# Turkey TWIP

**Source:** This Week in Pinball  
**Type:** article  
**Published:** 2025-11-28  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://twip.kineticist.com/p/turkey-twip

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## Analysis

Gary Stern and Jack Danger deliver a presentation at a pinball industry event covering Stern Pinball's 78-year history, company growth from basement startup to 225,000 sq ft modern manufacturing facility, the Insider Connected community platform (400,000+ players), and upcoming content including a documentary-style game design series and Star Wars Costco game. Key themes emphasize hand-built manufacturing, community growth as business necessity, and Stern's evolution from founder Sam Stern's 1940s game operation through Williams acquisition to independent Stern Pinball since 1999.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Stern Pinball has made hundreds of thousands of pinball machines since 1986, with 400,000+ Insider Connected players registered over 2.5 years — _Gary Stern stating company production history and Insider Connected adoption metrics during presentation_
- [MEDIUM] 40% of first-time pinball buyers purchase additional machines, driving repeat sales and community growth — _Gary Stern citing market observation about consumer behavior without explicit data source_
- [HIGH] Stern Pinball operates 225,000 square feet across two buildings, with one 50,000 sq ft facility dedicated to woodworking — _Gary Stern describing current facility footprint and specialized departments_
- [MEDIUM] A single pinball machine contains approximately a quarter mile of wiring — _Tour participant observation during factory tour segment_
- [HIGH] Star Wars Costco game is in development as entry-level full playfield variant following Jurassic Park Costco success — _Gary Stern announcing Star Wars Costco project during presentation_
- [HIGH] Jack Danger is transitioning from lead designer role to marketing/streaming role while continuing design work on a new licensed title — _Jack Danger's personal narrative about career transition at Stern Pinball_
- [HIGH] Stern Electronics (original company) was co-founded by Sam Stern and Harry Williams in partnership — _Gary Stern describing historical partnership with photographs_
- [HIGH] Stern Pinball was founded in 1986 in Gary Stern's basement with investor D. Fukuda and partner Shelley Sachs — _Gary Stern recounting company founding details_

### Notable Quotes

> "Our vision, this is a Stern vision, to create compelling entertainment that inspires a lifetime love of games, sparks passion, forges friendships, and connects people everywhere through fun, innovative, technologically advanced pinball games and experiences."
> — **Gary Stern**, ~10:00
> _Official Stern Pinball corporate mission statement publicly affirmed at industry event_

> "He became a game operator and then a game distributor. A lot of distributors were operators who became distributors in order to get games sooner and cheaper."
> — **Presenter**, ~15:00
> _Explains historical business model evolution in early pinball industry_

> "If you give people a shitty place to work, they'll do shitty work. So we give them a really fine place to work."
> — **Gary Stern (attributing to father Sam Stern)**, ~50:00
> _Illustrates manufacturing philosophy tied to facility quality and worker environment_

> "Every one of those games out there has been built by hand. Like someone has with their hand screwed every screw, installed every ball guide. Every pinball machine has been built by hand."
> — **Jack Danger**, ~80:00
> _Emphasizes handcrafted nature of pinball manufacturing as distinguishing quality factor_

> "We need more and more people involved in it because if you don't go bigger, you go smaller and then you shrink."
> — **Gary Stern**, ~35:00
> _Articulates business growth imperative and community expansion strategy for industry sustainability_

> "And that's when George Gomez reached out and he's like, 'I've been following this journey and this is what I wanted to see was this game being in a playable state for you to prove to me that you have the willingness to see something like this through.'"
> — **Jack Danger**, ~25:00
> _Reveals George Gomez's role in identifying and recruiting Jack Danger to Stern Pinball_

> "The idea is once we kick this project off, you're going to know the theme right off the rip. And it's a licensed theme. You're going to see the layout right away and then you just get to follow this journey of us executing the whole thing."
> — **Jack Danger**, ~30:00
> _Announces planned documentary-style content series showing full pinball design and manufacturing process_

> "Costco's really important. It's a less expensive game. It's still a full playfield. It's the entry level drug, if you would. It's a way of introducing people into the community."
> — **Gary Stern**, ~37:00
> _Explains Costco partnership strategy as market expansion channel for casual/new players_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Gary Stern | person | CEO/Owner of Stern Pinball, son of founder Sam Stern, 80 years old with 78 years in pinball industry, presented company history and strategy |
| Jack Danger | person | Pinball designer and animator at Stern Pinball, former Dead Flip Twitch streamer, designed Jurassic Park home game and X-Men, transitioning to marketing/streaming role |
| Sam Stern | person | Founder of original Stern game operation in 1940s Philadelphia, became distributor, partner with Harry Williams, father of Gary Stern |
| Harry Williams | person | Co-founder/partner with Sam Stern in early Williams pinball business; sold company to Sam Stern's family in 1947 following a workplace negotiation |
| George Gomez | person | Chief Creative Officer at Stern Pinball, legendary designer of Lord of the Rings, recruited Jack Danger after identifying his homebrew machine project |
| Zach Sharp | person | Stern Pinball employee, tournament player, mentored Jack Danger in pinball strategy and dead flip technique, son of Roger Sharp |
| Dave Peterson | person | Partner and 50% owner of Stern Pinball since 2008/2009 recession, shares control with Gary Stern |
| Shelley Sachs | person | Co-founder of Stern Pinball in 1986 with Gary Stern and investor D. Fukuda, since deceased |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer, founded 1986, acquired from Sega in 1999, operates 225,000 sq ft manufacturing facility with 400+ employees, 400,000+ Insider Connected players |
| Insider Connected | product | Stern Pinball's community platform with 400,000+ registered players over 2.5 years, tracks leaderboards and engagement |
| Dead Flip | organization | Jack Danger's Twitch streaming channel and pinball education community active for 10+ years before his Stern employment |
| Jurassic Park home game | product | Home pinball game designed by Jack Danger under George Gomez direction, sold well and reached Costco distribution |
| Star Wars Costco game | product | Upcoming entry-level Star Wars pinball game for Costco, full playfield variant following Jurassic Park model |
| The Walking Dead Remastered | product | Recent Stern Pinball release with two playable units on floor at event |
| Foo Fighters | product | Pinball game designed by Jack Danger at Stern Pinball |
| X-Men | product | Pinball game designed by Jack Danger at Stern Pinball following Foo Fighters |
| Lord of the Rings | product | Legendary pinball game designed by George Gomez, widely loved by community |
| Judge Dredd | product | Vintage pinball game that inspired Jack Danger to explore pinball strategy and mechanics |
| Laser War | product | Stern Pinball's first game, released March 1987, featured color-coded eject targets |
| Pinball Expo | event | Annual pinball industry event featuring factory tours, game showcases, and community gathering |
| Costco | company | Retail partner for Stern Pinball entry-level games; Jurassic Park game sold well through Costco, Star Wars game in development |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Stern Pinball company history and evolution, Manufacturing quality and facility operations, Community growth strategy and Insider Connected platform, Jack Danger career transition and design philosophy, Upcoming Star Wars Costco game and entry-level market, Documentary-style game design content series announcement
- **Secondary:** Hand-crafted manufacturing as quality differentiator, Pinball industry economics and ecosystem support

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Presentation maintains optimistic tone about industry growth, company capabilities, and community engagement. Emphasis on facility pride, manufacturing quality, and strategic expansion. No negative criticism of competitors or market conditions. Conversational asides and humor throughout maintain accessible, enthusiastic atmosphere.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Stern Pinball operates 225,000 square feet across two facilities with 400+ employees; supports estimated 3,000 supplier jobs and equivalent distribution/retail network (confidence: high) — Gary Stern: 'we're between the two buildings 225,000 square feet...There's about 400 over 400 people in that building every day. There's probably 3,000 people working at suppliers'
- **[community_signal]** Insider Connected platform has reached 400,000+ registered players within 2.5 years, representing significant community digitization and engagement infrastructure (confidence: high) — Gary Stern: 'there's over 400,000 Insider Connected players today...this all started two and a half years ago, something like that'
- **[design_philosophy]** Stern emphasizes handcrafted assembly line manufacturing with quality inspection throughout production rather than end-of-line, enabling higher volume with better quality control (confidence: high) — Gary Stern: 'You don't inspect quality in at the end...All along we have special test fixtures...by dividing it into smaller portions and having higher volume we can make a better quality game'
- **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo factory tour program modified this year with station-based explanations replacing tour guide model, suggesting operational refinement and visitor engagement strategy (confidence: medium) — Presenter: 'We tried the tour a little differently this year where we actually had people at stations to explain instead of the tour guide explaining everything'
- **[market_signal]** 40% of first-time pinball buyers purchase additional machines, establishing repeat purchase pattern and customer lifetime value economics (confidence: medium) — Gary Stern: 'We find in our country that 40% of the people who buy their first game buy more games and so forth. They get they get the bug'
- **[personnel_signal]** George Gomez explicitly identified and recruited Jack Danger after observing homebrew machine project completion, validating emerging designer talent through demonstrated execution (confidence: high) — Jack Danger: 'George Gomez reached out and he's like, I've been following this journey and this is what I wanted to see was this game being in a playable state for you to prove to me that you have the willingness to see something like this through'
- **[personnel_signal]** Jack Danger transitioning from lead designer position to marketing/streaming role while maintaining design responsibilities on independent project schedule (confidence: high) — Jack Danger states: 'I'm stepping out of the designers pit...moving into more of a marketing role where I'm going to be getting back into streaming, but I'm not done designing because I will be making games on my own schedule'
- **[announcement]** Planned documentary-style content series showing complete game design and manufacturing process from concept to playable machine, featuring licensed theme (confidence: high) — Jack Danger: 'The idea is once we kick this project off, you're going to know the theme right off the rip. And it's a licensed theme...you're going to follow this journey of us executing the whole thing...there will be a full playable machine'
- **[announcement]** Star Wars Costco game in development as entry-level full playfield variant following Jurassic Park success model (confidence: high) — Gary Stern: 'Now, we're doing a Star Wars version for Costco. Costco's really important. It's a less expensive game. It's still a full playfield. It's the entry level drug, if you would.'
- **[business_signal]** Costco partnership and entry-level game pricing positioned as critical community expansion mechanism; explicitly framed as necessary for industry growth sustainability (confidence: high) — Gary Stern: 'We need more and more people involved in it because if you don't go bigger, you go smaller and then you shrink...We need games out where people see them. One of the places is Costco.'

