# Ep 126: Working in Tandem with Bug and Luke **Source:** LoserKid Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2023-12-14 **Duration:** 66m 22s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/rhaqDIlW --- ## Analysis Loser Kid Pinball Podcast Episode 126 features an in-depth interview with Bug and Luke (Spooky Luke) from Spooky Pinball discussing the design philosophy behind their dual-release games Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The conversation covers their deliberate approach to creating fast-flow gameplay with integrated mechanics, licensing strategy favoring pre-1983 IP, artist recruitment (particularly Brad Duke from Deep Root), and manufacturing efficiency through pre-order planning. Key insights include Spooky's commitment to customer-driven theme selection and their three-tier pricing model strategy. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were designed in complete tandem from the start, not sequentially, with separate development teams for each theme's code and rules. — _Bug explains: 'from the get-go, we made sure to design them in tandem together. I mean, we knew what both themes were as soon as we were starting on the layout.'_ - [HIGH] Spooky deliberately chose both Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre together to avoid appearing to abandon horror themes after Scooby-Doo. — _Bug states: 'We also didn't want to hear, "Oh, Spooky's abandoning horror themes." You know, Halloween was two games ago now. Like, we don't want them to abandon the horror.'_ - [HIGH] Licensing is significantly easier for pre-1983 properties because actors and likeness rights were less rigorously protected before a 1982 lawsuit that changed IP protections. — _Guest explains: 'That's because there was a lawsuit in '82. And when it went through—when it went in favor of the plaintiffs—that then opened the floodgates so that actors and actresses could go after likenesses and stuff like that.'_ - [HIGH] Spooky plans five game releases in the upcoming year. — _Josh states: 'Yes, next year is Spooky Pinball doing four games.' Luke responds: 'Yeah, we're going to do five releases.'_ - [HIGH] Brad Duke, the Looney Tunes playfield artist, previously designed nine full pinball machine concepts while working at Deep Root before reaching out to Spooky. — _Luke recounts: 'he's like, "I've literally done nine full pinball machine designs at this point—like design concepts and playfields and cabinets."'_ - [HIGH] Spooky maintains three pricing tiers (Standard, mid-tier, Collector's Edition) but Standard represents a very small percentage of sales and is the most limited model. — _Luke: 'We were three tiers on Halloween. It's just you forget about the Standard because not many people buy it. It's a small percentage... It's actually the most limited of them all.'_ - [HIGH] Pre-orders are operationally crucial for Spooky's manufacturing efficiency, allowing them to plan production schedules and maintain full-time employment for 12-14 months. — _Luke explains: 'if we know right away going in how many units we've sold and can plan for that, it makes us a lot more efficient... we're able to plan for that and spread the efficiency perfectly throughout the year.'_ - [MEDIUM] The game layout for Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre produces production runs of approximately 888 pieces each, totaling around 1,776 units combined. — _Josh: 'you guys have actually kind of gone back about 200 units. So they're 888 pieces, which equals about 1,776.'_ ### Notable Quotes > "If both sides don't realize, we did our job." > — **Bug**, ~10:00 > _Summarizes the goal of making both themes feel equally prioritized despite sharing identical mechanical layouts; indicates design success when neither fan base realizes the dual-design compromise._ > "When people make a purchase with us, I take that as like you're kind of making an investment or a contribution to the company for us to be able to come back and continue to make the themes that you want to see." > — **Bug**, ~15:00 > _Reveals Spooky's philosophy of customer-driven decision-making and sense of moral obligation to their collector base; explains the reasoning behind theme selection strategy._ > "We don't wake up in the morning and do this so that we can upset people. That's not on our radar." > — **Bug/Luke**, ~15:30 > _Demonstrates the company culture and sensitivity to community feedback; indicates emotional investment in customer satisfaction._ > "This is a rough sketch... the lack of direction he still required was just so impressive. He just ran with everything and understood it." > — **Bug**, ~35:00 > _Describes Brad Duke's artistic competence and efficiency as exceptional; highlights the value of hiring artists who intuitively understand pinball aesthetics._ > "We're not going to throw anyone that comes to us and is like, 'Hey, I want to work on this.' We're not just going to throw people out right away. We're going to hear them out and see their stuff." > — **Bug/Luke**, ~40:00 > _Reflects Spooky's inclusive hiring philosophy and willingness to give opportunities to people with Deep Root experience despite the company's negative reputation._ > "in every single film reel, you can see an iconic moment from the 30, 40 years that we're pulling from the show on the playfield." > — **Luke**, ~33:00 > _Illustrates attention to microscopic detail and thematic coherence; demonstrates commitment to rewarding engaged players who explore the playfield carefully._ > "if you're just selling one model of a car, you're going to drop out the people who want a higher version of it and also the people who want a lower version." > — **Luke**, ~45:00 > _Explains the strategic reasoning behind maintaining three pricing tiers despite operational complexity; references market segmentation theory._ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Bug | person | Co-founder and co-owner of Spooky Pinball; lead game designer responsible for thematic integration and rule design on Looney Tunes/TCM project | | Spooky Luke | person | Senior designer and mechanical engineer at Spooky Pinball; handles playfield layout, mechanical engineering, and technical design for Looney Tunes/TCM | | Spooky Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer planning five releases; known for vibrant artwork, thematic depth, and boutique approach to game design | | Josh Roop | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; interviewer driving discussion about design philosophy and manufacturing strategy | | Scott Larson | person | Co-host of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast; participates in interview discussion | | Looney Tunes | game | Spooky Pinball's latest release (dual with TCM); features Acme factory theme, film reel collection mechanics, fast-flow gameplay | | Texas Chainsaw Massacre | game | Spooky Pinball's latest release (dual with Looney Tunes); horror-themed with identical mechanical layout; fast-flow gameplay with Leatherface spinner mechanic | | Brad Duke | person | Playfield artist for Looney Tunes; previously designed nine pinball concepts at Deep Root; known for quick turnaround and detailed microscopic artwork | | Brad Albright | person | Artist who previously worked at Deep Root; reached out to Spooky and contributed to Looney Tunes screen elements and cabinet artwork | | Deep Root Pinball | company | Troubled pinball manufacturer where Brad Duke and Brad Albright previously worked; referenced as a problematic organization that produced some talented artists | | Flippin' Out Pinball | company | Distributor selling Spooky's latest releases (Looney Tunes, TCM) and other pinball machines; owned by Zach and Nicole | | Scooby-Doo | game | Previous Spooky Pinball release (2022); Warner Brothers licensed property; preceded Looney Tunes/TCM strategy | | Halloween | game | Earlier Spooky Pinball release; three-tier pricing model established; cited as reference for tiered strategy | | Rick and Morty | game | Earlier Spooky Pinball release; sold 750 units; referenced for production planning methodology | | Warner Brothers | company | Licensor of Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo for Spooky Pinball; signed both properties under unified licensing contract | | Jeff Zornow | person | Comic book artist hired by Spooky; known for Godzilla and Ultraman comic work | | Matt Frank | person | Comic book artist hired by Spooky; known for Godzilla and Ultraman comic work | | Pat Lawlor | person | Legendary pinball designer referenced as design inspiration for Looney Tunes artwork (Whirlwind aesthetic) | | Elwin | person | Referenced as exemplar of fast-flow, single-level pinball design; design benchmark for Spooky's Looney Tunes/TCM project | | Jack Danger | person | Referenced as exemplar of fast-flow, single-level pinball design; design benchmark for Spooky's approach | ### Topics - **Primary:** Game Design Philosophy, Dual-Theme Mechanical Implementation, IP Licensing Strategy, Manufacturing and Production Planning, Artist Recruitment and Quality - **Secondary:** Pricing Strategy and Market Segmentation, Customer Relationships and Community Responsibility, Deep Root Rehabilitation and Industry Healing ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Interview is enthusiastic and collaborative. Hosts express genuine admiration for Spooky's artistic execution and design philosophy. Bug and Luke speak thoughtfully about their process, community responsibility, and manufacturing challenges. No significant criticisms or tensions present; discussion is constructive and insider-friendly. Positive sentiment toward artist recruitment and industry inclusivity. ### Signals - **[design_philosophy]** Spooky expanding beyond traditional pinball artists to comic book professionals (Zornow, Frank) and new talent (Duke) based on thematic fit rather than pinball-specific experience. (confidence: high) — Bug: 'we've explored out past who the typical pinball artists would be. I mean, like, Jeff Zornow and Matt Frank are both comic book artists... we just had grown personal relationships with them over the years.' - **[business_signal]** Spooky announcing five releases for next year represents significant production scaling; manufacturing capacity and employment planning tied directly to pre-order volume. (confidence: high) — Luke: 'we're going to do five releases. And it's just tougher, too... we're hiring full-time people. We have to have work for 12 months a