that. So that, that's weird to me, but I don't know if you're going next but the the spinning discs are just a the icing on the cake to me the main thing looking at this is the play field is so compressed yeah it is i mean and there's like okay there's one like what i would look at and say that looks aesthetically shot a satisfying shot in the game there's one and that's the ramp the rest of them you know based on seeing just what i've seen so farther they're not kinetically aesthetically satisfying and of the video they showed in the gameplay they were showing the other night they shot the ramp and like 75 of the time it didn't go up and around yeah well and not only that like you're you were speaking of finances and i just even on the gameplay video and stuff like that like they have i can't i can't remember his name melvin and melvin's explaining stuff and he's also telling us this is all sold out and there's plenty of distributors you can still go to that there's you can buy this from sold to distributors versus sold out are different so the manufacturer and you sell to the distributor that's a different story than the game not being available for a consumer that's what you're getting at josh yeah well not only that but you're cutting the legs out from underneath your distributors by saying none of these are available right because then people go and they're like they're still available what's what's going on here like are you trying to pull a fast one is there some fomo you're trying to imply it just everything about this like even the the the trailer the oh the trailer like like travis murray pointed out to me i didn't notice this you don't see a single ball to the flipper till about a minute and 10 seconds in it makes no sense and then on top of that it's like i just it's all this artwork oh okay here's the thing that drives me the most nuts this is the first thing the first thing that just made me cringe you're ready for this and and congrats to colin from kinesis to to loop this but the fact that that airy weird like mad hatter jackpot you're like what are you trying to like it's like he got punched in the stomach and he's trying to yell jackpot but i don't know what's going on there it's just it's terrible it's just all around the sounds atrocious why why why like and the other thing too is this is like a carbon copy of the form core to a team with the artwork and everything from John Papadiuk you've had over a decade to like perfect this and make this right but you didn't like i just i think a lot of the lead up to this too was like a lot of us were thinking well are they going to use the John Papadiuk? Because based off the foam core, it's not going to work. Mm-hmm. Okay, I'll play. I will give you guys a case for why people would buy this, okay? So, yes, there are certain issues with it. What I will start with is what sells people initially on games? Theme. Theme? and art right yeah like how it looks okay now it almost seems like they go through different phases one it's theme and art and then you go into the gameplay area and yes an experienced gamer will be able to look at it and say you know a pinhead will say yeah that looks like a fun game to shoot and so they will assess it maybe on that but i would say there's a lot of impulse buys and i will Case in point, I would point out Halloween sold 1250 games off the art package alone, right? And people bought – like that was an amazing success for them. So if I'm just looking at this from those – from that standpoint, OK, visually the art actually looks really good in that – now, I can disagree. with the choices they have made about how they've drawn Alice and the Queen of Hearts. But I would say still it does – it still looks good. Like the art is – it's eye-popping. The Cheshire Cat looks thematically consistent with it even though it has – it doesn't have that little weird claw that Dennis Greasel brought up. I do like the eyes moving too in that topper that's cool seeing those eyes it is really okay so visually if I walked by this it would catch my eye and really John Papadiuk's games have done that so if I look at it and say well so on art I would actually rate it pretty high now you can make you can say there were questionable choices to be made about how they drew it but this still looks like an aesthetically pleasing game yeah so you could argue it on that um sorry dying here um and the color wise it does look really interesting like the way they've they've done the lighting i would say it's very very good that way too now what the truth will always be in can you play it and is it going to be any fun but this could be an option where you're like well maybe and then you know the the call outs how are the call it's going to be all that kind of stuff but i would argue there is going to be a market for this game it may not be me it may not be josh and it may not be colin but it does look interesting now is this a small run to to get uh get capital sure uh it may be but there are people who really go for that there are people who go for the limited pretty things because they can have it yeah and i i can almost guarantee this is a a test run to see how it goes to see if dpx can do magic girl next i really think they're gonna keep trying to milk the John Popadiuk train because i mean it's a european company that's been trying to fix the magic girl anyway and that's who brought it over for expo last year so i just the same the same guy that's running DPX, did he also buy the Magic Girl assets as well? I'm not for sure, so don't quote me on it, but it wouldn't