---

## Transcript

Okay. How many How many of you been here to this show before?
Let's try it a different way. How many of you are first timers?
That's really good.
That's great.
That's good. How many of you uh first timers uh have bought your first pinball machine in the last year?
That's a couple. Okay.
You got to do better than Gary. We got to figure that out. But
yeah. Yeah. Well, we're he's we may be standing anyway. So, you know, he's still working it through. So, um you're ready.
You're going to bring it over here now in front of us.
Yeah. Yeah. He's not ready. He's not ready. Well, the good thing is that um we have plenty of time because our plane is not until Monday morning.
True. And we're locking the doors until Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is that long enough? Right.
See, I told you we're going to stand.
This is going to be great. So, um the uh what what is that? Credo. What is the name of that thing?
Our vision.
The vision. Thank you.
It's off. Yeah. All right. All right. I want you
to go I got to go to this end.
No, you just got to move your foot in the middle.
Move your business around.
Now, move my dishes around.
Move your dishes around.
Oh, well, this is doesn't work quite like I thought, but okay.
But it's too short. You just need to be able to
table's too short. Are we there? Does it work?
I told you.
Hey,
we can also move everything and Okay.
No, I love this.
We're okay.
This is actually the whole seminar internet or or I mean audience. I mean,
watching us do this.
Would you like us to get two bar stools? I guess a little bit higher.
No, well, that's nice.
Do you need us higher?
No, we're fine. We're fine.
Am I overshadowing Gary?
Martin, are we okay? You're taking We're Yeah, you're good.
Well, then we're Okay.
Okay. Here we go.
Our vision to create compelling Oh, sorry. Go for it. You go for it.
Wait, wait. We all have to.
We're going to ask you all, this is very important. We'll come back at the end and have a quiz about this. But this is our vision. So, we are all He asked if we're going to do this. Yes, we are. I'm going to ask you all to read this with us. So, our vision, this is a stern vision,
to create compelling entertainment that inspires a lifetime love of games, sparks passion, forges friendships, and connects people everywhere through fun, innovative, technologically advanced pinball games and experiences. Well done, everybody.
There isn't there there isn't a period on that. Is there more to this?
Page two.
Page two. Here we go.
This How do I go to page two?
To use the arrow.
This arrow. Ah. Okay. So, we're going to talk a little bit of history before we talk a little bit of games and what's going on at Stern. Um,
can you hear him? Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I think you don't even need a mic, dude. You're doing great.
No, I I usually don't use a mic, but you know, it's okay. Testing. Testing. It works. All right. these. So, I brought threw a couple of old pictures here. That's my father, Sam Stern.
Which one?
Um, the two in both cases, the guy on this side. Got it.
Okay.
Because the other one, two people are are Sam and Harry Harry Williams who work together. That happened to be taken at Stern Electronics, I believe, at the old Stern. But, um, I was younger then. I My father started as, how'd I get here? My father started as a game operator in Philadelphia. Um, we digress. His first games, he had two games and he put them, they were countertops with pushuts and he put them on a in a in a drugstore on the counter. He came back the next day and his games were behind the counter. Somebody else's games were there. He said, "I I don't I don't want to be in this." and his friends who told him to put the games in there, who were two policemen, said, "No, Sam, not there. Over in that drugstore." So, he puts his games over in that drugstore. 10:00 at night, the phone rings. One of his games is broken. I am done with his business. He goes running down there. He's done with the business. It had push. Wouldn't push in because there was so much money inside the game that it was jammed. And so, he wasn't done with the business. And that's how my family got into the pinball business. A great problem to have.
He became a um Sam became a a game operator and then a game distributor. You a lot of distributors were operators became distributors in order to get games sooner and cheaper.
Can you describe really quick what is a pushoot game? Just for people that don't.
Okay. Um it's a game that you put the coins in a in a uh pusher. It's like a laundromat in our country. and you push it push it in and the coins go in and make a switch.
Okay.
Yeah. Or make a mechanical thing to drop them because there was no electricity these games.
In fact, if you look at the museum's history uh panel up there, it's really very good. They've got a display here. I don't know if you saw.
Yeah. With all the push button things to show the mechanics and stuff,
but look at the history, the dates behind it. Uh you know, it has some very important dates. It's it's really very good. Y'all, how many of you been to the uh Dutch Pinball Museum?
Yeah, regularly. I like that. All right. How many of you There's
more people that have been to this event.
Wait, wait. How many of you haven't been there?
And are you How many of you that haven't been there are from from uh Holland?
Okay.
Okay. You haven't been there? All right. Um how many of you who've been there who are not from Holland, who are from other countries? Wow.
Wow. That's really This is That's really Have you been there? I've been there.
So have I.
Yeah. It's cool.
Yeah. With different times.
Yeah. True. Different locations.
Yeah. Just
I haven't been to the new one. No. I signed Hulk Hogan.
There's a new one.
Right breast.
When was the new one?
I've been the new one. Yeah.
The one I went to was like a weird warehouse next to a river or something.
Yeah, this was next to the river.
Yeah.
Okay.
Anyway, it's wonderful. It's really good. back to back to where we are last, but we're never g we're never gonna get anywhere here. Um we do have a few things to tell you. Any event, um Sam Sam uh uh in 1947 went to see his supplier, Harry Williams, in Chicago, kidding around, sat behind Harry's desk, put his feet up in the desk, and said, "Why don't you sell me Williams pinball?" And Harry said, "I'll have to go up on my airplane, fly around for three hours." did that, came down and sold my father half of half of Williams. So, I've been a pinball manufacturer since I was two. That makes it 78 years because I'm 80. Uh, and uh we still do it and been doing it for a long time and can't think of anything else that I would want to do or that I'm qualified to do anymore. So, we're going to let you hear why is it this button?
Yeah. Hit the right arrow.
The right arrow. One, two, three. Jack's going to tell you how he got here.
Look at this jerk.
Jack. Jack, you can read off of here.
Oh, yeah. That makes way more sense.
Yeah. But
Hi, I'm Jack Danger. Uh, new to the pinball scene. And um, so yeah, when I got started in pinball, I was an animator for almost 20 years at that point. Um, doing commercials, music videos. I worked with the Wowski, the Wowskis. Wowkittis. Machowski on Jupiter Ascending. They're most famously known for like The Matrix and stuff. Um, but when uh one of one of the animators that worked in my co-op uh went to like Portland, they're like they came back and go, "Hey, I discovered pinball." Like Portland has this big huge pinball scene. Chicago really didn't even have much of a pinball scene like 15 years ago. And um he's like, "You got to check it out." And we struggled to like go find some games. And he went out and he bought a pinball machine. And he came to me and he's like, "I don't have any room for this thing. and can I leave it here at the studio? And I reluctantly agreed. And when he wheeled this thing in, I was like, "What the? This thing's freaking huge. It's just like a big box of lights. Like, I don't know what the hell to do with this thing." So, we shoved it in a corner, plugged it in and played it for a little bit. It was Lord of the Rings, which obviously is a phenomenal game, but at the time, I'm just like, I don't know what the hell this is. And okay, whatever. Um, like a week and a half later, he shows up and he's like, "Hey, I bought another pinball machine." And I'm like, "Well, okay. Uh, if you don't have room for these things, please stop buying them because we can't keep filling up our place. And it was a Judge Dread and Judge Dread Super Game. Like, it's even bigger than this other one. So, like, what the hell are you doing? And we lifted the head up on it. And I remember the first time we turned it on and hit start and like the humor that was coming out of this game and the way the shots were and just the presence of it with like the big planet that was like holding the balls. Something about that like really spoke to me. I was like, "Okay, this is cool." like there's something about this game. Played it a little bit and went to the internet. I'm like, "How do you beat, you know, Judge Dread Pinball?" Well, you can't beat a pinball machine. And that threw me into a frenzy of like, "Well, that can't be right." And like digging down more and realizing like there's all these strategies and nuance to this one game. And I was like, "Well, let's check on this Lord of the Rings game." Come to find out, everyone freaking loves this game. And like there's all these different rules and approaches to playing. and just learning the nuance of even though there's only two buttons on this, like there is a lot of strategy just behind like pushing a single button in. And I quickly became friends with uh Zach Sharpe. I met him at a tournament. Him and his father Roger were there playing. I have no idea who the hell they were. And they were sort of like, "Hey, we could tell like you're into this." And there wasn't a big scene. They're like, "We'd love to show you how to play pinball." And uh Zach took me under his wing in a very like karate kid style like training montage. He taught me to play one-handed so that I would read the ball sooner, you know, like you can read where the ball's going to bounce. That's where the whole dead flip thing came from. Um 2014, uh I created a Twitch channel. Twitch was very new to me at the time, but we re we were recording ourselves playing pinball in order to get better at pinball. So, everyone in the studio uh was trying to figure out why we sucked so bad and uh we wanted to like slow it down to see what was going on. But by streaming on Twitch, we were building up an audience of people that were like, "You could tell us in real time why we suck." And that was actually a lot of help. But we were also using the information that Zach Sharpe gave us to relay that back to other people so that they could get better. Um and it just sort of took off from there. And I mean, Dead Flip existed for like a little over 10 years before uh you know, I had to slow things down to come work for Stern Pinball. But getting on to that in 2021, I shortly before that designed my own pinball machine. I don't know if any of you followed that journey. It was very painful. Um I didn't know anything I was doing. Uh I relied heavily on other people uh that had made their own games like Scott Danesi, uh Ed Owens. Um the list goes on and on. But every step of the way, someone would help me with like, "Help me with the CNC, help me with the code, help me with the wiring." And when that game finally was flipping and in a cabinet, that's when George Gomez reached out and he's like, "I've been following this journey and this is what I wanted to see was this game being in a playable state for you to prove to me that you have the I guess the the willingness to like see something like this through." And that's when he called me in, offered me a chance to on a contract basis design the Jurassic Park home game because Jurassic Park had part of its deal a home game in the whole mix of the licensing there. Uh made that it sold pretty well and then we got that into Costco. Then it sold extremely well. Um but it was that game that convinced George that I could probably take on a cornerstone and that's what led me to Foo Fighters and uh subsequently X-Men there. And that's my story. And also, now that I'm stepping out of the designers pit, if you will, is it called a pit? The group of designers, um, I'm moving into more of a a marketing role where I'm going to be getting back into streaming, but I'm not done designing because I will be making games on a I guess my own schedule, if you will, showing how a whole game is made professionally, front to back, where um, I'll know I need a ramp on this lefth hand side. And so one of the videos will be just me talking to the different designers on how they would prototype this specific ramp. George is really good at like melting plastics with heat guns and mixing up like baking powder and like super glue to make like this welding comp. It's insane.