year.' - **[community_signal]** Spooky demonstrates strong customer relationship orientation; explicitly frame theme selection as moral obligation to support fan base that invested in previous games. (confidence: high) — Bug: 'When our horror customers turn out and buy the game from us... I want to support them back and give them the themes that they want to see... we feel very morally obligated.' - **[design_philosophy]** Spooky intentionally pursued fast-flow, single-level gameplay for Looney Tunes/TCM to prove they can design 'Elwin/Jack Danger type' games alongside their experimental multi-playfield designs. (confidence: high) — Bug: 'can Bug and Luke do an Elwin, Jack Danger, flow monster type game?... we wanted to try sort of a more classic flow beast with major mechanisms surrounding it that's integrated with it.' - **[design_philosophy]** Looney Tunes and TCM deliberately designed with identical mechanical layouts but completely separate code/rules/animation teams to maximize thematic authenticity for each version. (confidence: high) — Bug: 'the code can't have anything in common... both games have their own development team, their own rules direction, their own programmers, their own animators, artists—everything.' - **[licensing_signal]** Pre-1983 IP licensing is operationally and financially preferable due to reduced likeness rights complexity; 1982 lawsuit is watershed moment for IP protection enforcement. (confidence: high) — Guest: 'lawsuit in '82... opened the floodgates so that actors and actresses could go after likenesses'; Bug: 'as a general idea... it is easier to go back... we deal with it. It's easier to go back in time.' - **[market_signal]** Looney Tunes and TCM production split (approximately 888 units each, ~1,776 combined) demonstrates deliberate dual-release manufacturing strategy to maintain factory utilization without over-supply. (confidence: medium) — Luke explains production planning: 'if we know right away going in how many units we've sold and can plan for that, it makes us a lot more efficient... spread the efficiency perfectly throughout the year.' - **[personnel_signal]** Deep Root's collapse produced secondary talent pipeline; Spooky explicitly hiring Deep Root alumni and valuing their experience despite company's negative reputation. (confidence: high) — Bug discusses Brad Duke and Brad Albright outreach: 'when the government stepped in... when they got arrested... he was just like, "Hey, I know Deep Root wasn't such a great thing to be a part of, but I really am loving pinball."' - **[market_signal]** Spooky maintaining three-tier pricing despite complexity; considering single-model strategy but market segmentation logic keeps them with Standard/Mid/Collector's model. (confidence: high) — Luke: 'we've kicked around not like just going to one model too... if you're just selling one model of a car, you're going to drop out the people who want a higher version of it and also the people who want a lower version.' - **[product_concern]** Brad Duke's playfield artwork includes microscopic details across all film reels with iconic moments from show's 30-40 year history; represents exceptional attention to Easter eggs and visual density. (confidence: high) — Luke: 'in every single film reel, you can see an iconic moment from the 30, 40 years that we're pulling from the show on the playfield. So you can really get in there and just find all these crazy details.' --- ## Transcript thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 126 i'm josh roop with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott we got two awesome guests on today but before we kick it over to them let's talk about flipping out pinball well i want to talk about flipping out pinball because my friend who i told you got the godzilla from him i thought was hilarious because his wife said that he was going to hold off until Christmas before he opened it. And I already saw a picture of it set up. He told his kids that they just fumigated their basement. Nice. So they can't go down there for two weeks. So anyway, it's good. And, you know, Zach and Nicole Mini, they have at Flip N Out Pinball basically anything you want, including the pinball machine from our current guests from Spooky Pinball. Their latest release is Looney Tunes and also Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So you can definitely pick out exactly what you want. If that is your style, definitely hit them up and they'll get you set up. So we want to welcome back Bug and his, what do you call your buddy here? You're like, you're henchmen. I don't know. It's Mickey Company. There's these two men. The larger one. Yeah. He's just the opposite shape as me. Yeah, totally. I'm the tall skinny. He's the short, wide. Kerry Hardy ran into us at a show once, and he's like, you guys are like two opposite ends of the spectrum. Evan Costello. That's exactly who I was thinking of. I think mostly Pinball goes by Spooky Luke, though. Yep. Spooky Luke. So far, that's what I've been dubbed. Nice. That's awesome. So I want to thank you guys for coming back on. This game looks insane. Whether you're a Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan or a Looney Tunes fan, I really think you're going to be happy with this. I've noticed on this layout you guys have kind of went more of, it seems really fast. It seems like the flow is really good there. I know like with Halloween it was kind of tiered with the stages and whatnot and it was kind of building up. But this is just kind of like brutal in your face. Like it might kick your butt, which makes sense with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah. Why did you go that direction? Well, I mean, obviously I think you guys probably wouldn't know as well as we do that people have been kind of hungering for that from us for a long time. We've done a lot. I mean, we've done some crazy stuff. Three upper playfields and a huge Scooby-Doo upper play field. We have done some wild things. So I think people were kind of just waiting to see us do a more, I guess. It's still sort of a question of can Bug and Luke do an Elwynn, Jack Danger, Flow Monster type game. We know they can do really weird stuff. We know they'll go out there and they'll try two upper playfields and a boat dock of an upper play field and all this weird stuff. So we wanted to try sort of a more classic Flow Beast with major mechanisms surrounding it that's integrated with it. So that was kind of our top priority going in, I guess, was getting a really, really, really great shooting layout. And being, you know, I guess you wouldn't call it state. Would you call it a standard game, I guess? Or it's not single level, really. It's just lacking in an upper play for once. It's just missing. But it has ramps. It's a modern game with ramps, not for play field, which is that's fine. A lot of games are that way. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, being able to do that, but then also we wanted to take our mechs, I guess, to the next level at the same time and not really inhibit flow with those mechs. Because that's the biggest problem when you get into mechanisms is you put some major mechanisms in there and all of a sudden the game is stop and start or whatever along those lines. I think being able to put those mechanisms in there in a way that the ball still keeps the flow of the game was really important for us in that one. and looking at this too so the one thing I don't know if you guys listen to ClickGitGamers but one thing they pointed out they were thinking that this was originally kind of done around Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then Looney Tunes was brought in afterwards is that the case? were they kind of just built in mind together? how did it work? we kind of knew that it was going to be a pain point going in with everyone they were going to be like if we do the dual theme again and we don't do them in tandem it's going to be Yeah. So from the get-go, we made sure to design them in tandem together. I mean, we knew what both themes were as soon as we were starting on the layout. So we were able to design both of them together, keeping both themes equally in mind. I think whoever, you know, buys their theme, I hope that they feel like they were the one that was catered to. Yeah. If you buy TCM, I hope you feel like they designed this one for me. And if you buy a Looney Tunes, I hope you feel like they designed it for me. I'm really hoping that's the argument. Like you hop into one owner's thread and it's like, this game was made for Looney Tunes and we want them to hop in the other one and be like, no, it was Texas Chainsaw. You know, like that's the goal anyway. We're trying to start turf wars. Yeah. We're trying to start arguments. That's what we're doing. But no, what's cool too is them being, even though they are so different, they're complete. I mean, you could not go two more different directions with your themes on that. Yeah. But a lot of stuff mechanism-wise works for both games. Like Leatherface spinning is an incredibly iconic shot. And then, you know, with spinning Taz, like Taz spin, you know. So being able to find those things that did overlap was actually oddly easy, I guess. The Leatherface spinning thing helps my argument with, like, certain Looney Tunes fans will feel like it was designed for them. Because they're like, well, Taz spins. Why is Leatherface spinning? And it's like, well, they don't know the end of the movie where he's throwing the chainsaw. Yeah, I actually did see that comment. Why is Leatherface spinning? Yeah, it's like, perfect. We did our job. If both sides don't realize, we did our job. Yeah, we have done it right. So let's talk about the theme selection. Now, the challenge that you guys have is that you are choosing themes that would resonate with an adult audience or a very specific audience. I mean, a lot of – you're into Halloween. You're into Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You're into Rob's – so these type of things. However, you're also very aware that you're not going to be able to sell to a mass audience with a very niche theme. So how did you choose to go with Looney Tunes? And what's the crossover when you're designing rules and flow and layout for those two things that actually Warner Brothers is wacky and violent in a comic way versus Chainsaw Massacre? So it's interesting to see how did you select the theme, the couple themes, and how