# The Great British Pinball Podcast Episode 18

**Source:** The Great British Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2024-11-26  
**Duration:** 96m 21s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** Buzzsprout-16173783

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## Analysis

Neil McRae and Scott Rundle discuss their recent pinball acquisitions and club operations. Neil's Pulp Fiction LE is being air-freighted and arriving within days after a ~2-year wait. Scott has acquired a homebrew kit and is building custom machines while managing maintenance issues at their pinball club. Both discuss Metallica LE quality, X-Men code updates and mechanical issues, and the club's financial challenges.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Pulp Fiction LE is currently in air freight and will arrive within a week — _Neil states 'Pulp Fiction LE is on a jet airline right now. It's in the air and it will arrive next week.'_
- [HIGH] CGC Pulp Fiction LE had to redo topper parts before shipping due to quality issues — _Neil explains: 'they'd got the last part they needed for the toppers but the part was wrong it wasn't right, they had to get it redone'_
- [HIGH] X-Men pinball has widespread launch/leveling issues affecting ball routing — _Scott discusses plunger issues, back leg leveling problems, and playfield alignment: 'X-Men is, you know, on Pinside, you see a lot of people suffering with the launch'_
- [HIGH] Stern is releasing a fix-it kit for X-Men to address launch and alignment issues — _Scott states: 'Stern announced that they're putting out kind of a fix-it kit, which is great'_
- [HIGH] X-Men Premium/LE cabinets are narrower than legacy non-expression lights cabinets, affecting playfield alignment — _Scott explains: 'on an expression lights cabinet, you don't need to center the playfield because there's very little movement. But on a legacy non-expression lights cabinets, there's still a huge amount of movement'_
- [MEDIUM] Metallica LE includes limited edition banners (one of four variants) as standard with all LEs — _Scott notes: 'they're shipping... they've all got one of four kind of limited banners that come with them as well'_
- [HIGH] X-Men code is on version 0.92 with a new update imminently planned — _Scott states: 'What's the version on now? 0.92, I think' and 'they've tweaked the auto plunge power settings'_
- [HIGH] Scott's pinball club is financially stable but lacks emergency reserves and cannot afford facility improvements — _Scott explains: 'financially we're okay... we're where we need to be to survive right but I would like for us to be doing a little bit better... we're not like in the Old Place were able to build up a little bit of a nest egg for emergencies'_
- [HIGH] Game of Thrones and Elvira Stern machines experienced board failures (node board and CPU board respectively) — _Scott discusses: 'I've only had... two failures... Game of Thrones... node board failure... and Malvira, the CPU board was dead on arrival'_
- [HIGH] Stern implemented unboxing achievements and launch party recognition for new machines like X-Men — _Scott describes: 'Did you get an achievement that was just for you to say, hey, you won the game? Yes. Well, it's called an unboxing achievement'_

### Notable Quotes

> "Pulp Fiction LE had such a high kind of excitement level. Yeah. And it's in the toilet now. And loads of people have either cancelled their game or sold the deposit to someone else"
> — **Neil McRae**, ~00:03:00
> _Commentary on how long delays have dampened community enthusiasm for a highly anticipated title_

> "the reason they're doing it is to make sure the games are as good as they can be... on the one hand they could have just shipped it out with some janky part that didn't work... they got it sorted"
> — **Neil McRae**, ~00:04:30
> _Defense of CGC's manufacturing delays as quality-focused decision-making_

> "I hate floaty games I can't stand games that are floaty I find that the hardest thing, it's hard to predict where the ball's going to go"
> — **Scott Rundle**, ~00:18:00
> _Personal preference for high-pitch games affecting gameplay experience_

> "if they don't do that they're missing out there's stuff they can do to reward them it's easy it costs them nothing but it generates engagement with their customers it would be mad for them not to do that"
> — **Scott Rundle**, ~00:22:00
> _Criticism of Stern's missed opportunity for customer loyalty through badge/achievement systems_

> "it's not ideal, it's not killing us but it's not as it's just made things a tiny bit more difficult than than we'd have expected... we're not like in the Old Place were able to build up a little bit of a nest egg for emergencies"
> — **Scott Rundle**, ~00:29:00
> _Candid discussion of club financial fragility and cash flow challenges post-relocation_

> "I'd rather have it so that software-wise just went, that's dead, carry on. Kill it, yeah, exactly. If you're on location and you didn't have time to come down and look at it... It could be losing you money."
> — **Scott Rundle**, ~00:40:00
> _Operator perspective on cascade failure risk and business impact in Spike 3 architecture_

> "when that node board failed, it just locked the whole game up. And what you want is okay, the board's failed, we're kicking it out, but we can still play some element of a game"
> — **Scott Rundle**, ~00:42:00
> _Technical critique of Stern's daisy-chain failure model affecting game uptime_

