# The Pinball Show Ep 183: Winchester Mystery House & 2025 Pinball Expo

**Source:** The Pinball Show  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-10-21  
**Duration:** 106m 5s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.thepinballnetwork.net/e/the-pinball-show-ep-182-winchester-mystery-house-2025-pinball-expo/

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## Analysis

The Pinball Show hosts Dennis and Zach discuss the 2025 Chicago Pinball Expo aftermath and Q4/2026 pinball releases. Key topics include Winchester Mystery House (Barrels of Fun) launching unexpectedly, Star Wars needing code fixes, King Kong accessories receiving mixed reviews, and Stern's All-Access home leaderboard subscription ($79-100/year). Hosts speculate on 2026 Stern releases (Walking Dead remaster, Fallout, Transformers, Pokemon rumors) and discuss market dynamics around pricing, toppers, and mod culture.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Winchester Mystery House is already shipping from Barrels of Fun, despite earlier June timeline expectations — _Dennis: 'Barrels already this year? Another game? Yeah. Nobody. Why would they? They're supposed to be in June. Why would they sell this?'_
- [HIGH] Star Wars Pinball has Death Star reject/playfield issues with fixed kits being sent out — _Zach: 'I'm hearing about the rejects, and then people said there's going to be fixed kits.' This is described as 'the biggest complaint on Star Wars.'_
- [MEDIUM] Walking Dead Remastered is planned for late October/November release — _Zach: 'in this late October, November We're still going to get that remastered game, I believe... That area... any time between now and the end of October makes sense'_
- [HIGH] King Kong topper is selling well but has mixed reception on redundancy (Kong figure both under glass and on topper) — _Zach: 'They're selling well... Do they move in unison? Are they separate? Are they two Kongs? ...Some people are calling redundancy on it'_
- [HIGH] Uncanny X-Men code update (.94) significantly improved game reception, particularly Danger Room rules overhaul — _Dennis: 'Now they've redone the Danger Room rules, and that game is really coming around and becoming favorited by a lot of people. I've heard a lot of appreciation for the new code.'_
- [HIGH] Star Wars code at .85 is still incomplete and needs more updates from designer Ray Day — _Zach: 'It's only a .85. Shout out to Ray Day... But Ray Day, still a bit of an uphill battle on this title... It's going to need as much Ray Day as possible'_
- [HIGH] Stern All-Access home leaderboards launching at $79-100/year subscription (with early-bird pricing before end of October) — _Zach: 'If you sign up before the end of October, it's like $79 maybe... But it's cheaper for the whole year... I think it's $100 a year.'_
- [MEDIUM] 2026 Stern releases being speculated include Walking Dead remaster, Fallout, Transformers, and Pokemon (rumor) — _Dennis/Zach discussion of 2026 'Cornerstone' with Dennis saying 'My favorite rumor, personally, would probably be... Pokemon guy. That's still my favorite... Fallout, maybe?' and discussion of Transformers as 'another' potential title_

### Notable Quotes

> "So we're rolling into the holiday season... And I really think that's going to be the title that's going to hold value very well, or the model, rather, that's going to hold value very well. So get your hands on one of those."
> — **Zach Minney**, ~24:00
> _Investment guidance on Jaws 50th Anniversary holding secondary market value through holiday season_

> "I put my pants on just like anybody else one leg at a time but then after I have my pants on I have Ray Day do more code"
> — **Dennis Creasel**, ~51:00
> _Humorous commentary on Star Wars' ongoing code needs; references designer Ray Day needing more development time_

> "Do they move in unison? Are they separate? Are they two Kongs? ...Some people are calling redundancy on it, seeing an interactive Kong both under the glass and above the head."
> — **Zach Minney**, ~31:00
> _Identifies specific community criticism of King Kong topper design: visual redundancy with playfield Kong figure_

> "Now they've redone the Danger Room rules, and that game is really coming around and becoming favorited by a lot of people."
> — **Dennis Creasel**, ~50:00
> _Indicates X-Men code update (.94) has meaningfully improved community reception and gameplay experience_

> "I'm still seeing the prices of Uncanny X-Men being, I think, way too cheap compared to the game you get."
> — **Dennis Creasel**, ~53:00
> _Market assessment: secondary market X-Men pricing depressed despite quality improvements; relates to initial oversupply_

> "The Winchester Mystery House is what this landmark or this attraction is called... Mrs. Winchester... thinking that she is cursed from the souls that lost their lives to the Winchester guns"
> — **Zach Minney**, ~59:00
> _Theme context explanation for Barrels' Winchester Mystery House game; historically-based supernatural premise_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Zach Minney | person | Co-host of The Pinball Show; owner of Flippin' Out Pinball distributor; discusses sales data, accessory orders, market trends |
| Dennis Creasel | person | Co-host of The Pinball Show (and This Week in Pinball/TWIP); primary commentator on code updates, game design, market dynamics |
| Ray Day | person | Designer/coder for Star Wars Pinball; needs additional development time on code updates (.85 version); mentioned as critical to game success |
| Ken Cromwell | person | Co-host of Flippin' Out Pinball podcast; worked Stern booth at 2025 Expo with Greg Bone |
| Greg Bone | person | Co-host of Flippin' Out Pinball; worked Stern booth at 2025 Expo; known for holding babies at events |
| Stern Pinball | company | Primary manufacturer discussed; releasing Star Wars, Walking Dead Remastered, Dungeons & Dragons, Jurassic Park, Metallica Remastered, Godzilla, Jaws 50th Anniversary in Q4; launching All-Access subscription service |
| Barrels of Fun | company | Boutique manufacturer; launched Winchester Mystery House earlier than expected (June timeline); released game at Expo 2025 |
| Star Wars Pinball | game | Stern release; experiencing Death Star bracket/rail reject issues; code at .85 version; selling well despite mechanical issues; LE sales bumped post-Expo |
| Winchester Mystery House | game | Barrels of Fun release; based on real California landmark; launched unexpectedly; theme unfamiliar to most community members; appeals to California region primarily |
| Uncanny X-Men | game | Stern release; code at .94 version; Danger Room rules redesigned in latest update; improved community reception; secondary market underpriced relative to quality |
| Walking Dead (Remastered) | game | Expected Stern release for late October/November; speculation about comic vs. TV show theming; hosts excited about potential; potential successor to original Walking Dead |
| King Kong | game | Stern release; accessories announced (topper $13.99, armor, art blades); topper selling well; mixed reception on interactive Kong redundancy; marquee may support custom lettering |
| Dungeons & Dragons | game | Stern release; code at .97 version; still in active development despite being <1 year old; expected to be completed soon |
| Metallica Remastered | game | Stern Q4 release; Premium tier confirmed available |
| Jaws 50th Anniversary | game | Stern December release; final run of the year; expected to hold secondary market value well; also running Jaws Pro versions |
| Chicago Pinball Expo 2025 | event | Major industry show where Winchester Mystery House debuted; Star Wars LE visibility boosted post-Expo sales; Flippin' Out Pinball staffed booth |
| Stern All-Access | product | New subscription service launching with home leaderboards; $79 early-bird (before end October) or $100/year; gold insignia cosmetic for members; relaunch of previous access tier |
| Kerry Hardy | person | Content creator; produced historical context launch video for Winchester Mystery House game |
| Flippin' Out Pinball | company | Distributor/retailer owned by Zach Minney; tracks accessory sales data; operated booth at Expo with Ken and Greg |
| This Week in Pinball (TWIP) | organization | Industry news/media outlet co-hosted by Dennis; mentioned in podcast introduction |
| Godzilla | game | Stern release; topper criticized for 'chasing clouds' RGB breath effects and sculpture redundancy; Premium tier in Q4 pipeline |
| John Wick | game | Stern release; code improvements making game more favorited; referenced as past title receiving positive reception to updates |
| Jurassic Park | game | Stern Q4 release; Premium tier planned |
| Mrs. Winchester | person | Historical figure; heir to Winchester Rifle Company fortune; subject of Winchester Mystery House game theme; believed cursed by victims of Winchester guns |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Star Wars Pinball mechanical quality issues and code development, 2025 Chicago Pinball Expo impact and announcements, Winchester Mystery House unexpected early launch by Barrels of Fun, Q4 2025 Stern release roadmap and inventory planning, 2026 Stern release speculation and rumors
- **Secondary:** King Kong accessory pricing and design feedback, Stern All-Access subscription service pricing and value proposition, Pinball code update cycles and designer workload (Ray Day)

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Hosts are enthusiastic about most games (X-Men turnaround, Walking Dead potential, King Kong accessories) but express concern about Star Wars quality issues, pricing inflation on accessories, and market saturation (X-Men oversupply). Zach maintains measured/critical tone throughout while Dennis is more exuberant. Personal anecdotes add warmth early in episode.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Stern All-Access relaunch addresses long-standing community request for home leaderboards; cosmetic gold insignia for subscribers (confidence: high) — Zach: 'People have been asking about it... I like the gold stuff more, that when you sign up to that, now you've got, like, this gold insignia whenever you sign into your games as an all-access member.'
- **[sentiment_shift]** King Kong topper selling well despite mixed reception on design redundancy and missed enhancement opportunities (confidence: high) — Zach: 'They're selling well. The argument a lot of people are like, well, there's aftermarket toppers that are half the price... For me personally as a collector, I don't buy big aftermarket shit.'
- **[design_philosophy]** King Kong topper design criticized for interactive figure redundancy with playfield Kong sculpture; represents missed opportunity for 3D spotlight effects (confidence: medium) — Dennis/Zach discussion of Kong topper redundancy and spotlight criticism: 'Why not do a 3D spotlight from, like, the Zeppelin? That would have really pushed me over on it'
- **[event_signal]** Star Wars LE sales saw post-Expo uptick, likely driven by in-person play experience at 2025 Chicago Pinball Expo (confidence: high) — Zach: 'I did see a little bump after Expo for the LEs for whatever reason. I guess the people played the LE at the show and really liked it.'
- **[market_signal]** Jaws 50th Anniversary positioned as premium Q4 release expected to maintain secondary market value through holiday season (confidence: medium) — Zach: 'And I really think that's going to be the title that's going to hold value very well... So get your hands on one of those.'
- **[market_signal]** Uncanny X-Men secondary market pricing depressed due to initial oversupply despite quality improvements from code updates (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'I'm still seeing the prices of Uncanny X-Men being... way too cheap compared to the game you get... There's just a lot out there... the hobbyist narrative behind that... It's going to be hard to pull itself out of that.'
- **[personnel_signal]** Star Wars designer Ray Day working under apparent time/resource constraints; code at .85 requires substantial additional development for game to reach completion (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'I put my pants on just like anybody else one leg at a time but then after I have my pants on I have Ray Day do more code... Ray, you've still got .15, baby... You have to pull some all-nighters... contract some team members'
- **[market_signal]** Stern topper and accessory pricing inflation relative to third-party aftermarket options; community debating OEM vs. aftermarket value proposition (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'I liked it better when their pricing was on par with the third-party offerings. And now there's a lot of inflation baked into these products... $1,400 toppers are seen as deals.'
