# Episode 238 - This or That

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-02-01  
**Duration:** 56m 10s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-238-this-or-that

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## Analysis

Eclectic Gamers Podcast discusses pinball themes (Dungeons & Dragons nerd criticism), email feedback on pronunciation of "modern," news about Wonderland Amusements' sub-$1,000 Alice pinball machine via Kickstarter, and analysis of why pinball manufacturers use code names for upcoming games despite consistent leaks.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Wonderland Amusements (team behind Arcade 1-Up) is developing an Alice pinball machine at approximately 80% the size of a typical pinball machine for under $1,000 — _Dennis confirmed Kickstarter page shows layout and art; team and sizing explicitly stated_
- [MEDIUM] Stern Pinball uses code names for upcoming games to maintain plausible deniability about leaks, not to prevent them — _Tony and Dennis analysis of Doug's email; acknowledged as speculation about intent_
- [HIGH] Jurassic Park was code-named 'Jaws' during development at Stern — _Dennis confirms this as known fact; topper boxes still carry code name instead of official title_
- [MEDIUM] Pinball leaks occur primarily due to word-of-mouth and employee sharing, not as a result of manufacturer indifference to secrecy — _Tony's analysis; both hosts agree manufacturers likely don't actively care about leak prevention_
- [MEDIUM] Sub-$1,000 pinball machine feasibility is uncertain due to recent US tariff increases (25%+) affecting import costs — _Dennis notes tariff concerns as of late January/early February 2025; expressed skepticism about tight margins_

### Notable Quotes

> "Your hobby is pinball. You collect pinball machines in your basement. Too nerdy? Don't look now. But pinball isn't exactly the sexiest hobby on earth. I rest my case."
> — **Skippy (via email)**, early segment
> _Humorous rebuttal to D&D theme criticism; highlights irony of pinball elitism toward other niche hobbies_

> "Modern. Modern. Modern... it becomes modern. I'm just – I trip the letter. I don't know why."
> — **Dennis**, pronunciation segment
> _Self-aware discussion of recurring pronunciation quirk that has become a running joke across pinball podcasts_

> "Getting a type of experience like pinball under $1,000 solves a huge barrier that they have even if it's a flimsy cardboard piece of junk."
> — **Dennis**, Wonderland discussion
> _Acknowledges market potential for budget machines despite quality concerns_

> "I think the use of code words is just simply to try and keep things officially under wraps with the knowledge of the games being worked on coming out because of, like you said, just employees talking to people who talk to people who talk to people."
> — **Tony**, code-naming discussion
> _Explains manufacturer intent behind code-naming as plausible deniability rather than actual secrecy_

> "The video game industry announces years in advance, and it's not out there sabotaging all the sales of each other. What sabotages sales more is when you release the game up against Monster Hunter."
> — **Dennis**, code-naming discussion
> _Compares pinball industry practice to video game industry, suggests timing strategy matters more than secrecy_

> "It's so amateur. It's so Mickey Mouse move."
> — **Tony**, topper discussion
> _Criticism of Stern Pinball using code names on physical topper boxes instead of official game titles_

> "I do think that if you want to grow pinball this price point for modern pinball does not work for a lot of reasons."
> — **Dennis**, Wonderland pricing discussion
> _Acknowledges current pricing as barrier to market growth_

> "The art is trash. I will say that."
> — **Dennis**, Wonderland art discussion
> _Direct criticism of AI art quality on Wonderland Amusements' backglass, noting anatomical errors and design inconsistencies_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Wonderland Amusements | company | Developing Alice-themed pinball machine (Alice Goes to Wonderland) via Kickstarter; team behind Arcade 1-Up |
| Arcade 1-Up | company | Parent company/team behind Wonderland Amusements' Alice pinball project |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; Kansas native with distinctive pronunciation of 'modern'; pinball enthusiast and analyst |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; experienced pinball collector and community observer |
| Zach Minney | person | Pinball distributor who maintains pre-order lists for rumored upcoming titles; referenced as co-host of show with Dennis; from Indiana |
| Chris D | person | New Patreon member of Eclectic Gamers Podcast who contributed a 'This or That' game |
| Skippy | person | Podcast listener who sent email defending D&D pinball theme against 'too nerdy' criticism |
| Josie | person | Podcast listener who sent email requesting Dennis demonstrate pronunciation of words with similar vowel patterns |
| Doug M | person | Podcast listener with 30 years in pinball hobby; sent email questioning purpose of manufacturer code-naming practices |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer using code names for unreleased games; uses code name 'Jaws' for Jurassic Park development |
| Travis Murray | person | Correspondent from Oklahoma; referenced for regional pronunciation variation of 'tour' as 'tur' |
| Ryan C | person | Former co-host of Head to Head Pinball podcast; guest on Eclectic Gamers with significant audio sync issues during recording |
| Josh Sharp | person | Pinball industry figure; argued that leaked game announcements undermine sales of currently-in-production machines |
| Dutch Pinball | company | Rumored to be developing Back to the Future pinball; distributor maintains pre-order lists for speculative titles |
| The Pinball Show | media | Podcast where Dennis discussed pronunciation and Wonderland Amusements announcement; recent episode mentioned |
| Loser Kid Pinball Podcast | media | Podcast using Zencaster for remote recording; referenced in technical discussion about podcast production |
| Triple Drain | media | Podcast potentially using Zencaster; referenced in comparison of remote recording methods |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Budget/entry-level pinball machines, Wonderland Amusements/Alice pinball Kickstarter, Manufacturer code-naming practices and game leaks
- **Secondary:** D&D pinball theme reception and nerd elitism, Regional pronunciation variations and podcast production quirks, US tariff impacts on pinball manufacturing costs, Pinball community leaks and information sharing culture
- **Mentioned:** Remote podcast recording technical issues

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.35) — Skeptical toward Wonderland Amusements' sub-$1,000 machine feasibility (especially given tariffs), critical of code-naming practices as pointless, positive about D&D theme defensibility. Light, humorous tone regarding Dennis's pronunciation quirks. Critical of Wonderland's AI artwork quality.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Pinball distributors (including Zach Minney) maintain pre-order interest lists for rumored titles years before official announcements, indicating normalized leak culture (confidence: high) — Dennis noted: 'Zach had noted...They maintain interested lists for all the rumored titles...People just maintain them because everyone's going around talking about what they think is coming out years in advance'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Pinball community pronunciation running joke: Dennis's 'modern' pronunciation becoming recognized quirk across multiple podcasts (The Pinball Show noted as recent driver) (confidence: high) — Dennis noted listener complaints and The Pinball Show mentioned as source of this becoming running joke; multiple listeners messaged independently
- **[design_philosophy]** Wonderland Amusements' backglass artwork criticized as AI-generated with anatomical errors (Alice face looks vegetative, Mad Hatter teacup resembles hair, Queen of Hearts playing cards use wrong suits) (confidence: high) — Dennis detailed: 'they turned her into a vegetable,' 'tea looks like hair,' 'seven a diamond, not a heart,' 'nine of hearts ear flap a spade but painted red'
- **[industry_signal]** Stern Pinball and other manufacturers use code names for development (e.g., 'Jaws' for Jurassic Park) but code names appear on physical product packaging, creating amateur appearance (confidence: high) — Dennis confirmed: 'Jurassic Park was codenamed Jaws...you get a topper for Jurassic Park and it says Jaws on the box. It's so amateur. It's so Mickey Mouse move.'