shock me if he has. You guys would at least agree that you may not agree with what he has drawn, but the art does look good. Right? Some of it. Artistic style is pleasing to the eye, I'll put it that. Yeah. There's a lot of attention to detail, but there's also So it's very condensed, too. And that's the thing. It's like, wasn't – Zombie Yeti is the one that originally did the art for Alice, right? And then he never got paid for it. I think he did the initial one and also for Magic Girl. Now, there's always going to be the line, and we've talked about this before, and this is a hard subject for us to talk about because we're middle-aged white dudes, okay? So it's not like we typically have the high moral ground when you're talking about – can you be attractive and sexy and still walk that line that doesn't cross into inappropriate? Ryan Reynolds does it. Why can't we? He is way better looking than I am. He's also a lot funnier. But there are ways that have successfully done that. You could argue Elvira too, and Elvira is one of those where it raises my eyebrow. But it seems to work for a lot of the pinball audience. Now, is this going to fall into that category? Maybe. But it is something to consider. It's also – it is European style. And really, when you go to Europe, there are a lot of choices that Europeans will make that are – would be considered crossing the line in the United States. What's the game, Expo, that's the Spanish game that's – Oh, yeah. Was it Nemesis? Something like that. It was like in the 70s, the scantily clad chicks riding dragons. I don't even know if they're clothes there, Scott. Okay, well, that would be scantily clad. And they're riding a very suggestive dragon. Yeah. Well, there's three of them. Okay, but hold on. I guess to me, I have a different criteria of like my order of criteria for pinball machines. And to me, art is not near the top for me. You know, at its base, at its core, why I love pinball is the physicality. It's not the rules and the scoring. I mean, I love that stuff too, but that's from a pure – I just – I love the kinetic aspect of pinball. Seeing the ball go and do things and go in cool paths and then that path suddenly changing because something changed in the game. It kind of surprises me. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, but I'm in control of it. And that element to me, when I'm watching the trailer, first off, even just seeing the pictures of it, when I saw the pictures, I'm like, oh, man, that's a really condensed play field. Then I saw the trailer of it, and they didn't really show much in terms of ballpads, and then I saw them playing it live. and oh my gosh that i mean for me i just i have you know in terms of my criteria the the gameplay physically is one of the most important things to me and this and this pin i'm sorry it's just like you said it's if they would have taken the original foam core design and tweaked it and maybe fixed it maybe having played it i don't know before you go and put it into actual all the wood and spend all the money on all the ramp paths and things like that. Maybe they could have addressed that and fixed that. But the way it's set up now, and I'm assuming this is how it's going to get produced. I don't see them changing that. It's pretty locked in. And it just, I'm sorry, it didn't look good. And I hate to say it because I always want to wait till I play the game myself to make that kind of assessment to it. But, man, it was a struggle for me to find something aesthetically, kinetically appealing about this game. Yeah. I would argue that Keith Elwin's Avengers Infinity Quest is a better modern-day John Papadiuk-style game than anything Papaduke has released in the last 30 years. It certainly has the ball paths. We've talked about this, right? One of the things that really draws you in is seeing a ball move at high velocity over a lot of area in the play field. And Keith Elwin's a master of doing those interesting shots that keep the ball moving. And visually, it is attractive to see the ball moving around. I totally agree with you, Colin. And by the way, by me defending why people would buy Alice, I'm still not a buyer of this game. Yeah, 12.5, no way. Right, but when we did talk about, okay, what other games have people done to try to raise money? Remember, Dutch Pinball also did Bride of Pinbot 2.0. Yeah. And they had the big Lebowski. And so they have always made some interesting choices, maybe not the most financially savvy choices, but they've made some interesting choices. I'm still surprised they're around Yeah, when Big Lebowski I mean, I've played that one I played it quite a bit At the Wormhole in Houston And when it's working It's a fun game to play I really enjoyed it I enjoyed kind of the hearkening back To kind of the old Different era of game in terms of The gameplay style in terms of How it's set up, kind of how this medieval madness Kind of vibe to it in terms of stacking different character multi-balls and things like that. And physically and kinetically, the shots felt good. And that's what I'm looking for. And so I hope I'm wrong. I hope that my assessment of just the pictures and the trailer and the gameplay that they were showing, I hope I'm wrong. Because I always like new pinball. I enjoy the kinetic and physicality of John Papadiuk's older design games. That's actually one of his hallmarks, is these big, swooping, flowing ramp shots that go and do amazing things physically with the ball. And I love that. And so I hope I'm wrong, but it's, man, we'll see. So I think one thing, as I was