- **[announcement]** Stern All-Access subscription service launching with home leaderboards at $79-100/year; early-bird pricing before end October (confidence: high) — Zach: 'If you sign up before the end of October, it's like $79 maybe... But it's cheaper for the whole year. I think it's $100 a year.'
- **[product_strategy]** Winchester Mystery House launched earlier than expected June timeline, suggesting acceleration or misalignment with earlier roadmap (confidence: medium) — Zach: 'Barrels already this year? Another game? Yeah. Nobody. Why would they? They're supposed to be in June. Why would they sell this?'
- **[product_strategy]** Uncanny X-Men code update (.94) meaningfully improved game reception through Danger Room rules redesign, shifting community sentiment (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'Now they've redone the Danger Room rules, and that game is really coming around and becoming favorited by a lot of people. I've heard a lot of appreciation for the new code.'
- **[product_concern]** Star Wars Pinball experiencing systematic Death Star/rail reject issues with manufacturer-provided fixed kits in distribution (confidence: high) — Zach: 'I'm hearing about the rejects, and then people said there's going to be fixed kits... The biggest complaint on Star Wars.' This indicates known manufacturing defect requiring post-sale correction.

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## Transcript

 Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. energy energy with personality it's pinball i don't even think we use it anymore do we poor jerry depends if i do the if i do the edit i work with what audio files i still have You have the fucking, the twip. Welcome to the This Week in Pinball podcast. This is the Pinball Show, episode 183, Dennis Creasel, Zach Minney. I miss these people, Dennis. I really did, I promise. Did you? I did. I did them two weeks ago. I was ready to record. I'm a Brandon, my boy. I'm always, I'm always refused to record. And I always show it. Do you know what movie that's from? No, I couldn't even hear you. I'm abandoned, my boy. I'm abandoned. I drink your lipstick. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there will be. I forgot that scene is so over the top. This is the whole third act. Gosh, I just love that whole movie. I'm so excited to be recording. Drainage. Drainage. We should be using drainage in pinball a lot more. I really like that. drainage feels good. Speaking of, I heard a lot of people bought this Winchester game. Oh my god, never more. More like no more. We're going to talk about that. We're going to discuss all the stuff from Sturm Pinball. We've got a lot of expo talk and all kinds of head-scratching moments throughout the Chicago Pinball Expo 2025. We just have a lot to talk about, so we need to jump into it. Straight into it. But what did you do over the last couple weeks? Have things been good? Yeah. Yeah, no, been a little bit busy. Yeah, you know. Did some birthday stuff last week. Happy birthday, Denise. Thank you. This week, Watch Collector was in town, so I met up and had lunch with him to talk about my other hobby. Wow. And, of course, tried to stay tuned in to everything that's been happening with pinball with extra going on. But holy cow, there was way more than I thought there was going to be. A lot of stuff. Number four amazed me. I tried to take a quick vacation with the family. I knew that it was probably the worst timing ever. You say that like every Antonio Cruz, though. So I think I'm kind of tired of the shows, doing pinball shows during, like, the fall and the spring breaks of children. It's like every single time. Chicago pinball, boom, during the week of my kids' fall break. TPF, boom, during the spring break week. And then, like, how to piss off a spouse in 10 seconds. Hey, instead of spending family time, I think I'm going to blow the only week of the whole year that the kids get off to go, you know, to go and to show and work. it just doesn't work well so we did we're going to do it anyway when do you want them to do it though? Christmas? 4th of July? Terry wouldn't approve I don't know but here's the good thing we did the expo show we is the royal we of flipping out pinball Ken Cromwell and Greg Bone the preferred ones anyway they ran the booth there and they had a lot of fun They wanted me to extend my gratitude to all of those that came up and said hello, shook some hands. I think Greg held a baby or two. I didn't know he liked to hold babies. I think they got me and him mixed up. They knew one of us liked the babies. Greg's kind of weirded out by holding people's children. I embrace it, personally. I love it. I nestle. Even so much so that one of our Screaming Goat Club members said he really doesn't even want to bring his kid around me. Yeah, that's probably wise. I went to pick up food yesterday, and I was waiting in line. I'd already phoned the order in, so I was just there to pick it up, but someone was ordering in front of me. And he had two kids, and I think their grandpa, because they kept calling him Papa. Papa was off to the side. Love it. They were, like, asking, like, the whole place was decorated with Halloween. So they're like, is this a ghost? Yes, that's a ghost. Is this a spider? I think it's a spider. Anyway, the littler one, who maybe was like four, all of a sudden ran up and grabbed my leg and started merry-go-rounding around me while holding on to me. And Papa said, I don't think that's your dad. That's right. And the kid just kept going. And the grandpa didn't stop it? And then he, it was pretty quick. The kid just looked up and I just said, hello. Why did you say it like Paul Bunyan? Hello. Well, it was me and Paul Bunyan. I think I was trying to do my Obi-Wan. Hello there. Don't be mad. I didn't say there. I just said hello. And the kid, his brain, he's looking and he's smiling. He had this look like he still thought I might have been his dad. But I was throwing my voice like, I'm a ventriloquist. And then he realized I wasn't. And then he ran over to Pat Bottom. And he's like, you're okay. He wasn't crying or anything. He got super shy. He was scared. I would say that was the biggest highlight, one of the biggest highlights of the family vacation. For those of you out there who don't take vacations enough, do. You should. Just stop what you're doing. Life's too short. Guess what? You're going to be dead. You're going to die. Not on a boat, because I ain't going to go on a boat and get that norovirus. So you've got to take these trips now. You've got to enjoy life now. Fuck it. make the government pay for it after you die whatever just take the trip but anyway one of the most uh beautiful things i i have a hard time slowing my mind down uh viewer and really bad about that almost like my hobby has become work now which is not really good but i don't know what else to do with my life uh it's pretty sad and pathetic but that's where i'm at a little too transparent as well so when i'm on these trips oftentimes my head is just whether it's growth or whether it's putting out fires or just, I'm always thinking about you people. And I can't just stop. I can't stop and just soak up the here and now. So I was able to do that on a couple of occasions during this trip. And it always focuses around something innocent or something beautiful. And it's always like children. So a couple of times I just stopped what I was doing and just watched. God, this sounds creepy that I'm watching kids. But it's like, I love how stupid they are and innocent, and it's just beautiful. Because they have a whole life ahead of them. Like, there was one, she was doing this whole thing. She was at an ice cream cone. You know, you eat ice cream all 24 hours. And she thought it was smart to nip the bottom of that cone. And you know what ensues at that point. Yeah, it starts, because it's hot, it's 90 degrees out. It starts trickling, and you can just see her little dumb brain with her little dumb gears like, uh-oh, like how do I find a solution to this problem? And it's just that kind of stuff just makes me smile, makes me just tear up because it's awesome seeing kids learn cognitively in real time right in front of you. And so stuff like that. Or seeing a child being really patient for something when they don't have to be. Or just all kinds of cool stuff. I just love that. So that was the highlight. one of the highlights of many on my family vacation. Kind of boring, but all right, fuck it. Let's talk pinball. Stern Pinball, of course, some manufacturers get upset because we start with Stern. Did you know that? No. They do. I don't believe you. They do. No names, but some are like. But they understand it. In this industry? I don't know if they do. Stern Pinball, look, I don't have a great production update because I've been out of it for a week, But I do know that they are building Star Wars And then I think here in late October, November We're still going to get that remastered game, I believe I don't have any We were right though, Dennis When I said we weren't hearing Last episode, we weren't hearing that this game was going to make it to Expo That was correct We did not see that So it should be coming If it is The Walking Dead I would imagine Halloween makes a lot of sense for that launch That area Yes, any time between now and the end of October makes sense, but I don't know. November, we're going to catch up a lot of Q4 stuff so that we can see the holiday season, have a lot of inventory within the sales network like Dungeons & Dragons Pro and Premium, Jurassic Park Premium, Metallica Remastered Premium, and Godzilla Premium. And we can already feel, I've already felt that we're falling into the fall-winter season because sales have increased slightly over the last two to three weeks. Not just the launched new products, new games, but you see, I've seen Stranger Things start to sell a little bit more. You're seeing the Jurassic Park stuff that you just, you see non-pinball people or even pinball people that have been waiting. They're starting to purchase more games. So we're rolling into the holiday season. December, that last Jaws 50th anniversary run. And I really think that's going to be the title that's going to hold value very well, or the model, rather, that's going to hold value very well. So get your hands on one of those. They're going to be running some JAWS Pros as well then. And we'll have an update in next episode on what specifically we see update-wise from then. January, we're going to see a 2026 Cornerstone. There's all kinds of rumors out there of what it could be. What's your favorite? My favorite rumor, personally, would probably be... I don't know, because I'm not a Pokemon guy. That's still my favorite, though, because I just think we'll see a lot of excitement around it. That's a good point. And as you know, I feed off of the joy of all the pinball people. And then Fallout, maybe? Although I don't think that would be next. That's my personal... I still haven't accepted this as a real rumor, but... But I'm hearing more about Elwynn Fallout. I'm such a Fallout fan. And I don't mean the show. I like the show, but I love the games. I love Fallout. Because you love the games so much, does that still transcend to being a theme that you love, even if it is the television series? Yeah. The show's good. The show's good. The show is good. Yeah. I mean, I hope season two, I hope they don't Westworld it. But I haven't seen Westworld. I just heard that season two was not nearly as good as season one. Well, it does go downhill. So, yeah, either way, I'm pretty optimistic. Kind of like how I was cool with Deadpool being comic Deadpool. Like, I get it. Like, Ryan Reynolds, iconic. And that's what I didn't read the Deadpool comics. But I thought Stern did a great job with Deadpool as a comic theme. And so if it's like that and it could be either way, I'd be happy either way. I'm still kind of excited about Transformers. Now, granted, I played with the toys and stuff, the nostalgic Transformers. I think it was still kind of right before my time, but I enjoyed the nostalgia of it. And I do like that theme. I want to see if it is, is it Harrison Drake? I want to see if he has another, Elliot Ivesman. Oh, the John Wick designer. Yeah. I want to see if it is him, if he has a redemption here, because there was mixed reviews on the whole John Wick thing. So we'll see. Honestly, I kind of am excited about Walking Dead, if it is that. I really want to see. I mean, I know you love Walking Dead. Yeah. It's an excellent game, but. Yeah, it's my favorite. It's probably my favorite game still. so to give me more of what I what is my favorite is exciting and I still really like that theme like for me it's one of the greatest television shows ever made right up there with like the Breaking Bad, Sopranos of the World the first five I won't argue past that but I just I really love the theme and I'm excited to see what it could be in the new iteration of the Spike 3 now what do you think if they do Walking Dead but they end up doing the comic, the graphic novels. I'm okay with that. I think more people want that. I don't. Yeah. I think more people want that. I didn't read as far. I didn't read them all. Like, I only read up until about The Governor, and that's about where I stopped. Oddly enough, the only graphic novel slash comic book that I've ever read in my life, Walking Dead. I read the first two compendiums. Is it compendiums? Okay. But, yeah, I went all the way. I think the second compendium ends in, and sorry if I'm mispronouncing that word, but the second one ends in relative to the series, television series, it would be like season nine. I mean, it's far into it. It's way past Governor and all of that stuff. So I put in my time there. I'm kind of excited about that. I don't know