# Episode 12 - Domino's, SGDQ 2016, Evo 2016, & Tabletop for Kids

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2016-08-18  
**Duration:** 85m 42s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-12

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## Analysis

Dennis and Tony discuss the 1980s Pinball Machine Mania Tournament results (Round 4), revealing Pinbot's upset victory over Taxi, and announce semifinal matchups. They then pivot to Spooky Pinball's newly revealed Domino's pinball machine, analyzing its playfield art, layout design, rule depth, and accessibility for casual players. They debate whether Spooky should continue limiting production or expand to meet demand given their established market position.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Spooky's Domino's pinball is their first non-limited production machine — _Tony explicitly states 'this is going to be Spooky's first non-limited pin' and references America's Most Haunted being limited to 150 units_
- [HIGH] The Domino's machine has four full wizard modes that stack sequentially plus several mini wizard modes — _Dennis reviewed the rule sheet and states 'there's like several mini wizard modes and like four full-up wizard modes that you have to...complete a wizard mode, start the next wizard mode'_
- [MEDIUM] Corporate restricts Domino's store locations to fewer than 30 that could physically accommodate a pinball machine — _Dennis references a forum thread where corporate stated 'less than 30 Domino's locations that would qualify' due to floor space and franchise layout constraints_
- [MEDIUM] Rob Zombie by Spooky sold out within 48 hours, compared to America's Most Haunted which took three years — _Tony states 'Rob Zombie sold out...within 48 hours compared to America's Most Haunted, which was something like three years'_
- [HIGH] Pinbot defeated Taxi 57.6% to advance in Round 4 of the tournament — _Dennis provides specific vote percentage: 'pinbot...did beat taxi...which was a three seed with 57.6 percent'_
- [HIGH] 8 Ball Deluxe upset #1 seed Elvira and the Party Monsters 51.5% to 48.5% in the closest Round 4 vote — _Dennis states 'eight ball deluxe, the four seed, did beat Elvira...the number one seed...51.5 percent of the votes'_

### Notable Quotes

> "I happen to love the design of EBD LE cab. I love the LED displays and the overall ergonomics of the cab. I like weird things."
> — **Adam (via email)**, ~4:30
> _Community member defending their vote for 8 Ball Deluxe LE, providing insight into minority opinions on early-80s machine ergonomics and display design_

> "if there are eight flippers that thing is a fat wide body we everyone knows that wide bodies are inferior so everybody knows everyone it's not it's science it's science now it's science"
> — **Dennis**, ~18:30
> _Humorous explanation of classic pinball design preferences; demonstrates community wisdom about body style impact on gameplay_

> "this is going to be Spooky's first non-limited pin...they have just built their new factory area so they can step their production up"
> — **Tony**, ~36:00
> _Key signal that Spooky is shifting business strategy toward unlimited production capability, indicating confidence in manufacturing scale_

> "the corporate individual...said there are very few stores that are laid out in a way where they would actually be allowed to put a pinball machine in...less than 30 Domino's locations that would qualify"
> — **Dennis**, ~42:00
> _Reveals corporate constraint on the Domino's pinball distribution strategy, indicating this is a home/owner-focused product, not location placement_

> "I think it was a good layout idea...I could actually see it...this could have been a really good concept for location play, where you get casuals coming up and trying to achieve certain modes"
> — **Dennis**, ~32:00
> _Professional assessment of the Domino's machine's approachability for casual players, comparing it to Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars in accessibility_

> "Rob Zombie sold out...within 48 hours compared to America's Most Haunted, which was something like three years"
> — **Tony**, ~45:00
> _Demonstrates market shift in demand for licensed vs unlicensed Spooky themes; supports business case for licensed-only future strategy_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Spooky Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer releasing Domino's machine as first non-limited production; recently expanded factory capacity; transitioned to licensed themes strategy |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; insurance professional; provides detailed analysis of pinball design, rule sets, and community trends |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; game and pinball enthusiast; provides broader market and accessibility analysis |
| Domino's Pinball | game | Spooky-developed machine commissioned by Domino's Pizza for corporate use; features Noid mascot, pizza-themed playfield art, four wizard modes, 'fan layout' style; first Spooky unlimited production title |
| America's Most Haunted | game | Spooky Pinball's inaugural game; initially limited to 150 units due to slow sales; took 3 years to sell out; demonstrates market shift toward licensed themes |
| Rob Zombie | game | Spooky Pinball licensed title; sold out within 48 hours; demonstrates strong demand for licensed themes vs original IP |
| Pinbot | game | Williams pinball game; five seed; defeated Taxi (three seed) 57.6% in Round 4 of 1980s Pinball Mania Tournament |
| Haunted House | game | Gottlieb #1 seed; defeated TX Sector 63.6% in Round 4; largest margin of Round 4; moving to semifinals vs Pinbot |
| 8 Ball Deluxe | game | Bally four seed; upset #1 seed Elvira 51.5% to 48.5% in Round 4; closest vote of round; advancing to semifinals vs Sea Witch |
| Elvira and the Party Monsters | game | Bally #1 seed; upset by 8 Ball Deluxe 48.5% to 51.5%; both hosts voted for Elvira; Dennis prefers gameplay on Elvira |
| Sea Witch | game | Stern #1 seed; defeated Stargazer 61.3%; advancing to semifinals vs 8 Ball Deluxe |
| Taxi | game | Williams three seed; lost to Pinbot 42.4% to 57.6% in Round 4; available on Pinball Arcade |
| Medieval Madness | game | Classic Williams machine referenced as example of approachable 'fan layout' style with two flippers and back-of-field shots |
| Attack from Mars | game | Classic machine referenced alongside Medieval Madness as example of approachable layout for casual players |
| Adam | person | Listener who emailed podcast to explain he was the sole vote for 8 Ball Deluxe LE; defends 8BD LE's LED displays and ergonomics |
| 1980s Pinball Machine Mania Tournament | event | Community voting tournament pitting machines from Williams, Gottlieb, Bally, and Stern regions; currently in Round 5 semifinals |
| The Hobbit | game | Referenced as comparison point for Domino's roundabout mechanic around central toy; Dennis suggests Domino's executed similar concept better |

### Topics

- **Primary:** 1980s Pinball Machine Mania Tournament - Round 4 Results and Semifinals, Spooky Pinball's Domino's Machine - Gameplay, Design, and Production Strategy
- **Secondary:** Pinball Machine Layout Design and Approachability for Casual Players, Licensed vs Unlicensed Pinball Themes and Market Demand, Spooky Pinball's Production Capacity Expansion and Competitive Positioning
- **Mentioned:** Pinball Machine Distribution Constraints in Commercial Franchises, Classic Pinball Design Philosophy (widebody vs standard, flipper configuration)

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Hosts express enthusiasm for Spooky Pinball's innovation and market positioning, appreciation for the Domino's machine's design and accessibility, and optimism about the company's growth trajectory. Minor criticisms (pizza delivery guy proportions, lack of depth vs flagship titles) are presented constructively. Tournament discussion is neutral/competitive in tone.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Spooky consolidating strategy around licensed themes due to market demand differential (Rob Zombie 48-hour sellout vs AMH 3-year sellout) (confidence: high) — Tony: 'Rob Zombie sold out...within 48 hours compared to America's Most Haunted, which was something like three years'; Tony predicts 'they're probably going to stick with licensed themes for the foreseeable future'
- **[business_signal]** Spooky Pinball transitioning to unlimited production model with Domino's machine after establishing factory capacity expansion (confidence: high) — Tony: 'this is going to be Spooky's first non-limited pin' and reference to 'they have just built their new factory area so they can step their production up'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Hosts express confidence in Spooky Pinball's long-term market viability and growth trajectory, positioning them as 'people to watch' (confidence: high) — Tony: 'I think Spooky is going to be one of the people to watch for a long time now. I definitely have high hopes every time I hear something new coming out of Spooky'
- **[design_philosophy]** Domino's machine designed with 'fan layout' accessibility approach targeting casual location players, similar to Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'I thought it looked like...a very straightforward layout almost what i would would call meeting the definition of a fan layout' and 'I could actually see it...this could have been a really good concept for location play'
- **[business_signal]** Corporate Domino's franchise structure limits machine placement to fewer than 30 locations; primary distribution model is home/owner sales not location placement (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'the corporate individual...said there are very few stores that are laid out in a way where they would actually be allowed to put a pinball machine in...less than 30 Domino's locations that would qualify'
- **[market_signal]** Licensing deals with major brands (pizza chains) expanding pinball's footprint beyond traditional enthusiast markets into corporate/franchise environments (confidence: medium) — Domino's pinball exists as commissioned product; hosts discuss target market as 'franchise owners' and corporate clients rather than typical pinball audience
- **[announcement]** Spooky Pinball Domino's machine officially revealed with playfield video, rule sheet, and artwork; positioned as non-limited production (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'Spooky...dropped their Domino's play field and some videos...when they released it at the pizza convention'; detailed rule sheet review confirms official release
- **[product_strategy]** Domino's machine features substantial rule depth (4 wizard modes + mini modes) despite simpler layout, suggesting competitive depth despite casual accessibility target (confidence: high) — Dennis reviewed rule sheet: 'there's like several mini wizard modes and like four full-up wizard modes that you have to...complete a wizard mode, start the next wizard mode'