- **[licensing_signal]** Alice in Wonderland selected as non-licensed open-source theme allowing multiple manufacturers to compete in same IP space (confidence: high) — Dennis stated: 'Someone was like, there's got to be some competition. This theme is non-licensed. It's open source. Let's do it.'
- **[market_signal]** Budget entry-level pinball market exists and represents significant unmet demand; sub-$1,000 price point seen as potential barrier removal for home market expansion (confidence: medium) — Dennis stated: 'I'm sure the market hungers for something like this' and 'getting a type of experience like pinball under $1,000 solves a huge barrier'
- **[personnel_signal]** Ryan C transitioned from Head to Head Pinball co-host to guest status; technical difficulties during remote recording noted as worst edit job in podcast history (confidence: medium) — Dennis recounted: '3 hours to manually paste it back in properly' due to audio desync drift; guests' content quality noted but technical issues would have caused episode rejection if guest involvement wasn't valuable
- **[market_signal]** Sub-$1,000 pinball machine pricing target appears threatened by recent US tariff increases (25%+) on imported components, creating feasibility questions (confidence: medium) — Dennis stated: 'a week ago i thought they could but i don't know at this stage because they're going to there's no way this is all going to be homegrown stuff' and 'if those costs have all gone up at least 25 now i don't know how they make their sub 1000'
- **[announcement]** Wonderland Amusements officially announced Alice-themed pinball machine via Kickstarter as entry-level product at sub-$1,000 price point with 80% scale playfield (confidence: high) — Dennis confirmed Kickstarter page exists with layout and art; team and pricing explicitly stated as development plan
- **[technology_signal]** Podcast production method shift away from Zencaster toward synchronized Audacity recording for quality control; multiple podcasts still use Zencaster despite known issues (confidence: medium) — Dennis/Tony explained: 'we have tony and i have never used zencaster again...we both fire up audacity' with count sync; noted 'loser kids pinball podcast uses zencaster i think triple drain might be using zencaster'

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, February 2nd. This is episode 238. Wow. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Tony, before I ask you what's going on, I do want to say we got a new Patreon member. we love to announce it so Chris D thank you so much Chris we really appreciate the support and Chris actually has a game for us that he emailed in earlier in the well now technically last week so we're going to play that at the end of the pinball segment even though it's not about pinball I'm just sticking it in the pinball segment because I didn't want to do it right at the start of the show so it's going to be in the spirit of a pinball game but the game itself there's no right or wrong Spoiler alert, it's a this or that. I'm still going to lose. You can't lose unless we ask the audience, and they're going to side with you because they like you more. Speaking of liking you more, I think it's because of what you play in between games. So what have you been playing? Surely not Brotato. I still have been playing Brotato. Oh, my God. Let it go. I haven't let it go. I have heavily reduced because I started. I mentioned, I think, last episode that during the winter sale, I bought all the DLC for Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. Yes. So I started a new Deadlock game to play through the main game. One of the first DLCs was a bunch of add-ons for the main story. So they're like secondary missions that take place during the main story. So I added all of that. I'm doing a new playthrough of the main game, and then I'm going to go and play through the DLC. So that's been taking more of my time. So I've been playing. I've still been playing a fair amount of Brotato. but I've only added a few percentage points to my completion status. And I'm at the point where with the main original game and Protato, I'm down to like the really hard characters to beat the game with, or at least the ones that I'm having problems beating the game with. So I've kind of been segwaying to playing the DLC and beating the game with the characters that are easier. Well, understandable. Well, I shouldn't really have criticized because I'm still playing Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. Here's the problem. I thought I would be much further along if not done with it by now. However, it's got so many mini-games in it. I'm now in the base-building game, which even has a completely different menu for saving and stuff. It feels almost like a module that got added on. Weird. There is a, I'm building up an island resort. And I'm doing it because my assumption is this is Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth. And I've been playing, and I'm like, I'm really poor. Where is all my money that I'm supposed to get? There are things like in the shopping malls, weapons and gear and stuff, that are hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars. And I'm like, I should at some point be able to buy these things, right? But I have like $3,000, and that's because I've beaten multiple bosses, and I'm being really stingy with my money. So I'm now in the base building section. This is separate from the Pokemon section where I go and fight Sujimon battles, where I have a group of three things and I throw them out against the enemy and I'm challenging these various gym leaders. And anyway, so they've just got – there's always been a number of mini games and Yakuza games, but this is just – there's just a lot that's designed to suck your time away. Are you waiting for Preston Garvey to show up and tell you that there's a settlement in need of your assistance? You know, he is probably in there somewhere. There are dating sim, like phone-style stuff that you need to do, and you need to capture the Sujiman as well. You don't just battle them. You go around and you try and capture them after you beat them and weaken them in combat. And there's a crazy taxi-style game where you're delivering food on a bicycle and you need to do tricks. So it's like SSX Tricky Plus Crazy Taxi. I don't – there's just a lot. So anyway, I'm in the basement. So it's a Yakuza game, basically. Yeah, I guess, but now I'm in a base-building thing, so I'm just like, yeah, it feels like I'm building a base in Fallout 4, but with less apocalypse. Yeah, less apocalyptic stuff and more costumed mascots and adorable. It's like Sim theme park, too, because I'm trying to bring in guests and stuff, and they have needs and wants, and you need to wave to them, and you also need to fight the Washbucklers, which are pirates who are legally dumping trash on the island. I'm cleaning up the island to turn it back into a resort because it has become a landfill. So there's also a core environmental message to it. There are a lot of layers. There are a lot of layers. Like a Captain Planet. Yes, yes, yes. So speaking of captaining this vessel that is this podcast, let's go ahead and go into the pinball segment. Segway! That's right. And I'm going to start the segue with an email. You know, a couple of episodes ago in particular is the one where we focused on Stern Pinball's Dungeons and Dragons pinball. And we had an email about that. So Skippy wrote in regarding our discussion to say the following. Your honor, the plaintiff says that D&D is too nerdy of a theme. My one and only retort to that statement is your hobby is pinball. You collect pinball machines in your basement. Too nerdy? Don't look now. But pinball isn't exactly the sexiest hobby on earth. I rest my case. It's not wrong. Thank