Um but like using foam core and all this other stuff. So down from like ramps to layout to code to wiring to absolutely everything along the way. The idea is once we kick this project off, you're you're going to know the theme right off the rip. And it's a licensed theme, um, you're going to see the layout right right away. And then you just get to follow this journey of us executing the whole thing where at the end of it when the final video is released, there will be a full playable machine, arted, animation, code, you name it. Uh, you saw everyone that worked on it and everyone that could have worked on it and gave us some like input and then if the game doesn't suck, George will make some. Gary will make some by his own hands. I think he promised to screw some together for me.
They don't let me hold tools.
Okay, that's fair.
I'm not allowed to hold tools. I could get hurt.
Yeah, that's fair. Um, but yeah, it's uh I love designing. I I don't want to stop designing, but I think we also recognized like my uh I I flourish better in front of a camera than locked in a room uh screwing things to wood. So, yeah, we'll see where this goes. And if it falls flat on his face, then I'll just go back in that room and make more pinball machines.
He actually asked me for my off.
I almost took it without asking.
Um I I'm going to digress a little bit and give it to me.
Two things. So, um, you mentioned, uh, the Costco game. Uh, you Yes, you did.
Okay.
Yes. It's then it went Costco and it sold well. Now, we're doing a Star Wars version for Costco. And, uh, Costco's really important important. It's a less expensive game. It's still a full playfield. Is a little bit smaller. It's the entry level drug, if you would. It's a way of introducing if you'll hear us talk about whether it's just in this talk or just in general enlarging the community, getting new people into the community. Uh you all helping people get in the community and and and the like. And we we really need to get more people for us for business, for you, for the hobby. We need more and more people involved in it because if you don't go bigger, you go smaller and then you shrink. And if we, you know, if we don't do that, well, we need games out where people see them. One of the places is Costco. We find that um if we're only in the US with that right now and we we have some opportunity for the UK. Um we look for other places to ultimately introduce pinball. With that is just one way to introduce pinball. We find that a lot of the people who who look at these games um either they go to one of our dealers and buy a commercial game or they buy that and then they go to the dealer and they get another game and another game. We find in our country that 40% of the people who buy their first game buy more games and so forth. They get they get the bug and it's it's it's so it's it's an important entry drug. The other thing that I want to mention as I digress is Um, you mentioned you were working on Matrix stuff for the for the movie
with with the Wowskis. They made the Matrix. I didn't work on that on one of their other movies.
Oh, okay. With with the Well, when you mentioned Matrix and then you mentioned Lord of the Rings. So, George designed Lord of the Rings, he wanted to to do Matrix and I thought, "Oh, this is cool because we got a hot movie. We're going to have another movie come out right before the game and we'll be between the the second and the third movie." And I made George do Lord of the Rings. I made him do it. And it was actually a good choice because the second movie, now a cult classic at that time, was not a cult classic. It was not popular. So George I made George do Lord of the Rings and it was absolutely fantastic. Then I could tell you the Ball Rock story, but I won't. So let's I can digress and do this whole thing as a
Wasn't there like a wings thing situated in there or something? And uh Oh, you weren't going to tell the story. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, you can keep moving. Ah, okay. Now, we're going to tell you who Stern Pinball is and was. Uh, in uh 1986, uh, we started Stern Pinball uh, in my basement started.
Do you have any pictures of like that dilapidated building you were in or anything? Do those exist?
Well, oh, no. No. Okay. Well, you're in the second place. I'm jumping ahead. You're jumping ahead. We start All right. We started in my basement. Uh and uh we our investor was uh D and Mr. Fakuda. So we took him out. We didn't have him in the basement. We had him upstairs at the dining room and laying everything out. And that's where we pitched them. Not in the not in the holes of the basement. It's Camo uh Shelley Sachs who since passed and and and me. Um and yes, we started uh in in September. Uh we moved into a um 200,000t building. one little off two little offices that we had to go uh get gas for the heater and and we took turns taking the garbage home and
wasn't the building condemned also?
Well, it was coming down. Yes. Well, that because it's town houses now, it's residential any event. And then we moved to Melrose Park the next year and in March of uh ' 87 we had our first game, Laser War. Uh we went to the show, remember in the commercial business then there weren't a lot of hobbyists and so we went to the uh show in um in New Orleans. Uh we took eight games there. We uh uh we put curtains around them. Some of the other people in the industry just like you got help doing things uh Eugene Jarvis and uh and uh name I keep having trouble with the name. Any event, you know, helped us. They sort of took parts off of Williams line and things like that and brought them to us. And so we were semi-legitimate. Uh and uh those eight games we were able to get four games out of them. Laser War has three ejects. They're colorcoded and you know three targets for yellow, three targets for, you know, each color and you need to go in the eject. But the balls weren't coming out of the eject. Luckily uh uh luckily software fixed it at the last minute. But Joe was going to put a hole in a screw in front of each eject and the ball wouldn't go wouldn't fail to come out of the eject because it wouldn't be able to get in. That's how we did it. Anyhow, um in '94 we sold uh uh we sold the business to Sega. Sold the company. Same company, you know, the owner was Date East, a Japanese video game company. Uh sold it to Sega. Same company, owner was Sega. changed its name uh to uh to uh uh Sega Pinball, but same company underneath. And in 99 uh my group uh bought the company from Sega. Same company, now belongs to Spearoint, which is our company, our holding company. And we renamed it Stern Pinball. Still the same company. We've been in business since 1987. in uh 2009 2008 with the layman brothers recession not easy in in the business world you know it was not easy in pinball world and uh Dave Peterson uh joined us and he's my partner so I control 50% he controls 50% but it's still owned by the same company it's still I mean it's still the same company it's still the same company since 1987 making pinball machines and uh and uh this is this picture here is our uh new building.
Has anyone been to this new building that you guys? Yeah. Heck
yeah.
Have you been on our tours? The the Pinball Expo tour. How many have been on Pinball Expo tour of any of them?
Like on any Stern tour from
any Stern Tour from Expo?
Oh, you went you were lunch. Okay. So, we were we were on uh in in Melrose Park at one point and then we moved we're we started at 2525 Mel uh no 1990 Melrose. We moved to uh 21 something 2050 2040 Melrose I mean excuse me Janice Avenue and then we moved to Lunt and uh we started in 25,000 square foot about uh 2500 square meters. We uh moved to 40,000 square foot which was about 4,000 square meters and then to Lunt which was a like 10,000 square meters 100,000 square foot plus. Now we're in two buildings um but we are between the two buildings. Um 225,000 square ft. We need all that space. We the building has grown. Uh one building 50,000 is just woodworking and the main factory is a really modern factory. We'll show you something in a minute. Um, this is a picture of the modern factory with the uh at night. You can see that that that's behind the windows uh is artwork from that was created to simulate pinball because it is pinball. And in front is the 8-oot uh pinball
that I mean watching that thing being installed was like a freaking field day. We were all just waiting for the news to show up to show a ball just rolling down the street.
Yeah. It got away. It got away. Yeah. And and and but that's, you know, that's our like the bean and is is famous in downtown Chicago to have your picture taken with. And so this is this is uh this is the uh our version of the bean. So it's cuz people used to come and take a picture in front of our funky stern sign. It was just horrible. But uh this is uh this is this is uh you know something good to take your picture in front of. This factory is unusual to me because I've been in plenty of pinball factories. This is the first one that I can say is really a modern up-to-date factory. It's uh you know high ceilings, clean uh this is a factory that an executive from Ford Motor Company or Huelet Packard would come in and say this is a proper factory. And my father used to say, and pardon my uh vernacular, he used to say, if you give pe people a shitty place to work, they'll do shitty work. So we give them a really fine place to work. Um I think next could be um we'll do
Okay. Ah this is this is next in this over the years this Stern Stern pinball dies pinball Sega pinball the Stern pinball has made uh hundreds of thousands of games. We have we've made hundreds of thousands of pinball machines. Most of them are still out there somewhere somebody's house or what have you. Since 1986, we've been making pinball machines, made hundreds of thousands in prior companies. My father at Williams and so forth. I probably participated in hundreds of thousands of other machines. But having said that, this company has made hundred thousands hundreds of thousands of machines. We've you all know that we've we'll talk more about Insider Connected, but just to give you the uh the idea of the community we're trying to build, there's over 400,000 Insider Connected players today.
Um and this all started
two and a half years ago, something like that. And so you guys have you guys have embraced Insider Connected uh and we keep adding on it and so forth. We'll talk a little bit about it, but that's a lot of players that are participating. We building we're we're helping to build the community and we think that's very very important. So, we have a
This is the the white screen.
Yeah. This is the presence. So, about the screen. I was going to explain to you
what what do you think this is?
Wait, which what what what is this supposed to be?
I don't know. But it's not moving.
Hit hit escape.
It's not moving.
There we go.
Oh, it's a video. Oh, let's play that video.
Uh, I told him to check that.
Oh, you're not connected to the internet, Gary.
Ah,
internet.
Can you connect that to your phone? Um,
you're doing it with your phone or my phone?