setting here, I think there's one thing that post-Bally Williams, John Pockerudu games, what they're missing, that the Bally Williams always had, was there was one specific mech that was really cool, that was unique. I mean even though like World Cup Soccer it's very basic it's a really wide open shop it's one of my favorites with the goalie moving back and forth on a stick you've got Theater of Magic that chest is super cool that is one of the coolest mechs in pinball Circus Voltaire the ringmaster when he comes up the magnet on his head grabbing the ball slinging it back at you hitting the face going up and the ball goes under it does multiple layers of things right that the chest does multiple layers of things the genie you hit him in the stomach and he kind of clenches up and he you know and then when you hit it enough the magnet in front of it catches it and drops the ball into the play field like it just disappears i i love disappearing and the fireball magnet on the ramp yes we're missing that from these John Papadiuk games and i feel like it's got the swoop it's got the pretty it's got the beautiful plastic ramps but we're missing that mech that makes Papaduke games Papaduke games. I think you're missing the heart. If you guys are ever attempting this going forward, that's what you need to be focusing on as well. I'm interested to try it, and I'm interested to see how it is. Magic Girl was not that fun for me when I played it, so I'm hoping that this is different, but I will also argue that sometimes gameplay video can be a little misleading as to the game and that brings us to our next topic is x-men so x-men was revealed everybody looked at it and said wow this looks really interesting this is this is different this is their departure jack talks about bringing weirdness back into pinball okay and then people saw the gameplay that they did the the stream and there were people who pulled their orders from that gameplay because it didn't it looked hard it looked and they're like these are good players and if they're just draining all the time it unsold le's which you always want to do right yeah it unsold games yeah it's it was like it was the uh the marketing uh kryptonite that that helped out However, afterwards, I have actually played it, and Colin, you have played it too. This game played nothing like that stream showed. I want to hear what you found when you played X-Men because I'm not a top-tier player, but you are, so tell me about it. So to your point, the shots are tight. They are not wide. There's not a single wide shot on the game. I thought there was going to be a wide shot with like the, you know, going back to the ringmaster. I thought the sentinel head was actually going to drop all the way down like the ringmaster does on Voltaire, but he doesn't. It doesn't. It goes around. His crown or whatever stays raised, and so you actually are hitting that still. And that's because there's really – there's nothing behind it. And so it makes sense after seeing it in person why that choice was made. But each ramp shot, and there's seven of them. There are seven ramp shots in that game, if I'm not mistaken. That's redonkulous, just full stop right there. But to your point, Scott, it is difficult in that all the shots, the major shots, are tight. And there's not a single one of them that go, oh, well, hey, there's the gimme shot. There's the easy shot. I mean, I think maybe the one that's to the left of the sentinel head is probably maybe a little easier than some of the other ones. But they are all difficult to hit. But man, once you hit them, oh my gosh, to my, what I was making one of my highest category prioritizations criteria, it is so kinetically and aesthetically pleasing, especially that left one where it does this, like, it does this like pretzel figure eight, whatever you want to call it, where it goes around and then back around. It's a double hairpin turn. Yeah. Oh, it's fabulous. It's fantastic. It looks great. And the design, I give major kudos to Jack and how he designed it and be able to pull it off correctly. And I hope it's something that doesn't degrade over time as the pin gets played at your house or on location. That left ramp that then goes across the playfield, rolls across the playfield, not on a wire form, rolls across the playfield and perfectly feeds this little side ramp on the right-hand side above where the shootoing comes out and then feeds then across that wire form that goes kind of over your flippers and feeds the danger room, that sequence and how that's designed is masterful. It's the katana shot 2.0. That's how I say it. It's like the katana shot, you look at that and say that shouldn't work, but it does. When you hit it right, it hits it. And with the danger room shot, you are exactly right. You shoot it from the right flipper. it goes through this this hyper acute angle then goes across the play field and then feeds a wire form that dumps you in the danger room actually at a pretty decent speed it doesn't actually do it in a in a in a dangerous way it's like oh well that it looks like it was meant to be it's almost like the first time you see the ball that shoots across the play field and goes into the the chest in Houdini or in Aerosmith. You're like, that shouldn't work as consistently as it does, but it does. Yeah. And so it's, but yeah, the bones and the most part of the physicality of it is there because you can't change that. You can change the code. You can change the mechanics, the game logic. You can do and mess with all those things. You can't change the