why. Maybe I'm less excited because it's going to kill the ability for me to sell the old one. Same. I mean, I've got my pro. Same here. And then, let's see, 2026, we're going to have pretty much the whole catalog being run. Did you know that King Kong has accessories now? I heard about that. Perfectly timed for your trip. Put me on a boat, we're going to see some stern accessories. That is a guarantee. Sadly, again, not that anybody cares, but I'm on like this little excursion. We're going to this little island where we're going to climb rocks and stuff like that, and this shit drops. and I'm doing roaming fees just so I can try to download really slowly the pictures and try to upload them to the website. Yay, vacation. You know, with having Ken and Greg, I would think there would be a way that you could have one of them do this while you're on vacation. They're open to it, but then there's this whole, then you've got to open them up to the website and train them on the website. Yeah, and train them. I get it. My business sounds like a giant pain in the ass. It is. It very much is. But, yeah, so that's what I was doing. But King Kong accessories, mixed reviews on the topper. What did you think about this interactive topper of the Kong up there with the chains he busted through? It's using the cinema motif that we've seen on the LE and that you see on all models within the game, mostly during the Eighth Wonder of the World last kind of wizard mode-esque New York City moments. Yeah, I thought it was fine. Well, for you, that's my praise, actually. Yeah, it's an iconic, like, it's sort of an obvious choice to do, but I think it makes sense for a topper to take that approach. Some people are calling redundancy on it, seeing an interactive Kong both under the glass and above the head. Do they move in unison? Are they separate? Are they two Kongs? You know, that kind of thing. Right, right. Yeah, but it's – yeah, I do get that. I was trying – I'm stuttering here because I was trying to remember, what was the other game where that – I thought it was a bigger issue than this. The redundancy was Turtles having the same logo right on the back glass and then right – Like, this isn't that. This was the – you know, you've got the marquee and all of that. I feel like it's different enough. Here's the thing, Zach, and you correct me because you sell toppers, so maybe you heard this. But I didn't remember hearing a whole lot of backlash when the Godzilla topper came out. And, yeah, he looked like he was really into vaping. But besides that, I didn't hear complaints that, well, Godzilla's already a figure in the game. Why is he a figure on the topper? People didn't like that. People did not. Yeah, they were like, because they were like, so we don't like the sculpture under the glass, and now we get the same damn sculpture on the topper. Now, I remember people not liking the way the sculpture looked. Like, I remember in the game in particular, I didn't remember that about what I call chasing clouds Godzilla. RGB plumes, baby. That's the magic trick. I'm just like, guys. And I get it. It's pinball. It's RPGs, and these buyers love RPGs. His breath has never been like a full rainbow. It's not. I've seen like a little gif where he does that, but not in the movies. I would have liked to have seen a different scale maybe, and that makes no financial sense. But I would have been okay if the scale of Godzilla had been a little different than Playfield. But for me, I'm a sucker for interactive toppers, especially if you're going to give me a motorized topper, I'm probably going to like it. So I'm all in on it. I really do enjoy it. I do like the lighting effects and the marquee bulb kind of thing. I like that. Do the spotlights light up? So that's one of the biggest criticisms. Why not do a 3D spotlight from, like, the Zeppelin? That would have really pushed me over on it, because I'm looking at the photos actually on your website, and I noticed that they're not on any of them, but the marketing is. Did Google algorithm that thing to the top there? Let me see. I searched King Kong topper, and yours was the first one, followed by Reddit. From an island, baby. From an island. I'm so proud. You've done it. You've mastered SEO. Finally. Yeah, but now I'm talking about it, and everything's listening to me, and they're like, well, I'll show you. it's a vicious game this is the price you pay for doing a podcast this is very true uh yeah i like the marquee stuff here's the clever thing that i do love i wish the spotlights were actually 3d i think mod makers out there can can do some cool stuff because you can you can project two of them a la godzilla and you could probably get some cool shadowing effects onto the ceiling or onto the wall if mounted correctly. I think a missed opportunity there. But I love, and I hope this is the case. They didn't really tell us. But the marquee itself, I think you can change the letters. Oh, like the, yeah. I was wondering if you had done that. You can make it say whatever you want it to say. Yeah, like if they give you a letter set or something. So it says, like, Bill's Game Room or if it's, yeah, all of that. I think that's the case. If not, then Stern, come on. Like, I'll chip in to make that happen. Like, you have to do that. I couldn't tell that those spotlights were flats at first until I zoomed in because they've got depth to them because they're a separate piece of booty right. Booty right. Yeah, I wish those had. Even if they just put light behind them, I would have liked it just a little bit more. The topper comes in at $13.99. So it's not a $2,000 topper. than against a $1,000 topper. It's as expected. They're selling well. The argument a lot of people are like, well, there's aftermarket toppers that are half the price and all this stuff, and you're absolutely right. For me personally as a collector, I don't buy big aftermarket shit for my vehicles. Unless it's really nicely done. I just like the OEM stuff. Like, the styling is the same. The art is the same. They look like they're supposed to. They interact like they're supposed to. I just don't like that a lot of people have been asking me over the last couple days, do I like this? Why do I like this over the secondary market or the tertiary market, aftermarket stuff? It's just not even close to me. Yeah, but pinball's had this, you know, there's a long, I'm going to say a culture in pinball, and one that you've participated in of putting in third-party mods. Sure, absolutely. So to see, like I get it from, like I understand, I don't fault manufacturers for wanting to bite a big piece of the apple here and try and leverage stuff, but I liked it better. This will shock you, I know. I liked it better when their pricing was on par with the third-party offerings. And now there's a lot of inflation baked into these products. Well, hey, with exclusive modes and stuff, you know, this was inevitable. Some of those third-party companies, though, are essentially just ripping off IP, though. Well, and that's – Tony and I had a conversation about that, actually, on the last Eclectic Gamers podcast about – I think it was. Maybe it was two of them ago. But, yeah, we talked about the issue with, well, you know, you run into issues where there were people that were kind of breaking licensing, like they weren't getting licenses, and then they get cease and desist because – or your other option is you go super generic. Like, you could have done the marquee without King Kong and just shown the chains hanging, and it would have been, like, left to the imagination. Sure. Yeah. Now with 20% more real chain. Like, I don't know what you'd leverage. I'd go to Home Depot and get me some good old chain. Just put some ferns up there. That's all. I would have just done that little spider. I love that spider. I would have made him like six times the scale. I know. That's why I went all in on it. I like him because he looks very jittery. Six times the scale on a spring, and it just kind of jut towards like a little coil or something. Oh, like those Halloween things where it pops out. Yeah. It would leap towards the player. Yeah, I think that would be fun. Like instead of grabbing the silver ball on the play field, it tries to grab your head. So the King Kong accessories have been announced, and thus far they're selling well. What's your best-ordered one? Is it the topper? Oh, yeah. Mostly people buy the topper. Armor's always the last that people purchase. I didn't think this was a strong armor, but just the broken chains on the side, the handcuffs. And Art Blades are usually Initially Shooter rods sell better than Art Blades But then long term Everybody, I mean so many people buy Art Blades So I think I ordered more Art Blades Than I did Shooter rods Even though Shooter rods quantity outsold That initially of the Art Blades Alright King Kong All Access relaunched A relaunching of Sterling Access A new launching, a redo of the launch If it were And what people have been wanting. They've been wanting home leaderboards, and now you can have them. Long for them. If you pay. Netflix prices. If you pay. If you pay. But this is a world where $1,400 toppers are seen as deals. So how much is it? $100 a year? Something like that? I think it's $100 a year. And then if you sign up before the end of October, it's like $79 maybe. Don't quote me. But it's cheaper for the whole year. I don't think it's – I know why people want it free. Well, I guess here's my perspective. In the grand scheme of pinball stuff, this isn't really all that much money. Yeah. So it's kind of funny to me because sometimes in pinball – and I'm probably just as guilty or maybe even more guilty of it than others. but where it's sort of funny that we'll spend, like, this huge sum of money on this thing, and then we complain and nickel and dime our way on some of the other stuff. But that being said, subscription services are naturally going to be, just like how people will compare whether they want to join this Patreon versus the cost of, like, Amazon Prime. The same analysis is going to be done with something like this. I think this will probably do okay with two groups. One, with a lot of people who play at their house a lot. I could see them really wanting the leaderboard. Someone like me, I don't really need the Insider Connected leaderboard because I have people come over and play my games twice a year. So I wouldn't get enough bang for buck out of it. And then there are others where $100 a year is basically just another streaming service, and they may very well go, well, I'm not going to subscribe to Hulu anymore. That's going to get rolled into Disney+. Anyway, I'll go ahead and do this instead. So that's kind of, I think it'll do all right. Paramount? Peacock. The Peacock? The Mountain. You know what really chaps my nuts is whenever you have these paid services, like I forgot which one it was, and the wife was subscribed to it or something, so I'm like, oh, let's watch this show. I heard of good things. And I'm still watching ads, and I'm like, well, now wait a minute. Prime's like that. You have to pay even more to get the ads gone. Yeah, what are we doing here? If I'm paying, then stop making me... Don get my dander up I want to be in a good mood today Don get my dander up on that Well you the peppy one on this show That what all the YouTube comments have said I wish Zach could just step it up and actually be enthused about stuff I know. I'm always down here. Always? You're the Eeyore. What am I? Am I the piglet? You're the tigger. I don't have the energy. Even at my best. At my best. I cannot. I think as a child I hated Tigger. Why don't you shut up and quit bouncing? I always related. Like, now that's a character I can get behind. Let's fucking bounce up the wall. I think this is a good idea for me personally. It doesn't do anything, but people have been asking about it. I think the price is good overall. What are you going to do? So do any other manufacturers have home leaderboards or any online system at all? For the most part, no. So $80 for a year, whatever. If it's something you like. I like the gold stuff more, that when you sign up to that, now you've got, like, this gold insignia whenever you sign into your games as an all-access member. That's the kind of petty shit that I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. To me, that's too much of, like, buying the blue checkmark. The skins and stuff, yeah. Guilty. I bet I'm running a business. New code? Oh, I love new code. Calm down, Dennis. Star Wars. The fall of the... Fall of the Empire. I'm sorry. That's my trigger. Fall of the Empire. The fall of the Empire. Oh, what trigger is this? We can't shoot the Death Star, but they can get it. The wonderful thing about Death Stars. Pipe the Piedable. Pipe the Piedable. Reject. That's the dribble. Get out the dribble. That's been the biggest complaint on Star Wars. People are actually loving that game, but it's like this reject thing. I still haven't got my hands on one. Joel's got mine. But I'm hearing about the rejects, and then people said there's going to be fixed kits. I don't know what's going on. But new code for Star Wars, people seem to be enjoying it. It's only a .85. Shout out to Ray Day. Nicely done, my friend. But Ray Day, still a bit of an uphill battle on this title. I'm going to shoot it straight to you, buddy. So it kind of is up to you, man, if this is going to be a successful game. No pressure. All the pressure in the world, I understand that. But we kind of just tell the truth here. Is the fixed kit they're sending out more Ray Day code? Is that what you're saying? You've got to have more Ray Day. I'm just imagining the kit is sandpaper. My game's got an illness And the only cure is more Ray Day More Ray Day Yeah, so it's going to need as much Ray Day as