I'm doing
Okay, go ahead. We're well prepared. We're well prepared. He and I've been goofing off about what can I tell you?
No, I'm taking this very seriously, Gary. I appreciate it. Um yeah, we're about to show you the the Pinball Expo tour um that just went down.
We tried the tour a little differently this year where we actually had people at stations to explain instead of the tour guide explaining everything. So, thank you all for coming. You know, this is the house that you all built. I think you're going to enjoy your tour and you're going to get to see something that you don't get to see very often.
We grew because you guys liked our games and we designed better and better games. Look around you. Look at this amazingness. Look at all these games. And then you're going to see the most amazing pinball factory in the world.
I really like being able to see everything that is uh in production, you know, just seeing how the how everything is assembled.
The wirings. Wow. The wirings and how much wiring goes into these machines. A/4 mile. That's a lot.
Yeah, that's a lot. It is pretty overwhelming when you walk in and it's like, "Oh, it's super huge." From the outside it looks big, but nothing like from the inside.
Got here a dragon mech. Watch out.
They get slid into a box from there and they pick them up and hopefully ship them off to you guys.
I found it really interesting seeing the behind the scenes learning how uh a pinball machine is actually made. Every Data East game, Sega game, and Stern game has gone through this machine, this very one.
Like how many checks it has to go and how complex the actual structure is.
I would recommend taking the tour, especially if you own pinball machines like we do, even one that we just bought, Dungeons and Dragons, to see it there on the assembly line was unbelievable.
They bring them to life. Like these playfields, it's like you're in the game. It's it's so amazing.
Looking at all the other brands of pinballs, you know, Stern really kind of stands out. We came back just for the tour. We drove
Yeah. 4 and a half hours.
Yeah. 4 and a half hours just for the actual tour.
Come on in, folks.
Thank you all for coming and joining us. We're really happy to have you here and I hope you have a good time. He was doing that with his hand. Um, that ball is actually a lot cooler to take pictures in front of instead of that corporate stern.
Yeah, it was horrible
thing that we had.
Belong to the landlord. The landlord.
Yeah, it was awful. But people took so many pictures with that thing.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's you looked at that uh you see that factory. There's uh there's about 400 over 400 people in that building every day. Uh we we support a lot of people. You support a lot of people. Uh there's probably uh 3,000 people working at suppliers. Part of their job is supplying us. There's probably equal or more on the other side selling the games. It's, you know, it's part of capitalism. It's a big part of uh uh of why we can exist, you know, and it's because we we're we're in a bigger scale and it it's taking care of all those people. A cool thing a cool thing about that factory though by the way and what's cool about like given a tour of this is
it's cool to show that like every one of those games out there has been built by hand. Like someone has with their hand screwed every screw, installed every ball guide, every pinball machine has been built by hand. You'll see the a majority of the soldering people are like everything is just meticulously gone down the line. We don't have any giant robots putting stuff together. So everything has been and I can't think of any game that has been mass-produced by just robots. So like pinball still today is still absolutely built by hand. And I think that's pretty special to see both firsthand or in a in a video like this.
Built by hand, but in an organized progressive line. If you're if you're making a few games, everybody has to do a lot of different parts and has to get them right and remembering. If you're making a lot of games, then everyone has a smaller job, a smaller task in the assembly area so that they can learn it better, do it better and uh and make a better quality game. You don't inspect quality in at the end of the end of the line at the end of the game. All along we have special test fixtures and and assembly fixtures and inspect all the way along and by dividing it into smaller portions and having higher volume we can make a better quality game. And I think you'll probably uh confirm that we we're with the advances we've made electronics testing and everything else that that these people in that factory are doing a very good job. We're going to talk a little bit about walking the Walking Dead remastered uh a little bit. We got a lot of stuff here. We put together stuff that uh he and I put together stuff with
Have you guys been able to see the We There's two of them on the floor. Have you guys got a chance to play them or see them at all? Yeah. Heck yeah. They're um I I believe
everything's at free play here, right? Like you just walk up.
Yeah. I
You have to give me a dollar to play the game, but you have to Yeah. Okay. We're good.
Yeah. I was trying to work that out, too. Uh but they didn't have enough American currency. So I only take American currency.
Yeah. Yeah. Um the um the there's two uh premium versions out there. We had an LE coming here uh which is we wanted you to see. We'll see some pictures of it because it's spectacular. Uh and I'll explain why what why it's so special or Jack will. But um um it's in customs somewhere. though, unless we all go to Belgian customs and we're not going to get to get to see it. It's a little hung up right now.
Um um it's based on the uh a AMC's television show uh from 2010 that ran 11 seasons. They're doing more uh spin-offs from it. Uh comes from a comic book uh famous comic book in uh in 2003. um a lot of spin-offs. I'm going to go through some of this because you've seen the game. It's uh the franchise has had $2 billion in revenue. So, it's a big franchise, very well known. Uh and uh and the uh we we made uh the first game uh on the SAM system in 11 years ago. John Borg and Lyman Sheets uh was was the uh the they say programmer, the rules designer and that a lot of the genius of this game and the genius we're going to add into this game is Lyman Sheets. Um so it's been a favorite all along and these two guys did a wonderful job with it. Um we're going to show you maybe a gameplay video. We'll see how it went. Okay. Yeah. There we go. What do we have to do? You do not have permission to be
accessful when you pull up on your browser.
What?
I don't have
Yeah. Here, try this. If you hit this button here and then you click this button here
and it says no access and then you have to imagine a pinball machine being played.
Oh, this is We didn't give him access, huh?
Should have done it. Send it from my computer. So, if you play The Walking Dead, um,
that's not going to work either.
If you've recorded your own video, please send it to me, um, so we can play it.
Do not have permission.
Thank you, Gary.
I don't know how to do that. Are you kidding? It worked on my computer.
Where's your computer?
Right here.
Uh, we don't want to hook your computer up to a monitor, Gary. That That's dangerous.
Yeah.
Okay. Anyway,
all right. We're not going to show you the video of it. And so, just pretend that you've seen the video and go play the game.
It's amazing.
It's a very great great presentation that we've done here. You know, it is amazing. It's a great game. Um, you've seen the uh you haven't seen this is the the mirrored back glass of of the game, which you haven't seen because that game's in customs. Yeah. uh and uh and uh this is all the artwork that's on the game with different sides of it and and so forth. It's really spectacular.
So, an interesting note about the the the color composition that we chose here with like the Zac Stark like warm and cold feeling there actually comes from um marketing materials that they gave us that they were using to highlight all of the series and spin-offs was Oh, I didn't You have a photo of it. How about it? No, no, no, no. This No, no, no. This is the marketing material. This is
Is this just one of them? I thought there was another.
No, I only put the one.
Okay, there's more. Um, but yeah, a lot of their marketing material right now is this like high contrast like warm to cold feeling going on. Um, and yeah, like you could see here there's like uh how many spin-offs? Like six.
Yeah, six spin-offs.
The Walking Dead universe. But yeah, that's that's where we got the inspiration to work on. You can see that's the noise you make when you switch between slides. Um, but yeah, the the likenesses we got on this are topnotch. Um, there the LE is really cool with the uh the armor. We're able Oh, you got that. All right, I'll let you continue talking. You got this.
We'll get to that because the LE is what I wanted to show you. Um, here you go ahead. Keep going.
Cabinet art by fantasy and horror illustrator Robert Laski. 3D motion graphic sequence by So what's cool about the animation on this is we this is a it's a remaster, right? So we can't we don't want to divert too far away from like what you people loved about the game. So what we did is we took the dots and we reimagined them with like 3D like more updated graphical effects and we kept it in that sort of DMD letter box style. There are full frame effects that happen in the game, but we like to keep a lot of that same uh format that was there. And what's cool with the execution of it, we have a video coming out soon that the animation team's putting out where they show how they actually um matched and recreated a lot of that. So they built a lot of like 3D puppets to get this motion and then they took this cool painterly effect of uh like the drawings of each character and they were able to like mesh that character to the skeleton so it actually brings that animation to life based off of Gary's phone ringing. Um who's who's Joanna?
Uh we're doing Yeah, we're doing a presentation right now. Can I call you later? Goodbye. Goodbye. So, yeah, look out for that video soon. It'll be great. Um, uh, yeah, new full screen graphics, as I said. Uh, playfield sculpts. We've added more sculpts. We've even, uh, like upped sort of the quality of the sculpts that were on there. If you look really closely at the Are you able to get a picture of the this guy?
Yeah. Right. So, what's cool about this is we made him grosser. Uh, you know, there's like [ __ ] areas of his is that a word? Um, and then like,
uh, we gave him 3D sculpted guts, so when his body flies back, you could see his intestines. And also this sculpt now
is, um, coil triggered, so we can make him shake and get angry, and you can see the GI tract of this poor gentleman. Um, and along with the the faces that are on the slingshots, we matched that sort of like Zac Stark contrast of cold to warm to give it this sort of like it's being lit from the side vibe. The fish tank, um, if you'll remember, the original Walking Dead had a a a fish tank topper. Um, this also, I think this fish tank was in the original premium. Does anyone remember? Yes, I'm getting nods. Yes. Um, and again, we just took all the sculpts we could find and tried to just bring them like elevate them a little bit, make them a little creepier, a little grosser. Um, and this is no exception. Uh, do we have I just want to look at this really Okay, I don't want to look at anything anymore. All right, so um I guess that's it for The Walking Dead. Make sure you go play.
Do we have a
We're doing this well. We're doing well.
Prepared.
Gary, you can't just leave me out here, man. I need my Uh, oh no. I was looking for something. That's hard. Can't find it.
Okay, let's talk about
It's on you. Go for it.
Let's talk about Let's throw it to Gary.
You got You got really Yeah. Anyhow, um you want to do this or am I doing this?
Um I think I'll let you do it.