physical nature of the shots. and the physical nature of the shots felt great. Now, I do worry slightly, Scott, if you get a player who's even better than me, like you get all these young kids that just have robotic cyborg-like aim. Yeah. The fact that all the major shots are actually ramp shots that feed back to your flipper could result in the game being very very long playing But you have to find those shots and they are really tight So only those cyborg-like players can probably keep playing this thing over a long period of time. Right. But it is like playing a video game. If you get dialed in, that's one question. There should be at least a dangerous shot. And there seems to be some hard shots, but there didn't seem to be – like Attack from Mars, that straight up the middle. Like if you shoot that – those three drop targets in front of the saucer, you better be prepared to recover because you don't know where that ball is going. I'm not sure there's a lot of that in here, maybe hitting the sentinel head and when the mouth opens and has that kickback on it. Did you play the LE version or – Yeah, I did. I played the LE version. I think that's the only one that's out right now. Yeah, well, they manufactured that first, so I haven't even played the pro one. Yeah, me neither. But that sentinel head, his little mouth, that kicker, it killed me at least three times. Yeah, so that is the dangerous shot, but there are so many options that it may not be that much of a factor. So that does make me wonder how would you adjust it. And it was interesting because when we talked to – I think we were talking to Elwin, wasn't it? When we were talking about lifting, like making the game steep. And he said, well, the problem is if you just jack up the feet on every game, you can actually make a game easier because it actually takes out the side-to-side action of the slingshots. Yep. It does one other thing too. It makes it so you can actually control and cradle the ball easier. because your ball is going to come to a – you have more vertical action on it as opposed to side to side where it's going to try to roll off the flipper. So if you're worried about somebody over-controlling the game, steeper is actually better for control. But it's – the other thing I'll say about this, I really – I was very pleased with how the danger room area turned out. Yes, you're right. That was fantastic. I was concerned that it was going to be a drain monster down there. Yep. But you could actually reasonably get back and forth from the main play field to the – I don't want to call it an upper play field, but the danger room is basically like an upper play field in the lower area. You could reasonably get back and forth without too much difficulty. I find it funny too that like I look at this game and I'm like, how did he ever get it approved? And in the recent interviews, like listening to Gomez and he's like, if I would have seen how much he put in this game, we would have caught you. My stupid cat just started to rush. I don't know if you heard that. Nice. Ah, cat. That's hilarious. We saw your cat climbing around in the back. Yeah, well, he hit the – can you hear Rush in the background? It's singing Working Man right now. Just a little bit. Just barely. Okay, well, then I'm worried. So Josh, you were talking about the bill of materials and what Gomez is doing. Yeah, I don't know if it was the bill of materials, but there's just so much in this game. They're like, we probably should have pulled the restraints a little bit. And I know that even Gary has stepped down. He's not the head. He's still in charge. But Seth Davis is definitely the man that's giving the green light. He's not a day-to-day guy anymore. Correct. He's like a load star. He's like the aspirational star, so to speak. Correct. But it makes me chuckle because even Gary, I guess, looked at this and was like, yep, I guess, you know, if I was still in charge, this would not have been approved. It goes to show that Jack is definitely pushing the bounds and somehow breaking through to make things like this work. And I'm excited. I'm excited to hear that it works because Gold Wings, in my opinion, does not. It's a fun game. No, Gold Wings is not a fun game. I mean, Gold Wings is a snooze fest. Let's be honest. Okay. It is a snooze fest. And this takes that cool – it takes the best elements of Goldwings and reimagines them, and it makes it fun to play. Yeah. There's no other way around it. It's true. It takes Goldwings, and I almost feel like it gives it a Radical touch because Radical is just all those loops and all the fancy paths and everything. it's like radical and gold wings had a baby and it just but instead of plastic it plays way better than radical and gold wings though and and i do don't get me wrong i enjoy radical but i think that it's too tight like the shots it's too like forced of like this is how you're going to play this game whereas i'm excited to play x-men because like everyone that's played it has just loved it and the only complaint is code but code is it it is what it is like it'll take a while it's a steering game and i will say this i think this is me personally i think elwynn should be the standard like when his games come out i feel like there's enough meat on the bone you don't really like you don't notice that the final mode's not in there you don't notice there needs to be enough meat on the bone when these games come out like the elwynn should be like the base standard in my opinion because i mean i think so i you get x get their x-man and you love it but it's