possible I put my pants on just like anybody else One leg at a time But then after I have my pants on I have Ray Day do more code I need to sprinkle in more Ray Day So, Ray, you've still got .15, baby You've got some room here But let's not go in between You have to pull some all-nighters You have to contract some team members to help. It's in a good spot. It's going to continue selling well. But I did see a little bump after Expo for the LEs for whatever reason. I guess the people played the LE at the show and really liked it. But we do have new code for that, new code for Dungeons & Dragons .97. Dungeons is close. But, man, that thing is still – I'm surprised it's not already done with the amount of depth that's there. I am a little surprised, but timeline-wise, I'm really not. Not yet. Because it's still less than a year old. That's true. That is true. And then the one darling little game that people are talking about is .94 on Uncanny X-Men. Now they've redone the Danger Room rules, and that game is really coming around and becoming favorited by a lot of people. I've heard a lot of appreciation for the new code. Yeah. That's made a big difference. I've actually heard that as well about a number of people who have really liked where John Wick kind of got the discode. I was going to say that, too. Yep. That's where they're going. John Wick came hard for me. I want to play it again, but I just didn't like shooting it very much. That's the biggest difference for me. I'm still seeing the prices of Uncanny X-Men being, I think, way too cheap compared to the game you get. A lot of initial games sold, though, so the market's a little – don't you think it's a little flooded, though, with X-Men? There's just a lot out there. That's very much why the market is. and just the narrative, the hobbyist narrative behind that. It's going to be hard to pull itself out of that. But give me Uncanny X-Men all day long over a lot of the recent Stern releases. But maybe it's just my particular flavor of game. I really like it. Now we get to get into the new release game that nobody seems to know. I was like, what? Barrels already this year? Another game? Yeah. Nobody. Why would they? They're supposed to be in June. Why would they sell this? June, yeah. Well, I guess the worm is sitting down for a minute and walks in, I guess, the possessed lady who keeps building onto her house. I don't know how many people knew of this theme. I did not know about it. But I've seen online a lot more people are, I think maybe there's like a lot of regional thing to this house. We've had a lot of California orderers. Yeah. That's flipping out. A lot of people in California. This is around the San Jose area, maybe. Okay. The Winchester Mystery House is what this landmark or this attraction is called. And it's based on, you go to the, Cary Hardy did a really good video in like this historical context at the beginning of his launch video on this game. that talks about basically it's the Winchester Rifle Company family, and the heirs to that was, I forgot what her name was, Mrs. Winchester. And she got all discombobulated thinking that she is cursed from the souls that lost their lives to the Winchester guns during wars or whatever it may be. And she was told by whether it was during seances, during this person telling her, what are the people they're not gypsies what are the people that oh you're thinking like crystal ball like a medium or a psychic or some sort so they told her hey look you've got the only way to ward off all of these spirits that are coming after you is to continue building this home for all these spirits to go into and all this stuff so they've got this expansive mansion this is real life stuff that she built a bunch of creepy ass stories related to this so it's based on a true story it's like the game that's based on a true story And it just so happens that it is a really intriguing story to make into a pinball machine because you have one of the themes that people most love, I would argue, in pinball. There's like space sci-fi that people love, and they love ghost haunted houses, and there's a couple. And magic, yeah. Five themes. Yeah, there's broad, broad stroke thematic stuff that people really resonate with. Really lend themselves towards pinball. So the Barrels of Fun, they had an idea to do something different. They wanted to do, because they even said themselves, this is not an A-tier license. This isn't even a B, like this is a low, this is so, such a small license that we pretty much see it as being its own license. This is kind of an original concept type of thing. But I don't think, I mean, it's a licensed game. So they did pay money to use stuff? Okay. Absolutely. Because I was a little curious if this was, again, I haven't consumed the making of content, so I wasn't sure going into this recording here if this was a license or if this was a non-licensed but not original theme, kind of like American Pinball and Oktoberfest and Houdini. and later we'll talk about Hexus 3 Musketeers. You don't have to pay the Dumas family for that. But this is an original theme. I mean, this is a – people were saying, like, oh, this is an original theme. I'm like, no, it's still not an original theme. No, but I found that in pinball people kind of – they think that license and original are synonyms, and they're not. Oh, I see. And on the surface, you understand, but you can see how someone shorthand – Because so often we talk, if something's not original, it's usually licensed in pinball. So people will sometimes, what they mean is it's not licensed. And I'm sure there are plenty of people that, like me, when I saw this, I thought, did they just come out with an original Haunted House theme? Just based off of nothing? Which is what a lot of people liked about this new game. So it's their second year anniversary, I guess. They launched Labyrinth at Expo. Okay, I didn't remember that. and so they were teasing, hey, it's our anniversary of Labyrinth, and then they teased leading up to this launch of this game. Then they teased, hey, Dune, you know, we launched that then, and then the next thing they were like, something special is coming on the 13th day at the 13th hour. They're doing this 13 motif that we did see in Labyrinth as well, which aligns very well with this theme. And then they launched at the same time two bombshells, which was, one, this game, the Winchester Mystery House, which we'll talk about in depth. But the other being they've added a team member, and not just anybody, a new designer. And that designer is a very well-respected person in this hobby and industry, that of Carl D'Python Anghelo from I.E. Pinball fame and notoriety. He was the, I would say he's one of the pioneers in pinball streaming, and broadcasting? I would say he is probably, at this point, the most popular. Okay. Does that mean most viewers? I don't know. But just in terms of with enthusiasts, people, you know, during the pandemic he really built up an audience. His high level of play coupled with what his content was, which was basically getting to the end of any game, was compelling to people that liked to see He's one of the greatest players in pinball. And the way he would narrate his games. He just really filled in a big void. His style is very different than Jack Danger's. But when Deadflip quit being Deadflip, lots of other streams started to fill the void. But Carl's was one where people were adamant that he had to get Twitch partner. They were mad that he didn't have it. We've seen others be successful in these more recent years as well get that, but I've never seen such an organized campaign to do it like I did for Carl. He set the standards, in my opinion, to the way that pinball is consumed gameplay-wise to the love of the world in that he was kind of the originator of this whole he made it well known, the streaming rig. Yes. Carl D'Python Anghelo and a lot of streamers and gameplay video people utilize his design on that. And the way he does broadcasting, like for these different tournaments and leagues, whether it never drains or whether he traveled. So he brought the quality of broadcasting to the masses that I think people say Jack Danger brought about pinball streaming. And I think Jack Danger is a pioneer as well. I think he brought people to pinball more so than anybody else. But Carl D'Python Anghelo has finely detailed. I'm trying to think what I'm trying to say. He just put the detail oriented. I don't know. He put the cherry on the sundae. Yeah. I think the way you described it where I really, I credit Deadflip for bringing a lot of attention to the pinball hobby, especially from non-pinball people, but the channel was always oriented around Jack's personality. Carl seemed to be the stream for people that had fallen into the deep end on pinball. The technical side of it. And, you know, had a lot of, I mean, Jack's streams looked great too, but just in terms of like the just really high polish, high production value, coupled with really high skill play, and then orientation about putting the pinball front and center. How do we get a rig with wireless components that can wheel from one place to the other? It's such an interesting, because for a lot of people, they probably don't really appreciate it, because if you don't stream, if you're not streaming, why would you necessarily care? But it upped the game on so many, like, all of a sudden, streaming tournaments became super common at high grade. Like, when I used to stream the Kansas City Pinball Championship, I didn't have that rigged stuff. It was so low rent. I mean, we're talking running USB extenders and using webcams, and the quality is just not there compared to… It's one of the most complex things that is streamed in the world, I would argue. I don't know multi-cam, I mean, from a hobbyist level. It was. If you had the money to put the rig together, which I think at the time was a couple thousand dollars, it sort of standardized a level of quality that was very high. Maybe that's a good way to put it. So that, I mean, that's Carl D'Python Anghelo. So he is a name for us hobbyists. Outside of pinball, nobody knows who in the hell he is. But in pinball, people know who Carl D'Python Anghelo is, and he's created a good brand for himself. He really has. He's very well respected by both hobbyists and by manufacturers. So he comes in. Now, this is his side gig still. He still has a full-time job. But he comes in and designs this. But interestingly, viewers, not his first – this wasn't his home brew that he was – whitewood that he was doing behind the scenes. That probably got him the job here at Barrels. And that game we may even still see, but it was attached to a license that – a very big license that Barrels was in the middle of attaining or couldn't attain or whatever it may be. But this is a whole new design. And this is essentially his second designed game, but it's his first publicly designed game. We'll probably see elements of his white wood come on his next game, which I'm already hearing fantastic things about. But he enters into the scene with this. He was really into the theme. He's a California guy, so he's very well-versed with the theme. And he's been working on this for a year or two. and he's very Elwyn-esque in that he designed the game and he has high level detailed knowledge when it comes to rules so he has created the rule set for this game as well, I'm sure the team has also helped but he's doing the rules too, programming is going to be done by Eric Pricky and team I believe, artist Brad Brad Albright, we've seen Brad on Portal, he is the artist here we love him because he's the artist of the pinball show logo with the goat, the Kraken logo straight down the middle, the Bebo Bebo Hulk 2D2. He's done a lot of work. Beautiful, beautiful work. So he's on this. And then sound was done by Dirty Pool Pinball Jeff Dodson, many of you are familiar with. They had one model of this game. That's what Barrels does. Just one model alone. They limited it to 525 units, which is rather low for a single model approach. A fully loaded game. So Barrels does this whole we only have one model. It's just fully loaded model. We're not doing this pro premium kind of stuff. No price increase from the last release of Dune at $11,600. And if we want to talk about the product launch itself, like I said, the 13th day at the 13th hour, they revealed this thing. Nobody was expecting anything this year from Barrels of Fun because they were still selling Dunes. But we got photos. We had a trailer of the game. And we had a lot of what people are praising very highly Barrels of Fun was that it was a surprise. They were praising a lot of things. This thing did well. But one of which that people really liked was they had a handful of media kind of primed and ready to go with content at the launch. So Kerry Hardy had a video. He's calling a featurette. It's the only iteration of what a featurette is. That was really good. Dirty Pool had a pinball video interview with himself doing sound and Carl D'Python Anghelo. The Flip N Out Pinball Podcast, Greg and Ken did a video interview of David David Van Es and Carl D'Python Anghelo. That was like an hour long, so that went very in-depth on different things. So at launch, I mean, boom, boom, boom, there's a lot of stuff to consume. And then the following day, we even got a prerecorded gameplay video by Carl D'Python Anghelo, a designer and rules creator for Winchester Mystery House. So a lot of stuff right at the onset. Here you go. Here's all the information you need. And then the first, as we were talking about launches, the first thing was like, oh, it's only 525 units. They're selling fast. And then everybody was like, yeah, they're going to sell through, but that's not selling out. So the controversy behind the scenes within