Okay. So, spike three. This uh this um The Walking Dead has spike three. you know, spike to spike two to spike three, scalable and uh improved and so forth. The processor in this is a Raspberry Pi actually uh which is uh what's why do they call it that?
I'm sure the you guys know why is it called Raspberry Pi? Is that just the name?
Okay. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah.
Okay. That's We'll take it. We'll take it.
We're done. We learned something. we learned something. Uh so any event um um it's it's a much improved system. Uh it will improve with what we're doing it over time. Uh substantially increased uh power, processing power. Yes, it has a bigger display 18 versus 15in display. Um and uh with uh better graphics in that display. Um, and we in doing that we were able to keep the back glass the same size and that's very important to us. We believe that pinball machine should have a back glass as part of part of the look of it.
Uh, so so we're, you know, we're committed to keeping keeping a backlash. So we were able to do that. Uh somehow George and his guys mechanically engineered this so that we could have a bigger screen and still keep the same uh uh back glass size without enlarging the backbox. So, you know, it's still the same. It'll look the same next to your games and so forth. Uh better audio, um more networking and and power handling. Um it's got the built-in uh uh antenna, whatever.
Oh, for the Wi-Fi. Yeah. Yep. Um it's got the quieter uh power supply with a quieter fan and you know more coming. Of course there's more coming.
Well, let me talk about the more coming if I could. Um we have uh wireless headphone
capabilities. So uh you're going to be able to like listen to your game just directly off of that through some like uh Bluetooth or whatever.
It'll be called Bluetooth when we get the license.
Yeah, we got to we got to clear that.
We can't we can't call it Bluetooth yet. It is Bluetooth. Um, but the thing that I was most excited by was from a from a streaming standpoint. Um, it's always been uh a nightmare to try to tap into that screen, tap into the audio to get that into for some of you streamers out there or people that ingest any sort of like streaming content. Um, now for anybody, there's going to be an HDMI port on Spike 3 boards that you just put an HDMI cable in and through that will come your video and audio directly into whatever capture device you have. So, if you just want a big monitor on the screen, Yeah, I appreciate you. Uh, big monitor on the screen. I know a lot of bars like to have, you know, larger displays so like people standing a little further away can see what's going on. You can hear what's going on. Um, I remember when I first uh dreamt up the idea of like capturing the screen and audio for streaming. Um, our lead uh what what is Guido's title? Whatever. Mark Waiterelli, who's in charge of a lot of the hardware stuff, said, "You were the only person on the planet that is ever going to need this. Why are you wasting your time with that?" And then fast forward to like there are just hundreds of pinball streamers out there now.
And the uh people are using this content for all sorts of stuff. We ingest it to like see what's wrong with games. if there's like bugs and stuff like that. Um, but for anyone at home, if you're looking to like, you know, just get a better audio visual experience out of the game into something else, it's literally just an HDMI cable. So,
so with the some of the t the uh statistics, it's again, it's a Raspberry Pi compute module. Four times the performance to compute and for video processing, so we can do better video with it. uh two times the memory, it's three times faster, higher quality. Uh and he's just talking about the video decoding and playback. The 18 1/2 in screen, 35% larger uh 125% more pixels than on the smaller screen and uh true color depth enables 256 colors anybody.
Yeah. Okay. Better better. And then the better audio with the two times, you know, twice the wattage. Um, mid-range speaker, the better speakers and and uh additional separate tweeter in the limited edition and again the wireless headphones. There's also one other cool thing about Spike 3 that they worked on is um so if you have Spike 2 games and I think Spike one games this works on also. Um you know there's the question of longevity like what if my board fries and you're on to like Spike 3 and my Spike one like crapped out and like what do I do? My game's just like ruined at this point. Um Spike 3 has been made backwards compatible so that you can take a Spike 3 system and put it in your Spike 2 game. And what that means is you can also uh bring over that larger screen to your Spike 2 game. You can bring over those enhanced audio things into your Spike 2 game. Um I don't believe it's uh something that we're
necessarily uh promoting, but it is a thing that
it's not trivial yet. It's yeah, it's not trivial to do these things, but it does mean that once we get this all sorted that your spike one and spike two games have a lifespan beyond just the those boards.
You got to figure out the software conversion. That's a big thing because that's what we learned.
That I don't have to figure it out.
Well, certainly I'm not going.
Okay. Well, someone's going to figure it out and it's going to be great. Don't worry.
Um, this is all more about the system repeating the same stuff we've been talking about. Um, I called attention to a couple things here. Uh, speaker lights format, this whole new speakers you'll see on on the game. Unfortunately, we don't have customs has the game I wanted to show you.
Um, and uh I think that that's most of the stuff we need to talk about with that. So, let's talk about something else.
We're going to talk about the cabinet that's in that game. Uh the uh both the Premium and the LE have a a uh redesigned cabinet. It's a modular cabinet. Uh it's it's held together with brackets and uh it's strong as could be. Uh and uh with a better uh uh panel uh material for better decals. If you were to get a scratched uh cabinet and it's a damaged cabinet, instead of having to get a whole new replacement cabinet, you might be able to just get one of the take one of the panels off the panels and replace it. Uh most important to me is that where the the armor is uh the armor we sometimes have expression expression lights and that's only if we have routed the cabinet right to put them in. This whole new assembly means that you can have accessories of expression lights on the inside going and also on the outside. Inside and outside can be fitted on any cabinet without us having to route it. Every cabinet pro, premium, and LE will be able to have those.
And that armor actually uh attaches differently, too. It's sort of uh it's built so it just sort of slides in and then you can just secure it down versus the like the screws that went directly into the wood to like hold the armor in.
So that you know again that's I wish I the customs hadn't kept our
We'll yell at him. It's fine.
Yeah. Yeah. So um this is this in fact is this is a limited edition and you see that it's got uh expression lights inside and out on it. Uh and uh uh that's that's that system that we're talking about. The premium doesn't have it. You can add it with black. You don't get this this artwork with uh this uh armor with it. You know, you'd be with black armor. We're going to work on when the accessories will be available for that. Um but that's the limited edition. Ah, here's the playfield. Um you can tell them something about the play.
Yeah, I'll talk a little bit on this. So, uh, John, much John Borg, much like what he did with Metallica when we went to remaster this game, he went back to the drawing board and wanted to like read all the information on what people had as problems on the previous title so that he can remedy some of the on the remaster here. Um, so some geometry was tweaked a little bit. Um, notoriously I think that left lift ramp wasn't always the smoothest on the Walking Dead Premium. So, he made that a priority. Um, again with uh how the the cell doors open, um, we were getting some uh false if not like incomplete readings off of the star rollovers we had. So, we worked on a a button rollover system, which is like, you know, instead of going from a tiny pinpoint of uh reading on a switch, we actually have like a whole almost inch there that the ball can roll over, so you're not going to miss it. And it's got a cool light around it to let you know that you hit it.
It's It's so much better that they added an extra one under the game.
Exactly. Yeah, we added an extra switch just where the ball rolls out into play, too, so we can read that. Um, other things like more accuracy and granularity on the crossbow so we can actually like aim that at things instead of it just like swinging out. Um, and a whole litany of things that he did to really smooth this out. I know the the pop bumper notoriously the top left pop bumper used to have a very exposed screw that we would just screw into the playfield
to stop balls from getting stuck there, fix the doors. Um, so a number of things went into this to make this game a lot more durable, a lot more reliable, and a lot smoother than the previous title. Um, and I think it turned out pretty well.
Some of the things we're still was we're still adding into it. We are uh adding uh we are just finishing the software that emulates the original game and then we start putting in some more stuff that Lyman had in mind and and that we've we've had in mind. Um the uh crossbow uh will be activated more granularly. That's not completely in there yet. Uh but there's more and more coming in this. How many of you played the game
like the original Walking Dead?
Yeah.
All right. How many played the ones the ones here?
Oh boy. I wish we had
There's only two. So
I know. I know. All right. Well, um so we we've added uh RGB inserts. We talked about the crossbow. Is it nice? I'll do that. Uh here's the uh the new fish tank. Uh and the
illuminated zombie heads on the uh slingshots there.
Yep. Um we've got uh the well walker animates now. It's not just hanging there. Yeah, he's
he has a coil underneath him so we can actually make him look like he's doing stuff.
Uh the bicycle girl left ramp uh returns to the right flipper to re reveal the bicycle girl bash toy. Uh cell block C. We again we've improved the m mechanical the the doors on it the mechanism. What did I do? Uh the uh rollover button we've talked about and we've added one more here.
Yeah.
That wasn't there before uh to which is used in the in the software and the uh then it has the magnet there. Um it is okay. What else we got? Um,
yeah, it's again like we we wanted to stay true to the layout here, but we had to just clean up a lot of the things that we read or understood were problems uh or issues, if you will, with the the original game.
So, these are still basically the same uh features, but redone. Uh the uh uh fish tank. The fish tank up here. Uh three bank uh drop targets here. The well walker uh magnet uh well walker bash toy walker bash toy so forth. Lots in it. Uh ret retain the uh key gameplay from the original Walking Dead experience. It has new aV, new uh call outs uh by Merl and uh uh
Michelle. I'm having trouble reading.
Yeah, it's all good.
Yeah. Yeah. Um then we've already talked about the crossbow. Uh there's a new well well walker uh kill mini wizard mode. So that brings it closer to you uh rather than have to play. It's so maybe I could get it. Maybe not. Maybe not. And so there's other game tweaks and so forth. Um there's um the normal stuff of a limited edition five 500 games uh in it and uh but all the normal uh uh the mirrored back glass the uh the uh expression light systems are on it. That's not normal. Uh the uh
shaker motor anti-reflective glass.
Yeah. Game sign so forth. I'm seeing if there's something here uh that uh now shaker. Yeah, there's shaker motor on this one comes with it. All right. L whole list of features. The only thing here we're not we're not reading this.
We're gonna Jack is now going to Jack is now going to read this list mechanical.