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## Transcript

Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast, episode number 12. This is Sunday, July 3rd, and I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to be talking to you today about pinball and video games and tabletop gaming. As you might be able to tell, we're back to our original setup of us being in separate places, and hopefully there's not the mic overdriving issues that happen when we're in one place using one mic. Yeah, well, we have great software tools to help us when we're remote for normalization that works better than me trying to do it in post. So I think that'll probably alleviate a lot of those issues. And I'm a loud person. I mean, I just am. I always have been. So we just have to cope. I normally try and boost my mic to make up for it, but I don't think I keep mine loud enough. I'm a little too soft spoken, you know, in a long history of podcasters who are too soft spoken. You all know who you are. So just we'll get ahead and get what we've been doing lately out of the way. I haven't been doing a whole lot. I've been still reading Wheel of Time. I've been studying for my next certification exam. I did watch the first season of The Man in the High Castle, which is an Amazon Prime show. I enjoyed it quite a lot, and I think the most impressive thing about it to me was DJ Qualls actually played a great role that he didn't feel like DJ Qualls in it. I mean, I was impressed. I didn't know he had it in him. What's the show about? I'm not familiar. Oh, The Man in the High Castle is an alternate history story that takes place in 1962, 64, something like that. And it's where the Axis won World War II, and Nazi Germany controls from the east coast of the United States up to the Rockies, and Japan controls from the west coast to the Rockies, and then the Rockies is kind of a neutral zone between the two countries. Okay. And it's about a resistance, and there's a bunch of newsreels that are being found and smuggled to resistance peoples for various reasons. Okay. I'm a Prime member. I should check it out. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was pretty good. I mean, there were a couple little things that I didn't like as much, but for the most part, it was really good. Yeah, the DJ Qualls thing, though, because he always kind of plays the exact same character, and he wasn't that guy. And the only other thing is I finished my podcast backlog. I'm completely caught up on podcasts. I'm listening to them as they come out. I mean, I know. It's built back up to almost three hours just because I haven't listened since, you know, midday Friday. Right. And that's it. I mean, considering I went for the longest time where I'd be at 30 hours and I'd pull it down to 25, and then I'd be back at 30 and I'd pull it down to 24, and then I'd be at 29 and I'd pull it down to 23. To finally have caught up is just shocking. Well, it's a good glorious feeling, I'm sure, but it will likely slip away eventually as more content comes out. Are you going to add any podcasts? I've been thinking about it. I have test-driven three podcasts and deleted all of them because I didn't really like them. So we'll see. Yeah, sometimes I've let some go for a while, and then I've had some where I've tried them for a couple months and then ended up dropping them for various reasons. There are plenty to choose from. Yeah, these were all – one of them I ended up not liking the format. It was kind of a short story radio drama type thing, and while I've got some of those that I listen to that I like, I just didn't like that one. And another one it had the two main people's voices just were like nails on a chalkboard for me for some reason and the last one was supposed to be – everyone told me it was really really funny and after listening to three episodes and never laughing once I'm like okay I apparently don't know what's funny anymore. Yeah, it stopped, yeah, yeah, yeah. I some – yeah there have been some things like that I've run into where people insist that it's hilarious and it's like um not under my structure of humor but but you know I usually at least can kind of get where they may be coming from. I may pity them for it but that's about all. I've been doing oh okay well uh my let's see what have I been up to. Well first thing I should note is I have a correction to issue from episode 11 so thank you to Don who pointed out via Facebook that when we were doing our E3 rundown, and we were in our first section, which was sort of the Square Enix titles, I continuously and repeatedly referred to Deus Ex as D-U-X instead of saying Deus in Latin. So my apologies for that. I don't know why I did that, other than I know I've been saying it wrong for a really long time. So as penance, I have started listening to Mike Duncan's The History of Rome podcast to fully immerse myself in the Latin. That's about 175 episodes that goes through the entire existence of the rise of the Roman Empire from the legend of Romulus and Remus all the way to, I think it ends around 500 CE or so. I'm still before Julius Caesar. I'm just after the Social Wars. So I'm still pretty early in the history, still in the Republic era. But anyway, so hopefully I'll pick up some Latin along the way. If not, at the very least, I've repeatedly made notes to myself to remember to say Deus and not D-U-X as if it was French and ended in an X. Wouldn't it be Kaisar? Isn't Kaisar the correct pronunciation of Caesar? Oh, I've never heard it that way. Okay. Maybe in Russian. Oh, gosh. I was just – obviously you said that and I started thinking, what did – why are we talking about Kaiser rolls now? I don't know. Let's see. What else? I'm working on my continuing education for insurance. So that sucks. But I'm not an insurance – well, no one really cares. So so I guess I should clarify. I am I am an insurance agent. So I always have to do continuing education. I don't actually sell insurance, though. So I always forget kind of about this until I get my reminders. So every other year I have to do these hours and I need to maintain it for work, even though we don't really do anything with it. It's just something I need to have for for certain financial reasons. So it's like, okay, it's time to do the education in the field I don't really work in. So I'm most of the way through it. It's only 12 hours worth of work. So I did. I have two left, but boring. But it must be done. So I did read a book. Speaking a little bit ago of Amazon Prime, this was one of those free Prime books, but this one I liked. So I actually tore right through it. It was Scott Allen Morrison's Terms of Use, which is sort of a thriller involving social media and the attempt to use it to influence elections. So it was actually pretty good. I enjoyed it. And then on the video game front, I wrapped up Witcher 3 finally. I did that yesterday. I thought I was done with it Friday, but it actually had two points of no return where it warned me that I was at a point of no return. And then hours later, I hit the second one. So I finally completed the campaign to that. I don't know if I'll play any DLC. I've not started anything major up since finishing that off. I started a little arcade game called L.A. Cops, which is kind of a real-time strategic shooter where you control two different cops and you do fields of fire and try and clear rooms that way. So this is something I got on sale. But that's pretty much it. That sounds kind of like Frozen Synapse. Yes, that's what it reminded me of. Yeah, Frozen Synapse was a fun little game. And I know they've got a new Frozen something out that's a football game that's used by the same people and used in the same system. Well, Frozen Synapse is better than LA Cops. I'll tell you that right now. But it is what it is. I'm just – actually, you hit a difficulty spike right away. I looked online today. I was like, okay, well, what do I need to do? Am I just not playing it right? And what was the suggestion? Go back to level one and just grind level. Just grind it? Yeah, just grind XP and level up your cops. So, okay. So I started to do that. But that will be just something to sort of tinker around with. There's going to be a big Xbox sale here coming up probably on the 5th, I think. So I might pick up some new stuff there. I picked up a couple things on the big Steam sale that's going on, but it'll be over tomorrow. But in the summer, everybody has big sales. Yep, it's summer sale time. I actually saw a commercial. I was over visiting with my parents, and there was a commercial on the TV that was advertising it as almost Black Friday. That's awesome. It was some place's big sale on Friday the 1st. It's our Almost Black Friday sale. It's the Friday before. It's like, oh, man, no, come on. Yep, earlier every year. It's not just a feeling. It's reality. Hooked on a Feeling. I'm not going to pay anybody. Don't sing anymore. We don't have the rights to that song. Okay, so introductions are out of the way. So I guess we need to hop right into the main portion of our show, which will be pinball. We'll be back up to our regular order. So we'll go ahead and do pinball first. I guess that means I get to talk some more. You get to talk some more. I do. So let's start with what we normally open with on it, and that's the updates for the 1980s Pinball Machine Mania Tournament. But before we go into the results of round four, I need to note that we did have someone email us. His name is Adam, and he wrote in to reveal that he was, in fact, the person who backed the one vote for 8 Ball Deluxe LE a couple of rounds ago. And you had wanted to know if anyone was going to back that one for them to say anything, and he had just fallen behind. So he was not hiding from you. He has, in fact, come forth and said, and I will quote, I happen to love the design of 8BD LE cab. I love the LED displays and the overall ergonomics of the cab. I like weird things. Well, there's nothing wrong with liking weird things. I like weird things, too. Just not that one. Well, it was. I would give him, obviously, I respect the fact that he came forth with his opinion. I would say the thing about the display would be what would resonate with me most, not the ergonomics to it. But I like the idea of the score being so clearly segregated away from the back glass, because I do think it is easy to identify the scores that way. It's just with those early 80s games, it was, in my view, always easy to identify the scores because they had – that was all that was up there. They were just the numeric displays. Now, if you were to take something today where you had like the DMD or LCD or whatever doing the animations and stuff, but kept the scores somewhere else, maybe something really clear, like an alphanumeric. I would probably like that, even if it looked a little weird, just because I hate like on a Stern game when you go into multiball and you don't know what the other player scores are anymore. And, you know, you're just trying to get the points you need and then let it go. So, I mean, not a big deal. It's a sort of a competitive pinball gripe. But anyway, so thank you, Adam, for being the explainer. You based off of the fact as I noted being the one vote for 8 Ball Deluxe LE against 8 Ball Deluxe non-LE means you are very much in the minority but thank you for playing. Yes, thank you Adam. Let's talk about round four. All right, so round four we did have a – you know, at this point upsets a little weird thing to say because uh these are all pretty well-ranked titles. We did not have anything that was lower than a five seed in any of these uh brackets but we'll go ahead and go through them real quick. So Williams – the Williams region Pinbot which was the five seed game did beat Taxi uh which was a three seed with 57.6 percent so Pinbot will be representing Williams. That's