the hobbyist community was, they haven't sold out they just sold through it's going to take dealers a while and then within a day everybody's like well no fuck all the dealers are sold out now too so a lot of people a lot of people did wait on this too long but they didn't know i right whenever i knew it was winchester mystery house and we'll talk about this but i did that theme alone i was like, well, I don't know what you're going to do with that. Nobody knows what the hell that is. But it wasn't until all of the other details around this, then you're like, oh, okay, I see what this is going to be. The objectives and story, like I said, the history of the license, there's a lot into it. They still probably added some elements to that as well. But they did some really crafty things. Like I said, go watch those contents. They're going to do a much better job than us at that. Artwork, let's jump into the artwork. What did you think about it? It's a different style of artwork that I've fallen in love with, but I think I can see some people either love or not like. Yeah, overall, yeah, it's different. I thought it worked well for the theme. You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of a virtual pinball table called, yes, I knew you were going to have a reaction, But you have to remember that. What was the – no, I just blanked. It's the Pinball FX3, like, launch 01 with a haunted mansion or something. But some of the stuff with the ghost look and stuff on the Translight, that's what it reminds me of, is from that. And it kind of – you know, it's a whimsical look. I would say I like the play field. I thought the decision just sort of to have the crystal ball and sort of the smoke going up. I think it's a nice look. And, again, there's not really a lot of identifiable, like, imagery that I can associate with the license. So, for me, doing something more generic works okay here. And, you know, it's playful. The only thing I really didn't care for art-wise is I don't really like the size of the cab very much. I like the left side of the cab. The right side I'm just neutral on. That's fair. I've been looking more at the, well, I guess, the right side one with the hands. I don't really like that. And that's okay, the seance room there. I like the perspective of that left cabinet with the palm tree, notably. Yes. The house side looks better. That's cool. And I love that back glass. I do like that glass. That is a strong composition there. Color, placement, illustration, logo placement. That is damn good, Brad. That's pretty close to perfection there. I would say. I love the head art. That's the stained glass. And that's really where you can pull the colors in with stained glassing. I think a lot of people could say, this theme, why would blues and purples? Like, this is a dark theme. I think this is perfection. This is exactly what I would want for a pinball machine. Pinball machines are games, so I'm fine with them going more whimsical. cool. This is almost John Papadiuk-esque, the art that's associated with his games a lot. So I'm a sucker for that. I simply love this art package, and I think it's so good. Like, I'm really tough on play-filled art. I'm really tough on it. And this works for me. I think it's just the predominance of the blue that really works, and like you said, that crystal ball being a main large image, like you know I like, right between the flippers there. that illustration perspective wise is perfect and I think even the models of this game are well done and if we're talking about art they blend really well with the whole theming of the 2D illustrated art. Even the apron art is beautiful. I love their choice of colors on the trim This is a stunning pinball machine and I think it's one of the main reasons among probably four or five that this game has done so well so quickly. It's the art package and the looks of the game. Okay. So we're up on the art. That's good stuff. What about the toys, mechs featured? To me, this game is loaded. We're going to go through. I'm going to jot off some stuff here, Dennis, then we can talk about it. The Mystery House Ghost Box. kind of the most prevalent where you see this big molded house, mansion in the background, in the back third of the game. And what do I say? What do we say here all the time? Something big, predominant, like a medieval madness castle, like an alien ship, an AFM. It's right there. And that's what they did here. And I think it paid dividends for them. But this is more technological in that you've got the molding, but you've got a Pepper's Ghost effect where they usually use that backboard as a display. This is a Pepper's Ghost effect, a rather large one, probably as large, the largest since Pinball 2000, I would guess. But it makes total sense when it comes to spirits and ghosts to have this effect in the backbox there. And then even has a tower that falls, creating a new path, which feels like the tower in Lord of the Rings that falls. but enhanced, so you get what people love, and then they enhance it, and they go up one on that. You have the revolving hallway turntable. This feels very much of what we're going to get from Carlo D'Python Anghelo. The I want something different in pinball, not just toys, but I want different paths and different ways to shoot a pinball machine, where this has a Lazy Susan-esque kind of thing that turns and creates different ball paths, eight different positions, unexpected variety of ball paths, three unique entrances. So that's a welcomed effect that's going to leave people with, it's not going to get a stale because you're going to have all kinds of iterations of where the balls are going to go. You've got that collapsible tower. And it's theme appropriate, too. In 1906, there was an earthquake that destroyed that house's tower. So they play it into the gameplay here. And then there's a hidden ball path. I love that you have to earn different ball paths in pinball. We don't see that often, but I really like whenever they do that. We have a stairway or staircase to nowhere magnetic ball catch. I thought this was weak at first until I realized really what it was. It looked like just a dead-end shot to me, and I was like, whoop-de-doo. And just the side of the metal and stuff, I was like, that's not very captivating. But once I realized there was a magnet midway, and they set up a moment here where seemingly a dead-end plummets the ball further into the depths of the house. So there is a certain ball path that will lead up there. Magnet will catch it so you see it's going nowhere. Rotisserie or the table will turn, creating another path. Then the ball will be let go down into a subway or down into a different ball path. That's really cool. That's a moment there. We have a door to nowhere staircase. Again, theme appropriate. This lady created weird shit where there's doors that are in the floor. doors on the upper levels of the house that just walk into nothing outside. You would fall and plummet to your death. There are doors that you open, and it's a wall. Weird, weird shit. So they have that in this house. They have a door to nowhere that expels the house's ghostly inhabitants. They have a right staircase ramp that has a diverter on it, so it's a whirling mcgig that feeds the upper flipper, or it can be diverted into the back of the house. They have a seance room Inline target banks Very few people do these Dennis But this is a Carl D'Python Anghelo He's a competition player And those players love drop targets So not only do we get two Three bank drop targets We also get an inline bank of drop targets It very close to the flipper I would guess that it going to be a mean area to shoot but nonetheless I do like inline drops that we very rarely see. We have the seance table and the crystal ball. More aesthetic. It's a ball hold area that's really cool. It looks probably buck-esque. I'd probably throw a buck up there. It's a physical ball lock. There's a spirit board apron that is illuminated lettering, and it glows as well. There's an outlaying kickback. There's custom sculpts, magnets. We could keep going on and on. There's a lot of stuff in this game, a lot of stuff that changes the path of the ball. I would argue this is a very unique layout, which, again, if we're talking about why this game works, in my opinion, this is one of them. You compare this to Star Wars, and it's very night and day. Fan bit layout versus a four-flipper, multi-path, very novel layout. What are some of the mechs and toys out of that list that stick out to you? Yeah, well, obviously the stairway to nowhere magnetic ball catch. I thought that was a really interesting idea. and the way I think it's going to be implemented really well, given the emphasis that they've had on it. I also really appreciated the hallway turntable. We've seen a few other turntable systems now, obviously with Harry Potter and stuff, but I'm curious how this one will compare, given the number of paths involved. But it's been pulled off in a different way than we saw in Harry Potter, like in terms of how it feeds. And so I like the Harry Potter one, as well, but I'm very curious about this. And then just the general layout, despite having all this stuff, I do want to note, it just looks very clean. So, sometimes and I think most modern game design has generally done a good job of this as well, but considering this is a freshman slash sophomore effort from Carl, a lot of the stuff, like the sculpts and stuff, they've kept more towards the sides and the back of the playfield. It's nothing looks particularly disruptive. I like that it's a four-flipper game, and it looks like all of those flippers have really unique shot choices. It's not just to do a simple thing. I know one of those is a mini-flipper, but just the overall approach there makes it look like it will be pretty fun to shoot, which I think is exciting. But, yeah, feature-wise, I also think, yeah, that the ghost box was a really cool touch, at least from the promotional stuff that I've seen with it. Looks very well integrated with the whole building backdrop. You know, Barrels has always done a great job with World Under Glass, and it continued here. I was just surprised at how good this ended up looking. It's interesting. I mean, it's not an inexpensive game, but we know games that are more that we could argue don't look this good in terms of features. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point. The other things I will note, if we're talking about features of this game, what stacks up, what this game has, three full-size flippers, one mini flippers, four flipper games, six pinballs used, four metal ramps, five habit trails, two subways, two scoops, two vertical up kicks, two magnets, a spinner, a diverter, kickback, two drop target banks, one inline drop target bank, a captive ball, two up posts, one physical ball lock. It does have the Horizon Atmospheric Lighting, or HAL, the RGB, like the stadium lighting, interactive kind of expression lighting, hot rails, their own iteration of that. It does have, let's see here, apron floodlights, Evergloss, that high-gloss decal art, RadCal-like, their iteration of that, Evergloss, Infinity Glass, anti-reflective glass, Thunder from Down Under, I cannot get used to that name, shaker motor, factory-installed inner art blades, 15.6-inch HD LCD display flanked by some high-range stereo speakers. Luminated lighting for the speaker lighting as well with insets. 8-inch cabinet subwoofer, a 12.3-inch LCD Pepper's Ghost display. Polyester metallic powder-coated cabinet armor and matching speaker panel with laser-cut stained glass window pattern speaker grills. I really like that the powder coat is like the seafoam green-blue. It's phenomenal. We do not see that color in pinball, and I'm glad it is used here. Rules and code of the game, 13-plus modes, because there's like 13 rooms that they 3D mapped from this house. So you are walking around, and you're exploring this actual house within your game. Two main multi-bowl modes, maybe more in the future, numerous mini wizard modes and then your wizard modes and all of that. Not much we can talk about regarding rules and code because, frankly, we just don't know enough yet. We have, I think, as a hobby, as a community, we have a lot of faith in Carl D'Python Anghelo, more so than we would give anybody else that was on their first rule set. I think it's fair to say. So needless to say, I think we would all put our money that the rule set on this game when it is finished will be superb. Yeah, I think so. Well, we may be wrong, but I don't think we will be. Also, I want to go ahead and say the Ouija board for the apron. Oh, clever. Clever for like the player number and stuff. The ball and stuff. Nice little touch there. I think that was in one of the videos they were talking about. I think it was a Brad Brad Albright call where they had like a smaller one on it And then they brought him in to do the art package. And he was like, what if we just did this, the whole apron, almost wooden Ouija-esque spirit board. And then we can use the whole thing to light up letters. And it really worked. Yeah. I'm glad they went the full apron with it. Here's the thing. They were teasing on, I think it was the Dirty Pool video, that there's a secret, something that nobody's found in this game. Or nobody's found it because it's just releasing. and they thought it may take a while for people to find, but it sounded like they were talking about UV lighting effects to me. Maybe I'm just reading into it too much, but they were, like, talking about lighting. And then I always, I'm always keen to, like, if somebody's talking about something and then they go into another topic, but it came cognitively from something. It was derived, odds are, and something led me to, like, the UV. And then when I look