did you make sure both were catered to? Yeah. You know, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we had Looney Tunes first, didn't we? Well, we had it signed up first, but we'd already been talking about Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well. We were talking with them, and back when we signed Scooby-Doo, I mean, like, Looney Tunes is obviously Warner Brothers, so is Scooby-Doo. we were already looking at the portfolio and like kind of picking some some items on there and uh we thought that you know scooby being most likely a great success with a theme with fans and everything we thought looney tunes would be a great follower right and there was a lot of people asking too for more saturday morning cartoon type of stuff everything after scooby-doo so it kind of just naturally we also didn't want to hear oh spooky's abandoning yeah horror themes you know halloween was two games ago now like we don't want them to abandon the horror that was so I guess that was probably the most major part of our decision, really, is when we did sign the Warner Brothers Scooby-Doo license, we signed Looney Tunes at the same time because we were able to pile those on the same contract. And with doing that, it was like, okay, now we have a decision to make because if we do Scooby-Doo and then just Looney Tunes by itself in a row, you know, are our customers or our fans going to feel like we have abandoned them in the horror market? or like we're not doing right by them and providing them with the themes they want to see. Because I do take a lot of response. And I've talked about this before, but I take a lot of responsibility that like when people make a purchase with us, I take that as like you're kind of you're making an investment or a contribution to the company for us to be able to come back and continue to make the themes that you want to see. Like when our horror customers turn out and buy the game from us and do that for us and support us in that way, I want to support them back and give them the themes that they want to see. You know, I don't want to do what we want to do necessarily so much as I want to make sure that the people who are supporting us are getting the themes that they deserve to get. And, you know, when they're spending money for us, they're not only getting their game, but they're setting up to see future games that they want to see. If you're a customer or a fan of us, we feel very morally obligated to make sure we continue to do things you like. Probably a little too much. We take it very seriously. We do. We don't like when people are mad at us. No, we don't want anyone to be mad at us. We don't wake up in the morning and do this so that we can upset people. That's not on our radar. But then to answer your question going into the code side of things, the immediate plan from the start was just the code can't have anything in common. The only thing that it can have in common is the fact that it's going to be using the same layout, but it's using the exact same layout in two entirely separate ways. I mean, both games have their own development team. their own rules direction their own programmers their own animators artists everything and like i'm sure there's a couple crossover things that are the same like you hit the captive ball to light lock but even how they go about doing that is completely different between the two games which is cool to see too because neither team really consulted the other team about rules so if they did land on some of the same rules that means the layout was just you know speaking to both teams and kind of telling them to go with those rules which is cool yeah so so one thing you talked about was licensing and i've had something on my mind and and if you guys can't talk about this this is fine but i i was told recently that like anything dating pre-83 it's a lot easier to deal with because the licensor kind of owns all the rights to it versus after 83 they're kind of divided up is that kind of one of the reasons you guys are doing stuff that's kind of pre-83 because really the only modern modern is rick and morty i mean the i mean that's probably like an accurate statement it's a decent general rule yeah i mean like the further back you go the less likely it was that people had agents who are still protecting their rights now i mean you compare it to like an 80s blockbuster of some sort like gremlins or something like i'm sure some of the actors in there are very well protected and covered and everything but uh back in like the 60s and 70s people just didn't really think that far ahead per se people just weren't pursuing their own likeness rights is hard back then it didn't seem like or if they were it was for a term not for all of time so i mean yeah i mean as a general idea i guess that's a this is a really good question by the way i'm actually really like this is a great question a lot of people don't technically is yeah that we deal with it is easier to go back in time you're right it is easier to go back i've never heard 83 before i wonder where does that come from that's because there was a lawsuit in 82 and when it went through when it when it went in favor of the plaintiffs that that then opened the floodgates that like actors and actresses could go after likenesses and stuff like that and and there's there's different stuff that i can point out but we're not going to go down that rabbit hole definitely in general like people can just see i guess a big cost in our game versus a lot of the manufacturers games out there and everything is how many of the assets and likeness rights that we do pursue. Like we, I mean, we pursue the majority of iconic things in our title. Like you've seen, even back to Rick and Morty having actually Justin Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon and all that. We always do try to get the largest part of the theme that we can get. And we do pay a premium price for that. I mean, we pay a premium price for that. But I think, again, that comes back to the same thing I was ranting about before, where we feel responsible with our customers that when they're supporting us and doing these things that we're going to go get them full assets and stuff for the titles that they want to see. So, yeah. Yeah. So the other thought I had in mind too, with all this is, so Scooby-Doo was 1969 because that was the year it came out. But with, with Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you guys have actually kind of went back about 200 units. So they're 88 or 888 piece, which equals about 1776. Is this like a strategic, because I mean, we can talk market all day and people can be bored because that's, that's all they're hearing left and right right now. But is this kind of one way to combat the market? And it, it's still, you're getting the same product on the line. It's not the same product, but like drilling wise and manufacturing wise, it's similar product you're doing. It keeps the factory line going, but it's not necessarily, you're limiting supply. You're going back to those limited numbers on those themes. We didn't go super low with it. I guess we weren't trying to like drive FOMO. I mean, it was going to be a dual theme no matter what. It just so happened that we managed to do it in a market where it somehow made the most sense for us to go into it. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I would love to tell you we're rocket scientists and we planned this perfectly. And I hope that's what most people think. But, I mean, it's, I wouldn't even say happy accident. I mean, it just kind of worked out that way. Well, like I said, it kind of demanded it too. when we were coming off of Scooby-Doo. We didn't want to go with too many cartoon themes in a row and have people feel like we abandoned them. But no, I mean, if you look at the combined units, they're kind of similar to Scooby-Doo. Generally, if we can, we like to stay consistent because we're hiring full-time people. We have to have work for 12 months a year. So if we're back to, say, Rick and Morty days, we sold 750 units, right? So then we're taking those 750 units and we're saying, okay, we need to keep our guys busy for 12 to 14 months with this. And then we break it down to that, and that's how many games we do. That's what determines how many games we do a day, you know. And then with obviously the way numbers have been going up and everything, we've been able to just keep kind of slowly scaling that up to meet that demand and everything. So I guess when people ask, people ask a lot of time, too, what's the benefit of pre-order? And it's like, that's actually a hugely beneficial thing for us. And during COVID, I had a lot of people reach out to me. They're like, how are you manufacturing right now? Like, how are you guys getting games out the door when other people aren't? It's like, well, if we know right away going in how many units we've sold and can plan for that, it makes us a lot more efficient. You know, whereas if you sell some units on day one and then they're sporadic throughout the entire year, you're always kind of chasing a little bit. It gets a little bit harder to plan for. But, you know, if you have all of your units sold right up front, you know, if everybody shows up on launch day and puts down their deposits and everything, we're able to plan for that and spread the efficiency perfectly throughout the year. Whereas if only 25% of our sales are on launch day and then they're trickling in throughout the year, we kind of have to start slow, you know, to guarantee that we're not going to run out of work. But then we can trickle up to meet that speed. But it just makes it a little bit more difficult. You wouldn't want to hit the ground absolutely sprinting at it. So, you know, if, for example, like, you know, if 300 Rick and Morty orders would have come in instead of 750, we wouldn't have planned on building 750 right away and built ourself out of work in three months. Because the next thing you know, you're releasing three titles a year to keep working your shop. And that's not good. I mean, it's not good for anyone. You know, the pinball market doesn't need three more titles released per year from anyone right now. Yes, next year is Kooky Pinball doing four games. Yeah, we're going to do five releases. And it's just tougher, too. It makes it hard to get ahead on code. You want to have your builds take a decent amount of time because you want to be