Yeah. The the again the most the rollover button is mentioned in here. That's the one I always try and call out. This is the premium back glass. Again, this is a game you see right here. Uh this is the artwork on the whole cabinet. This is how we show the license or the artwork without this particular background but with the back glass and the cabinet cabinet art. Uh and so this is the premium edition is the whole game. And uh this is a summary. So I'm not going to go through that because we've just done this stuff and some of the fine print. We haven't changed our pricing.
Woo.
And we're starting to ship in uh November and the premium will start shipping in late November.
Heck yeah.
Yeah. So, now let's talk about All Access. Jack, I'm going to let you do all access.
Okay.
Yeah.
Hey, All Access membership. So, um has anyone in here been a member of All Access already? Okay. So you guys are grandfathered into the previous price point. Um so you know just to like say thank you for you know supporting this as we got this rolling. Um but there's a lot of cool things that come with this. Um home leaderboards being like I think the the best bang for your buck like the in my mind the reason to join this right to have your own leaderboard system for all your games in your house in your club in your wherever you have it. So, if you're not like a procertified like bar or arcade or whatever, um you could still have these cool things that are populating for people to chase down. Um free discounted shipping. Oh, on things from the shop. I listen, I know what I'm talking about. Trust me, it's uh we're good. Um the showing up in gold on the leaderboards, uh both when you log in, your account is going to look different and also on the leaderboards themselves, you'll have a highlight of a gold ring there. Um there is Oh, you'll have an all access little badge at the bottom there, too. Pretty cool. Um you also get a free once a year uh tour of Stern. So, do they just like reach out to us whenever
we're setting up a sign up thing for it? The judge working on that now.
Okay.
Uh they should have it operative. I just heard something. I think that in the first quarter,
but what's cool about this and I'll I'll get you in a second. The cool thing about having a tour outside of like the expo tour is you'll get a lot more information from just one-on-one with a person walking around the factory. Especially the factory that isn't set up in a way we're like trying to run groups of people through something like you get to have a more intimate experience with us explaining what's going on. Maybe we'll hand you some parts to look at, you know, things that we couldn't do if there's like thousands of people coming through the building at one time. Um, so that should be pretty rad. All right. Why don't you hit the uh right arrow for me?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I was going to say something.
Say something, Gary.
Um, something something. Um, the, you know, the leaderboard at home is really,
as as Jack said that, you know, the really the most important, not the most important, but really important. It took us a while to get all this done because of all the cloud that's needed for when all of you got leader boards. It takes a lot more uh cloud computing space, all that stuff. Yeah, we had to make sure that was rock solid.
So, that's what took us, you know, we knew we wanted to do it. It took us a while to get there.
Um, the home leaderboards would
like like Gary Gary hold% if you shipment.
Oh, really? Yes. Yes. This going back here. Oops. Uh,
here we go.
Oh, really? That's great. I mean free within
Yeah. No, the top
Oh, not the whole topper. Okay. I was like
shipments are
I'm buy a bunch of toppers.
No,
right. That's cool though.
Free in the continental US. A discounted rate, which I can't quote to you right now, but you're you're correct in bringing it up. a discounted rate for uh outside of the United States, outside of the continental United States. Thank you very much.
We we treat Hawaii the same as uh as uh as Holland in that respect.
They got to think of this kind of rate. Okay. So, leaderboards uh just quickly, you can you can put it on your own TV or on your phone. Uh, so there's different there's all kinds of variety of how you're going to be able to treat your leaderboards, but you can see here in this picture, uh, somebody's home leaderboard.
What do you mean somebody
Georgees? Is Well, I don't know if that is George in particular. I don't know if George. Yeah, that may or may not be his. So, there we go. Uh, see again on that's on on George's TV. Y
or actually, is that George's TV? I don't know who John leaderboard.
Yep. There we go. All right. Uh,
so this is cool, right? So, uh, some of you may have seen on social media a lot of people sharing photos of themselves next to games, uh, because they got a badge on Insider Connected because of this. So, what we're doing is weekly we're going to have everyone play uh, well, all of you are going to submit a photo, all of you that want to help, submit a photo along with your score to a game that you played. and we're going to cover every single Spike 2 title we've made and we're going to choose randomly uh a handful of people to highlight and they will get their own badge with their username and their photo and stuff like that attached to it as a score that the rest of the world has to try to take down. And when someone gets that badge, your whoever's score that was, their name is attached to that. So it just like lives forever as this cool insider connected badge. And we're gonna be doing this for quite some time. And um once a week, how many Spike 2 games are there? He's in a conversation. 32.
Is it 32? You're right, Jack. It's 32. So there's going to be 32 different badges um with your IC name on it. And uh we're we're already sharing the first week's worth of them. And it's really cool to see the excitement of like I can't believe they picked my score for this. I submitted one for Beatles that was absolutely atrocious. And I think they told me to uh not submit any more scores, but um it's uh it's a really cool initiative that we're running hopefully to get more people engaged in submitting some scores, but it also like is lending itself to trying to get the community to recognize each other a little bit more because like uh like Fart King uh if that's your username. Um you don't know who that is, but they're probably doing really good in your arcade. And now you can actually see who they are and try to communicate better with that person if you choose to. Um but yeah, uh hopefully uh we get a lot of scores going. I know this is um a very ambitious project because we need a lot of community engagement to make sure this thing goes off, but so far we've had no shortage on people submitting scores and stuff like that. So thank you very much.
I should submit so everybody can. Yeah, let's write the Gary badge. Get three points on that. So for Valentine's Day, they had they had this I got to tell for Valentine's Day, we had a we had a badge, you know, if you play but you had to play with somebody else and I was in by myself in Vil. So I didn't have anybody to play with. I didn't realize that I could have been the second player and got the badge. You can't get the badge.
So I didn't get the badge. But we do have a badge for here.
True. For here.
Don't tell people how to game the system.
But we have a badge for here for the show, don't we? We do have a badge over here. Yeah. So, by logging into Insider and playing here, you will get a badge for attending the DPO and competing in uh a game of pinball.
All right. What is next?
Okay. Next, we're going to talk about uh we're going to you're going to keep talking about No, we're gonna All right. Together, this is
Wait, we're not going to recite this, are we?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, we don't have to do this. Uh but it's together we built together you and us we built uh more of the community and and uh uh it's because because you guys are have adop have adapt adapted
adopted
adopted thank you thank you this is why I had to quit law um and so this allows but the the other thing that that this does that insider connected does I'm not reading their stuff uh it gives direct communication well that's one word they have here it's it's gives a two-way street. We We can ask you, we can see what you're doing. We can see when you're playing. We know when the most play is, what kind of locations play is at. Uh we can see what's working on the game, what isn't working. Um and you likewise can will be able to communicate wi with us. And so we're going to sometimes communicate directly with her. Often though, we get all kinds of the the thing about about, you know, connectivity is data. There's so much data and we can find what you all like. There's so much data. We can't analyze it all. We're starting to, but we can't get it all analyzed. So, um, uh, this is, you know, we're just, we're just starting on this. There's just so much more to do. And with the 400,000 of you all that are connected, that means that we can all make better games and and have better gameplay for it.
Absolutely.
Anything you want to add to that? Uh, I'm hoping for some like visualized analytics on like what my gameplay is like. Um, I I know that's a conversation we're having internally, but I think it would be cool for you to request like, "Hey, I've been playing the Mandalorian for a month. Can you please send me some like graphs and statistics?" And it could be like you love to make this shot from the right flipper 300 times or you're hitting this target way too much or you know stuff that you can read that maybe can help adapt your gameplay style because you're recognizing what the game's recognizing and uh yeah data. Okay, now we're going to talk about uh what I'm going to call the elephant in the room. We do not have Star Wars for Europe. um which you all know. Yeah.
As we're all disappointed in that. Um our uh you know the uh the Disney group uh has divided the territories up uh so that we were able to originally we we didn't have part of uh uh like Australia. We were able to get it. We still hope someday that maybe we'll be able to get uh get Europe into the market for this. But our current size, our current business, our growth in the business in in in Europe in in particular has not uh generated enough for the Europe group of business to Disney want us to do this. Um Europe's our biggest opportunity and we've have you know market study that says that that that this is a great opportunity. There's over 500 million people uh in in the European area. That's that's about 50% more than we have in America. So what we've done erroneously is we've been heavily focused concentrating on North America uh you know and we haven't concentrated enough on uh on on the European and the Middle East community particularly European community. We've we've given it short shift if you would. We're changing that and we now we're committed to uh to building and rebuilding the business in Europe. Uh we're committed uh to to having this be, you know, the biggest growth market because we we've had much more growth in North America and not much growth here. So, John Vcalia is is uh is moving to Amsterdam and he's going to lead Lloyd and Doug and other staff. Doug Duba a Doug Doo, a Doug Skor from uh from it was in the US. This is a picture of John that that uh did you pick
might be like a little little
that picture's like 20 years old, but um
yeah, but he's he he's he's been responsible. He's been our since he's been with us since uh 2012 as our EVP and chief re revenue officer in charge of sales and marketing. Um he he developed a lot of the things that we did in North America that helped us grow. He developed the Stern Army. How how many of you know know what the Stern Army is? Know about it? Okay. So, a lot of you know about it. How many of you know of any location that has Stern Army in it?
A few of you. A few of you.
Museum.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Okay. So, um
Oh, you got it.