at the flyer, like there's some different cuts of like pictures that seem very bluish green, almost a flasher effect that I'm like, I think this is what they're talking about. So I think there's going to be some additional really cool lighting stuff maybe in this game, whether it is within the game already or if there's something you're going to add. I don't know, but something cool may be even coming in addition to what we've talked about. The music, sound, and call-outs, I think it's Dodson, the Dirty Pool. I thought everybody would love this sound package. What little I've heard thus far was, like, phenomenal. And there was this cool, almost caretaker voiceover. It took me back to the Haunted Mansion, which I just love so much in my life. I love the Haunted Mansion theme from Disney. But it reminded me of that. But then I heard, like, after it came out, I was like, oh, well, shit, everybody's going to love that. Then some people were mixed on it. And I'm like, what? Like, it's one of those things when people say they don't like something, you're like, you almost want to check their forehead. Like, you have a fever? Like, there's, how do you not? That's awesome. That's unbelievable. So, but I think most people do like the music and sound. But I haven't heard enough of it yet. Yeah, I can't. I can't opine on that yet. Same with animation and display. That was one of the things I was worried most about. Whenever you have an IP like an Avengers, you've got the movies. Well, what an example of these. Sorry. Whenever you have something, why don't I use Jurassic Park? But when you have the films of something, you can use that on the LCD screen. Whenever it is not an original license, but, you know, a low, they don't have assets, the Winchesters, is what I'm saying. They might have a logo that the company has made, but they don't have animation sets. They have to create everything. So I thought one of your biggest red flags is like, what is this game really going to have in it animation-wise? But what I've seen thus far I really like and I think it was smart To lean into an effect With your animation So they have a Pepper's Ghost thing But we'll see over time What the animation is going to be Talk about the reception of this game It was alright What were your As you've been listening Over the last week or so What this game came out on Monday So we're nearly a week Like, was it always just big? Because I'm too close to it because I was kind of, I knew what was coming kind of thing. Kind of. I mean, I think right, again, I was, I mean, I was working. So, like, when the announcement hit, I wasn't there right away to know the initial take. So, I saw some Discord posts on several pinball Discords that I'm on. and the initial reaction was, I'll summarize it this way. Oh, this looks really interesting. Oh, it's kind of expensive, but it does have a lot in it. Holy cow, Carl D'Python Anghelo did it. Oh, it sold out. That is your timeline. All on the same day. Okay, yeah, I could see that being. And so there were a lot of people that I saw who were like, wow, this is, I don't know what this theme is. This looks really interesting. I like who's involved with it. But maybe, you know, I'm wondering, oh, they're only doing 525. Oh, I probably have some time. And then it's like, no, I don't have any time. And then a lot of people do the whole, well, I'm glad it sold out because now I don't have to make a decision. That's a good point. Yeah, the reception, I would say overall, exceptionally strong. I can't help but compare it to TNA, total nuclear annihilation, which was the first run was 550 units. Sold a little bit different strategy, of course. Original theme. Got it known as a whitewood around shows. But also had a person who's well-known in pinball. Not as well-known as Carl D'Python Anghelo, but well-known and respected in pinball. Difference, though, was TNA was, it took forever to sell out. I bought one from Spooky. It was already built. I didn't order it. It was done. It was done, and I bought it off of the line. You know, I didn't preorder. So my point being, like, that was not a fast mover like this. This, I was very surprised. Even when I saw everything about it, I was still like, but nobody knows this theme. And I know, yes, there are people that are listening that do know the theme, but you know what I mean, Zach. This is an F-tier license. and you and I both have for years now, ad nauseum, said this is not the right play. Yeah. But it's sold out. And I get it. It's not a 5,000-unit thing. It's 525 units. But what does this say about us? That is a really interesting point of discussion there. Have we failed? No. Are we has-beens now? No, no. No, I think we could have projected this as well. So to talk about the sales of it, the sales were strong from the minute. It was very exponential. So those in the video, it was like strong sales, strong sales, strong sales, but boom, gone. Like it built every hour, built up upon itself. There was not one dip. It was like almost a curvature, like bam. And it was just, it was done immediately. It was almost like the days that we've seen of Evil Dead once people got their hands on it from Pinball at the Beach. It was like, oh, okay, no, no, it's legit. This game isn't breaking down. It's awesome. It's fully packed. It's that, bam, it was gone. So that was that. It was fun. We haven't waited to see if it breaks down. It's just gone. It's just gone. So did we fail them? Yeah, I do think the interesting point of discussion here lies within this whole different modeling concept. Does it work? This whole low popularity IP but low unit production? We have said no. Don't bother with it. This is not how you sell games. But what if you only want to sell 500 games? Okay, that's a little different. But you still look at Predator. other things that I know this is not, please, barrels, don't blame me, don't blame Zach for this, but like, Berrio's barbecue, it ain't even getting to 50. Like, we've seen it, and I get it, that's not a theme, or again, it's not a license, but the thing is we're talking about something that's not a big thing to most people. I'm just saying, we've seen this blow up before. Like, blow up in people's faces. Predator couldn't sell more than 200 units? Yeah, so it doesn't matter how small a run is, is what we're saying. You still have to check boxes. Now, once you check enough boxes, I'm sure you're going to sell out of 500 units more than you are 2,000. And I would argue that you're going to sell them out quicker because there is a built-in fear of missing out at 500 units compared to 2,000. There just is. But when you compare it to the likes of something like Dune, you think Dune has sold 525 units? I want to say yes, but I did want to bring up Dune. I'm glad you did because Dune is a mega license. Huge license. Very integrated. The films did great. It's fresh on everyone's mind. We're not digging up a bunch of books from, you know, before I was born. And, yeah, full assets. And that game, like, people were cautious. And, again, part of that could be the LE here, like, that it's limited to the 525. So I can understand that being a factor. But normally for a nothing license, it's like you would think that would give you plenty of time. In Dune, people were being – and it wasn't like Barrels' Labyrinth are just renowned for breaking down and stuff. but people seemed cautious with Dune. Labyrinths were tanks. Labyrinths were tanks. And so, for me, what I thought happened with Dune was two things. One, the software was pretty basic when it came out, and that didn't do it any favors. That was a killer. And people knew they had time. And the other thing is, God, this has been a rough year. Like, there's just a lot of good games. It was surrounded by Harry Potter and P.Bell. People, I think, were kind of, and we're deep enough in the year now where I think everyone knows, like, all the big stuff's out. So at this point, you knew if you wanted to get, like, you saw Harry Potter, you decided if you wanted it or not. You saw King Kong, you decided if you wanted it or not. And maybe it's been easier at this point. That still doesn't explain why this sold out. It just explains why Dune maybe was slower than, I mean, Dune is slower than this. And the surprise effect. remember at this point I have a loud speaker that I'm screaming into year after year and soon enough I think manufacturers are catching on that part of it is an emotional response like you will get sales based on emotional response people kind of heard rumblings of a dune coming they were prepared for it they didn't really like it they like the movies but it wasn't built-in nostalgia when people hear about a haunted house based pinball machine and they hear about it being available, announced now, boom, there it is their emotion shoots up like maybe it would have if they dropped a dune without anybody even knowing it was going to be a dune, so when that came out, hey this is a haunted house based pinball machine it was the timing of it too, like you get people on that emotional high rather than them getting high on it and then waning over time I think that this works phenomenally for a number of reasons, many of which we've talked about, but a lot of which can be summed up in different arenas, such as, do you think the designer had anything to do with this being a success? That of what we've iterated, Carl D'Python Anghelo, first game. I actually think that it's the biggest driver of all of your items. I think it is. I do. Because when I think back to when Elwin started, did his first game, and yes, people were familiar with the Archer Whitewood, and they saw the DNA of that in Iron Maiden. But high-level player, very well-respected person in the pinball industry, game did very, very well. Same thing happened with Jack Danger. Well-known in the industry. A lot of people like him. I knew people who bought, and you know, Foo Fighters was not like the biggest band license to go with. But I knew people that said, I'm buying Foo Fighters because it's Jack. It's Jack's first major game. You know, they're saying it's like the home editions. His first major game, I want to back it. And here you have Carl D'Python Anghelo, another really, you know, he's quote-unquote pinball famous, and like Elwin, a very good player. So I think people are going, based off of what we've seen in the past, why wouldn't we take a chance on this guy? One of us. One of us. And I think more so than anything else, there are plenty of people that are like, I don't care about the toys in this. I don't care what the theme is at all. I care that it's Carl. And I'm buying it because of Carl. Carl. It's Elwin. It's Jack Danger. It's Scott Denisey. It's one of us. It's who we. Yes. And it also helps that this is more the layout and features of this game that I think helps sell it. But when these guys come out with something, it wasn't the fan layout. If Jack Danger came out with his first game and it was Foo Fighters and it was a Steve Ritchie fan layout, I don't think it would have done well. These guys are new. Fair point. And they're bringing to the hobbyist what we want, and that is something new in design and layout. And Carl did that in Aces here, just like Elwin, just like Jack, and arguably just like Scott Danesi did. Yeah, I mean, TNA is not a layout like anything else. I get that single level, but it's not like anything that was in the – it will not be mistaken for anything else. So, yeah, I think desire. I think the layout being unique. I think the theming of it as a haunted house. You can make another haunted house-based pinball machine, and if it is loaded and cool, it would sell again. Like, people just – it is a theme that speaks to pinball. I think one of the biggest things here is collectability, and not just because it's 525. You know how fast it took Evil Dead to sell 525? This sold 525 units way quicker than Evil Dead did. I would say Evil Dead probably took months to sell 525. And in retrospect, you're thinking if you're a hobbyist in this industry, you're like, what? Evil Dead took that long and this thing was a no-name and took? I think that this game's success, they are forced to thank Spooky Pinball in this. I think the success of Winchester Mystery House comes in a large part to that of the success that we've seen with Evil Dead. I would almost put that right up there, not with Carl D'Python Anghelo. I think that is the strongest reason it has. But the collectability, it being 525 units, and it coming off of the back of what Spooky Pinball did with Evil Dead, is a big, big reason why this thing is successful. And the irony of these two companies juxtaposed between a lot of them leaving Spooky and not forming Barrels but ended up being at Barrels, them not having a back and forth but them kind of doing things publicly and behind the scenes that may be tit for tat. But seeing Evil Dead's success and seeing it on the market sell for thousands more, I think that has led to some of the success, a large part of Winchester. Am I wrong? I think maybe, but I don't think as strongly of a factor as you do. I think maybe for some buyers, but I don't think it's a strong number. I don't know what game we've had since Evil Dead that was pitched from a respected manufacturer that was a low run. We don't have any other examples. Like, this was the next example. No. The reason why I'm cautious about that, Zach, is simply because the pinball hobby got like that and then got burned so many times. I just don't know of speculative collectability, especially when it's not the same manufacturer. I'm just not sure it's – I mean, things can be cyclic. So maybe we're bad. You may be right. I just don't feel like that. It was like, holy cow, this happened with Evil Dead. I need to act now and buy this. I think if these other things