not – I that's not too much of a surprise. I kind of thought that would be how it was going to go. The Pinbot and the whole series was just so popular. I mean, Taxi's fun, but Pinbot's something on its own level. I was surprised. I voted for Pinbot, but I did think that Taxi was going to win. I didn't expect it to be a blowout, but I just assumed. I don't know why. Part of it's, you know, Pinball Arcade has both of them, I know, but there's a lot of respect for both of the games, and I just, for whatever reason, I think of Taxi almost more iconic, maybe because Pinbot's somewhat overshadowed by Jackbot, but there ain't no Jackbot in the 80s to worry about, so we have what we have. So I was pleased with the result, at least. Gottlieb. All right, so Gottlieb, Haunted House, which was the number one seed game, did beat TX Sector, which was the four seed, had 63.6% of the vote, making it the largest margin of round four to win by. So Haunted House will be Gottlieb's representative. I don't think that's surprising at all. No, not really. I mean, obviously, given it was the one seed, that's where it sat at Pinside. It's very, very iconic. Not what I would have wanted to see. I actually think that Black Hole is a better game, but Black Hole was already wiped out. Yeah, I mean, I like Black Hole a lot, but, yeah, it's already long gone. Yep. Bally region. Now, this one was interesting. It was the closest vote of round four, but 8 Ball Deluxe, the four seed, did beat Elvira and the Party Monsters, the number one seed. I'm surprised. I'm very surprised. I was. It was 51.5 percent of the votes that it received. So it was extremely close. And I, I vote. I did vote for Elvira. I did, too. I, you know, I sat and thought about it. Both of these games have been on at various points. They might still be on Pinside. I'd have to check. But they have both been on my wish list of games I would like to have in my limited collection. But I just think that the gameplay is more enjoyable on Elvira but apparently it's much more divisive than I thought. I know there's a lot of love for 8-Ball Deluxe and I really respect it as a game but I am surprised. I am surprised. Yeah, I'm surprised but I've played a fair amount of both of them and I'm pretty happy with it. I think I would be happy with either one. It's just it was a surprise to me. Yeah, no, but I'm not surprised that given it won that it won with a really, really close vote. Yeah, a blowout would have been shocking. This is just crazy. Yeah, nothing was too much. Nothing really, in election speak, I guess, Gottlieb was very decisive, I suppose. And the other region is as well. So Stern Sea Witch, the number one seed, did beat Stern Stargazer, the number two seed. It had 61.3% of the vote. So not, I suppose, unanticipated, given the seeding. I actually voted for Stargazer, but obviously with the seed placement, I'm not surprised that Sea Witch won. Those games actually, I think, have really, really similar layouts conceptually. So it just sort of comes down to what other features you really like. I'm not really strong on knowledge on the Sterns. I want to think the Sea Witch is a lot rarer title. So maybe that helps drive some of that. I'm not entirely sure. They're both kind of what I call three banks of drop targets is sort of what you shoot for on both of them. Yeah so it's kind of like Sea Witch gives you four flippers and Stargazer gives you two but Stargazer had three spinners and I think Sea Witch has one so I don't like lots and lots of flippers so that's just sort of me but you don't want an eight flipper game. Gosh, I'll tell you why I'll tell you why because if there are eight flippers that thing is a fat wide body. We everyone knows that wide bodies are inferior so everybody knows. Everyone. It's not it's science. It's science. Now it's science. Uh-huh. I didn't I didn't create the science I merely reveal it to all of you. Yeah, this is the sign. Yeah some other people do that too so okay so anyway now that we are all in agreement the uh let's go ahead and announce the round five matchups. We're in the semi-finals. We're almost done. We only got this and then the finals after it and then we will be done with the uh 1980s. So uh this means we will have uh Williams Pinbot five seed game going up against Gottlieb's Haunted House the one seed game. That'll be the one side of the bracket. That'll be uh kind of – I think that one will be close. I think it will not be close. You don't think so? I think Pinbot is going to win with over 60% of the vote. Really? I do. Okay. I can see that. What do you think? What's your prediction? Who do you think is going to win? I guess you've said close, so obviously you expect a lower percentage than what I said. Yeah, I expect Penbot to take it, but I expect Penbot to only take it by, I don't know, maybe 55%, 56%, somewhere in there. Okay. Okay. We're not all that far apart, actually. Just a little window there. Okay, and then on the other side, we've got Bally's 8-Ball Deluxe 4-seed game. We'll be going up against Stern's Sea Witch 1-seed. I don't know. 8-Ball's been doing pretty good. I think 8-Ball might take that one. I think 8-Ball will win, and I think it's going to get over 60% as well. We'll just have to see. Yeah, I mean, again, it's so weird. I mean, that whole other region, which has been cleaned up by Stern's titles all the way through, looks really, really strong. It's sort of like Haunted House having the largest margin. It's just, this isn't the EM era. Gottlieb doesn't have the same respect as it did in the 70s and before. Now, still, Haunted House is very, very good. I think it's the best or was one of the best representatives of the manufacturer for this era. Anyway, we'll see. I don't think it'll be all that close this time. But, hey, I've been wrong before. I can definitely be wrong again. So let's go ahead and we'll have a link in the show notes as normal, and I'll get it out on social media and everything so people will be able to go vote. And then we'll move on to the finals and have those announcements at our next podcast. So we've got one more pinball topic. So let's go ahead and transition over to that. There was a big announcement regarding an upcoming machine, wasn't there? Yes, there was. Spooky. They dropped their Domino's playfield and some videos and stuff when they released it at the pizza convention, the Domino's convention. Is there a special name for that thing? I don't remember. Oh, I'm sure there is. But since we're not a pizza podcast, we don't really care. Okay. I don't know. I think a pizza convention could be kind of a cool thing to go visit. It probably could. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know anymore. I don't know what we're even doing anymore. So, yes, I guess this is a good sign for pinball if we're having to bring up pizza conventions to talk about it. So we've both seen the stills and we've both seen the video. Yes. So I guess, I mean, backglass and stuff was already known. And we know that Spooky does not officially recognize the Domino's pinball machine as a Spooky table. That they were just contracted to come up with and devise it. It's not part of their, what you'd consider core or pure lineup. So they don't, you know, it's obviously they're catering to an entity that's basically hired them on contract to devise something for Domino's. But it is publicly available. There are no limits on the number being sold. And so it is something that I think is of interest to anyone who's into pinball because you don't have to be affiliated with Domino's to be able to acquire one of these machines. So I guess I would say, Tony, just kind of what do you think overall? What do you think of how it looks? And to me, what's more interesting is what do you think from the video in terms of kind of how it's shot? Well, I like the playfield art. I wasn't sure what they were going to do, and I wasn't sure how it was going to look. But honestly, I thought the playfield art was pretty cool looking. Um the – Uh the shots seemed – It seemed to – You know – It wasn't like crazy. It doesn't seem like it's a super insane lots of shots thing. But the shots that were there looked satisfying from the video. It looked like I kind of liked the little quick roundabout around the Noid. That shot looked like that could be fun depending upon how it feeds back. Yeah, it was kind of like – it looked to me almost like, not to be mean, but like a better version of what they tried to do on The Hobbit, with that roundabout in the middle of The Hobbit. Yeah, it could be. I hadn't actually thought of that, but yeah, that looks kind of – it looks interesting. And the, I mean, you're designing for a pizza place, so you want the pizza stuff. I mean, you know, there's an oven and there's this and that. I looked at the rule sheet they put out, and it seems like there's actually, you know, it's deeper than I expected. I mean, it looks like there's like several mini wizard modes and like four full-up wizard modes that you have to – that you stack through one at a time. You know, complete a wizard mode, start the next wizard mode, this and that. I don't know how hard any of them are going to be to do, but it looks fun. I know they're all going to be too hard for me to do, but it could be pretty interesting. I thought it looked pretty cool. Yeah. Artistically, I like the direction they went with. I didn't care for the pizza delivery guy by the flippers. I think he looks a little weird. But how he's stylized is fine. It's just – it seems a little – I don't know. He seems a little weirdly proportioned. But other than that, I liked it. You're talking about people being weirdly proportioned in pinball, and that's just – because it's the artistic style. Yeah, that's all it is for Spooky. I mean, for me, it would never be something to make or break. But as I've said repeatedly on past episodes, I don't play the art, so I don't care all that much. Overall, I thought it looked really clean. That would be how I'd describe the artistic style. It looks really clean. I think it's really easy to tell what sections there are. And so I think it would be really easy to know what to shoot for and such, given how it seems to be laid out. In terms of the gameplay uh I I thought it looked decent. I thought uh it looked like it had a really good flow. It looks like they were shooting for a very straightforward layout. Almost what I would would call meeting the definition of a fan layout but maybe not quite and I guess that depends on how one defines a fan layout. But we've got we got the two flippers only so that helps. All the shots are in the back of the of the machine so that kind of meets that portion of the definition. They don't all kind of flow around. I think there are a couple of scoops or something that the ball can fall into and be held in briefly. So to me, that kind of disqualifies it from being a pure fan layout. But most of the shots are back there. I think it's very approachable for that, much like how I think a lot of people will go and look at something like Medieval Madness or Attack from Mars. And that layout, I think, is very approachable for people. It is. I love both those games. Right, because you don't have a lot of stuff lower in the field that will disrupt your flow. You don't have the alternate flippers besides the two that are necessary for achieving certain shots, things like that. So given all of that, I think that it was a good layout idea. And, yeah, as you noted, it does seem to have a decent amount of depth. I'm going to assume code-wise it's never going to be as deep as what we're seeing out of normally what would come out of a Spooky machine or a Stern or anything like that. But you don't need a ton of depth if the game isn't going to be sort of dissected by a hardcore player. So because of that, I think, while I know that the