you, Skippy. Skippy is not wrong. The irony was not lost on me that there were a number of people looking at D&D and going, nerd. And I'm like, look, you might remember that Fonzie had a scene in Happy Days where he was playing pinball. But broadly speaking, pinball is not cool. It's an arcade thing. Right. So, look, I know the people who thought they were the bad boys. You have to understand, to pinball people, there's a hierarchy. Video, like arcade game players are below pinball. Pinball's classier. There is a bit of elitism that goes into it. I think that's part of it. I also think that the complexity, the likelihood of pinball breaking and the perceived need to understand how to fix it. kind of again arcade games go down there i know a lot of people who collect arcade games that got into it but what do arcade game people do other than put in new monitors and recap stuff it's like with pinball it's like the ball gets stuck and we gotta adjust the level and we gotta we gotta demagnetize these balls or get new ones in and oh you gotta wax the play field and you know it's it just requires more love to make it work yeah so there's also i think a sense of what we're smarter than arcade people because we had to figure out more stuff that breaks but in reality with modern pinball collectors most of them don't have to fix anything so they they get upset when they have to you know re-level a game or install a mod and hey they can't at the prices they are today i think they're right to get upset so that's okay too but they're good if they're hot they're they're looking down from the balcony oh look at those lower tier arcade gamers now as i I tried to do a genteel southern accent in reading Skippy's email. You probably noticed, because I'm not editing it out, that I stumbled over certain sections. So I have another email. This one's from Josie, and I need to provide some context before going in. So here's the thing. I don't say all the words the same way that a lot of people say them. One might argue that I can say words wrong. And Joe's email is really going to dive into one that has come up a lot, particularly on the Pinball Show, which is the word modern so i do know how to say modern but i am a kansan and i speak very fast maybe even for a kansan so when i say modern really quick it often will come out as modern so it sounds three syllables because my i'm going to blame how my tongue hits my teeth when i do it but anyway it has become a running thing i'm in i'm interested in how this is because you're a canton i'm blaming midwestern tropes for causing this in me because i i assume that there are other things that midwesterners do you as an eastern midwesterner might not have the same proclivities but travis murray who we correspond with a lot you know from oklahoma a lot of people would criticize how he says uh tour as tur tur tur which again if i hear that from a midwesterner i don't think anything of it i don't know if i say it like tour tour i probably say it both ways quite frankly, depending on how fast I talk. It's just one of those things. Or Zach Minney, who I do the other show with, Indiana. Jaws, the shark. Jowls. He adds an L. Alright, that one is a little more wrong. Don't get me wrong. Modern is not the right way to say modern. This is what Joe wrote. Hi, Tony and Dennis. I've been a long-time listener of the show. Well, in truth, just the pinball half. I have one small request I'd like to make of Dennis if he could indulge me on the next episode. For my personal edification, I would like to hear his pronunciation of the following words in descending order. Modern, Southern, Northern, Eastern, Western, Govern, Tavern, Intern, Cavern, Concern, Fern, Stern. Thank you for your time. I look forward to the next episode as always. So that was how with me being deliberate trying to say it. Here's how I would say it fast so that he gets what I think he was after. Modern, Southern, Northern, Eastern, Western, Govern, Tavern, I missed Western. Western, Tavern, Intern, Cavern, Concern, Fern, Stern. So some of those probably got three-syllabled, but I was talking really fast. So there you go. But Joe is not alone in this, by the way. I had someone mention how they, I guess, look forward to me saying modern on inside. I had someone message me through messenger through Facebook who had never messaged me before saying, please never say modern again. I hate it. I hate it. And I hate how you say it. And I like your I like the show. And I like what you say on the show, except your words. Stop your words. Stop using that word. Why are your words like ice picks to their ears? I don't know. I got a follow-up saying, because as of the last pinball show, I've been very deliberate, because I use the word modern a lot, because I talk about modern pinball a lot. And so they appreciated that I made a concerted effort to actually not say it. Again, I know how it's supposed to be said, but when I'm just going, it becomes modern. I'm just – Modern. It's like I trip the letter. I don't know why. interesting it's just one of those uh proclivities i suppose joe wasn't done though oh good no joe sent a separate email so thank you joe by the way for the last email and we thank you for this one as well um because it's giving us content even it is at completely my expense uh so this was regarding our best and worst theme discussion do you recall that discussion we had i do of course you did because we just recently did it but um this is what he wrote on that oh and one note addition on the latest episode segment regarding best worst themes in the past five years the modern themes the modern themes yes choosing to just use toy story 4 for a pinball theme would not be like just using moonraker as the only james bond movie for your pinball game it would be more like only using the non-eon production bond film never say never again as the only movie for your james bond pinball okay thanks again joe for the email i disagree because the eon production is not the official it's not official bond like it's not seen as official bond that was a whole for those that don't know uh now that's the one where sean connery came back right i think that's the one with kim basinger in it it's the one where they play the video game that causes pain i remember that yes the only scene i remember never say never again is just a remake of thunderball And the reason it is is because Thunderball had multiple rights holders and eventually the other rights holder who wasn't working with Eon Productions got granted through litigation the right to make their own version of the movie. And that's what they ended up doing. And that came out the same year as I think it was the same. Roger Moore had one come out that year as well. Was it from Russia with Love? I can't I don't remember this part. So but I believe both that we saw two Bond movies in a year. And this one was not seen as very good. No. So, but here's the thing. It was the unofficial. It's not seen as canon, just like the spoof Casino Royale with David Niven, I believe. That's not seen as a canonical James Bond. Only the Eon production ones are canonical. Toy Story 4 is canonical, is my understanding. It's not like, hey, you know, let's get some weird studio. It wasn't done by DreamWorks or some other, like, notepad. name studio who did that dreamworks is a no-name studio but did who did do toy story what was the animation studio pixar oh i guess i was there first wasn't it or first cg one right i don't remember i don't know on that look i don't care my but my point is it was part of the official chain so so i still stand by my moonraker analogy i don't know if you feel differently tony but I mean Moonraker is a terrible movie Never Say Never Again is a terrible movie Moonraker was so desperately trying to hey look that Star Wars thing was really popular Let's put James Bond up against Vader, except Vader is Jaws and we'll just have lots of lasers and the moon. And as I recall, it ends with, doesn't Jaws fall in love with that tiny little blonde girl? Something like that. She falls in love with someone and they crash back to Earth and they live happily ever after. Because this was the second movie with Jaws because he was in a prior film. But news. All right. Thank you. We're not actually done with all the emails, but I want to jump into news. There's one piece. That's one news. There's only one news. So Alice in Wonderland. We've talked about it, Tony. We've talked about the DPX. PX? PX? Yes. Thank you. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Well, you know what? Someone was like, there's got to be some competition. This theme is non-licensed. It's open source. Let's do it. And so welcome to Wonderland Amusements. So I actually recently talked about this on the last week's episode of the Pinball Show, but I thought this definitely warrants a discussion with you because there is absolutely nothing else to talk about. So, Wonderland Amusements is building Wonderland Pinball, Alice Goes to Wonderland. They have a Kickstarter. As of yesterday evening, Tony, I checked. The Kickstarter is still not live, so I do not know how much money they want to raise. However, their goal is to make a pinball machine for the home market that will be under $1,000. How are they doing this? We don't entirely know yet. They do have some photos on the placeholder Kickstarter page of some of the stuff, some of the art. I've seen a picture of the layout, kind of a fan layout look. But the main thing is it's not going to be a full-sized commercial pinball machine. It's going to be about 80% the size of a typical pinball machine. So that's the plan. The team behind Arcade 1-Up is the group that's doing this. So I wanted to know what your thoughts are about just the idea of this. And in our internal notes, I have included a photo of what I assume is going to be the Backlasser Translite. And I included that because this was a point of discussion that I brought up on the other podcast, which was this AI, this what I assume is AI art from Alice's Potato Face, which is I we have criticized the DPX art. But this is like art like they turned her into a vegetable. So I'm bothered by that. I'm bothered by the teacup that the Mad Hatter has looking like the tea looks like hair to me, to other weird things like you have the Queen of Hearts on the left and her soldiers. Then why is the seven a diamond, not a heart? Why is the nine of hearts ear flap on his head a spade but painted red? It's it's I think I see where they're saving the money. But what do you think of the idea of a sub one thousand dollar, almost full size pinball machine? does the market hunger for this oh i'm sure the market hungers for something like this but i don't know that it's something that can actually happen with the bill of materials to have anything that's not just a cardboard crackerjack box pile of junk i think it's one of those things that if you go back i i can't remember what episode it was it was a long time ago you can listen to my extended long diatribe about how I got burned in a Kickstarter. That was about an hour-long discussion. And here's the thing. I have not quit Kickstarter since that burn. But I am very careful about what I do kickstart since that time. and I've only done a few either small or things from groups that I trust. Okay, I went kind of crazy one time, but that one all worked out for me. But it's definitely a thing you should look into before you kickstart something and plan around how much and how you are going to support and just be aware that like any other form of gambling, there's no guarantee that you're going to get anything out of it. I do think that if you want to grow pinball this price point for modern pinball does not work for a lot of reasons. It easily becomes the most expensive thing in the game room and getting a type of experience like pinball under $1,000 solves a huge barrier that they have even if it's a flimsy cardboard piece of junk. It lets you still have that visceral physical pinball experience that the closest you can get right now is like a v-pin a virtual pinball machine which is really just an arcade game none of them that i know of that are in this price range have any sense of haptic feedback so it's really just a easier way to see the screen style because you have the vertical orientation sort of thing which is fine if that's what you want but um now all that said my story uh of where i think there's a market for this changes a little bit actually a lot of it with all these tariff moves that the u.s is now doing because i don't know if they can build this for a thousand at this point i a week ago i thought they could but i i don't know at this stage because they're going to there's no way this is all going to be homegrown stuff so they're going to have to rely on importing a lot of things and if those costs have all gone up at least 25 now i don't know how they make their sub 1000 And it seemed like a tight margin already. So I'm very skeptical that it can be done in the current climate. But anyway, it's an interesting idea. So we'll see. It's hard to say more until we see how much they want to raise on Kickstarter because I don't know yet. Right. And that's always the question. Until they go live, you don't know. There's just no way to tell. But anyway, the art is trash. I will say that. All right. I agree. We have another email, Tony. This one's from Doug M. He wrote in to us. He wants to bring up something that came up on the pinball show. So he says, hi, Tony. Hi, Dennis. Dennis, you and Zach briefly touched on the topic of Stern using code names to hide the titles of upcoming games. Stepping aside from the email for a moment. Tony, for example, you're familiar with these. For example, Jurassic Park was codenamed Jaws when it was in development at Stern. Yeah. And apparently what I did not know, but Zach told me is it gets confusing because sometimes they get things like toppers and the code name is on the box. Not the official name. So you get a topper for Jurassic Park and it says Jaws on the box. It's so amateur. It's so amateur. What a Mickey Mouse move. Anyway, continuing on with the email I thought you two could expand on this a bit My question for you gentlemen is this Why bother? I ask why bother because when was the last time The pinball community was actually surprised by a title On the day it was released As long as I have been in this hobby Which is coming up on 30 years Think rec.games.pinballusenetgroup The upcoming game title Wow I used to use that for research I did too The upcoming game title was leaked all over the Internet months, even years before the game launch. Do pinball manufacturers simply not care if an upcoming title is leaked? Or do they just suck at keeping their staff quiet? Or is there another source that allows an upcoming title to get leaked prior to launch time? Or is my perspective skewed because I am deeply involved in the hobby and I have access to information that the casual pinball player would not have? Curious your thoughts on this. Keep up the good work. Love the show. Well, thank you for the email and for the kind words, Doug. Tony? I think the use of code words is just simply to try and keep things officially under wraps with the knowledge of the games being worked on coming out because of, like you said, just employees talking to people who talk to people who talk to people who talk to people. I don't think they're trying to keep this isn't like top secret, top secret. it's designed more around having them maintain plausible deniability about leaking stuff and them to be able to just not comment on stuff