weren't in play, that wouldn't have come up. I think it would have just been a, eh. You know, Spooky, the reason why I think Evil Dead took as long as it did to hit their exponential thing and sell out is they are still having to try and shake that reputation that their games break all the trust. And so once people were hearing that these things were surviving in shows, I think that went a long ways. People did hold up very, very well. But Spooky has relied on the, what I call, and Beryl says this too, the false scarcity strategy of deliberately selling everything limited to try and, I always assume it as to juice sales. to try and be like, well, we're going to have a little bit of the FOMO. No matter what, there's always the FOMO because you know there's this raw, hard count that's set on everything that we do. That's not enough in this day and age to move units. That worked very well for Spooky early on after they got the momentum from America's Most Haunted, which took forever and a day to sell out. But you may be right. I might be underestimating this. We'll talk more about that in Pinball Market Trends. I think another, again, subset reason, but if you keep adding up different check marks here, that's why you find success. The launch of a game. We found, I would argue, that the launch of a game in such a niche little hobby with limited unit products sold is very important. We've seen it with Evil Dead. They nailed that launch, and people loved that game from the launch. We've now seen it with Barrels of Fun here. Dune was not the best launch. I think they would even say that. This was what people are saying, damn near perfect launch. So I think evermore the reason that launch is important is becoming, I don't know, I preach it all the time, maybe I'm too close to it, but I really think the launch of a game. No, I'm not too close to it. I'm technically an expert in it when it comes to pinball sales and marketing. So I'm just telling you, that is the fact. The other thing, values and features of this game. Use yourself, Dennis. It's $11,600. That's not cheap. Then again, when we are comparing what's in this game and what we get compared to other manufacturers, it is in the better value than what we may get from a $13,000 Stern LE or even a $15,000 JJP game or even a Pinball Brothers $13,000 on their highest edition. The really good values in pinball are the one fully loaded edition of the Skooky Pinball Machine that Evil Dead was under $10,000. And it has kind of been barrels of fun. Significantly loaded game for under $12,000. So when I say value, I mean what all we're getting comparative to other like products. I think that helps. And then the timing. I think the timing of this, you talked about it, how they timed it, what they came out with, the little window of, hey, Stern just had a Star Wars launch, didn't really hit big. We know that Spooky's launch isn't going to be until later on in the year. Big window. We've got a Chicago Expo show. Halloween. We're all in the mindset of thinking of something kooky and spooky, and boom, here's a haunted house. We only have to sell 525. We are surprising people with the timing of this. We hit them up. They are excited. when you're surprised by something, your endorphins are high and your cognitions are fresh and your emotions are high. That's when you want to sell a game. That can turn on you, though. If you're heightened by something, you could turn on that bastard and be even nastier to it because you're heightened by it. But if you doing it right timing is everything and they nailed the timing So yeah those are some components as to why this was successful in our opinion here at the Pinball Show And our belief is the designer probably the biggest factor I think general theming of it being a very novel, loaded, haunted house-based pinball machine was number two. And then, in my opinion, number three is collectability. Dennis may differ what number three was. I think timing's number three. Okay. Yep, I can see that argument, too. Would this work in the future? Sure. Okay. So you think, oh, it's such a risk. I still think it's a risk. I ain't saying this is the right play. I'm just saying it could work. It's not the play I'd want. However, the freshman effort of the one of us can't be duplicated. You'd need a new person. If this game is great, Carl will be able, like, he'll become a bankable name, and there will be that. I think we're already there. And that's a different strategy than this. I think we're already there, though, with him. I think he is arguably their Elwynn. Sure. I think that's a fair argument. I would rather see a second game before I would say it, but... I'm just saying premonition. My guess. I'd also guess we hold, us hobbyists hold, this special elite category of designers, and some go in and some come out of it. One person has never left that group, and that was Keith Elwin. I think this person, Carl D'Python Anghelo, has the best opportunity thus far with the designers out there to enter into that same group and be there for a long time. Well, this is still a pretty unplowed field of pinball playfield designers being top, like, really high-level players. It's been more common for them to go in and do rules. The Ray Days, the Tim Sextons, the Keith Johnsons, really, really high-level players doing design, playfield design. That's a newer field, and that's where Elwynn has started. And plus, D'Python Anghelo here doing the L-Win and doing both rules, lead rules, and the design of the game from a physical perspective. It's interesting. It would be – there's good opportunity there. The thing is, I don't know how many high-level players want to become playfield designers. It's not – Sure. Yeah. Yeah. There's only so many openings, and a lot of them may not even be really full-time gigs. And I think we have these components in these groups for different creators as well. Artists, I think Christopher Franci is in that group, and I think Zombie Yeti is in that group. Yeti, at times, though, gets close to dropping out of that group, but I think him and Franci are still in that group, and then everybody else is trying to work their way into that exceptional group. Same with rules. Right now, though, I would argue that the only person in the rules category that we hold up to a no-brainer is the Elwynn Nagel group. I think that who is close, in my opinion, would be, I think, Ray Day is working to be there, not there yet. He hasn't proven himself to be in that group. And the other person I think has a strong, probably the strongest force right now is Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske. I predict that she will be that person that everything that she comes out with and leads from here on out after Jaws, I think she's going to be in that upper echelon of like, okay, yep, she's going to be that big drawl. But I don't think she's there yet. I think Jaws put her there, but I think she's come out until she puts herself in. She's in the conversation. Yep, absolutely. So it's going to be interesting to see where this all goes. I think it does work in the future, but give me the big IP to try to sell 2,000 to 3,000 units all day long. This is a risk, but this paid off very well. And what this does, I'm glad they did 525. My closing would be this. They could have sold more. A lot of people bitching about, well, they really botched how many they're selling. They could have made so much more money. I argue very much against that, and I think that is incorrect. I think they launched this to perfection. They nailed 525 units, in my opinion, with it selling out as quickly as it did. It actually is going to make them much more money. And they made a lot of growth in their brand from this move. And I think it automatically makes people and will make people purchase their next game, no questions. Just like Spooky Pinball's next game will sell based on the success of Evil Dead, undoubtedly. play. So, for the extra... Because if this game came out and they said 1,000 units, Dennis, I'm not convinced it sells over 600 units. I'm not even convinced it sells over 500 units. They needed to rely on the scarcity. Even if they guessed wrong, and I do think if they had made more, they would have sold more. However... After the fact. Yeah, well, hindsight. You can't... This was the right play to do this limit because if nothing else, they needed to rely on that to try and help the collectability drive sales. Yes. You've increased the value of your brand and your products just with one product. That is most ideal in any situation. Let's talk about the 2025 Chicago Pinball Expo. We're going to kind of do this rather quickly because if you go to patreon.com slash the pinball show, we're going to give our deeper takes on each of these items that we have heard and seen about from the expo. So make sure to join us there for all of you official club members. Check that out. Patreon.com slash the pinball show. The talk of the show is Winchester Mystery House by Fails of Fun. Of course. They stole the show. They stole second and third place as well. There were a couple predators at the show from Pinball Brothers. They even had, I like the play that they tried to have with the Richard Chavez there, played poncho there at the show, meet with the fans. So they did have that. We'll talk about that more in the Patreon episode, what we thought about that, and about Predator and what we're hearing. You'll want to hear the Patreon episode. Dutch Pinball announcing that they're going to make 333 Raza games. Raza. Raza. Raza. It's back. There are choices. I love it. I love it for the Patreon. Dead. Patreon, because we have thoughts. They also announced, and we've really got thoughts about this, at least I do, They announced that those 500 Alice from Wonderland buyers are going to get the first 500 games of what they inferred to be Back to the Future. Good move or fucking horrible move? Find out on our Patreon. They seem pretty concerned with people bailing on those Alice orders and requesting refunds at the end of the year. That would be a motivation to make this announcement. Nah, bigger picture. Is that a Band-Aid, short-term Band-Aid? We talked about brand equity of barrels of fun. This might be the opposite. Find out. Chicago Gaming Company telling people that they're going to run more Merlins in 2026. What does that mean? How are you going to get them? How many people get? When can you take them? A lot of details there, even behind-the-scenes distribution stuff in the Patreon episode. Hexa Pinball announced their next game title. Why so early? I don't know, because they don't consult with people like myself. Three Musketeers. non-licensed but not original Big Trouble in Little China was the homebrew that everybody fell in love with by Kyle Smith and a lot of thoughts on that Monster League Hockey by friend Jake Dienzig almost jazzed-esque battle back and forth at the end of the game, I've got a lot of thoughts on that the homebrew area in general was a big talking point at the Chicago Pinball Expo and pin a weave sale. The American former, formerly known as American Pinball Orbit Games revealed their new game, Whirl-O-Ball, where the player whirls a ball into a slot. For what? One minute to 525? Sold. They might have sold 5.25 units. We'll talk about that. Whirl-O-Ball. The Screamy Goat Club. We got a thanks from people like the Bobcat. Gracias. I don't know if Bobcat went to X4 or not. Rock. The Panther. Snorkel. I don't know if our goats. Most of them sounded like they were not going. Those that attended the happy hour. They're busy people. They're out frolicking. In their goat-like pastures. Frank. Frank Madison. The Falcon. Thanks for the support, Frank. Charlie, come and ring my bell. Charlie was not at the end. Ding dong and thank you. No, he's busy. William. Oh, the dude just got a game. Got another game. Good job. A lot of these people got their hands on a Winchester spot. Adam. Speaking of Papa. Running around your lane. Marsha. It was Adam's kid. Adam. Maybe Adam got a Winchester. Maybe he knew the right people to get one. Brian. Thank you. Caretaker. For all your support. You think the caretaker got a Winchester? It's right up his alley. It is, but it's such a big game for his kind of hand to handle. I better use my scrotum. Action button, child. Okay. And a reminder, the next live happy hour hangout, People are loving these things, and they are getting really good. But it's going to be, what is it? October 29th. The 29th at 8 p.m. Central. Not 8 a.m. 8 p.m. Central. And we can't end the show. You guys missed it last time, but we're going to have it this time. It's pinball. Mark the trance! No, we're out of time. You're out of time. Sorry, guys. Sending out this week's Winchester Miss. No, they can't even buy it. Well, because it's the ba-ba-ba. Ba-ba-ba. Come on. Sorry. Ba-cha. It's so good. It's trending up. Everybody wants one. Did you know? I told you I was going to discuss numbers because, quite frankly, they do not lie, listener. And viewer, right now, you can get a Winchester Mystery House. Oh, yes, you can. Oh, yes, you can. Going to cost you, though. I heard a couple of sales now have occurred. Three or four, maybe more, of Winchester Mystery House. already, 2,000 plus. What the MSRP. So they're already going for around 14,000 as of right now. I could see this once it really dries up with every single person out there and production just starts. We didn't talk about production, but they're going to trickle out probably in the next six months. You're going to see the majority of these things out. But they'll really ramp up over the rest of the year. We'll start really seeing them turn them out come January, I believe. But, yeah, I think we're going to see this thing upwards of $15,000, $16,000 where it's going to settle before production