market here is sort of non-pinball people who are really into their Domino's franchises, I could actually see it, other than perhaps the theme itself, this could have been a really good concept for location play, where you get casuals coming up and trying to achieve certain modes. And it's – I mean, so again, the theme, because the theme is a product, I don't think it's ever going to resonate like a normal consumption product, like a movie product or something where people feel a strong attachment. But there are probably a lot of Domino's fans out there who are like Domino's. That's my main chain pizza place, just like some people are Papa John's and some people are Pizza Hut. And and things like the Noid and stuff are very iconic. They are. They're in the they're in the pop culture, even though it's been so long. I was going to say, how in the pop culture is it? I mean, they haven't acknowledged the Noid since, what, the 90s, like the early 90s? Yeah, but I think it's so famous that it's kind of like there are people who will quote, where's the beef, who weren't even alive when those little old ladies were doing the commercials for Wendy's. Well, that's true. That is very true. Now, the Noid isn't that. A Wendy's pin would have made more sense. Spooky. I'm just telling you. Think about that. You could have had the people looking for the little square patties. Oh, it writes itself. It writes itself. But this is what we have to work with. But the Noid is pretty iconic. So, no, it's not. It would have been better had it come out with the Noid in its heyday. But the Noid is just one element on the machine. So it's just people who are into Domino's are going to know what the Noid is. And that's enough for the target market, which is the franchise owners, to acquire the machines. I think most people won't really care, but if anyone's just like, I want to play pinball, pinball is pinball, and they'll know that's just the Domino's. They'll know that's the most iconic thing is the logo and the brand name. That's why we're not going to see – it's not like this is going to be a machine you're going to see on location anywhere other than a Domino's. You know, this is the only machine I haven't heard yet that's going to be at the 403 Club, so maybe someone's going to get it for them. I don't know. Because it seems like I've heard supposedly practically everything else, even the more obscure stuff sounds like it's going to eventually end up there, which we're real lucky to be able to have such access to those sort of things. But this is one where I truly haven't heard anyone. I don't know anyone who's getting Domino's. But after seeing the gameplay video, I really would like to try it. Well, I've got a Domino's that's not a block and a half from my house. My problem is it's one of those carry-out-only Domino's that has no room inside, so I doubt they'll get one. Yeah, and I saw a thread where someone was asking about that and thought, oh, well, maybe a lot of these Domino's franchisees would actually put the machines out in their restaurants. But I think the corporate individual who was arranging for the whole thing, he said there are very few stores that are laid out in a way where they would actually be allowed to put a pinball machine in because of the floor space dimensions and everything. Because it's a franchise, everything's very structured in terms of how it's all going to be laid out. So I think he noted there would be less than 30 Domino's locations that would qualify or something like that. So, no, this idea was to get it into the homes of the owners, not into the public view. But people want to consume more pinball, and so they could buy them, and Domino's corporate is like, no problem. You guys want them. We're not limiting them. You guys want them. You can have them. To me, that's a big thing is this is going to be Spooky's first non-limited pin. America's Most Haunted only had 150 pins. Yeah, they didn't start that limited, though. They did that because it wasn't selling well. Well, yeah, but, I mean, they've done, and as they're growing, and I think that's the nice thing about Spooky is as they're growing, I mean, they've just built their new factory area so they can step their production up and this and that. I still think Spooky is going to be one of the people to watch for a long time now. I definitely have high hopes every time I hear something new coming out of Spooky. I think they have a really good approach to how they're growing their business. My sense would be they do not need to limit the pin counts anymore. I don't think they even needed to for Rob Zombie. Now, maybe they should if they're going to do more non-licensed stuff. But given how quickly Rob Zombie sold out, which was what, within 48 hours compared to America's Most Haunted, which was something like three years, I think they're probably going to stick with licensed themes for the foreseeable future. That'd be my guess. It would be what I would do if I were them. Yeah, well, that makes sense. I mean, there's a reason most people are doing licensed themes and not just original productions anymore. Oh, sure. Yeah, Stern's been doing it for a long time, and it makes good sense. And I think the issue with Spooky is the nice thing when they did the limitation was you knew that there was going to be a certain degree of rarity. So if you didn't like it and you wanted to unload it, it would probably retain a certain amount of value. I don't think that they need – they'll make more money if they can sell more machines based off the licenses. Then the limitation may help the end user who gets a Rob Zombie and wants to resell it, and then they say, okay, I bought it for six. Now I'm selling it for seven because there are only 300 of them. That doesn't help them, though, other than the initial sales. But if they were going to be able to sell over 300 without limiting it at 300, then they might as well sell 350. So I think – I mean, we'll see what they want to do. They may want to just keep it limited so they can keep moving to a new game at a certain kind of fixed speed. But I don't think that they need to do the limitations now, now that they're established. d. It made a lot of sense. I think it was a great move when they were doing America's Most Haunted. I think they're at the point where they don't need that as a crutch. They can, if they want to do limited editions and keep those limited, they could go for it with that, but I don't think they need to do it for most of their sales. Yeah, that makes complete sense. I mean, they're definitely, they've moved themselves into the place that they can do stuff like that. Rob Zombie, I mean, it's a beautiful table. America's Most Haunted was fun and very humorous, at least when I played it. I enjoyed it. They've definitely proven themselves as a boutique that has the ability to make good, solid machines. And I think the biggest thing is they're like, well, we're making this machine, and then this machine comes out. They're not getting locked into the problems a lot of the other places are where they're announcing a machine and the machine arrives four or five years later. Right. No, they've been really, I think, really smart about it. And then I think their customer loyalty has borne that out. I want to think I heard on another podcast actually that Charlie, who owns Spooky Pinball, noted that of the 150 people who bought America's Most Haunted, 130 of them, I think he said, bought Rob Zombie. That's a lot of loyalty. Oh, yeah. They've won a lot of support. And I think that as long as they keep making the decisions they've been making, they're going to keep that support. So, and that's – I think that's good because I want to see – I want to see other pinball manufacturers and I want to just see – I want to see them actually make pinball machines, not say that they're pinball manufacturers on paper. And then in reality, it's like, no, no, they're Stern. And then there are people that are claiming that they make pinball machines, but barely do it. You know, that sort of thing. Stern's a big going production has been a big going production for a long time. I mean, they put out – they can put out three machines a year. Not a problem. I'm not looking for another pinball company to put out three machines a year, but something more than one every half decade would be a big plus, a net plus. Yeah, that'd be kind of nice. Kind of nice. Well, that should take care of our pinball segment, so let's go ahead and move to segment number two: video games. A couple of big events are coming up that I wanted to take some note of. One of them actually just started earlier today, and that would be Summer Games Done Quick 2016. For those that are not familiar with Games Done Quick, it's sort of a biannual event. They have in the winter, usually I believe in January, they do Awesome Games Done Quick. And then in the summer, usually in July, they do Summer Games Done Quick, which came about later. It originally was just an annual thing. And it's a week-long speedrunning event. So what it is is they're a bunch of video gamers. A lot of them are very active on Twitch. They will master how to speed run particular titles. A lot of the games are old. Some of the games are new. The only consistency is that they are video games. And so a bunch of them actually fly out and all get together in one place. And then it is live streamed on Twitch 24 hours a day for the full seven days that the event runs. And they just try and beat times and show off their skills. And meanwhile, they are doing donations for charity. And the charities vary. Awesome Games Done Quick has its own charity. And then the summer one, which we're in now, is Doctors Without Borders. So every time they do the summer one, it's been Doctors Without Borders, or at least it's been that way for the last couple of years. Yeah, I've seen a lot of these streaming games, the speed runners. I've seen it. That's kind of interesting to watch. I watched one. I don't know if it was Games Done Quick, it might have been, where it was three teams and they were speedrunning three Final Fantasy games. They were racing each other to see who could finish all three Final Fantasy games the quickest. That was insane. Yeah, a lot of things like that will crop up on Twitch as well, where gamers will put together things and do their own mini charity things, for example. So there's stuff like that. I think this Summer Games Done Quick is going to do something that was done back in January at Awesome Games Done Quick where they're going to get a bunch of speed runners who are kind of familiar with the Mario titles and they're going to have them blind run on Mario Maker levels that are being created at the event, so no one would have played them before. And it was really, it was really awesome to see during Awesome Games Done Quick. The way they did it there was each team had like five gamers, and they ran the same levels. But as soon as one person died, they had to get up out of the chair and pass the controller to the next person, and then that person had to try. So you only got one life, and then you had to wait for your turn to rotate through again. Oh, so you couldn't just hammer away at it. No, no. It was round robin. It was round robin. And so you had to watch how your other teammates were doing and you had to collectively as a group actually get through the level unless, you know, you had someone who did really awesome. And on some stages it did go quick and on some it did not. So it was, I thought, really fascinating. So this is running from today, July 3rd through July 10th. I did try. I'd sent out a couple feelers to try and grab an interview on this because I think it's really interesting. But I didn't. Those didn't pan out. And then we had so many other interviews going on over the last month, I completely