You got it. Oh, fire mine up. We're going to show you the video afterwards. Anyways, just a little Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Any event, um, so John's going to come here. Uh, he he did our dealer development. He did social media, added videos to I mean, when he came in, uh, 2012, we didn't have any of that for North America. And, um, and so he's the one who we we've committed to this to the market. We've committed to have somebody in in addition to Lloyd because Lloyd's been great, but we've committed to have a top executive here to to drive the market. Uh and and so we're going to we see this as the great growth opportunity. Um we learned our lesson, so to speak, and we're moving forward. John's a little more on John's background. Uh he came from Topps. was a uh a couple decades. To tops is a trading card company and what made that so attractive is that they they do collectibles and our Ellies are collectibles and you know when we were starting to develop uh the Ellies and more in 20 uh 2012 you know he was the right person to come join us for that as we were shifting from being a commercial company we my my partner and I realized that we wanted to shift from being leadly a largely a commercial company to being more of a uh consumer company, you know, a retail consumer company. Uh John's other uh criteria is that he's he's got a master's degree from the University of Georgia. Uh Piname Journal. Thank you. Uh made him an industry superstar in 2012. Martin, that's you. Pin. No. Oh, no. Pin Oh, it was Piname, not Pin Pin Journal. It's pin game, not pin. Okay, wrong one. Well, Martin, well, you got to put him in do something for him. You got to get a lot of publicity. Pinball Hall of Fame in 2020.
You can't let Gary be a liar. You got to fix it.
Yeah, you got to fix that. You got to make me right. So, that's what we're doing. Um, and in that, we're going to ask you uh a couple things. We're going to ask you where you buy your games. Uh, how was the buying experience? I've asked talked to a few of you. uh in particular uh where your service uh how we can improve our performance here. Where do you play games and uh a lot of uh a lot of I've I've known this before but you guys have confirmed that there are many many clubs that you all have. We need games on the street. We need games where people can play them either on the street or in your clubs. If we don't have people playing games, we won't enlarge the community. They can't discover them if they're not out in the wild.
Yeah. And they they you know, we don't have games out in the wild or in your clubs, which we'll consider wild. I hope they're wild. You have a wild time in them. If we don't have games, they won't be topical. They won't be current. They'll be, you know, just old old games, old stuff. We want young people, we want more people to be involved. And that's why I'm I've been asking a lot of you and he's been asking you. We've asked you about the participation in in clubs and fe in leagues and FC or street locations and about the IFPA. We'll over the next day I'll be asking a few more. I've got little little notes written all over this that I can't read and nobody else can.
Yeah, of course. Of course you can. Shelley could read them, but she's passed away. So, we're we're we're going to discover more and we're going to do more here. And um in doing that, we uh we need input from you. Um we also need you to be a sherpa. What does that mean?
Um
what does that mean?
I'm going to explain that. If you're climbing climbing Mount uh the Himalayas, you get a sherpa. You get a guy, a guide that helps you there. When somebody wants to buy a game, you know, when you get your friends, they come play at your club or they come play at your home and maybe they like the idea, but they're scared to buy that first game because, you know, they're they're not cheap, you know, they're scared. You need to help them. Hold their hand. Tell them it's all right. You're not going to get it's it's not a bad thing. You're going to get, you know, they got value. Uh they're going to work. You're not going to have it break and I'll tell you how where you're going to get it fixed and all that. You need to help other people become part of our club, part of our community. Now, now we can talk about what we really want to talk about.
Like, like it's like 6:15, Gary.
All right. Here's the three games I made. Thanks for playing them. Um, we're I'm I'm not going to belabor this too long, but I just wanted to uh jump into this really quick. Um, up here you can see sort of my like trajectory as a pinball designer. And I am not up here if it wasn't for like all of you that like watched my content and a lot of people that helped me make games. Um, and then that was recognized by the companies that actually make pinball machines.
And at like I I've gotten a lot of people that come up to me anywhere I go and more notably here uh at this event asking how like they can get into designing pinball machines or like how do you get your foot in the door? because it is sort of a job where like it not many people have had this job, right? And it it's not easy to get into. And the the thing that people when you play pinball long enough, you have your own ideas of like what you want to make and how you want to make them. And um a lot of people can have ideas, you can write them down all day and stuff like that, but a good click um representation here of like this was X-Men, right? So on the left, this was me with just a a a piece of wood and a a bunch of found metal and literally like mountains of uh painters tape and paper and plastic and stuff to build a functioning whitewood. Um I was able to get some power to some flippers to shoot some stuff. Um here you just see the natural progression of like what I did to like working with an engineer to the final product. But all this to say, like if you're looking to get into this into designing, the most attractive thing you can do to get your foot in the door or even a conversation started is build something. All right? If you don't know how to, there's amazing communities out there that are willing to help you. Um, it's a community that helped me greatly get to this point. In fact, on Jurassic Park Home in the credits, I thank a lot of people, maybe I shouldn't have, uh, inside of there. And it's um this is a community thing and if you want to make a game, just go out and make one. Find some plywood. There's so much information on the internet now. And as I spoke to before, the series I'm doing where I'm going to be talking to all the different people involved in making a pinball machine. uh the the process of making that video series is also going to be um sort of taking some of the technical snafoos out of it so you can get right to the creative part and start making stuff because uh at the end of the day if we don't have people wanting to make games or people continuing to make games there's not going to be games to make. So, I encourage you all if you want to make a game, it's obviously not cheap to get started, but there's a lot of great resources out there to start doing it. And if you want a audience with someone like Gary or George or uh, you know, any of the other companies around here, your best resume is a flipping piece of wood that you can show that you've dedicated yourself to making. So, I hope someone in here continues that journey. Go make something cool and hopefully uh we see it in a few years. You guys are giggling. You're making a game. You better.
Damn it. All right. Somebody better do it.
Heck yeah.
There are quite some people here in the home area.
Oh, dude. The home.
Yeah. So, if you haven't seen uh in the homerew area here, there's some incredible games, a lot of content creators that have been recording themselves building their games. Um the there's also some games that have been traveling around. I don't know if any of you went to Chicago Pinball Expo this year. So, the homebrew area this year was out of control. It was humongous. And what's wild is some of those games look like they were purchased. Like they were so polished and fresh and new, but there was also some like very rough games there that even though they didn't have that spit and polish that some of them had, they were still very fun to play. Um, and I again like that's where a lot of the great designers came from is the homebrew section of, you know, the world. Um he's arguing with me that it didn't happen, but like Pat Lawler uh showed up with a variation of um Banzai Run or Keith Elwin, right, with Iron Maiden.
Definitely Keith.
Um Mark uh Mark from Seiden. Mark Seiden showed up. Um Ryan, you're McUade. Dude, you are on it, man. Um, and what what's wild is like again when homebrew games were being made, uh, the resources were very slim, but nowadays it is everywhere. There's like board systems. There are people with the information you need. And even even Keith Ellen came up to me after walking around the home area and he's like, "We are lucky we came out with our games when we did to get jobs because we can't hold a candle to some of the stuff that people are doing now. So, get out there, make some games, help keep this going, and uh heck yeah. Now, we're gonna play some Walking Dead videos, I think, for you.
No, we're not.
Okay. Continue.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, we're going to move on to questions. Does anyone have any questions?
Thanks for having us.
Oh, I love you.
Okay. All right. Got it. Tam it. Never mind. Next.
So, you're saying there's a difficulty in purchasing? the purchasing experience is is not good. Uh and and I certainly hear you and uh um as I said in in Europe, we want to reb re have a rebirth. We want to uh make that purchasing experience uh much better. Uh that's part of what we're going to look at. We you mentioned that the uh the confusion of the prices when you look at the prices because of your VAT and whatever else and cost coming here and and the the pricing systems here with the various people selling games. This is all stuff we're looking at. Uh and and I totally totally hear what uh you know what what what you're saying. It's hard to buy a game and uh that's actually it's too hard to buy a game in America and and here we just make it that much harder. Um there's all kinds of things that we consider for a solution. We're just just starting just starting on on on trying to fix things. Um so yeah, totally agree with you. Totally agree.
Thank you. Also, your note says dead two feet mouse. I can't read what you're writing here at all.
Oh, you got it. Oh, we're Are we actually going to play that video?
How'd you get it?
All right, more questions. Let's go with you first.
Yeah, do questions first.
We need to have too many laws against
you need Roger Sharp here. Too many laws. Well, actually, you know, there are I'm not familiar with all the laws against pinball. So, I'd like to know more about that.
Is that the reason? And I I'm like I'm a little myopic to like the the laws in Europe. Is it is that why there's so many clubs here because there's like laws against having them on location?
No.
Taxes. That's a tax.
It's a taxes thing.
Okay.
Say that again.
The taxes are the reason why there aren't so many games on location and it's more of a club based system.
Yeah, that's that part of that is true. And the other part of it is that many operators want to operate gambling equipment and a lot of Europe has gambling and uh certainly makes more money. So, you know, we pinball.
Don't talk about coin pushers like that.
Pinball and location. Uh, when you have one game, eh, it's okay. You need to have, you know, we say three or four games in order to have competition and have draw the both have the variety and draw the enthusiasts and what have you. Um, so, um, part of it part of it is just to to get those locations. Now, we were looking at uh pinball locator