will catch up and then it will come back down to reality on the secondary market. But that's quite a bit of money. All this training up this week has got to be barrels of fun. You've got to give praise where praise is due. They did really well, so much so that also training up alongside this, Dune. We've sold more Dune in the last week And we have, in the last two months combined, we've seen a major uptick, a statistically significant uptick. Polynomion, I'm not sure. But Dune uptick. People are wanting the duo of Dune. And a lot of people played it at Expo. That's one of the things that Ken and Greg told me. They said a lot of people got their hands on Dune, and that was their first time, and they placed orders. Actually, I didn't think about that, but that's a good point. They really did like that game. And they were like, why isn't this getting love? It is, but just not as much as the mystery right now. So that's trending up. All trending up this week is Beetlejuice. What? Beetlejuice. That's not out. That's not even. Is it out? I don't. Maybe it's out. Questions need answers. Depends on who you ask. If it is out, can I have your money? Lock in now. That's trending up. But really, unfortunately, what is trending down this week is Beetlejuice-esque. Look, this kind of stuff does not make me loved by a lot of people. But it is how I feel, and it's what the truth is. I wasn't crazy, viewer. I wasn't crazy, Dennis, about Spooky Pinball's move there. Marketing-wise. Them dropping the whole Beetlejuice meme on the 13th of October. The old JJP, let's have a pizza party. to try and sabotage people who went into the stern reveal at a show style of heaviness? I just didn't like the move. For me, when you got a big dick, you don't need to throw it. I just didn't like the move. And they're my great friends. They're like some of my closest friends in this industry. But I got a call as I see it. What? I didn't like the move. And it wasn't so much because a lot of people are going to argue, it's business, Zach. That's why Jack Guarnieri did the whole Harry Potter thing. He wanted to play defense more than anything. He wanted to prevent people from spending money they might be spending on his product in the future. I have a whole other episode to argue why that may or may not be the case. But when it comes to this one, I'm not so much mad about spooky pinball. I'm not mad about their move of doing this. This is like a defense thing. I don't think they needed to do this. I'm upset they didn't need to. For what? What's the benefit here? No, no, I agree with you. But that's the thing where, and I don't, but I disagree about it being a good, I get that it's done as a defense, but even with JJP, if it was something like, hey, Winchester came out and there were still Evil Deads to sell and they mentioned Evil Dead is one thing. When the game's not even for sale yet, and the same with JJP and all the Harry Potter references every time there was a new game that came out, and it's like it's not out yet. to me, it's a sign of weakness. It's a little bit of insecurity. I agree. And it's not a good look, guys. It's not about how petty. It comes across at best petty. And who wants to look petty? And I get where they're coming from. They're excited. They're excited because it's... Then release it! They're excited they have Betelgeuse. That's what they're saying, you know? Then release it. If you were to release it and sell it the same day, it would have been different. But you're not ready. I'm not sure. I'm not that much mad about them doing the move. It's just a move I wouldn't, I don't think was a great move. I think if anything compromises the value of their brand, that was rising really quick. I just, you don't need it. You don't need it. I don't think it goes that far. No, I don't. I don't. Most people don't care. The problem that I have with it is the indirect consequences of such an action. So I don't care that they did that. They were mean. Because I think the community likes that. I think the community probably thought, oh, that's fucking cool. Oh, they are saying it's Beetlejuice. Oh, man, look at them. I'm sure they're glad that they talk about Beetlejuice. I don't think the community was glad that they tried to stick it to barrels. No, but I think the overall community don't take it too... I don't think the community cares that much about it. Yeah, they don't care that much. So they just kind of like seeing the fun of it. But the indirect effects it had on me were, then what happens? Then we get all of... Well, no, I think it is market confusion. then enters into the space stuff like market confusion and forcing somebody to do something that they're not comfortable necessarily doing. Everything was fine. Put me on the interested list. And then, you know what? Interested list, it's fine. We've got a nice system. Everybody's got the same rules. We're all playing by the same rules. And then you do something like this, and then it makes some dealers get a little squirrely. We talked about that insecurity. So then they start getting a little insecure. Oh, I'm not able to sell as well as somebody else, So I'm going to jump out in front of this, and I'm going to let people order from me. They said it's Beetlejuice. They didn't. They did. It's Beetlejuice. I get to announce it now. I'm a dealer, and I'm going to take your money. It's nonrefundable. Yeah, sure. No. Then it fucking messes everything up. It makes everything messy. It leads to confusion within the market. Customers are like, well, shit, I was on your list, Zach, but now I don't. Like, this guy's taking money, I guarantee it. So should I be on his list? It's like, no. You shouldn't have to pay money before you see what the hell you're paying for. Should that not just be a rule in pinball? Have we not learned? And this is from a dealer. It's not a rule in lots of places, though. This is common in other industries. Gosh, why? Why? Just everybody play by the same rules. We got time. Why are we doing this to our customers? Why are we doing this to hobbyists? We don't need to. Again, don't need to do this. If it is Beetlejuice, and clearly it is, why do you need to take people's money before them seeing what they're getting? Just chill out. Chill out. Everybody should start the race at the same time. Do we really need handicaps in this industry like that? And that's fine. Again, I can't really blame, I can because I think it's iffy to try to jump ahead and take advantage of customers, but that's just my philosophy. I kind of blame Spooky again. They have the control in this situation of saying, hey, if you want to sell our product, just everybody chill out. Let's sell it to people once they can see what it is. It doesn't make us look good if people are putting money down for something and they don't even know what it is yet. I don't know I just don't like it Stern wouldn't allow that That's all I'm saying Stern would have said no You'll hear in the Patreon another manufacturer They wouldn't allow that Just we don't need to do it Let's just make it clean So that the people buying this Don't feel burned or don't feel a burden You know to give money before they can see something That's all Also turning up this week Dennis is none other than myself Not myself. But it's Flip N Out Pinball. Not Flip N Out Pinball. Not myself. It's actually Ken and Greg from Flip N Out Pinball. The booth that they did, I gave them, mostly Ken just said, Ken wanted to do booths, and we gave up on booths a couple of years back. And whenever he joined the team, he said, I'd like to do booths again at shows. And I said, you do that. and he rolled with it, so much so turning up as the flipping out pinball booth at Expo because they received an award for runner-up of best booth. Huh? How about, yeah. So it didn't win. Damn it. Just a small applause. Turning up. Turning up. Turning up. Turning up. All right. Turning up. Pretty awesome. I think the winning booth was the homebrew tents. The Marco had this big area full of all the homebrew tents. You're not going to beat Marco. Marco, Marco, Marco. Yeah, very deservedly so. So they had all the homebrew. That was a big area. So I think they won best. I could be wrong, but I believe that was the case. Or it was Cointaker. But I don't know if Cointaker had a booth this year. Yeah. That's probably why we didn't, that's probably why we got runner up and didn't, you know, got an award because Cointaker wasn't there or any of the others. I don't think, I don't think a lot of the dealers were there. They were there, but they didn't have a booth. Have you set a trend for dealers to abandon the booth model? Sometimes when we walk in a room, people scurry. What can I say? You know, that's a thing. No, I was, full transparency. We saw the layout And anybody that has a booth Is going to bitch and moan about something Me and myself Turning down bitching about the $5,000 Internet fee $5,000 I mean You might as well buy your own Internet provider What the hell is that That's just a slap in the face Always with these fees I think we paid electricity We paid probably air fee for the air that we used within our cubic feet. Wow, man. $5,000 internet. Why would you do that for $5,000? Like, I would go without Wi-Fi. That's what we did. Or I would say, I'm not going to your show. Well, you could do that as well. They had a lot of fun at the boot. We were in a good spot, right center, you know, closer to the bathrooms than I would have liked. But needless to say, still center right when you walk in. But they did the placement. I'll have to give Rob Burke a little sass here. He put us behind the Cup Guy. Cup Guy? We got behind Cup Guy. So Cup Guy builds wall-o-cups. And we had this nice, you know, featured portal thing. And we got big illuminated. And we're hidden behind Cup Guy. Really? We haven't worked hard enough in this industry to be in front of Cup Guy? Our portal would have entered into World O'Cup But no We were behind Wall of Cups That's okay I bet you Cup Guy got the Wi-Fi That's right But yeah, I've got to give credit To Ken Who almost single-handedly Just put that entire booth together But then again I'm just here to report facts Because numbers don't lie They do nothing more than get my ass in trouble every week on Pinball Marketers. Where can people catch you? You can always reach out and click the podcast at gmail.com. Absolutely, or you can email us at thepinballshow at gmail.com. Please sign up to the Patreon, become an official club member so you can hear all the exclusive content, the private discords, all the other perks that go along with the all access Patreon club of the Pinball Show. We might even give you a home leaderboard if you sign up today before the end of the month. And we won't. Product showcase this week for Flip N Out Pinball, which is the sponsor of this show. When I buy my pinball, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. From Topper, Topper, Jamie, I've got it figured out. Figured out. Figured out. When I take a pinball, I think it's out. Figured out. Figured out. Figured out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. Buy, buy, buy. This product showcase is Medieval Madness Remake Merlin Edition. That's right. You can get on the list now for one at Flip N Out Pinball. I'm not going to take your money or anything, even though you know what it is. But more details to come. Listen to the Patreon. But if you would like to and you're not on the interested list for a Merlin Edition, just reach out to ZachZech at FlippinOutPinball.com or Greg at FlippinOutPinball.com or Ken at FlippinOutPinball.com. Buy a game from us. Support us. Help us. We love it. And we very much appreciate it. We're creating content for you over at Flip N Out Pinball, such as, I mean, come on, doesn't get much better than Joel at the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel. I think he's got a new Medieval Madness Merlin tutorial video, and he's going to be playing some Winchester here soon. Flip N Out Pinball podcast with Ken and Greg. They just did, I think, episode 10 on what their thoughts are on teasers, and they polled the audience as well, and people phoned in and called in, message than what they thought about pinball teasers, how soon they should come, what they should show, etc. That was a really interesting episode. And they had that special episode, that exclusive launch interview with David David Van Es and with Carl D'Python Anghelo about the Winchester Mystery House game. That's a lot of stuff. Follow, like, and subscribe. I love you people. Dennis, teach them something. This is for all the pinball manufacturers. Do not confuse Winchester Mystery House with this carte blanche permission to just do a bunch of generic haunted mansions. It is not going to work for you. This is lightning in a bottle, and you don't got the lightning. You ain't got the lightning. And always practice safe pinball and find the beauty and joys in life. Watch a child eat the bottom of an ice cream cone, and it spill upon their feet, and then try to figure out what the hell life is all about. You know what, kid? That's a pinball hobby and pinball distribution right there. You go ahead and take a big chomp out of the bottom of that cone, you're going to reap the consequences. But you're going to learn from it. And that's all I ask. I don't ask for you not to bite the bottom of a cone because, dag nabbit, I would want to try that as well. But once you do it once and your fingers are sticky and your shoes are getting sticky and it's starting to affect other people's shoes and other people's enjoyability of their ice cream, Just be normal And just eat your ice cream cone Like everybody else, would you? From you, great Great advice, be normal

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 37fe91d6-3dba-45ea-84be-3fb7a0439ea5*