able to get ahead on code and provide people with more complete code at launch and everything. Yeah. Spreading that work out is definitely really important for us with having full-time employees. We're not just bringing on some people and then throwing them out the door. We don want to do that That not what we about you know so the the one thing that I would give you guys top versus anybody else is everything It's the entire game. Edit that out. Okay. Visuals. Like you see a spooky game and your art is fantastic. like the way it looks across the room is a hundred percent better than I would say in any other machine, or at least it's on, it's certainly competing at the highest level. So how do you approach your art packages? How do you probably, the bottom line is day one, when Halloween came out, you sold so many units based on it looked so good. Yeah, absolutely. And so like, how do you approach the art for your games? I mean step one is just hire really good freaking artists yeah and we have we've always gotten very lucky and done that I mean and we've we've explored out past who the the typical pinball artists would be I mean like Jeff Zornow and Matt Frank are both comic book artists that I grew up reading their Godzilla in Ultraman comic books and we were just like these guys are so good and we just had grown personal relationships with them over the year. And Brad Duke reaching out to us pre-Looney Tunes, he was like, hey, here's some stuff I used to do at Deep Root. He's like, I love pinball. I love that I got into this. He really has a knack for what pinball art is. Just knowing, too, which artists are going to be good at that theme. I mean, we spend plenty of time talking about which artist is going to be perfect for that theme. Yeah, you really do have to consider, I mean, what you're working with with the license. I mean, are they saying you have to take these images and base your things off that? Are they saying you have freedom to do whatever you like? What's the theme going to look like? Is it going to look like a comic book? Are we going for realism? Are we going for a cartoon? You just have to really pay attention to what the theme is and what artists you're putting on the project. well speaking of artists you guys have posted the looney tunes artist brad duke on your page and and kind of gave a look can you give a little more story to this because it says that he reached out to you guys a long time ago yeah it's kind of a funny story really yeah he uh i was i got an email from this this guy i'd never heard of and his name was brad duke and he opened his email saying hey i wanted to introduce myself my name is brad uh i used to be an artist at deep root which I know is a terrible way to introduce myself. And he's like, please stay. Don't delete this email. He's like, please keep reading. And he goes on to say, yeah, he got hired on at Deep Root. He's like, I've literally done nine full pinball machines at this point, like design concepts and playfields and cabinets. And we hopped on a meeting and he was showing me his artwork. And I was like, this is really good. This is phenomenal. And he was brand new into pinball. But he reached out to us after Deep Root kind of went their way or however that went. When the government stepped in. When they got arrested. He was just like, hey, I know Deep Root wasn't such a great thing to be a part of, but I really am loving pinball. He's like, I've really gotten into this hobby. He's on all the forums. He's checking things out. He's buying games. And he's like, I really want to stay in this industry. I think it's great. Is there any chance I can do anything with you guys? and you know we just tried them out on a couple things on Scooby-Doo on screen that we were like oh yeah you know we could use an extra screen for this thing here we need some images for that and he was just right on top of it turned it around quickly it was very good quality he really knew how to make his colors pop he understood just how you're supposed to make the artwork for pinball friendly guy and we were like oh you know let's just have him try out Looney Tunes I mean we were We're kind of getting ready to start doing some concepts here in the cabinet and everything. We'll throw that his way. We'll just see if he has it, and if it doesn't work out, then that's fine. At least we gave him a shot or whatever. We can work it out. And the concepts he sent back, first off, he sent them back quickly. Yeah, and that's a big thing too. Which is huge when you're dealing with licensors and major corporations that the turnaround time is quite a while. Approvals are never quick, so having a quick artist is. Who's ready to jump right on top of what you're asking for is huge. And what he turned around was just so freaking good. He just completely understood everything we were going for. I thought it was final. I thought he was done with it. I looked at it, and I was like, this is the play field art? I'm like, this is amazing. This is a rough sketch. I mean, obviously we give him direction on like it's in the Acme factory, these are what the shots are doing. But the lack of direction he still required was just so impressive. He just ran with everything and understood it. So many little things in the play field people are going to get to see, too. Yeah, and the microscopic details he was putting in all the Acme products. And one of my favorite things that I can't wait to highlight is all over the play field there's rolls of film reels because a part of the Looney Tunes game is that you're collecting film reels. And in those film reels, he drew his own sketches and scenes from the show. So in every single film reel, you can see an iconic moment from the 30, 40 years that we're pulling from the show on the play field. So you can really get in there and just find all these crazy details he included. But yeah, that's the Brad Duke story. It probably helped a lot too. I mean he did nine concepts and he was rubbing shoulders with some of the most iconic names in pinball at that point too of the past history. So I mean looking at this play field, it's insanely cool. It feels very like Bally Williams 90s. Like it's giving me like Pat Lawler vibes with like whirlwind and like with the squares in the middle and the lightning bolts. And just it just looks really, really good, especially this. I'm not going to lie. Like Brad does not look old at all. I don't know how old he is. I think he's like he's probably your age. Yeah, maybe like 20. A lot of us are young guys. Yeah. In general. Yeah. They were back then too, actually, in the 90s. Yeah. Seriously, they were. Yeah, no. Yeah. Sometimes you get a lot of creative juices. It's kind of a forgotten part of pinball too. It's like those guys were young in the heyday of all that stuff. I wish I could share my meme I made. Now, I will say that, and you touched on it, I'm actually, and heaven knows, I have been hypercritical on many aspects of Deep Root. But I would say they land squarely on the con artist who was running this. Like there's actually, if you can see a silver lining, there's a lot of things that actually came out of that, including, you know, Steven Bowden going in and Barry was working for a while. And if he comes out with artists, and we know that even going back to Zidware, like Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti). so there are there are things that can can actually be positive about that dumpster fire that deep room was and so i'm really glad that he gave that he that you gave him a chance to say yeah that's a good way of looking at it yeah we're because we also the animator on looney tunes also deep root brad do we he's like oh i have this friend by the way i worked with him on a handful of things he did he animated my art a lot if he could work on looney tunes with us you know we up a good relationship we could really get it done yeah like yeah go for it man like it worked out with you we're also just not really those kind of guys in general like we're not gonna throw anyone that comes to us and is like hey i want to work on this we're not just gonna throw people out right away we're gonna hear them out and see their stuff like we're always looking to include good people in what we do so i noticed that you guys have in the past it's usually been a two-tier system like the bloodsuckers edition and i can't remember if it's the standard or the collectors that you guys do but it looks like you've actually added a third tier this time so you've got standard uh rick and morty we had two tiers yeah ever since then yeah we've been three tiers we were we were three tiers on halloween it's just you forget about the standard because not many people buy it it's a small percentage it's actually the most limited of them all yes oh by far yeah there's not there is not very many out there at all we i can see how it really got lost in the weeds with halloween and ultraman 2 just being as there's two games six total models and And we've kicked around not like just going to one model too, because if you look and I don't know if you guys agree, maybe it's just my opinion or whatever. But I mean, our, our CE price is right in there with like a mid-level price for a lot of companies. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Whatever. Your price is quite competitive. Yes. Yeah. And I guess. We include a hell of a lot. Yeah, we do. I mean, the color, like if you look, I guess if you really dig into what we include between the powder coated coin door and the custom rails and all the powder coat to match everything and extra decals and all the custom art and stuff, you know. interior blades i i do think that we're competitive enough with our ce price being at that mid-tier price for a lot of people that maybe there would be a world where we drop off the other two models and just have one because it would make it easier to make all of them for everyone um and it would actually probably help the the affordability of that model even if we only had to tool up one version you know so but that on the on the flip side though this we've talked about this model before with cars if you're just selling one one model a car you're gonna drop out the people who want a higher version of it and also the people who want a lower version yeah that's a good point yeah then there's not available which i guess with us you do have some availability of high because we do have the the direct print option sure and some other stuff like that so i guess there is some higher availability but yeah that's i mean that's why we haven't changed anything right it's like we've we go back and forth on it it's like it's hard to say sometimes sometimes even we don't know so i i want to go into kind of the difference you kind of talked about looney tunes you're trying to collect the films is so that's the base gameplay like what else are we trying to do inside of looney tunes to advance where we're going yeah so in looney tunes uh essentially the the game's story is that uh taz has gone through and he's just completely destroyed the Acme factory and he's still in the factory. He's causing mayhem all over the place. And so Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, like the whole gang, the whole Looney Tunes gang is in there. They're trying to put the factory back together and they're collecting film footage while they're in there. Because when Taz went through there and destroyed everything, he tossed around all the golden era film footage everywhere. And they're like, oh man, that's, that's the heyday of Looney Tunes. We can't lose this. So you're, you're essentially a recruit at the Acme factory and you're helping them collect the film footage to put it back together so that you can re-watch the episodes you're collecting acme themed items like oh man there's luke peters has so many different yeah they're all stacked at the top of the screen rocket skates and punching gloves and and super glue uh duck bat outfits and like all these crazy things that work as like power-ups in the game and uh yeah marvin the martian has some special modes in the game as well because he he he was working on some top secret Martian inventions for Acme that didn't quite hit the market yet. It's a really fun original story. I'm glad we have one in the game. I feel like that might have been the one thing that was missing in Scooby. Yeah, just the overarching. But Scooby has its own story. Everyone knows the overarching story of Scooby-Doo. You're going to cases, solving histories, and whatnot. Yeah. But Looney Tunes definitely needed something, like a reason that you were going to be a part of all the golden era episodes and everything. It needed a reason, and I love the story that we created for it. I think it's really fun. And then the cool part, the flip side of that coin, with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you guys are actually, you play as the killers. Yeah, that was a really early decision that we made. We kind of almost knew that, right? Like, we were going to do that. We planned on it almost, I guess. Yeah, well, we definitely knew coming off Halloween, we needed to make our minds up on if you are for sure the killer or for sure the survivor. Yeah, because in Halloween, it was kind of both, right? Like, sometimes, depending on what mode you were in. Yeah, very loosely. It definitely could have been a lot more solidified. Yeah. The thing with Texas Chainsaw is if you're the survivor, how the heck are we going to use the film assets to show you got away when nobody – When no one got away. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't make sense. It's kind of tough to put that one together. I think it's also just a cool concept to be the actual – And it's special because, well, you might think, oh, playing as the killer would get boring, but it's not just one killer in the Texas Chainsaw. It's numerous killers. So that really spices it up and makes things very unique in how we can go about each of the different modes when you're the different killers. You're not just choosing one either. You're switching them throughout gameplay. So every time you hit that and you switch it, if you know what you have almost ready or what modes you have almost ready, you can choose the right character for that mode. To get special perks and bonuses. So you're not just stuck in one character. A lot of games, it's like you start, then you character select. Even Scooby, you start, then you character select. This is not like that. It's fluid, and you can keep using it to your advantage throughout the game. And the family in Texas Chainsaw, they're so different that it's really fun, the things that we can do with the perks between them. Like Leatherface is obviously going to be better at killing people. He's going to get all the kills. But you play as the cook, and when you're in the gas station mode, the items you sell are worth more because he runs the gas station all day. And when you're in the cook's mode, he gets special bonuses for actually cooking the meat and everything like that. So the fact that the family members are all so different makes their perks and items so much more unique and fun. Yeah, well, and one of the unique parts about this, too, is I was watching the gameplay footage, and you talked about, because the grandpa drinks blood or whatever, filling up the whole play field, the LEDs become blood, and it slowly drains out of the play field. and yeah as you hit shots lower and as the blood gets lower on the play field the shots that are above it no longer work so like it's completely full and you're hitting the ramps up top and you drain it below those ramps now you got to focus on your shots that are below because the blood isn't up there anymore because it'd be like it'd be like if you had a straw and you were above your drink like well that doesn't make sense you're getting the liquid okay i will say i don't think anybody who buys Texas Chainsaw Massacre wants to play as the survivor? No. I play the video game. I never play as the survivor. Never. Well, one question I've heard floating around about this, and I'm going to ask to keep this as family-friendly as we can, but is this going to have the first topless scene in a pinball machine? No, Halloween does. Halloween actually does. Yeah, it's crazy. Halloween has nudity, but Texas Chainsaw doesn't. A lot of people don't know it. There is actually a topless scene in Halloween. Like, full on. It's there. Which, keeping it as family friendly as possible, I do think spooky pinball deserves some form of award. Yeah. For putting the first topless scene in a pinball machine on Halloween. I feel like that was worth something. I don't think, there's no nudity in Texas Pants. No, there's not. There's none. But then there's also, look at Rob Zombie in the extra ball scene too as well. I mean, that's classic. That's classic. Yeah, it was pre-LCD. We were the first to do dots. And LCD. Yeah, no kidding. We're on top of it. We stay on top of what matters. Sure, it took us a while to get extra fall on Halloween, but we have the moves. Okay, so let's talk about the different versions that you're offering. Now, we talked briefly about them. So I'm your customer. Sell me on why I should get each version. Like two CDs? Each version. Yeah, sure. Tell us what, like what, if I'm like the bargain shopper, you're like, okay, so these are, this is the important stuff you're getting. This stuff is really pretty, but you get the gameplay on this. However, if you want the prettiest thing for your game room, this is why you need it because it has this, this, this. So one of the biggest things, I guess, is our standard is still a really decent deal in pinball. As far as having full gameplay, we're not taking out a whole upper play field. We're not taking out a whole mechanical feature in the game as far as one that actually affects gameplay. We might take out a sculpt that moves around a little bit, things like that, but we want to make sure that they playing the whole same game So having that I think is a big selling point on the standard I think I guess I probably hop right up to the CE I mean we could go over that all day just the amount of things I mean, still having a physical knocker, shaker, a real back glass, a topper included, your lighted speaker grills. We now have custom art over top the speaker grills, your interior graphics, your powder-coated side rails, and we even do lighted buttons. Nobody else is doing lighted buttons. Full RGB, by the way. Yeah, they're full RGB. They have light shows that go with them. It's the same driver. And you have two buttons on the right side, I noticed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that second button on the right side is actually used in, like, Looney Tunes for selecting some of those Acme items that we were talking about earlier. It's got a cool Mario Kart set to it. I would rather have two buttons on one side than one on the lockdown bar. Like, especially if you're using it in a game, yeah. Okay. Interesting. Well, we did both. No, I'm looking at it, and I see both. But I know there's a little bit of a skill of hitting the lockdown button while you're trying to control the balls. But, yeah. Yeah. But then I think, you know, you take all that. And I really do believe, and like I've said it before, I think our CE is the best deal in pinball. I really do. We load that thing up. But then the bloodsucker is just kind of a nice mix between those two reasons that I just noted. It's kind of the perfect middle ground and everything. So we do have a – I mean, we have good reasons to keep the system that we have. keeping it somewhat vague, but like if you were to buy any other company's mid tier option, which is about the price of our CE to get it to the state of where our CE is, you're going to be spending a lot of money to the point where you almost are just buying one. You're going to put a couple thousand dollars. Yeah. So I mean, our CE, like it's always funny when our CEs come out because the mod guys go, dang, yeah. What are we going to do? They didn't really leave a lot to add here. We do the smallest things, too. Even the start button and the launch button are always customized. They have a little custom art on them. Small stuff like that. I think it really does. That's part of the reason why you're saying when you step back and look at the game, they do look so beautiful. I think that's part of it. We do every little detail throughout the game. Everything somebody would do to mod out their game, we already have it done for you. And at the price that other companies sell a mid-tier edition for. well even even like your wire forms they're on you know they're they're powder coated i don't see it's a two-part process actually too so they're laying down that color first and then they do a clear coat over top of it a totally separate layer