like the coach is so bare it it feels like you're just waiting for the the the brownies to finish cooking in the oven right like yeah this is great it smells wonderful they look wonderful but they're still they're still raw in the middle like i one raw brownies are awesome right you do not want to overcook your bones too now remember we didn't know a little we have a little bit of an insight because they have publicly said they moved this up so wayson didn't have as much time on the code as you pot you would have so give another you know three months or so or we'll see now however this is you know the last time wasin's done games it's been a while you know we he did uh wwe and uh didn't he do the original x-men or at least part of the original yeah so it takes a while for for them to to evolve but i will say playing the game with waste and he was super excited about where he's going to take this so i i'm optimistic that he can do that and considering we have next level coders now like game like game designers so like what raymond uh and you know has added to the mix of being a top level player and being able to do that and keith is kind of the gold standard of being able to find the the mix of of modes and score balancing and being able to distribute there's enough there that weren't there when he has done his last games and so i'm optimistic that this will all come together as a beautiful machine but this does take a little time you're right it's going to take but i it was a blast to play though right colin you agree with that oh absolutely i had a fun time shooting it and uh exploring it it was uh it didn't feel uh the first couple games i played on it i got i got crushed i mean it was it was hard so i'm not surprised at all by that by that gameplay footage that we saw when they were doing their release um once you found the shots then you were able to kind of you can get in the flow but you guys are talking about i think one of your previous episodes a was it one episode ago, two episodes ago? And you were talking about how you were worried that there wasn't enough because there wasn't a sling on the left-hand side. That pop bumper that's above the little horseshoe area or whatever on the left-hand side. The stargazer side or whatever. Yeah, the stargazer right above that. That thing will kill you. And the other pop bumper will kill you. There's two pop bumpers that are in like lower playfield area. But instead of like on other L1, like his Godzilla and also in Jaws, he has one pop bumper that's in like a lower, you know, close to the flipper area. This one has two of them. Get ready. I mean, yeah, especially depending on if you like, you know, if you want to make it hard and remove like the center post or something like that, you know. But no, you're going to get crushed on this game. It's easy to get crushed. Once you find the shots, then you can just keep flowing. And that's what feels so good. You do these combos. The combos are just sick. They're absolutely ridiculous. And I mean, it's got some potential, too, as far as how the code and the gameplay works. I like the whole notion of like if they're going to go to a place where if you go into the you do the future and then so you're limited and you can only do like maybe something else in the future and then you can choose to go back to the past. and you can go back to different modes. So I think that's a really cool game element if they dive into that and really explore that aspect of it. It's got some cool mechs to it. I really enjoy what they did with the little cerebro where the ball gets held and it looks like it's floating. It's such a simple design and it comes across so well. Yeah. So Stern has been... No, I guess they haven't been teasing. We've heard rumors that Metallica is being re-released as a fresh take and supposedly before Expo. We're getting down to the minutes before Expo. Maybe. We're what? Four days? Do you think it happens? Do you think code stays the same? What do you think? What do you think we're going to see? Is that what your question is? Yeah, I want to know if you think we see this by Expo or at Expo. No way. Yeah. Why would you want to short-circuit your uncanny expense in sales. I mean, they kind of did it to Venom last year with Jurassic Park 30. True. And Elvira Blood Red Kiss the year before. Okay. I, I suspect that something is going to happen. The question is, what will that be? So if I were looking at Metallica, Metallica was a huge seller. Okay. Sure. but still is challenge right now is are you going to go like full lcd on this or are you going to do like a like a cgc with an expanded um dmd but a colorized version so it still maintains no way okay so you don't think that so you know if i'm running a business and it is a manufacturing business okay yeah so i work at a manufacturer coming out granted we manufacture chemicals, but there's still, there's all about standardization. There's no way that Stern from a business standpoint is going to want to do what you, you described as far as doing like a CGC expanded, you know, fancy looking DMD. I think if they're going to, if the, if this rumor pans out to be true, it's going to be an LCD. Okay. So it'll be Metallica footage. Yeah. So is it going to be like concert stuff? That's what I'm assuming. I'm assuming it'll be concert stuff as opposed to like animation stuff because really Rush is a little more interesting to play than some of the other LCD because if you're going to say that Stern has a deficiency, I would say their LCD game could step up because the animation department