> "I was absolutely shocked but I did find I found a pinball machine in a new location so there's an arcade... they had a Simpsons and when I was there the guy was actually cleaning it... it's actually got me in the mood to buy a Vuelix"
> — **Scott Rundle**, ~end
> _Discovery of unexpected pinball presence in Japan generating new collecting interest_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Neil McRae | person | Co-host of The Great British Pinball Podcast, UK pinball collector/enthusiast awaiting Pulp Fiction LE delivery |
| Scott Rundle | person | Co-host of The Great British Pinball Podcast, pinball technician, homebrewer, club operator managing UK pinball venue |
| The Great British Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by Neil McRae and Scott Rundle covering UK pinball news, reviews, and community discussion |
| Pulp Fiction LE | product | Jersey Jack Pinball game, air-freighted to Neil in UK, ~2-year wait with significant community enthusiasm erosion |
| CGC (Custom Gameplay Concepts implied or manufacturer) | company | Manufacturer of Pulp Fiction LE, experienced production delays due to quality control on topper parts |
| Metallica LE | product | Stern Pinball game, purchased by Scott's wife, praised for animation and lighting quality, includes limited edition banner variants |
| X-Men Pinball | product | Stern Pinball game with widespread launch/leveling issues affecting plunger accuracy and ball routing; code on v0.92 with fixes pending |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer releasing X-Men, Metallica LE, Game of Thrones, Elvira; implementing fix-it kits and achievement systems |
| Pinball Republic | organization | UK pinball club operated by Scott Rundle, relocated to mall location, hosting tournaments and events, facing cash flow challenges |
| Phil | person | Logistics/distribution contact offering air freight services for pinball machines to UK |
| George Gomez | person | Stern designer, engaged by Scott regarding X-Men playfield alignment issues |
| Joel (Flippin' Out) | person | Pinball streamer providing high-quality Metallica LE gameplay demonstration on YouTube |
| Preston | person | Top 20 world-ranked professional pinball player, collaborated with Joel on Flippin' Out stream |
| Jason Werdrick | person | Collector in Chicago who received Metallica LE with banner variant |
| Game of Thrones Pinball | product | Stern game with node board failure history, experienced extended repair wait during COVID |
| Elvira Pinball | product | Stern game with CPU board failure on arrival; had Dead-on-Arrival replacement; Scott purchasing additional unit for club |
| Godzilla Pinball | product | Stern game with QR scanner failure causing cascade failure; game playable after disconnecting scanner |
| Kerry Hardy | person | Boutique pinball designer known for building resiliency into software to handle component failures gracefully |
| Iron Maiden Pinball | product | Boutique game with diverter-off mode allowing degraded gameplay without full systems |
| Flippin' Out | organization | Pinball YouTube channel with high production value streaming of new releases |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Long production delays and community enthusiasm erosion, X-Men mechanical and alignment issues affecting playability, Stern quality control and post-release support (fix-it kits, code updates), UK pinball club operations, cash flow, and sustainability challenges
- **Secondary:** Achievement/badge systems and customer engagement in pinball, Spike 3 component failure cascade and operator impact, Homebrew pinball building and 3D printing customization
- **Mentioned:** Metallica LE quality and limited edition differentiation

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.45) — Positive sentiment on game design quality (Metallica, X-Men animations) and community engagement features; negative sentiment on long production delays (Pulp Fiction), mechanical issues (X-Men launch problems), and club financial constraints. Generally pragmatic and accepting tone despite frustrations.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** UK pinball club financial model fragile; cash flow challenges from upfront rent/insurance payments; unable to build emergency reserves or fund facility improvements (confidence: high) — Scott: 'we're not like in the Old Place were able to build up a little bit of a nest egg for emergencies' and rent/insurance timing creates 'really challenging' cash flow
- **[community_signal]** Stern implementing customer reward systems: unboxing achievements, launch party recognition, mission-based badge completion for games like Elvira (confidence: high) — Scott: 'Did you get an achievement that was just for you to say, hey, you won the game? Yes. Well, it's called an unboxing achievement' and Elvira mission system
- **[community_signal]** UK pinball club successfully hosting tournaments (Critical Hit, launch parties) with 40-50 participants; monthly tournaments crucial to venue survival (confidence: high) — Scott: 'our tournaments, mate... that's pretty crucial to the club survival because we'll do great' and launch event attendance of ~50 people
- **[design_philosophy]** X-Men cabinet design variation between expression lights (narrower) and legacy cabinets creates alignment challenges for operators; missing leaf alignment features from older Stern designs (confidence: high) — Scott: 'on an expression lights cabinet, you don't need to center the playfield... But on a legacy non-expression lights cabinets, there's still a huge amount of movement'
- **[market_signal]** Scott considering air freight acceleration of Metallica LE despite additional cost, indicating strong demand and premium positioning (confidence: medium) — Scott: 'I'm trying to get that shipped over... I'm trying to get my Metallica air freighted as well because I'm mad'
- **[announcement]** Metallica LE includes limited edition banners (one of four variants) as standard with all LE units; positioning to restore LE exclusivity perception (confidence: medium) — Scott: 'they've all got one of four kind of limited banners that come with them as well, which is quite nice' and 'haste and make the LEs special again'
- **[product_strategy]** Pulp Fiction LE experienced ~2-year production delay from order to delivery, causing significant community enthusiasm erosion and deposit cancellations (confidence: high) — Neil: 'it will be two years almost two years in March effectively' and 'it's in the toilet now. And loads of people have either cancelled their game or sold the deposit'
- **[product_strategy]** X-Men code v0.92 with auto-plunge power setting tweaks and unboxing achievements; new code update imminently planned (confidence: high) — Scott: 'they've tweaked the auto plunge power settings' and 'they need to get a new version out'
- **[product_concern]** X-Men widespread launch and playfield leveling issues affecting majority of units; Stern releasing fix-it kit in response (confidence: high) — Scott: 'X-Men is, you know, on Pinside, you see a lot of people suffering with the launch' and 'Stern announced that they're putting out kind of a fix-it kit'
- **[technology_signal]** Spike 3 architecture exhibits daisy-chain cascade failures where single component failure (e.g., QR scanner) can disable entire game; lacks graceful degradation (confidence: high) — Scott on Godzilla: 'Took a while to get a replacement... everything died' and 'I'd rather have it so that software-wise just went, that's dead, carry on'