in an official capacity. I think most of the stuff that leaks is just word of mouth that gets out there. And I think a lot of people who aren't as deeply buried in the hobby as like yourself or Dennis and I and everyone listening to this podcast, for a lot of them, the game announcements might be surprises because we are all very much of a buried enough into the news cycles and the forums and everything else that we get to see all the little stuff focused down, concentrated as it were, while people who are just more casually into it might only see the big announcements. So that could be their primary aim. That could be their primary goal. Yeah. I in terms of the use of the code names, I do agree about the why bother. I don't really see the point. I assume back in the day, perhaps maybe this was common at Williams and maybe they use the teams were in competition with each other. I assumed all the teams knew what each other was working on, though. So I don't know if it was just for like document purposes. If you had write ups, it was better to have the code names in the documents in case a memo accidentally fell into the wrong hands or whatever. But I'm very skeptical of this because back in the day, like in the 90s, they would take the games before they were to be announced and they would test them on locations and stuff. It was less – anyway, I think it's stupid, quite frankly. Or if you want to do it because you think it does something or you want to do it because you just enjoy it, like it's just a cute little fun thing, like a joke internally, that's fine with me. I don't understand why they're ever putting the names on them like putting codenames on cardboard boxes that is that's just goofy also I'm going to go ahead and say it's probably pretty goofy to use codenames for other games that you might make or you know you're going to make I think something got codenamed Goonies for example it's like why are you doing that and that's the thing maybe they want the codenames to leak or maybe they encourage it to leak which leads me to the second part of Doug's question for you, which is, do you think that the pinball manufacturers simply just don't care about the title? A hundred percent. I don't think they care. Unless there's something written into their licensing agreement that requires them to be special about it and secret. I don't think they actually care. They don't ever have to comment on what people seem to think. They just let it go. Yeah, I agree. I think that it's, their caring only goes as far as a legal obligation to shield the announcement. It's usually there's a, you know, there's a planned announcement. We've seen plenty of pinball manufacturers say, well, we had to announce like this was our agreement. So we had to announce at this point. So there's this announcement and there's this fanfare. I personally and I've said this for years now. I think it's silly. I disagree with with Josh Sharpe and his argument about it undermining production on the line to know that this other game is coming up because people already think they know off of all of these rumors. The pinball industry leaks like a sieve, by and large, significant leaking. It's gotten so far that Zach had noted, and I know other pinball distributors do this as well. They maintain interested lists for all the rumored titles. Yeah. So you're not people. If you want to get on the list for Back to the Future from Stern, you can do that. Even though you've heard that Dutch pinball has Back to the Future, you can get on these lists. People just maintain them because everyone's going around talking about what they think is coming out years in advance. The video game industry announces years in advance, and it's not out there sabotaging all the sales of each other. What sabotages sales more is when you release the game up against Monster Hunter. Oops. That's when you get sunk. In the pinball world, that's, hey, look, you went ahead and you dropped your game against Elwins. Oops. Should have known better. Or, hey, every company dropped their game in the same week. Sorry, somebody's losing. And I can tell you what, it's not Stern. And a lot of these mentalities date back to when operators were the ones running all of these games. And now it's mostly a homeowner market that's going and getting them. So I agree with you, Tony. I agree with Doug in the sense that I just don't see the point in really any of this. I think as long as they know that the game is going to get made. Again, they're going to honor their obligation. So if their agreement is we're going to do this fanfare announcement and officially roll out the name at the time the game's ready and not a year in advance, fine. Again, I don't care. But in terms of why the things leak and why are they so leaky, I think a lot of it is just it is fun for a lot of people to know something and then to share that knowledge. It makes you feel special. It makes you feel like you've got when you know something that no one else knows and you want. Do you not like to tell people and say, hey, you know, here's an interesting thing that I found out. It's cool. I like doing it. So I think a lot of people do. So that's why it leaks. It's not it's not so much about I think there's not really a lot of disincentive to the staff to stay quiet. and they love to go and hear their rumor said on a podcast or written on a blog or whatever and it just happens. So anyway, those are my takes. Okay Last email and we move to the video games Chris D our new Patreon member Yes He said he had a game for us he emailed it in so this is what it says hi guys long time listener and recent patreon subscriber i keep up with all of your new releases but i find myself listening to old episodes as well hey he might know which episode was your it was a long time email us what number it is if you know don't go out of your way but if you know email us eclectic gamers podcast us at gmail.com to remind us and we can we can plug it on the next episode but now he's using the patreon members to do our own research and this is why we don't have that many patreon members but anyway it was a while it was a long time ago it was it was a long time ago but he said he's listening to the older stuff and it's all still available so even episode one i accidentally was checking something on the itunes thing i accidentally clipped it clicked on it and i I forgot how careful we were back when we first started. But the question is, is episode two still there? Because wasn't episode two the one where the audio cut out? We played the thing with the clipping, so it was clipping the end, started to clip the words and made all the sentences real short? I believe I left it up, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was just at the end of it. My computer was lagging. That was before I had my current computer, which I need to replace my current computer because it's so old. We've been doing this for a long time. And I remember at one point when we were doing a lot of remote stuff, we were starting to have weird desyncs and all sorts of crazy stuff. Yeah, Zencaster back then was – well, then they changed it. Oh, gosh, I'm going on this rabbit hole rant. They changed Zencaster, so then it only worked right in Chrome, and I had been running it in Firefox. And so then I switched to Chrome, but we still had issues with it. When I upgraded my computer, it helped a little bit, but sometimes when we had another guest – we had an episode. I will get to your email, Chris. we had an episode with Ryan C who back then was a co-host of Head to Head Pinball and the desync drift for just his audio was so bad if I remember correctly it took me three hours to manually paste it back in properly so it sounded like a coherent conversation it was the worst edit job I have ever done on this podcast