is not quite as interesting as other games that are out there. um yeah but do you think they'll they'll tweak the layout at all though or do you think they'll leave the layout the same because metallica is a well-respected game i don't think you need to tweak it yeah there's nothing that sets in my mind that you're like oh i'm trying to think of like sea witch aka beetles they tweak it a little bit just so it flowed a little better right yeah But that was like polishing the rough edges. So do you think this is like a vault version of Metallica with an LCD screen? So they fixed like the little things that hang up, you know, like in Spider-Man, when they did the vault, they fixed the magnet and they fixed some other stuff, but it was basically the same game. But I can't think of anything in Metallica that I just, I shoot and I go, you know, I wish they do that a little bit better if they ever made this game. Yeah, no. And I, and honestly, I mean, I don't want to, because like you said, they've done it, they've remade, granted as though these are Stern Electronics games, like Sea Witch to Beatles. I guess I'm going to be maybe a little bit biased in terms of being a huge Lyman fan, that I think it would be a disservice to Lyman and his legacy to try to mess with how that game is, how the rules work. And I think to your point, there's nothing – there's no deficiency in the physical design of that pinball machine. Okay. And I agree. Once you start changing layout even a little bit, you're going to affect rules too just because the shots are going to feel different. They're going to – so I guess – okay, this is me just looking into the future, and you guys can all mock me. I think it is going to be the same layout, the same rules with an LCD screen, with the premium body. So maybe they fixed the hammer so it's less of an issue. Yeah, yeah. But kind of like a road case version of Metallica where it's a little bit – it's more of the live stuff. But who knows? I guess that would be my take on it Maybe they'll do like a limited run on it There's tons of Metallica games out there If you want to buy a Metallica they probably made 10,000 of them I'm guessing One just went up for sale here in Utah They're available My other question too So you do feel like Lyman Code Still holds up to this day For a modern For a 12 years later Community And buying Demographic Okay, would you risk taking the PR hit on undoing a Lyman code? Yeah, that's where I would not go there. I wouldn't go there from my personal connection with Lyman, as limited as it was. You know, I didn't get to sadly I didn't get to know him until, you know, very close to when he sadly took his life. Plug here for 988 in the suicide hotline and mental health. Take care of each other. Take care of your friends. But I don't yeah, I don't think you should you should mess with it. I don't think that's a good decision from a legacy standpoint. I think it would be a foolish decision from a business standpoint as well. if anything if they do something different would be maybe they maybe they add something on as like an additional like a challenge mode type of thing that they add on or or if they wanted to add on some type of uh you know side mode or you know maybe some little extra mini wizard mode or topper mode or something like that but the the basics of that game i think are are amazing the one thing they could do to add in using an lcd screen is make communication better because those rules are really cool but you don't you don't know them by playing it until like many plays later until somebody else tells you about them you're like how is this working what does this mean and you it's you have to kind of solve the puzzle and and delve into the world of lyman's mind as you're playing the game and so it would be very helpful if they would use the lcd screen to tell people of like oh hey you have a shot selector right now on this shot and this is going to you know somehow somehow communicate better with the player yeah i agree i agree i and and that's my thought process is even if they do alter the code a little bit i think the way you keep the the main lime and stuff but like you said maybe add an extra mode or add some underlining i just think of like Keith code where you have all the main modes but there's like with Jaws you've got a you've got a shark hunt running in the background the bounty or something like that I don't know if you could do that without messing up the code it does help that Borg I assume Borg's back on this I don't know why you'd have someone else do if you're making a remake you have the designer that made it tap him as the resource you know I'm saying yeah so I'm excited I'm really excited to see where this goes if the rumor is true um other than that man expo there's a ton of stuff avatar i wasn't as fortunate as scott to to go to chicago last month i'm excited to get my hands on avatar and try that out and see if if the code is uh as convoluted as some has uh alluded to but you know just i'm i'm excited it's it's it's that time of year and i i kind of i kind of put i don't know i kind of live for this time of year i i i doubled down so on everything else so that way i could come out and join you know one thing i want to talk about before we wrap this all up though and it kind of blows my mind we're doing media mixer again this year and last year was a blast and they had a ton of stuff to give away and i think i know it made me laugh when eric vignere of jjp showed up and gave a bunch of jjp stuff to give away and he won a jjp hat it's like uh he's