forgot to follow up with anyone else about it. But, I mean, for comparison's sake, we did a couple episodes ago, episode 10, we talked about Project Pinball Charity, for example. And I should, as an aside to our pinball fans, because I know there are a number that actually sit through the rest of these segments, Pinball Done Quick was done at Awesome Games Done Quick in January, which was – they kind of piggybacked at the same time. I don't know if they're running a Pinball Done Quick here with Summer Games or not. I didn't check to see that. But the thing that I want to point out is just how successful this event is. So, I mean, just before coming in here to record, the show had been going on. They had already noted that in the first hour of streaming, which they were doing Super Mario Sunshine was what they were speed running. They had already raised over $20,000. Wow. For Doctors Without Borders. If they keep pace with what was done at last year's Summer Games Done Quick and Awesome Games Done Quick – and Awesome tends to raise more money than Summer – they will break a million dollars in the week. It's kind of amazing to me how much some of these charity events that have been created basically purely based upon the Internet brings up. I know, like, because there's like, you know, this – there's the Child's Play charity run by the Penny Arcade guy. Huge money. That's just enormous. I mean, all this stuff, it's just it's amazing. This is stuff that without the Internet and without the social media being the way it is and without stuff like Twitch, that we'd never see anything like this. Right. And the pinhead in me really wishes – you know, I know we're in the video game segment, but the reason why I brought up Project Pinball Charity is I, you know, I really like their mission. You know, they've had a lot of success. I noted on the social media earlier in the week they've sold out on the raffle tickets, which I looked at the name list, and I know a number of people that I know listen to the show did end up buying tickets. So I thank everyone who did participate with that. But, you know, they're doing a ton of work to get enough money together to, you know, put in a pinball machine. So, you know, we're talking like $6,000 when you think about maintenance and everything like that. Whereas for a major event like this, like Summer Games Done Quick, $10,000, $20,000, that's nothing. That's, you know, that's less than an hour's worth of streaming. It's just that massive. And so I'd love to see other groups start to look at these models and I think Pinball Done Quick was an example of trying to harness that, looking at this sort of thing and seeing, hey, can we move this sort of work into other areas? What else can lend itself to live streaming and can raise money for a good cause? So anyway, very exciting. I really enjoy watching Summer Games Done Quick. I'm going to watch more of it tonight and I'm going to watch it all throughout the week because I do not speed run. I am way too old to have the reflexes to do it, and that's never been my play style, but I do enjoy watching it. So I think it's a lot of fun. Yeah, I enjoy watching them. I've seen them. I watch a lot of weird stuff as is, but, yeah, it's definitely one of those things that the future of and how much it does to help people is just amazing to me. Yeah, and they have really cool shirts too. I think the Yeti is who they partner with on getting artists will donate designs on T-shirts. And so I usually try and pick up one or two T-shirts during the events because they give a portion of that to the charity. And they'll tell you how much if you go to the site. But you get some really cool, nerdy video game style stuff that artists have done where they make them just a little bit off. So you don't have to get Nintendo mad at you, because we know I just saw today that some Kickstarter thing Nintendo went after. So you got to be careful with some of this stuff. But you never know. I mean, it's amazing what you can do that gets you a quick DMCA and what can be put up, and you don't see anything special come out of it at all. I mean, it's just a matter of who and where and what. I mean, you post up five seconds from an NFL game on your TV screen in the background while you're recording your little kid do something, you're going to get pulled down. So anybody can do it if they want to. And we could have a whole rant about fair use versus DMCA. Oh, yeah. We probably will at some point. Oh, yeah. I think we'll run into it because there are a lot of – especially on the video game front, we see a lot of stuff that tries to kind of take use of things that were done in the past. And some companies are very protective of their intellectual property and will construe such things as an assault, and they'll defend it vigorously. Well, yeah, and I can understand it from some occasions because some of the thing is, if you don't defend your rights, if you don't defend it, it's going to – they're just going to let it take it away. If you don't defend it once, next time it goes to court when you do try to defend it, they're going to be like, well, you let those people and those people use it with nothing. Right, right. So they're just going to – That's where you run into things like Blizzard having to shut down the vanilla running WoW servers because even though you basically have the company saying, well, we're not threatened by this. This doesn't bother us, but we're legally obligated to protect the copyright. Otherwise, we won't be allowed to protect it when someone actually tries to monetize against us on it. Yeah. Anyway, but enough of the finer things. Let's talk about more fun events that aren't going to run any risks of that sort of stuff. Are you telling me that talking about legalese and the changes that the Internet has provided on the legal ramifications of everything we do in our life isn't fun? I bet it's fun for attorneys, but I'm not one of them. And I know plenty that we can bring on and talk about. It may not be their area of specialty, but I'm sure they have thoughts on it. But no, not really. I'm sure we'll scrape the barrel and have to do something like that eventually on a really slow week, but we got more fun things to talk about right now. All right, so let's move to another event. This one not a charity event, but it's no less enjoyable from a spectator standpoint, and that would be EVO 2016. So the Evolution Championship Series – EVO for short – so for people that don't know, EVO is the premier fighting game tournament that happens. It's going to be in Vegas. I think it's been there for quite a while. It's not always been the same facility. It originally had a different name. It's been called EVO for quite a while now. And I wanted to note this because it's taking place July 15th through the 17th. So when we next record, if we record on schedule, it's going to be right when it's wrapping up. So I wanted to get the announcement out now to people. You can watch it on Twitch, but there are a lot of interesting kind of milestones or trailblazing things that are happening regarding this particular EVO. The EVO popularity has been skyrocketing – probably not strong enough of a word. It's been doing very – I mean, it's always, it seems like it's always doing better and better and better, but this one's hit quite a number of interesting points. So I think the main thing to note that's been in the news is that ESPN2 is actually going to be broadcasting the top eight playing Street Fighter V. Really? Yeah, they're going to do that live. So while it's been a huge deal on Twitch where thousands and thousands of people are watching the various EVO streams – because a lot of these tournaments happen simultaneously because they're multiple games – Well, yeah, I know that because I've watched it in the past, especially when I've been over at your place, because I know you guys watch it constantly, where you're bouncing back and forth between, eh, I don't really feel like watching the Killer Instinct stream. Let's go over and watch the Smash Brothers. And then you've got to beat somebody up, because it's like, why are you watching Smash Brothers? Nobody cares about Smash Brothers. Why is Smash Brothers a fighting game? Right. So on July 15th, when they're running pools, there will be streams showing pretty much all of these games because they'll have to be running at the same time. So yeah, one year I actually had I was watching Marvel vs. Capcom on my TV. I had my tablet loaded up with Killer Instinct and then on my phone I was also streaming BlazBlue or something, just while I was reading a book. So of course I wasn't paying attention to any of it. Once you get to the end, they spaced the finals out at EVO. So Street Fighter has always been the last thing. And so it's been what they close out on, and it tends to have, obviously, very large viewership. So ESPN seizing on that. Should note that it's not small taters here. So Street Fighter V has over $100,000 in prize money for the top eight, and whoever wins is going to get over $50,000. It's the largest prize pool for an open tournament in fighting game history because EVO is open. A lot of people will qualify at other tournaments, but when it comes to EVO, you can actually show up, play in pools, and you know, fight your way into the finals if you want to. And EVO's in Vegas, isn't it? It's always in Vegas, at least it's been for years now. I think I don't know if it started when it was under its old name in Vegas or not. I don't know enough about the history to remember if it's always, always, always been in Vegas. Yeah, it's in Vegas. So have you considered going and getting into pools and giving it a shot? Me? No, I'm not. I'm not strong enough on any of the current titles. You know, I actually have a better shot of doing that in pinball than I would in video games. And I don't have much of a shot in pinball. So I kind of, where that gauge is. That's something where Mike, our guest host from the last episode, I've often told him, you know, why don't you go and compete in EVO because he plays more fighting games than anyone I know. At this point, but... Yeah, I don't know. Fifteen years ago, I could have probably competed in, like, Soul Calibur tournaments. That's right. And we're going to have a little bit of discussion here after we get through EVO about fighting games, because this is a great time to talk about it, because EVO's upon us. But for people that are curious, here are the main games. There are actually a number of little side tournaments that happen at EVO that aren't a part of the official roster that play a lot, especially older things. Like you can still play Street Fighter 2 at EVO. There's going to be someone running some sort of tournament with it. Things like Skullgirls, stuff like that, that's a little more obscure. Those things tend to be available somewhere at or around EVO. But the official games are Street Fighter V, which will be the largest tournament attendance in EVO history in terms of people who are going to play. The final count is 5,065 people have entered to compete in Street Fighter V. Now, on a quick Street Fighter V question: did they ever drop their big patch, their big June patch? Did it ever come out? I think so, yes. I mean, I don't own it, so I don't know, because it's a PlayStation exclusive. But my understanding is whatever had the story mode has come out, and I know a bunch of characters have come out now as well. So, like, Balrog's in it now. Yeah, because I knew they were having a big issue with getting their releases out. So there has been something that's come out. I'm assuming it's the big one, but it sounded big, but I haven't tracked it enough to know. So anyway, Street Fighter V will be the largest EVO – that 5,065 – that makes it the largest tournament in EVO history, and it also is the largest single-location tournament in fighting game history of any sort, which I'm not surprised that EVO would set that. In fact, I think the previous record was last year's Street Fighter 4, Super Ultra Street Fighter 4, whatever it's called, the final flavor of it. Let's see. Super Smash Brothers for Wii U is commonly known as Smash 4. It's got 2,637 people competing, which makes it the largest tournament ever for Smash 4. Then we've got Super Smash Brothers Melee. That's the really old one from GameCube with 2,350 people competing, which makes that the largest tournament ever for that game. And then there's the newer Pokken Tournament with 1,165 people competing, making it the largest competition ever for Pokken Tournament. Largest tourney ever. Killer Instinct is the smallest attended of any of these games with 540 competitors. That's still the largest tourney ever for Killer Instinct. Tekken 7, which as Mike pointed out in the last episode, still does not have a – it's still just an arcade release. It's not on console yet, but it's got 543 people, which makes it one of the largest single-player tournaments in all of Tekken history, not just Tekken 7. Wow. And then the other ones, which to my knowledge are not setting particular records, is Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator. It's got 903 people competing at EVO. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which is one of my favorites to watch, but it's very unbalanced and showing its age at this point. 770 people still are going to be competing in that. And Mortal Kombat XL has 707. So all of these major games have at least 500 people in them. And so anyway, people who have ESPN, if you want to watch the finals on Sunday, July 17th live, Street Fighter V, you can. For everyone, though, there will be various Twitch streams that cover all of the games. Just look for the top fighting games in the game list, and you'll find the streams, because they're going to be the ones with all the people in them. Anyway, lots of fun. Before the hate mail rolls in, I don't hate Smash Bros. I'm just not a fan of watching one-on-one Smash Bros. with all the items turned off and only certain levels allowed and stuff like that. I like the sheer insanity that is Max Player Street Fighter with all the – or Smash Brothers with everything turned on, and I know that's not competitive. Well, I think they would, they look at it and would – I'm assuming and would say, well, this way it's skill versus skill. But on the flip side, again, to reference our earlier segment, when we talk pinball, we understand that the ball is wild. There's a randomness that's just inherent to that game, which they, on the video game side, try and strip out. They don't want that randomness. But, you know, randomness means anything can happen, and it makes it interesting. So I personally, I don't find, I think Smash 4 is much more watchable than Melee. I think Melee, they've got way too many stocks, aka lives, that they get to use, and the clock is way too long. I just, I just don't enjoy it. And that game, you think Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is unbalanced? Holy cow. Melee is just a bunch of Foxes jumping around where you end up rooting for people to glitch them with Ice Climbers and totally cheap out, knock them out because it's someone different than Fox. So, I mean, there's not very many characters that people play because it's not supported anymore. So it's GameCube. It's not like they could release patches. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so speaking of EVO, let's go ahead and go into our final element on the video games, which is we thought that it would be a lot of fun to actually talk about our experiences historically with fighting games, you know, games that we spent time with and why what we liked about them. You had mentioned Soul Calibur, which is not a game I've played. I'll go ahead and say my Soul Calibur experience is I've really only put any significant time into Soul Calibur 4, which I did like. It was on the 360. I borrowed it. It was before I even had a 360. I played someone else's. I played through the tower mode. It was the first 3D fighting game I ever really put any time in, and I didn't do much on the multiplayer side of it. But I really liked the tower stuff because you used equipment and you'd min-max and you'd try and gear yourself up to get through whatever the specific gimmicks were of that floor. And then there'd be a new floor you need to re-gear. And so I really liked those elements. But my problem with Soul Calibur, really Soul Calibur IV, was I only really played a couple of characters because, to me, it felt – unlike some other fighting games, which we'll talk about – it felt to me like I had to memorize custom combat combos for every single character that didn't just translate over into different – And they don't. They don't at all. So for me, it was like, okay, I spent all this time. I finally learned how to do the cool moves with Raphael. Those same controller motions didn't do things with Ivy. And so it was like I can't use her. I'd have to learn – I'd just have to learn her all over again, unlike something like Street Fighter where, you know, Ken, Ryu, Dhalsim, if I want to throw fireballs, throwing fireballs is the same move on all of them. But you've had a lot more history with Soul Calibur than me with Soul Calibur 4. I started playing Soul Calibur with the original Soul Calibur. I know there was a game before, Soul Blade. I've never played Soul Blade, but I started with Soul Calibur, and there was a point in time where Mike, who was on the E3 episode with us, would come over to my place and we would play Soul Calibur from like 6 o'clock at night until we passed out. Be like, yeah, it's 3 a.m., let's go to bed. You should have done EVO back then. I was probably in it. Oh, yeah, probably. I mean, but that would be all we would play. We would play Soul Calibur, and we had everything set up, and we had to just go for hours and hours and hours, and we did this every single weekend. We'd get up the next morning and we'd play Soul Calibur, then we'd go get lunch, then we'd play more Soul Calibur. I mean, that's just, we'd burn whole weekends playing Soul Calibur – this and that. So that was my first real entrance into Soul Calibur. It wasn't my first entrance into fighting games, obviously, being as, you know, Soul Calibur was late 90s, but it was my first fighting game that I got really insanely hardcore into, and it's probably the only game I would ever consider myself competitive at. On my birthday one year, we found that when Soul Calibur 2 was in arcade, we found a Soul Calibur 2 arcade cabinet in St. Louis. And at the same time, there was a limited showing of the Cowboy Bebop movie in St. Louis. So for my birthday, we drove to St. Louis because that was the day the showing was. We played Soul Calibur II in St. Louis for hours. Then we went to the Cowboy Bebop movie, and then we drove four hours home. We were sitting there, and it was Soul Calibur II. We'd never touched Soul Calibur II, but we played so much Soul Calibur that we were sitting there, and we were playing against each other. And kids would walk up, and they'd put up their quarters on the thing. Whichever one of us lost would walk away. And then the kids who put their quarters up would be instantly vaporized by the other one of us, and then we'd go back and take our spot back. And it just kept rotating like that the whole time we were playing. I got to the point, it made me feel bad. It made me feel like, what – we used to have a Fun Factory at one of the malls up here. And they had a – oh, School Rumble. Was it School Rumble? That sounds right. It's based off of Street Fighter. Right, I think I played it, but only casually. Yeah, and it's like students and teachers and stuff. Right. And I was up there playing that one day, and this guy came up, and he put his quarters in, and he did the whole here comes a new challenger type thing, and he, like, instantly vaporized me. Like, I didn't even know what happened. It's just like, oh, what? It's like, oh, you got double perfect. Where did that come from? I didn't even see you moving, that type of thing. So I'm sure that's what it was like with those kids. But, yeah, no, I've always been a Soul Calibur guy. I mean, I have Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. That's what I was originally playing was Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. And, you know, Soul Calibur 2 and 3 and 4 and 5, I've played them all because that's been my go-to fighting game. I mean, I've played the others. I've played Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, BlazBlue – I really like BlazBlue – and about any other thing, but nothing have I gotten into like Soul Calibur. That's my fighting game. Yeah, the fighting game for me that I most sort of associate with – and what I always think of when I hear fighting game mentioned – is Street Fighter 2. And I think it was specifically Street Fighter 2, the World Warrior Super Nintendo version. This would have been in the late 90s. That game came out in the mid-90s. But when it was time to finish up high school and went off to college, we did not, and you may recall this, because Tony and I, we lived together with two other guys off campus. But when we got our apartment, we did not bother to actually get any cable TV. Who needs cable TV? We're gonna be studying, and this and that. That's right. We're gonna be learners and we're gonna be. And for people – for you youngins out there – okay, this was 97. Okay, this was the first time we ever had significant quantities of internet. And by significant quantities, what I mean is we had arranged through the college that we had a dial-up connection, and we got 20 hours a month. That is what we got. So the Internet back then – you do not game on the Internet. You know, there were – in fact, we would do Quake. We would go to the computer labs and install Quake on the computer labs and try and play Quake there. But Internet at home with dial-up was really just download your emails. That was pretty much all it was for. And start and occasionally turn in projects and stuff. Sure, sure. And eBay, I think, was around then. I was using eBay in the 90s, but maybe not that year. Enough about us old geezers and what it was like when we were just finally getting consumer-level internet. So we didn't have any of that. But because we didn't have any cable TV, we weren't really prepared for anything. So we probably had a VCR. For about a month, I believe, what was always on our TV was Street Fighter 2 because it was like the one video game we had with us. And so what I've always liked about that 2D game is I've always preferred playing on the 2D plane than on the 3D plane. And a lot of the character controls were similar. They're not all identical, but you have your quarter circle characters. You have your charge-up characters like Guile and such. And then you had your rapid-tap characters like E. Honda and Chun-Li. They had their little niches, but you could play pretty much any of the characters that used that style. You just had to learn. I mean, there were differences. Like, you know, he has more range, but he's slower, things like that. But because of that and because of that consistency, I've always been able to go and pick up a modern Street Fighter game. And the last one I put any significant time in was Street Fighter IV, the vanilla version. And I have competent functionality. I can pick up Ryu or Ken and I can play. I might not be able to, like, on Street Fighter V – I've not tried Street Fighter V. I probably couldn't, you know, I wouldn't know how to activate the V trigger. I probably wouldn't remember how to pull off the super. But I can Hadouken. I can Shoryuken. I can Spinning Bird Kick, and I