if it hadn't been a guest I'd have thrown the episode away his content was great but if we just have this drift and he would all of a sudden be out of sync with us and it was and this is why we have tony and i have never used zencaster again i know like loser kids pinball podcast uses zencaster i think triple drain might be using zencaster when tony and i record remote we both fire up audacity we do like a one two we start recording we like to say one two three on second intervals and then i'm able to sync up the audio and post using those call outs because we're going off the same time Yeah, that's how I do it. And that's how Zach and I do it also. Except we don't do the count. We just click record at the same time and I make Zach figure it out. Because if he wants us to do the one, two, three, Zach, if you're listening, we can do the one, two, three. If you think it'll help you. But he's just like we just click record at the same time and then he sorts it out with the because we always say the same thing when we started. It's like I'm recording and I go I'm recording and I give a microphone test. No. So anyway. All right. Back to the email. I keep up. I'm going to read this part again. I keep up with all of your new releases, but find myself listening to old episodes as well. One topic I am not sure if you covered is this or that in your world. Thoughts on these. So, and I will, he ended with a PS. If you've done this before, feel free to skip, which I don't recall. We may have done a this or that at some stage. We've done this or that at some stage, but it was not like this. It was all pinball. It was all pinball. This is different. This is a mix of stuff. I like this one. Yes, I thought you would. So anyway. So thank you, Chris. No, we have not done these questions before. So we'll go ahead, and I skipped over the questions because we might as well just do them instead of making the audience listen to them again so they can think about them while we go. So I'll start with number one. There are five of them. So number one, Earthbound or Final Fantasy III US for the Super Nintendo? Tony, this or that? Earthbound or Final Fantasy III? Final Fantasy III. Same for me. I can't recall if I played Earthbound. I think, I'm pretty sure I did at one time a long time ago. Like, I rented it from a rental place. And that's about it. Like, when I was young. And I'm trying to remember. Was Final Fantasy 3 Final Fantasy 5 in Japan? Because Final Fantasy 2 in the U.S. was Final Fantasy 4. I think so. But I don't recall. I have played all of them. Right. Up through 7. I haven't played through eight. I didn't play nine, which I know you really like nine. I did like nine. So anyway, so we both agree, Final Fantasy. All right, item number two. These are the movie versions. The first alien movie or the first Predator movie? Man, see, I find this tough because I consider them very different. They are very different. This is tricky because one would be cleanly, I feel, classified as a suspense horror. And the other one is an action horror, which is like Predator is like Aliens. Right. And that's where that was my thought, too. So they're different genres, really, I think. I would say, oh, gosh, this is tough. It is. Predator. All right. I would end up picking Predator. Like, artistically, Alien is a better movie. However, and the suspense is excellent. The quotability. The suspense is excellent. But I watch Predator more than Alien because I like the tonal shift of it being this mercenary adventure movie. And then all of a sudden, they're the prey. And they're doing all the, you know, they have to set it all up. And they're trying to figure out what's going on. And they don't understand because it's all of a sudden a supernatural thing inserted into a world. Whereas in Alien, they understand the idea of foreign pathogens. And you get the sense that there's been other life kind of found, not intelligent life, but other life that's kind of been encountered in some capacity in that regard. So I like it for those reasons, even though I'd say artistically Alien is a stronger movie. But I would pick Predator. I enjoy watching it. I think it's more fun. It's very quotable. Yes. And it has just some sheerly insane moments. And like you said, it's the whole reversal, the outside of context problem that the Predator brings in. It changes the whole feel of the story. The only other movie I can think of off the top of my head that does this is From Dusk Till Dawn. That does. That is a complete tonal shift in the middle of the movie. And I really like that movie, too. That is a good movie. Anyway, so Predator is my pick. Tony, which one did you prefer? I'll go with Predator as well. Okay. All right. Number three. This is the arcade game. Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat? Here's the thing. What is the thing? By locking it in as the arcade. Yes. That's what he said. Because my typical answer would be Street Fighter. Right. but I feel like when it first originally had came out and I was playing games in arcade, I played a lot more Mortal Kombat. Okay. So I think if I was going to choose based upon that, it was the original arcade Mortal Kombat. Because most of the time, I didn't really go super big Street Fighter until like Street Fighter 2 and later. Right. Yeah, I don't really remember the first Street Fighter at all. However, I have played far more Street Fighter arcade than I have Mortal Kombat, So I would pick Street Fighter just as a series, I guess. Well, also, I worked at a place in high school that had Mortal Kombat and... Virtual Fighter? Virtual Fighter were the two arcade games that they had back in the... It was a pizza place back in the arcade corner. And given the choice between the two, I played Mortal Kombat a lot more. Yeah, I could see that. But no, I ended up in arcades playing more Street Fighter. All right, we have a divergence there. All right. Divergence. Yes. not a very good movie unfortunately um all right pc gaming wolfenstein or doom now are we meaning classic are we meeting the reboots i guess i'm gonna go with classic okay i'm gonna interpret as classic all right i will stick with that interpretation as well doom all right if i had to pick between the two i agree with you i would pick doom i probably played more wolfenstein 3d than I did Doom. Maybe not Doom 2. Doom 2 maybe I played more. But versus regular Doom, part of the thing with Wolfenstein is you could easily edit and make your own maps. So I made my own Wolfenstein levels. And so I played that an awful lot with a friend of mine in high school. Doom, though, I picked because it's a better game overall. And we still have our farm. so i think we've shared this before but um so tony and i we were into the same high school and was this doom or doom 2 i don't even know it's probably both quite frankly but uh so computers this was an early like this is an age where computer networks didn't have much in the way of security and computer network experts didn't have much in the way of security because they didn't know what us kids knew. They didn't know what we knew. So here's what would happen. We would hide copies of Doom in the network. We would have it stored. Because back then, the game would all be in one .exe file. You would have doom.exe, and you'd just run it, and the whole game is contained in that one file. So we would rename Doom to something like project.wps, WPS, word perfect file. We make it look like a word file. And so I was in AP Physics, and Tony was in journalism. Yes. I was a newspaper nerd. Yes, you were a newspaper nerd, and I was getting college credit in physics. And the reason why it's important to mention the AP Physics is because the way that class was run, any day after we had a test, we would go over the test results. because the teacher