clear coat ramp thing to rest here the oh the the where yeah i i heard a lot of people bringing that up now so yeah it's a great question it's a good question it is yeah totally valid there's there's two good reasons for that You know, I guess three things I'd like to touch on with that. Number one is, like, we do want to make sure everything in the game just pops. We want it to be perfect. And that's why we do powder coat all the ramps and the rails and everything like that. With that said, too, we had that in Scooby. Yeah, Scooby, both ramps. The ramps and habit trails in Scooby are powder coated. So far, we're not having issues. I don't think we've ever sent a single ramp out for the powder coat shipped because of the ball hitting it. I don't think it's ever happened once on over the thousand Scooby-Doos. I'm also not going to sit on here and say just because we test our games, and they've obviously been powder coated for almost two years now and everything with our prototypes, and we've had no issues, but things do happen. Maybe it could happen. I don't think that it's likely. But the best part about us is if it does. if someone says, you know, Hey Luke, my, my left upper ramp ship or chipped or whatever, you know, we're going to send them the new left upper ramp. You know, we're going to drop it. We're not going to charge them, you know, stuff like that. We don't have a problem. Part of, again, part of when people spend money with us is we're, we're planning on taking care of them. If something like that comes up, you know, so, and then even farther with that, just in case when I, when I was doing a lot of the engineering for the stuff. So if you look at Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw, the optos are actually attached to the habitrails. So all you have to do to pop those ramps out and put them back in is just a couple of screws. Two screws. So, I mean, you can leave your habitrail wired right in place and you pop your two screws out of your ramp, take your ramp out, slide your new one in, pop your two screws back in the same holes, and you got a new ramp in the game. You don't have to remove anything else. There's nothing on top in your way. In the first place, you're very, very, very likely not going to have to replace this ramp anyway. And even if you do, one, it's free, and two, we made it as easy as possible to do. We do put a lot of thought into that stuff just in case. And even try to cover ourselves the best we can when we don't even think there's going to be an issue. You know, we're still, we haven't had, I mean, our playfields have been rock solid for years and years and years. and we still take, I guess, so many precautions every time we're designing a game that we're trying to avoid play field damage in any way that we can. I mean, there's things on Scooby that we learned that we're not going to share. Okay. But there's little secrets we learned on Scooby that we were like, oh, we should do that in the next one. That would make it even safer. And it's been flawless. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about voice actors and the call-outs. because, okay, one, the question is, who's going to do the call-outs for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and who wrote the script? And also, with Looney Tunes, everybody knows Mel Blank did all the iconic voices. So, obviously, Mel's not around anymore. How are you going to find someone who's able to replicate that for the call-outs? Yeah, so, Looney Tunes. We went and we hired Eric Bauza, who you can ask around. is he is the Looney Tunes voice actor. He plays all... It's not like we went and hired him either. That is Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes voice actor now. This is who they're using. Yeah, Warner Brothers gives you a list, like they did on Scooby. They gave us a list. Here are the approved Scooby-Doo voice actors if you want to go get one. And we chose from that list. Same thing here. They gave us a list. We saw Eric Bauza, and we went and we got ourselves Eric Bauza. And, I mean, he is the official Looney Tunes voice actor. He does all their movies and their TV shows. He's amazing, too. He's all over the place with everything he does with them. And, yeah, he's absolutely incredible. And when I was talking about him, he brought up Mel Blanc constantly about, here are the specific things you have to do to channel your inner Mel Blanc when you're voicing these characters that other Looney Tunes voice actors haven't done previously. And he was like, here's why this is going to sound better when he's doing those specific voices. And it does. It sounds amazing. He sounds absolutely phenomenal. He did some of our best call-outs of all time from a standpoint of bringing the energy. Because you think back to the Medieval Madness days and the Addams Family days, how good call-outs were. And Medieval Madness, you get extra ball, and that wizard dude is just bellering about it. And I told Eric Bowser, I was like, dude, do not hold back. When you say super jackpot, give it everything you got. He was like, oh, I know that Looney Tunes does some yelling. Yeah. And what he let fly each time is so – I was laughing my tail off when we were recording. I was just like, oh, my God, this is going to be so good. Even like we were saying when Don was playing, he was just like giggling to himself the entire time. Yeah. Just because it's so much fun. It really is. Phenomenal, phenomenal voice actor. I don't think I would be – you'd be – I think you'll really be hard-pressed to find a person who can play that game and not be smiling when he hears those call-outs. I really think you'd be hard-pressed to find that. Absolutely. Because he's Canadian, does he finish every call-out with A? Not in any of them that I've heard, no. Don't you know? So back to Scott's question, though. Are you using movie clips for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or did you get a voice actor for that? Yeah, yeah. So Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we have access to the original audio as well, so we're pulling the audio from all the actors who were the, I guess you'd say, survivors. They weren't. The survivors in that movie. The remnants of the movie? Yeah, exactly. And then we also got Edwin Neal, who played the original Hitchhiker in the movie. He just did the Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game, which obviously got a major release across the whole world. His call-outs are really fun, too. He sounded freaking great in the video game. So we got him on board for the project for the pinball machine. And, yeah, he recreated some of his original lines from the movie just because it's fun to have him do that. We still have the audio from the original movie. He also did a ton of call-outs just saying very bizarre, creepy, crazy things that Ben and I wrote for him. I was just in the office today while he was playing the game, and I was just laughing to myself here and overhearing some of the stuff that I hadn't heard. There is some type. Because, like, the thing is with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is like it's secretly kind of a funny movie yeah like there's moments in the movies that are like just really really dark humor i think that's why i make sure with looney tunes as well though yeah and i wanted to make sure that the game still had those moments where you're just like jeez it's messed up but like you're giggling about it so there and there's some callouts in the game that you're just like god i'm playing this so he did a really really wonderful job with that And then beyond that, we still wanted to have more voices in the game. I mean, it's always good to have more than one character. And we figured that as far as giving you direction on what you should be doing, the movie opens up with a booming narrative voice. So we had Scott Scott Innes, who is famous for obviously Scooby-Doo. I mean, he voices Shaggy, Scooby. He voices all the monsters. Just an insanely talented voice actor. So he recreated that original opening narrative dialogue, and we use it all over the game for direction and what you'll be doing. And Ben wrote all sorts of really just fun, creative, descriptive intros that sound like you're reading a horror comic book, almost, when you're entering in these modes. So between the two of them, the callouts are really great in the game, and then, yeah, we have the original movie to pair with it. It's just another area that we've been really fortunate. we have worked with some really, really top quality voice guys. Yeah. They're professionals. Like these are good, good guys. And with that narrative voice too, we also, you know, applied effects to it and everything. So it sounds like it's coming from the original movie. Because the important thing with the games is like your sound has to match the whole way through. Otherwise it can be pretty jarring or weird sounding. So we made sure the sound matches all the way through. Yeah. Well, one thing I got to applaud you guys on too is you like immerse the game into the universe of what you're doing too i noticed even like in the description of the movie or when you were doing the the video on these on texas chainsaw massacre it's it's you're still having to say rampant stuff like it's hard to get around like i know a lot of people complain like you need to name it something and then call it by that name it's like it's kind of hard though to to to do that but i noticed that you guys are you take that world and you and you splash it into pinball machine you refer to some of that stuff not necessarily as the ramp and stuff like that but like even on looney tunes like in this front left i'm assuming this is the anvil ramp because it's the only one that has anvils that lead up to it so is that something you guys consciously think of when you're going into these games absolutely yeah yeah definitely i mean one of my favorite things about pinball right is like pinball is still a very niche hobby technically Like we are in a pretty small community here and we get really excited about seeing our favorite thing come to our pinball world. Like we want to hear our favorite shows, movies, bands acknowledge that pinball exists. And even better if they're in a pinball machine, like we want them to be acknowledging us. So I've always really loved incorporating that into our scripts. When the Looney Tunes characters know that they're in