can Sweep Your Leg, and that's all I should need to beat against beat someone who isn't, you know, really pro at that game, because I have enough competent functionality to be able to survive. Whereas if I were to pick up Soul Calibur 5, I probably would just die because I wouldn't remember what to do. I remember that time fondly. There was a lot. We were literally just all sitting in the chairs and the couch and... nd it's like, I lost, just passed the controller to the next guy. That was the first time I ever took a fighting game and really worked through the story mode so I could see the different endings because there was no YouTube. We couldn't go to YouTube and look up and just watch all the endings. So I had to learn how to win with Zangief and Dhalsim and characters I was weak with. So that was neat. And so that's the one I always think of the most fondly. The only other fighting game I've put in really any notable time that I thought I might mention here would be Killer Instinct, the new version, the Xbox One version. I got a free copy with the Xbox One, so I don't play it much. I think it lends itself mechanically very well to, if you're familiar with Street Fighter, I think KI is going to feel pretty familiar to you. The big difference is it's a game that stresses combos as your mechanic. So you try and get characters into a combo. They have the ability to break a combo. If they fail to break the combo, though, you're able to rack up massive damage. And the ability to break the combo consists of both timing and understanding what sort of move is hitting you, a light, medium, or heavy move. It's almost a rock, paper, scissors sort of thing, but with timing added in. So very small roster when it came out I think they're up to season 3 at this point I only have season 1 I know that was a game that some people really were fond of from the 90's I actually didn't have any experience with it back when it originally came out but I've grown to respect it as I've seen it now in this current generation of fighting I've only seen the new KI watching Evos and the like I haven't dealt with it other than that And the, I mean, everybody, I played Mortal Kombat back in the day on the arcade, and I played all those. But nothing have I been real serious, like so many other games, like so many of the big players, the people who get really into a game. But there's a lot of good fighting games out there. So, I mean, I definitely, it's a genre I enjoy. Well, I think that's enough video game talk for today. We'll go ahead and segue over to our tabletop. I had the opportunity this month. Well, I guess technically it was last month since we were recording this. Yes, June was last month. I was able to attend a local board game night in June that I have not been able to attend in a while. And it was enjoyable. I played a lot of games that I've played countless times in the past. We played a bunch of Sentinels of the Multiverse, which I always enjoy, and some other games. But I played one new game that I thought I would drop in here because it took me by surprise. I played Castles of Mad King Ludwig, which is a tile-laying game. I am not a fan of tile-laying games at all. I don't think I've ever played one. Most tile games they are you know you building something You building a town or a village or a political this or you know whatever their thing is but for the most part tile laying games are, you have square pieces, or hex pieces, or rectangular pieces, whatever you want to call, whatever that particular game has, and you're just laying them, it's like, you draw them, and you lay them down and you fit them together and everything fits together perfectly and everybody's things in front of them looks the exact same because they're just fitting them together. And it only matters is, oh, this is a red tile, which means whatever, and this is a green tile, and I've got more green tiles, so I get this bonus, or I've got more red tiles, so I have this bonus. And, I mean, their mechanics can be fun, but they're not exactly what you would call visually appealing, at least not to me. Okay. So what I like about Castles of Mad King Ludwig is that while it is a tiling game, there's different size tiles and different shape tiles. There's hallway tiles. There are big round tiles. There are small, tiny square tiles. There's L-shaped tiles. There's tiles that are big and round or big and how many sides are there? Big octagon-shaped tiles. and this and that. So when you lay it out, everybody's stuff looks different every time. I mean, no two look the same. And they have different colors and different things, and you score points with how your layout is. But the fact that they look different and every castle that you build is different, you're not going to build two castles that look identical, that ups the fun a lot for me. The main thing is what you're doing with the game is you are a builder building castles for the Mad King Ludwig, and you're trying to build the largest, most extravagant castle. And basically it rotates. You buy tiles, and the order rotates. There's a master builder. He's the guy who lays stuff out, and he's the last person to go, and the person to his left is the first to go. And you just go around all your groups as you buy tiles, and then you lay them on your castle to make your castle bigger and to earn more points. And you've got synergies between the different tiles. If this tile is touching a tile of this type, it scores two extra points and this and that. So it's all about synergies and this and that. But it is a lot of fun for, like I said, a tile-laying game. It's the first tile-laying game I've ever played that's actually considered purchasing. Because, as I said, I'm not a fan of most tile-laying games because they just don't appeal to me that much. But this one really did. It's striking. One of the gentlemen I played with, every time he plays it, he takes pictures of the castles. And he's just got a running collection because every castle is different of what the castles were that ended up in that game when they finished. Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds very unique. I've not. As I noted, I had not played any tile-laying games before. I see your point, though, regarding the sort of monotony that you've faced on most of those, where it's sort of a, oh, I've just gotten this color versus that color sort of thing. But structurally, it's almost like, why are we laying tiles? Why aren't we just flipping over cards to see? Yeah, and it's the same thing. I mean, I'm not saying that tile-laying games are bad. There's fun. There's ones out there. It's not like if somebody wants to play one, I'm not like, okay, yeah, I'll play. It's just I don't own any, and they're not games that I go, oh, hey, let's play this. But I would do that with Castles of Mad King Ludwig. I'd be, yeah, let's play this game. Right. And it's got an expansion that adds moats to it, so you can build moats around your castle, which restrict your castle's size. The more moats you build, because you build a side, you can be, you know, each side you build, but you can only build up to four to make a square. But if you make a perfect square of moats, your castle is going to be really small. so you have to be very exacting with what tile pieces you get and how you lay it out together but every moat section you have you score bonus points every time you lay a tile down because the moat section the restrictions the moat section puts on you lets you score bonus points so yeah it's an interesting there's a lot of ways you can build it I mean you can aim for certain things you can make wings you can go very small and try and go for straight bonus points with everything. It's just a very interesting and very different game. I mean, I'm sure there's others out there like it, but this is the first one I've played that I really enjoyed. Well, in addition to the Castles of Mad King Ludwig, I know you also wanted to talk a lot about tabletop games that are accessible for kids. Yeah. In the same Facebook post where you were called out for your lack of Latin, Don was also asking about games for kids. I have two daughters. One's four and one is eight. And we play a fair variety of games. Most of the stuff we play, especially with the younger one, are the standard games that you would play. Candyland, Connect Four, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Battleship, stuff like that. We play a lot of those. But there's two specific games that are very aimed at kids that we play that are a bit more unique. One of them is called the Enchanted Cupcake Party Game. It's a Disney princess matching game. It's just like any other matching game that you would play, but there's a timer built into it because as you flip tiles for your matches, there are four timer tiles, and every time you flip a timer tile, it goes on to the timer, and if all four timer tiles are completed, the game's over. Wow. And there is a reset tile that puts all the tiles back into play that have been pulled out of play. And what you're doing is you're making matches is what you're matching is you'll flip a card and it's, oh, it's a cupcake. It's frosting for the cupcake. Oh, it's the wrapper for the cupcake. It's the sprinkles for the cupcake. And what you're doing is every person has goal cards that have the types of cupcakes on it that has a specific cupcake on it that you're trying to build out of parts. I mean, like I said, this is a game designed for three-plus-year-olds. The little kids love it. It's a lot of fun. It's not like it's deep and massive. But honestly, for a match game, it's a fair amount of fun for a match game. And the kids love it, building their cupcakes. And, you know, they pick their cupcakes. I know most of the time they pick their cupcakes because each cupcake is a Disney Princess's special cupcake. Oh, she wants to make Ariel's cupcake, or she wants to make Belle's cupcake. So that's how that kind of drives. They like it, and it's a lot of fun. So we play that one a good chunk. There's also another game we play. It's called Unicorns in the Clouds, which is a racing game where you just roll dice and move along. I mean, it's nothing fancy. but it has one interesting little mechanic compared to most of the dice games where you're just trying to get to the end first, is there are certain clouds you can land on, and when you land on that cloud, you earn crystals. And the first person to get to the finish, they don't win. When you get to the finish, you earn four crystals. And the winner is actually whoever has collected the most crystals. So instead of just being a blatant run to the end, it's more of a you don't have to be the person who's constantly rolling sixes to get ahead. Right. Okay. So those are the two that work best with your youngest. Yeah. Those are the two we play the best with the youngest. Again, I mean, she's four. There's only so much you can do. It's not like we're going to be pulling out, you know, the really big, deep games. I'm not going to be dropping Pandemic on my four-year-old. I don't know why it matters. An adult can't win. They can just teach her about the inevitability of loss it's for the best it's for the best now with the 8 year old there's a lot more games we play I remember the very first non just normal little game we played with her is Surrow now Surrow is a game that I consider one of my favorite games of all time it's simple it's fast, it's beautiful. What it is, is there's a board you lay out, and everybody has tiles, and the tiles have paths on them. And you lay the tile down, and your token, you lay it down directly in front of your token, because everybody's got a token, and your token follows the path you lay in front of it. And it goes all the way to the end of that path, which is at the edge of the tile you just laid down. And then