wanted us to understand what we did right and what we did wrong. And that wouldn't take all that long. And then we wouldn't start the next lesson until the following day. So we had most of a period where there was nothing to do. So we'd get through the test grading. If we went way too quickly, we might actually move on. So we always had to ask enough questions that we would stall out. And the class knew how to do this. So we'd ask enough questions about what we did wrong to stall it out enough. And then he'd be like, all right, just, you know, talk some months yourselves or work on the computer or whatever you guys want to do. Tony, being the newspaper nerd, got to just roam the high school at will. OK, Rome, to be fair, Rome, like of hordes of mutineers. To be fair, it's because I in those years I took the newspaper class. I took yearbook class, but because the person who ran the newspaper and ran the yearbook was the same teacher, and because I was a photo editor for the newspaper, my tasks that I was assigned in yearbook was to do newspaper stuff, not necessarily yearbook stuff. I was given a bare minimum of yearbook stuff just that had to get done. The majority of my time in yearbook was spent working on newspaper. And then I was also a student aide for that teacher. And those classes all backed up. So I had a three-period block where I just worked on newspaper. That was the only thing I did for three periods a day. So roaming, mutineer, roaming the halls. doing important newspaper things most of the time. Well, the darkroom for the photography was in the back of the science labs. Right, which is where the physics class was. So Tony would know what days were the grading days because I would tell him. And so when we got done with our test review, there would be Tony coming out of the little darkroom area, and we would rename our Doom files back to Doom EXE on the network, fire them up and play multiplayer in high school class of doom it's out in the open and eventually like the the computer network person would occasionally find our copies of doom and destroy them it would you couldn't i was like a virus we couldn't stop us we would hide them even further chains upon chains of uh subdirectories and stuff because you basically had full control this was before we had cat5 cables these were daisy chained computers oh yeah Using the T-connectors and the terminals and all that. This was that old. We were very old. But it meant we could get away with this stuff very easily. So, anyway. So, Doom just has a huge nostalgia thing. It does. Now, if you want to talk about the newer games, I'm also picking Doom. It's the newer games. Though the new Wolfenstein is a fun game. It is a fun game. But the new Dooms are just... They're very different styles now. Pure enjoyment. So last one, number five of the this or that is. The most important of them in my mind. Yes, that's why I'm sure he put it as last. Tacos or pizza? I have a patch on my laptop bag that says I into fitness Fitness taco in my mouth. That's all I got to say. I'm a taco man. I eat more tacos than I do pizza. So taco is the answer. That being said, I really do enjoy most like the only pizza I can think of. I've ever had that I hated was Gumby's. Oh, my God. Trash tier pizza. That place isn't even around anymore. We're back in Lawrence where University of Kansas is based. But we only tried it once. Tony and I, we were roommates the first year we were in college. And we tried Gumby's one time and everyone hated it. It was the cheapest pizza that there was. And there was a lot of cheap pizza, but we were really cheap. And Gumby's was bad. It was super bad. whereas like tacos I'm pretty tolerant of you want to give me a fake Taco Bell taco I'll eat it you want me to go and get some of the most authentic tacos up in Kansas Kansas absolutely I'm all down for it I love tacos tacos I mean I eat a fair amount of pizza but I would prefer a taco every day I would prefer a taco enough that one of my favorite pizzas is a taco pizza just saying so anyway chris thank you for the this or that so we definitely didn't answer those ones before um tony video games i mean i could seriously go off on a big old long thing on like movies and food and and and all of that that's for sure again if he's listened to a lot of the older episodes he has probably heard us mention that we could easily do an eclectic movies podcast we could and because of all the older movies we could cover there's all there's plenty of content to go ahead and farm in that world. But this is not that, and we now have video games. We are. And for a beautiful segue, let's talk about Doom. Yes, yes. They have confirmed Doom the Dark Ages will come out on May 15th. They've also confirmed that there will be no multiplayer. Okay. And it is not an open world game. These are all fine with me. These are all perfectly fine. I did find the interesting comment was that they consider in the Doom, Doom Eternal, the more modern, futuristic Dooms, they considered it a very acrobatic kind of super fast-paced combat game. The remake Doom, the second Doom remake got kind of crazy with the amount of like flowing around, like three-dimensional movement. It was a lot, let me just say. It was a lot to kind of embrace. It was. Still very enjoyable. It was. I mean, I beat it. But in Doom the Dark Ages, they say that you want to feel more like an invincible tank just wading through the enemies. Oh, so Warhammer. Yeah. And some of the video clips from the trailer that was released. Look real good. Look real good. I'm excited. All these newer Doom games, the remakes have made me happy. Yes, they're very good. They're very pleasing. Also, in the set of announcement that came out, in what was a surprise to me, is Ninja Gaiden 4. It's been almost 20 years since the last Ninja Gaiden game. Yeah, I played 3. That was like an early Xbox 360 release. It was probably on other platforms, too. Actually, I don't remember if it was or wasn't, but I played it on 360. It was hard. Yeah. I mean, I remember when they made the announcement and brought Ninja Gaiden 3 out. It's like, holy crap, I haven't thought about Ninja Gaiden since, like, Nintendo. Because I think 3 was the first 3D one. I think the first two were the side scrollers. Excuse me. So, yeah, no, it was. So to see it coming back yet again after another almost 20 years, I just found that humorous. We'll see how it goes. I'm sure it will be fine. Yeah. Everything old is new again. Yes. Obsidian has brought back John Gonzalez. He's the head writer. He was the head writer and the creative design lead for Fallout New Vegas, which is – it has my favorite story in Fallout. I would say it is of the mainline Fallout games, which are really the only ones I could think of. And I would consider New Vegas a mainline. yes best story easily easily the best story well they brought him back as creative director Vegas 2.0 quickly said no to that I know that was everybody's hope quickly said no to Vegas 2.0 though he's excited about the project a secret project whatever it is he's working on I want the secret project to be Vegas 2.0 it would be nice you know what I would really like I would like to see the storyline and everything of Vegas rebuilt with the gunplay and power armor style of Fallout 4. The gunplay I liked. I never really embraced making the power armor. I need batteries and stuff. See, I like the feel of the power armor in 4 because it felt more like power armor. Yeah, it did. Instead of just like something you'd strap on. I just didn't want to have to manage it. I was just being lazy. Maybe they'll do Fallout Reno, Nevada Fallout Reno 911 New Reno Fallout New Reno It's close But it's different so we can get away with it If you're wondering about something else If you've not played a lot of Fallout New Vegas He