a pinball machine. yeah yeah definitely but then of course like yeah it's it still is better to have as much theme integration as possible as for like what your shots are like shooting the door the texas chainsaw door like everybody's gonna know what that is so yeah well it that is actually very smart and by the way i do have to bring this up because it is hilarious i have both uh scooby doo and or sorry i have both texas chainsaw massacre and looney tunes kind of on a loop so I can just get a visual for the game. And the ad that popped up into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre video is this giant machete hatchet for cutting up meat. No way. So I took some pictures. I'll have to send it to you. But I'm just laughing. I'm like, well, that's ironically cross-promotional. Just in case you want to open your own Texas Chainsaw franchise, guys, these are the knives that you should use. Yeah. No kidding. That's funny that they're chopping meat, too, because we literally have a mode in the game that is about, it's so great. I didn't get to show it in the video yet. There's still so many modes. Yeah, that was the hard part. It was such a brief video. I know. There was seriously like seven other modes that I was like, oh, those ones would have You'll get to all of them, though. Yeah, but there's a mode in the game where essentially like you slap a slab of meat on the play field and the shots are lit as such. and as you shoot them, it's as if you're cutting it. So you shoot a shot and then that section would slide off and then you shoot a shot and that section, like everything past it slides off. So it's literally like you're cutting up meat on the play field. Nice. I love that concept. That's cool. Yeah. Ben is a really detail-oriented programmer too. So being able to work with him and have him actually implement those things that are that small and nuanced and everything, it's cool. I've had the most fun working on pinball code that I've ever had working with Ben on this game because he's just as ridiculous as me. Yeah. We can sit in a room and go like, can we get the meat to literally slide off? Like as if it was like, and put a sound effect with it as if like the shots are meat. He's on the same wavelength as us for things like that. So I had an absolute blast working with him on the game. No, that's awesome. And actually, that is a very smart move to have almost like the Muppet show in Looney Tunes where you see behind the scenes of them putting the show on, if you go with me. And so having them behind the scenes of being part of the factory saying, hey, we're part of the production, that's a very smart, savvy move. also having for Texas Chainsaw having like a yes you're in the movie and this is what's going on it's not over the top creepy because there is a level of camp that you're like this is so ridiculous that there's no like this is yeah it seems almost like yes it's a giggle fest because it's just so ridiculous what's going through it there's again to bring back like having your favorite characters acknowledge pinball there were so many call outs that if you pulled it from another game but have the hitchhiker say it it gets exponentially creepier so one of my favorites is uh if for extra ball i had the hitchhiker say keep the ball i have a bucket full family but when the hitchhiker says he has a bucket full it's a little gross that's funny well and you guys have kind of had cultivated this uh relationship with warner brothers and kind of the the cartoon network side of things it makes me wonder too because adult swim has brought in some really cool titles like cowboy bebop and i know scott's always talking about venture brothers venture brothers are these are these titles that you guys would consider doing down the road or something like that? We want to do all of the titles. I actually have to kind of pull him back in because he like we need to get this one and this one and this one and this one because people are going to love it It like you don want anyone else to be able to do it You just want to do them all yourself and everything. I will go sign way too many titles. Yeah. Nobody keeps an eye on me. I just keep talking. You just end up falling into these things and you're like, oh, this is so cool. We can't put a hold on this. We've got to go get that. No, honestly. Dude, no one's going to hold on to a contract for 15 years. You got to slow down. Yeah. That's really why Luke got hired, right? Like you're like the parent with their kid on the leash at the licensing convention. We found each other out in many ways. It's weird because like I, you know, it's funny that you say that because I get carried away on all of the opposite things that he does. Yeah. So we kind of perfectly keep each other in check in that way. Yeah. Because everything he gets carried away on just happens to be stuff that I do not at all. And everything that I do, he does not at all. so it actually works out perfectly it really does you know people ask sometimes it's like how do you guys design games together and everything it we just everything that we want in the game are such separate things that work well together that just it works out so wait you both have a general trust of what the other person's uh you know ideas and opinions are on certain matters like there's just certain things that i really trust luke on making the right call and there's certain things he trusts me on making the right call so it's really been a a wonderful yeah like when he's talking about the overarching theme of looney tunes it's like that is not not my not my there's definitely things that each of us can help the other way as far as getting it integrated in the game you know but when you ask me you know is this shot possible or can we do it at that price yeah that's a different different thing but we do try to keep a really good idea of what themes people want from us like we're always i guess you guys probably see we're active on on all the social media sites we try to listen to to the shows and everything we try to keep in i guess as close an eye on the the heartbeat of that stuff as possible so that's the main way i guess we choose our theme so if if people want themes from us you don't yell it at the top of the rooftop i guess you know put it everywhere you can because we'll pick up on it and we'll we'll make it all right i've told you Adventure Brothers. It writes itself. Yep. I'll put one on my checklist. I'll put one. You can even do a double thing. You can do Adventure Brothers and Johnny Quest because it's the same show. Yeah. I got to look up Scott Pilgrim. Let's see. Who's that? Scott Pilgrim, yeah. Okay. One thing I do want to talk about, though, is pinball is a business. And you have talked about this. Okay. Okay. Like so you're splurging on making sure you have every single bling on there. You're also splurging on licenses because you want to make sure people feel like they're fulfilled. You're making sure visually it's really cool. Okay, how can you still do that and keep your build down? Because people still – Yeah, eventually – okay. But at some point, you're going to say, okay, we need to be a little more economical in this. And now I'm going to point out you are manufacturing in a place that is less expensive than Chicago. So I guarantee your overhead is significantly cheaper than it is at the Chicago manufacturers. I mean, I can rant about this. You guys got two more hours? Because this is where you'll get me to just drone on and on and on and on. We have some strong opinions here. But even with what you said, like with manufacturing being cheaper here, our labor cost has legitimately doubled since probably, what, 2016? I mean, you guys know as well as we do with the economy, that stuff has skyrocketed. But something I guess I think a lot of people know now, but not everyone, is how much of our own work we've set up to be able to control. Which it kind of goes back to the COVID thing where people were asking me, how are you guys making machines when other people aren't? It's like, well, we're making our own metal parts. We're doing all these things in-house. We're printing and we're printing our own decals. We don't have a landlord. Yeah, exactly. All those interior graphics, everything, we're making a lot of that stuff all ourselves, which helps us be able to pass on that, I guess, those savings to the customer. And that's why we're able to do that CE level machine at the premium type price. I don't know if you guys can really talk to this or not. I know that you in the past, you've shared how the out of the gate things have went. How are the out of the gate going with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes? Yeah. So this is a lot of fun right now, actually, because everybody is like, you know, with today's market and everything, it's everyone saying, you know, we don't we don't want to rush in and that. Right. So it's going to be really everyone's like sitting on the other seats like, did it work? Are they? How many? Where am I online? What am I doing? Did they? How many did they sell? Nobody knows or anything. so no we're honestly still tallying numbers everything so we won't know for sure for probably another week we're still working on the game numbers and everything we ask for every morning what game numbers are we're still we're like we also we have more distributors now than we ever did before so you know getting that figured out between them and everything here's what i will say uh today looney tunes just so ever so slightly pulled yeah whoa very nice okay I will say, okay, Looney Tunes would be a better fit in my house. I think that's why it just so slightly took a hit. I do love, though, it's like movies. I love that there are movies for all types. And I'm really glad that you guys are not just sticking with all the mainstream stuff. You are exploring areas that maybe companies are selling at higher volume, higher overhead. They can't touch because it's just – I'm still shocked that the closest horror theme that a major company – I would say a high volume. I hope that doesn't sound bad, but like a high volume manufacturer would be like The Walking Dead by Stern, which still kind of surprised me that they made it to be frank. It just so happened to be the biggest show on the freaking planet. Okay, sure, but you look at the play field and you're like, wow, that is – there's a lot of blood on there. Yeah. You know what's