you draw a new tile and the next person goes and goes and goes. And what you're doing is you're laying tiles and you're following the paths. You're creating the paths. If a path goes off the side of the board, your token is gone and you lose. If the path meets up so two people's tokens go together, run into each other, both people are gone. So it's purely a survival game. It's about laying out a path and following that path without hitting anybody or going off the edge. Kind of reminds me of that Tron race car thing where you build the little walls. It is kind of like that because in this, when you're building it and as you're laying, if I lay a token, if I'm on one spot and you're at a catty corner from me and I lay one of the square tiles and it connects your path to somewhere and my path to somewhere, we both move. so I can force you off the map, or I can force you to loop back so you're going at somebody else. Tricky. It's really a super simple game, and it's pretty quick to play, but it is a lot of fun. And the actual board and everything, my board is beautiful. I mean, it is amazingly laid out. And some of the people who run the board game night that I attend, they actually sat down and they created a life size Surrow and what they'll do is on special occasions like tabletop night and this and that they will mark out a board on the floor at the venue and people will go and draw giant life size tiles and put them in place and you walk them you are your token as you move so you follow your path and everybody just plays like that and it can support a lot of players It supports eight players, I think. Eight or more. Yeah, it's not just a couple or four players. It'll support like eight players, maybe more. I don't think I've ever played more than eight. I know I've played six. But it's just, yeah, it's a fast. You can knock out a game in 15 minutes, even with a younger kid. I mean, with my oldest, we started playing Surrow with her when she was, I don't know, six, maybe five or six. We played Surrow with her for the first time. Because it's a pretty simple game. There's another game that we play, and this one's a little bit harder on kids until they get older. But honestly, this game's kind of hard for adults. It's called Timeline. And what Timeline is, is Timeline is a series of different card games. They've got different editions. like there's editions, they've got different editions like inventions and historical happenings or stuff like that. And what you're doing is you actually, everybody draws a hand of cards, and the cards on the front have a picture and something that describes it. It's like the domestication of sheep or the first checkbook was created or the first steam engine was created or the civil war had this some battle in the civil war happened oh i think maybe i have played this yes we have i think i think we have played this one once and what you do is everybody takes turns and you lay down your card or like if it's my turn i would lay down my card in a spot i think in a line where it would fit so if i'm the first player I just put it wherever I want, but then I flip my card over, and it'll be like, oh, 1885 was when this event happened. And the next person who plays a card, they take their thing, and they have to decide, was it before or after 1885? Well, this one, this is the domestication of sheep, so obviously it was before 1885. So they put it down, and they flip it. It's like whatever thousand B.C. So they move it to the left of that, and then the next player lays down a card. Oh, this was the first landing on the moon. Well, obviously that was after 1885, so it goes to the right of 1885. You flip it over, and that's what you do is you build the timeline. And every time you successfully put your card in the right place in the timeline, that card is out of your hand. But if you put it in the wrong place, you have to draw a new card. And that card is put in the correct place, but the goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. So it's a, it can, especially towards the end, it can get to be pretty difficult, but it's kind of a fun game and it's very educational because of, because of how it lets you set things up and how it lets you, I mean, it kind of teaches you when things happen. And there's always, I said to the end, it can get hard even as an adult. And some of the things surprise me. Like it always shocks me. It's like, Oh, when did, I don't remember all of them. I know there, there's been a couple where it's like, Oh, this happened in like the late 1800s. So I'll put it around here. And then you flip the card over and it's like 1650. And it's like, okay, apparently I was wrong. So, I mean, but it can be a lot of fun and it can be educational. But like I said, it can be hard. As kids get older, it'll get to be a lot easier. But, yeah, we played that once. I've played it a couple times. The nice thing is you can take and you can mix all the editions together so you can get some really weird stuff. because they've got editions that talk about movies. So it's like, you know, Gone with the Wind was released, okay, or Ghostbusters was released. So you can get ones that are stuff that will be easier for kids to understand than like, you know, when were cattle domesticated and when was the first black powder used and stuff like that. Yes, I enjoy going to children and asking them when Gone with the Wind came out. I find they know it much better than sheep domestication. And the last game is the game that I know we've played because we've played a fairly large amount of it, and that's Ticket to Ride. Yep, good pick. Yep, Ticket to Ride, easy game, a lot of fun. What you're doing is you're collecting cards that are different types of train cars, and in your hand you've got train routes on cards that you're trying to complete. so like you know kansas city to st louis is is like requires three white uh cars or three blue cars i don't know if that's right i'm just making up off the top of my head so it's you collecting your hand three blue cars and then you'll turn them in uh on your turn you'll turn in those three blue cars you grab three and then you take three trains and did it and that's your route and what you're doing is you're trying to complete routes so you'll have a route that's like new york to la So you've got to complete routes connecting from city to city to city all the way from New York City to L.A. And then you'll have shorter routes. You'll have, like, you know, Santa Fe to Denver or something like that. But all the route cards you have in your hand are worth points, and if you complete them, you get that many victory points at the end of the game. But if you have any in your hand that you don't complete, you get negative that many points, So it's a fun game. It's easy to look at. It's easy to play. and I find kids pick up on it really easily. They need some help, obviously, of course, but even with older kids and with adults, it's fun to play. So that's definitely, that's probably my biggest recommendation. That and Surrow are probably my two biggest recommendations for kids. Yeah, I like Ticket to Ride because it offers a lot, there's a lot of strategic thought that can go behind it. It's one of those simple to understand but challenging to master. given the elements of it saying one would be able to master it is probably a bit of a misnomer because the challenge of all the other players you don't know what routes they have in their hand obviously if you've got a really long route that you want to try and go for you're having to consider whether or not they are going to be trying to complete smaller routes that will interfere with your path so you've got that and so it's not just a question of trying to go for your own routes but also control the options that your rivals have available to them. So those sort of elements to it mean it's not all just random. It's not just, oh, well, I drew enough whites, so I guess I'll complete this route that white can connect to. Yeah, you're actually – I mean, if you can connect it, if it's not doing something, it doesn't do you any good. Right. So it's those sort of things because you don't have a card to get the victory points for it. But those sort of aspects to it mean that it actually requires thought, which is like the requirement for an adult to be able to enjoy a tabletop game. It has to require some level of strategic or tactical thought depending on the game. And this one has it. So I think it's not so complicated that a child wouldn't be able to. It's like being able to teach a kid checkers and then being able to teach a kid chess. Children can understand chess. There are only a certain number of moves. Once they're old enough to be able to understand how each piece moves, they might not be grand wizards, but they'll actually be able to play and they can compete against adults. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely true. Yeah, no, it's definitely, I mean, and it might sometimes end up being one of those things where the fastest way to get from Miami to L.A. is through Toronto. But if that's what it takes to get around everybody blocking you and stealing your little places and blocking you out. it's sometimes Canada's our only help yeah sometimes you blame Canada that's right but we try not to because here at Eclectic Gamers Podcast we are loving and accepting of all and if you all love and accept the Eclectic Gamers Podcast please like and give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher we're at both of those places and a number of other podcast playing sites but those search algorithms especially iTunes I know their search algorithm is dependent on the number of reviews. I thought maybe we should start maybe reading the reviews on air or something to kind of say thank you to those that go and do that sort of thing because we really could use more of those so that we pop up higher on the search algorithm so that we know. Yeah, they're really important to getting more people to see us and listen to us. Yeah, because we're always trying to grow the podcast. We don't make any money at it, but we do like the idea at least to know that people are actually listening to it so that we're not wasting our time totally uh going off onto the on the uh you know rail construction involving the great northern in order to circumvent the caustic midwestern rivalries of the robber barons uh so uh so beyond that if you want to reach the show you can go uh find us on facebook.com/EclecticGamersPodcast probably where i'd say we're most active you can also email the show eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com and we're also on twitter as eclectic_gamers and i just recently uh set us up on instagram also as eclectic_gamers and they're both getting updated a little bit more often i just posted a picture to both places of me actually recording this podcast a little while ago oh how fancy i know all right well um i do think we'll probably be back on the in the next couple of weeks. Don't know exactly what we'll be hitting on other than the Final Round for the Pinball Machine Mania tournament, because Can't Con is probably going to be the podcast after that, would be my thought. Yeah, because the next podcast will take place the week before Can't Con. The Can't Con podcast will be the one after. We might do a little talk next time about what we're planning, but we'll see. We'll see what shakes out. We've got some other stuff brewing. We just never know when it'll be finished and baking in the oven so we can actually pull it out and put it on air. But anyway, until next time, I'm Dennis and I'll say so long. I'm Tony and I told you this one would be shorter than the last one. And you kept your word. Good job. I did. Awesome.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 6e9323bd-1d7b-44bd-94cd-f5179a129392*