was one of the primary people Behind the story And larger universe from Horizon Zero Dawn I guess the hide in the tall grass game So he's well known in his heavy lore work. So anything they're going to bring him back to be tagged into, I think, we're going to know it's going to at least have a good story. Sony had this whole big thing with their mandatory PSN requirements for Helldivers 2. They have been starting to withdraw their mandatory account requirements for at least the single-player games because their argument was, well, we have these so people can't cheat. So everyone was pushing back. It's like, okay, so why do you have this mandatory PSN requirement for a single-player only game? Right. So they finally decided, okay, okay, we're going to start walking back the mandatory PSN accounts for single-player games. And instead they're going to say if you log into your PSN account, you get in-game benefits. Oh, goodies. So bonuses like costumes in Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man 2 remakes, uh apparently god of war ragnarok gives you like a huge resource bundle if you use your psn thing and it gives you access to a new game plus armor set way earlier than new game plus so uh yes use bribes to get them to bribe them to stay on your psd and i mean you've won the console war it's okay guys i'm surprised they're accommodating this at all right frankly it's like you've won it's okay yeah it's fine i think it could be because they're getting such a horrible pushback on from the pc side of things right then yeah pc people are kind of whiny we are we we are i i definitely played a lot more xbox related titles on pc than playstation related titles just because most playstation ones are broken but that's microsoft's plan that it's microsoft's plan and they need a plan because they announced their latest financials and overall Their gaming division is down 7% year on year, and that includes an almost 30% drop in hardware sales. Yep. They are just completely falling off the console sales market. Their one feather in their cap, their one uptick is that they've set new records for Game Pass for the quarter, and their PC subscriber base increased by over 30%. but there's a reason for that yes they were a day one game pass for call of duty 6 which is why they bought activision which is right and it launched thanks what's interesting is it did not appear to have scavenged the overall call of duty 6 sales sales were still extremely high on playstation and pc yes i've i've heard um somewhere i didn't read the details but developer notation that game pass does not hurt their game sales yeah well and i've seen the overall set of numbers is that call of duty 6 is the the highest selling most played call of duty ever okay so well i mean phil spencer's been going around i've seen some other people even echoing saying that no this this is the right strategy for because i know a lot of gamers xbox gamers are like this we don't like this are you going to get rid of the console phil keeps saying no we we plan to keep making hardware but the answer is always well but there's no exclusives so why would i buy your hardware why wouldn't i buy sony's hardware and phil's response has been well if our hardware's got the best specs we would think if you cared about the performance you would embrace it but if not we're okay with you playing somewhere else too to be fair if you care about performance you'll play on pc see that's where a lot of the people will will say that but i mean to be fair I use an Xbox controller on my PC. Phil, the whole strategy is we don't care where you play. And I've heard there was some information that I guess it kind of purportedly leaked out of Microsoft. The target that Microsoft has been giving them is on the Game Pass numbers. They want to see very robust Game Pass growth. And they think they can get there now that they own both Bethesda and Activision. And I think they've got a very real chance of it. So we'll see. It's a change. It's a big change from the old console war philosophy. I actually just yesterday watched a video on the failure of the Sega Saturn. And that whole, I forgot about that whole console war stuff back then where it was like Sega do what Nintendo don't and all of that. Like it was just bloodletting. And the last we saw was right after the Xbox One came out and the Sony did the, this is how you let someone else play your game on PlayStation 4, and they just handed the game to the next person. It's a wicked burn because Don Maddox era of Xbox, and here it's $100 more with a Kinect that people don't want, and you go online and do this thing too, and it needs to be always on, or it needs to touch home base once a day, all this stuff. If you don't like it, you can buy a 360. It's just terrible. Yeah, because I remember when they had some of their issues when they were doing the location tie-in stuff where troops would deploy and it would stop working. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there were a lot of those examples, like military examples. To be fair, what they wanted to do then would have been more palatable today than it was when they tried it. There were still a lot of data caps back then, a lot of instances where people didn't have an Internet. well we don't have the best internet in the world our internet infrastructure is a lot better there i mean what what major internet providers still do throttling and data caps cox communications maybe i don't know yeah maybe it's it's it's fallen out of it like i don't maybe comcast still does but i haven't even heard that i i don't know it yeah things change i mean but we remember the era where you paid per text message on a cell phone things just change So and this is changing. I remember getting getting screwed because I called a an acquaintance five minutes too early. And then we had a three hour phone conversation. So instead of being after the 8 p.m. super cheap rate, it was the the before 8 p.m. super expensive rate. Yes. And non peak hours. Three hour. I had a three hour phone call that cost me one hundred and seventy five dollars. now we just get charged all that with all the subscriptions they tell us we need that was supposedly going to be cheaper than cable oh I know I got the notice Netflix is going up again it's what they do and it's the one that I can't let go the children think of the children think of the children is anybody actually watching this and everybody in the house other than me raises their hand I'm like okay I'm the only person who hasn't Because until I watched Arcane back in November, I hadn't watched Netflix probably since the last season of Stranger Things. So that was it. I mean, I've been using it a little now because I'm watching Breaking Bad. Not Breaking Bad. I better call Saul. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I've seen Breaking Bad. Well, we made it. We survived. We did. Fairly low news overall. But hopefully people were entertained. And if you were and you haven't paid enough Netflix, you can pay money to us by joining our Patreon. We do have tiers as low as a dollar a month. That's at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. You can reach out to us at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or on facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple weeks. What will be out? We don't know. Maybe we'll have more content that get emailed in. We do appreciate that. It definitely helps pad out the episodes. Yeah, especially right at the beginnings and ends of the year when the pinball nose is real light. Yeah. It's just, I mean, things will warm up as we move along, but we're not quite there yet. But until that next episode, my name is Dennis. I've been Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 57614efe-35f6-4b1b-964e-1af1b16ceb4a*