crazy? We've been getting so many comparisons to Walking Dead on TCM. Visually, yes. No, we didn't. We never once compared or contrasted to Walking Dead. And the first person that said it, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. One game we haven't run into a lot either, honestly. No, I honestly have an extremely limited experience with Walking Dead as a whole. Yeah. Let's be honest, though. I would say Walking Dead, though, you take the title card off of it, and it's just a zombie game. Sure, yeah. Yeah. Anyhow. I was saying visually, though. It's like lots of red, lots of blood splatter, that kind of stuff, which really isn't specific to that. I mean, that's really the horror genre. You could probably put that on everything. So I'm really glad that you guys are willing to take the risks and make things for the themes that are less mainstream. I guess I'll put it that way. And put Unity into pinball machines. Come out, support us and everything because we're going to do that stuff. We're going to do stuff that other people aren't going to ever release for you. If people come out and keep supporting us and everything, we're going to keep coming out with the games that they may have never gotten. so if someone wants to buy your game what are the options that they can they can order it so yeah basically the best thing to do is just go to our website um just spookypinball.com from there you're going to be able to see we have all of our authorized distributors on there um so you can go that direction otherwise you can order it right on our website as well direct so you just go to shop and then you scroll down and you can buy yourself a texas chainsaw masker a looney tunes you can even buy yourself a scooby yeah so you can still buy a Scooby, you can do all three. We'll cut you a special bundle pack. The triple pack. Yeah, we haven't made anything like that yet. We should probably do that. Just use discount code LOSERKID and you'll get your triple pack. There you go. We could have a free hat. Is there anything else? We're running out of time. Is there anything else you guys want to cover before we close this up? No. I think we hit all the – Yeah, we've been rambling for weeks here. So I think everyone's, we just wanted to come out here and I guess answer your guys' questions and everything. I mean, just to really send it home once again, though, I mean, the CE model, like we said, we really do put absolutely everything we can into those games, whether that's the custom armor and the powder coating and then the mechanisms and the sculpts and everything. But beyond that, the assets from these franchises and licenses and everything, whether that's, you know, the likeness rights, or we go get the original call-outs or we hire the professional actors who literally make their new movies, whatever it may be, the music, everything. We for sure think that our CD is hands down the best deal. I think the reason we keep rambling about that is we have been, like both of us have just been so excited because this feels like to us, I guess, the one where it kind of all came together. Like we think that this layout is really top shelf. Like a lot of people who've been, I guess, 50-50. I like Spooky's Layouts. I hate Spooky's Layouts, whatever. You know, we're always pretty controversial in that regard. Like I think this is the layout that is going to kind of bring everyone together. And then with having all of the movie assets, because going into Halloween, that was a big thing too. We had the movie assets, but it was, you know, a specific set amount of clips. And then it ended up being, I mean, it did end up being like well over 30, almost 40 video clips. We got it there over time. But being able to just go into Texas Chainsaw Massacre with just this load of just a whole movie. We can use a whole movie, everything. There's just no, I mean, completely like leash off. And then obviously Looney Tunes with having the episodes that we have and everything, it's just as loaded as Scooby-Doo. So I think just seeing all of that finally come together, layout, and then Eric Krepke, obviously great programmer, known for Rick and Morty on Looney Tunes, and then Ben Heck just completely blew us away on TCM. With his ability, yeah. We've talked about that before. We weren't sure if Ben was going to be able to come back into the current pinball level of code that's needed, and, oh, dude, he showed up. When we were bringing him on, we were like, Ben, you do understand this isn't AMH. Like, there's a new level of, I guess. Integration and depth. And he just literally freaking blew everyone away, like blew everyone out of the water. We're like, all right, you win. you know so yeah we got to say overall like there's obviously so many behind the scenes things that we never talk or share this was our best launch yeah it really was it was okay this i will say this layout just for me not playing it yet this looks like your best layout it looks like your best layout it looks like things are coming together and i'm actually going to do one more plug for you in that for spooky i love that if you want all the bells and whistles you can get them yeah like it's not like there's this hey we're only making 200 of the best option we're only making 300 of the best option you're like hey this is how many we're doing and how the orders come in depend on what we're going to make and so if there's more like uh you know the collector's edition that's probably the most common one because people want all the bells and whistles. Yeah. And so, so I like that because there's one thing that I'm frustrated when they have like, okay, if you really want all the bells and whistles, then you have to pay this kind of ridiculous FOMO premium. Uh, and, and we don't really have options that you could level up your own game. So you have to go after market. So I, I like that that's an option for you. And I'm really excited. I'm really excited to flip this because it looks like a lot of fun and both of them really do look distinct and they look like they're complete packages and i love i it looks it looks like a lot of fun that's the largest feedback we've probably gotten is just how different they feel even when you're playing them side by side i think don said it yeah recently he was like if you put these in two different parts of the arcade most people probably wouldn't notice that's the same layout i got two questions left for you the the first question is when's the first time we can what show is this going to be the first time we can play these at it looks like texas i i want to get to a show we're ready to get to a show and get it somewhere but i just don't think there's anything popping up until texas for us so you know march at texas pinball festival sounds like we're going to try to have a whole bunch there's like a major show we're missing that i don't know about yeah i don't know okay so if you want them to come to your show All the people who have major shows out there, minor shows, reach out. Yeah, absolutely. Just send bug at spookypillow.com an email. Yeah, yeah. And then actually a third question popped in mind. So my second question is going to be when do these hit the line? When are you going to start cooking these? They're on there right now actually. The cabinets have been going up over the last few days here. They're getting them wired up, kind of getting things figured out, getting parts in. And, you know, it always takes us a second to really get rolling because it's literally a whole new machine that you're building. It's different than the thing you just spent the last 12 months building. We kind of like to take kind of an extra month almost and just really, really work through the first ones just to make sure the first ones come off the liner as good as we can make them and everything. And you have to ease the employees into building it. Like you can't take them all off of one thing and put them all on it at the same time. You kind of have to like pick and choose and get them slowly worked in. But on top of that, we're still building Scooby-Doos, and it's still for sale at the same time as these. So all three of these titles can be on the line at any given time. And that's been a transition for us, too, as well, that I think we've really worked into well, is we're going to be able to produce all three of those at once. It's not going to be an issue. There's going to be Scooby-Doo on the line every day, and there's going to be Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw on the line every day. And then the final question is, you guys are coming up on 10 years in April from your first release. you guys going to be doing anything special? Is that when the first release was? Yeah. America's Most Haunted was April. I guess AMH wasn't released yet. We totally remembered that and had that planned. Yes. I'm just wondering about this for the first time. All right. All right. All right. Awesome. Well, stick around. Stick around. We definitely want to get your address because we're going to send you some 3.0 Loser Kid hats. If you want to make them spooky, you can just draw some blood on them. That's funny. Thank you, guys. If anyone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of you guys? Yeah, if it's for game ordering and general questions and whatnot, you can always call the main line for the shop. If you Google the Spooky Pinball, it's the first phone number that comes up. Otherwise, squirrel at spookypinball.com is a good place to hit for that. If you're trying to get shows set up or you're like, hey, I'm a wicked cool animator. You should hire me. or things that are related to the Screamin' Stream, whatnot, you can always email me at bug, B-U-G, at spookypinball.com. And my email is just spookyluke at spookypinball.com. Awesome. If you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. You can hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, X, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube. Hit like, subscribe, all that jazz. We appreciate you guys. There's been a lot of amazing emails that have come in. We'll probably talk about it next episode, which might be sooner than you think. So I want to thank you guys for coming on again. Corwin, I didn't even know your name was Corwin. I always thought it was Bug. And Spooky Luke, thanks for coming on as well. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 464e183b-a6c7-4171-ac01-651bd27fbf98*