like someone else can have this but this year it's all sold out and there's it's weird it's cool but it's a weird concept to me that people want to pay to come hang out with well okay it's a party come on it's a party okay everybody wants to come okay it's an exclusive party to have fun and get some some giveaways and stuff like that if i come early enough i will love to crash the party i'll yes definitely sneak in under the table or something well it's thursday night so if you can get in there before five it's five to eight so um but congrats to colin for putting this on from kinesis slash this weekend pinball erica's pinball journey for stepping up she's gotten a lot of the sponsors too i've helped a little bit just not not a bunch and i apologize them then i and colin's like you know sometimes it's just the the push like the joker says right like insanity is just a little push off the cliffs it just takes a little any sorry i like this dark and speaking of the cliffs of insanity i'm excited to play princess bride coming up so this will be my first hands on it and it'll be uh fun to touch base with colin you know i I would like to see a remake of The Dark Knight tweaked and then the footage put in from the movie and a whole new art set. I think that would be – that's just side tangent. Okay, you're going down another rabbit hole, Alice. Exactly. Well, at least I'm an adult, Alice, then. I'm of consenting to wear that fabric, the tattered towel. Just move on. Just move on. The joke's not landing. We need to go. Well, cool. Well, is there, Colin, is there anything else that you should have asked that you want to emphasize on Princess Bride? No, I don't think so. I mean, Josh, you talked about it before. Yeah, the production is going strong right now. They're on batch two of five, I think, in terms of they've batched the orders. And so there's a big line of people right now that are going to be getting their games here over the coming months. So, yeah, if you want, you know, after you play it at Expo, because I'm a big fan of advocating for people to play a machine, you know, before you buy. Because that's just me personally. I don't buy machines, you know, without playing them. So play it. And there's also, they're starting to pop up at locations. I know there's one that has it out in New Hampshire. So, and ask your location. Ask your favorite barcade or arcade to consider getting one. And if they don't have a P3 platform, they can get in touch with Jerry and he can answer all their questions as far as what that will look like. Because it's different parts than maybe some of your traditional parts that you would find for sterns. But all those fears can be allayed. But I would just love to start having the buzz and hearing people getting to play it and experience it and having questions like, oh, I found this cool thing about the game and playing it. I found this little fun little trick. I would love to start hearing those types of stories. And this is arcade ready. It has a coin box. It has the ability to put on location. So this could be something that a like a route runner could really buy because you don't have to buy a new game. You can just swap it out. Correct. So, yeah, I just I'm hoping to hear more and more stories of people and the feedback we've been getting also in batch one has been great. All the customers are loving it and amazed with with how it plays and the experience of it. So, yeah, I just I put so much into lots of little nuance into the rules. I'm excited for people to discover that and and, you know, talk about that and post about that. So I'm just going to I'll let I'll let people discover all those things that I haven't talked about. Thank you so much. If people want to get a hold of you, how can they do that? you can find me on on Facebook and also on Ray Day's Discord I'm on there quite a bit as well and then if you want to you can reach out there's also a multi-morphic P3 Discord you can find me on there awesome and if you want to get a hold of us and you're not at Expo well you can do it via Facebook you can do it via Instagram at our gmail at loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com there's multiple ways via the socials those that ordered hats i am picking them up monday and i will contact you on shipping and stuff like that we're going to get you taken care of and i'm going to stuff like every expo i'm going to stuff my backpack with so many hats and security is always like what are you doing with so many hats like what is with all these hats i gotta say though it isn't it impresses me every year how many hats I have to take to Expo because they just... And I have to thank Scott too because he does give away a good amount of hats to manufacturers and stuff like that. But I was doing the math and we've sold or given away more than... I think it was like 300 hats. Yeah. It's insane. Nice. So it's... I always smile when I see him floating around though. Yeah. It's amazing. So thank you for all your guys' support and don't be afraid to come up and shake hands and talk to us. Give us a fist bump and play a game. Yeah, and pull a Doug Puerta because now he had the shoes, the shirt, and the hat, and now we have joggers. So if you show up in full regalia from head to toe, Scott will give you something. The Loser Kid jersey is awesome, by the way. It really is. The hockey sweater. I'm definitely wearing it. Thanks again, Colin. Thank you. Check us out, and we'll see you at Expo. Thank you. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 2a3aa918-0ffb-4c86-84b7-ed1614825b5a*