and there are pinball map pinball map there's uh there are locations that some of them are just some location 135 machines listed in it but which is probably Freddy's or something like that in Germany but there there are game locations that have multiple games and we are going to find those locations have them be see if we can make them stern army locations at least the the commercial you know there the games without too many. We get the Stern Army involved and get promotions that we help with involved. Uh but John wants to look and to find the locations with the most games. He right now has a location has all the locations, you know, we can tell him where the locations are that have insider connected pro, you know, that are in games that our operators have on location and he's going to start looking at at those.
Excellent.
Yeah.
Thank you. Yes,
Yeah, there um there was a lot of trial and error that went into that. And um every designer again is different in how they approach designing games. I design digitally first so I'm not throwing away tons of material, wood and time so I can manipulate stuff. So what I'll do is I'll I'll design something digitally. Once it works 100% here, I know it's going to work like 75% of the way like in real life.
And then once I get it on wood and start manipulating it there and working closely with my engineer, that's how we can get the ball to actually do some stuff. um like that. A couple of those shots, the shot at the top left that turns around and then goes back up in a ramp and then the shot that like cuts across the playfield and back below the flippers. Both of those shots, uh I've had people come up to me when they saw my whitewood before they flipped it. They're like, "What? None of this shit's going to work. What are you talking about?" Um and they'll throw a ball at it and it didn't do anything. And I'm like, "You got to just flip it." And you flip it and it does it. And they're like, "Fluke. Shoot it again. Shoot up here." And it starts working. And um when I design uh like George likes to start with a giant toy and then make shots around it. I'm quite the contrary. I want the ball to do a bunch of wild stuff and then I'll try to make mechanisms that work within those spaces that I had. Um so it it was a fun journey. I know uh Gary played the crap out of that game when it was in it wood stage.
Which one?
Uh X-Men.
There was he he has some novel shots in his stuff now. He really does. It's some say that did what? Yeah,
you know, you watch it.
I remember you shot it and you'd shoot it again and you go, I don't know what the hell just happened. You got to like shoot it for me and then explain it. Uh because I think you're having trouble just tracking what the hell the ball was doing.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Other questions?
Thank you.
Anybody else got there? We got
one question about Yeah.
So I'm a huge Godzilla fan to Godzilla. Once you get the license for you multiple
like completely different unique layouts and stuff
different
um
for it's what's economical what makes econom Yeah. They certainly let us submit a whole new title to them within the time frame. Yeah. And they they probably would go along with it but just you know
there's you want to go on to another title at some point. there's cost involved with doing a whole new game uh so forth. Um we so it's it's I don't know if it's practical or not practical uh what and every license or is different licensing is difficult. Yeah,
difficult at best.
For example, if you have kind of like machine like one option if you have this license to charge people a little bit more to the extra cont. Well, it to that extent we're doing that now. We we con we constantly uh uh make new code available for our games and and add things to them. Also uh we also changed the game uh not only by adding new software to the game but by having accessories like toppers uh that have rules associated with them and by insider connected because there's things there's rules in the game that only work with insider connected and as that keeps developing there'll be more new rules in that respect. the idea, you know, it used to be the old days of pinball. The old days, you know, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, you wanted to finish the software and ship the game. You're in commercial business. Now, coming from uh from learning from the video game business, one of the things that one wants to do is to continue to upgrade to have new rules so that the game is is freshened uh is freshen. I think the the greatest example where you you know could be Dungeons and Dragons, you know,
where it the it will continue to have like code and updates and all that stuff.
Yeah. So there's Oh, hello. Um so there's there's so much more that we can do connectivity, you know, here I go. Every product to have a future has to have connectivity. Uh you know, I start my car with my phone. uh when I when I this is he's got this when I when I when I look at the uh the uh hotspots available at my apartment in Vale number one is is Xfinity my hotspot number two is my neighbor's washer dryer Samsung dryer is is number two why anybody needs their dryer
yeah my dryer messages me all the time actually
yeah he does it legitimately does let me know like what's going on.
Yeah.
Yeah. But everything's got to be connected and and you there's so much more you can do with connectivity and including changing the game with the rules and some you know v video video or whatever it might be. it like you also brought up something with code like what's interesting is games 10 years ago compared to now we're almost creating an entire video game that has to live inside of this pinball machine with like as screens got better now we have all these 3D graphics and interactive like things that are happening on the screen so it's not just like this light is lit for 100 points and hit it like there's so much that goes into it and with the the titles that we come out with we're sort of like creating a whole new video game every single time.
Think of, you know, a machine gets released.
It's the game is still under the glass. It's a ball and bat game. It's still a ball and bat game. It's whether it be uh or a ball and foot game. It's like football. Uh yet, um it's also a video game. And instead of a joystick and buttons, you got flippers and pop bumpers and targets and what have you. It's the same type of same type of thing.
Yes. Right.
I think that I think that really hinges on what the development team uh like wanted with that game. So, that's not to say that can't happen, but it it's really up to Dwight and his team on like how far they want to take that. I would
uh as long as we're still under that licensing time frame, we could submit whatever we want. Um but again, it comes down to time and resources and stuff to Yeah. And voice actors is important, but also every licenser is different. So some licensers will get back to us in a day, some take a month, and like you know, the second you say yes to that license, that clock is ticking. So we try to get as much as we can to get to a 1.0. And then everything beyond that is just like fun.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Any other questions?
Oh god. Do this.
Yeah.
Oh, wait. Got a question.
Uh, one more time.
Yeah.
Foo Fighters is done. But if for some reason we find time or we're granted time, we have a a laundry list of things we want to put in that game. Some of it sort of half exists in there, but it's like secretly locked away. Um, but if Tanyo and Ray and I find a moment to hit that there, there's a lot of cool stuff left to unlock in that game. Like the game's great, but again, like that that project, everyone was in love with everything that was happening. We just started dumping stuff inside of that game. So, um, if we ever find extra time and money, we will see what happens.
If there's no more questions. Oh, there is.
Then we know the match play that everybody scores.
Oh, like tournament software built into the games. That is something we are definitely working on, but we don't have it available yet. But it it is absolutely like we've got a a whiteboard full of like like big ticket items we want to address and tournament software is definitely one of those. So, I can't give you a time frame on it, but it is being worked on. Yeah.
This is where the game turns sets itself.
Okay.
No, this is where Yeah. Sure.
Yeah. Yeah, sort of. Okay. All right. Go ahead. Do this
here. It just It's
Now watch this.
Maybe.
Yeah. But you don't have any sound.
Share with you today a technologically advanced version of one of the most beloved pinball games of all time, The Walking Dead. One of the most popular entertainment franchises in the world. AMC's The Walking Dead has captivated global audiences since its television premiere in 2010. The hit TV series, spin-off shows, video games, merchandise, and more have reshaped the modern landscape of horror storytelling. Powered by Stern's new Spike 3 technology platform, we're bringing back to life The Walking Dead for a new generation of pinball players. Players will experience an epic journey through the legendary moments from the series as they fight to survive the apocalypse. Extra care and attention to detail have gone into every facet of The Walking Dead remastered, honoring the original masterpiece by John Borg and Lyman F. Sheats Jr. Jr., the game includes an updated version of the revolutionary rule set that introduced a new mode structure and riskreward elements that have stood the test of time. The Spike 3 technology platform includes a larger 18 1/2 in full HD display with true color depth along with a more powerful processor and a new highfidelity immersive audio system. Players will experience completely overhauled 3D rendered graphics and custom animations that pay homage to the dot matrix display from the original game. Spike 3 Electronics features more efficient power handling, improved Wi-Fi support, and wireless headphone capabilities. This release will introduce a new modular cabinet lighting system designed to allow for internal and external expression lighting on all versions of the game. And now I'll hand it over to legendary game designer John Borg to give you an uplose look at the modern interpretation of the original masterpiece. I'm John Borg, lead game designer of The Walking Dead Remastered. Immerse yourself in a completely redesigned universe of The Walking Dead with all new upgrades, visuals, sounds, and mechanical enhancements. The game features custom audio callouts from Merurl and Michonne.
You going to help me kill these things or what?
No one who comes here leaves. While remastering The Walking Dead, we decided that we wanted to make the well zombie move with a solenoid instead of just it moving when you strike it with the ball. We added lint zombie heads to the slingshots and additional RGB lighting to several of the inserts on the playfield.
He's not getting up after that shot.
He had fish tanks full of hits.
We updated the functionality of the crossbow with an encoder. Shoot the crossbow. We
need you strong.
Handsome devil, ain't it?
We also updated and redesigned the rollover playfield buttons.
Oh, ain't that special?
We have updated the art package with handdrawn artwork by fantasy and horror illustrator Robert Lassi.
Yeah,
the Ellie features illustrated side armor with laser cut bullets. We want our weapons.
All right, you're going to have to kill five at a time to get through this. We having fun yet?
Fight the dead. Fear the living. The Walking Dead Remastered. Available at sternpinball.com.
Your skills, a whole new beginning.
Thanks for nothing customs. Uh, so yeah, um, we have two of these on the floor if you want to go jam on it. Um, there's probably going to be a line, so muscle your way in there and, you know, go tell us what you think about it. You have anything else to add, Gary?
No. Is there any other questions? We're all done.
You got enough?
Thank you for entertaining us for an hour and a half, guys. I appreciate it.
We're going to be here all day tomorrow also. So, if you have any other questions, please come find us.

_(Acquisition: youtube_mirror_subs, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 4a9b8fba-7862-4acd-8c3e-752cc96011b9*