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## Transcript

 welcome to the great british pinball podcast and here are your hosts scott rundell and neil mccray welcome pinball fans as per usual uh we've spent the last half an hour faffing about with our set-ups to make this try and sound like we haven't recorded it in a metal container down the docks in Leith in Edinburgh. This is the Great British Pinball Podcast. Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us again. Hi, I'm Neil McRae. And I'm Scott Rundle. How you doing, Scott? Not too bad, Neil. How you doing? I'm doing great, but I'm going to pile in right away about our Pulp Fiction bet. No, no. You say your bet and I'll say mine. So Pulp Fiction LE is on a jet airline right now. It's in the air. It's in the air and it will arrive next week. Pulp Fiction LE, thank you to Phil for offering air freight so I would win this bet. Otherwise, it would have been January and I think we would have been tied. Didn't I say March? I think you said March. Yeah, but actually, I'm hearing that there's an outside chance that the container might arrive this side of Christmas. Now, that would actually align with two of my previous CGC deliveries. That's hard work, though, right? Because it's right at Christmas period. I don't know if they're going to be able to manage that. Yeah, they'll be fine. I mean, Christmas time, actually, for these guys, for Hadfields. Yeah. When I last got a game delivered It's actually a slow pier for them Because they do a lot of shop fitting type thing With big fridges And at Christmas that just doesn't happen Because everyone goes into lockdown mode For the Christmas rush When Attack from Mars Which is sitting over there got delivered to me I didn't even know it was coming I literally opened the door Phil sent an email to me But I didn't get the mail And I opened the door And it was there And I was like, oh, that's nice. Please bring it in. Because they gave me something to do over Christmas. But, and I was talking to the guys, actually two of them for a change, but they said, yeah, we're quiet because normally all the big stuff we do, they do like, they deliver big shit basically. And it's the biggest thing they deliver, like these kind of, you know, the fridges you see, you know, your yogurts and Diet Coke and the big commercial fridges you see in a retail store. That's a big part of their business. anyway yes it's coming I've won the bet and life is I've bought your way through the bet more likely I'm looking forward to getting it back we obviously have it in the club but it's going to be good to have it here over Christmas I might actually have it in the house as well how long has it been now two years it will be well it will be two years almost two years in March effectively I mean I don't know when they officially started taking orders but i told phil well actually probably for me longer because i told phil i wanted it long before they um they announced it so it's so weird isn't it because we work in this industry of like what the next big thing kind of thing everyone gets excited about the next release then realistically when you've got into the said hype and bought said game at least for us the the way is a lot longer than like you know it's a bit weird because i suppose Stern, it's like, you know, it's a couple of months and you got it. But then with these other manufacturers, it can be upwards of years. Yeah, no, look, I think I think the it's definitely an issue. I think Pulp Fiction LE had such a high kind of excitement level. Yeah. And it's in the toilet now. And loads of people have either cancelled their game or sold the deposit to someone else it's a bit of a shame really because I don't think it deserves that but CGC, they've started communicating which is great but probably to quote another game that we're going to talk about later, it said a day late and a dollar too much or whatever the quote is and yeah it is frustrating but the only thing I'll say is the reason they're doing it is to make sure the games are as good as they can be so apparently, so last time we spoke they'd got the last part they needed for the toppers but the part was wrong it wasn't right, they had to get it redone or something so I appreciate that on the one hand they could have just shipped it out with some janky part that didn't work Or they did the right thing And they You know they got They got it sorted So yes they're in the air thanks Again Phil for flying them out I will I'll do a proper I couldn't unbox my own because it kind of came Second hand so I'll do a proper Unboxing When it arrives So And speaking of new games or new, you know, in terms of your own collection, Scott, what's your ins and outs and ups and downs? I see what looks like the back end of a cabinet in the background. Well, that's just my homebrew being built, but yeah, it's getting there. You know, I finally got the kit, which was a lot of hassle. I'm not going to lie, getting that from the States, because basically the guy he's tried in pinball, isn't it? does the DIY kits. Yes. He's not really dealt with dealing with shipments to the UK. We had issues with international bank transfers and getting a courier, and then he missed the courier because the guy wouldn't wait two minutes for him to get to the door, and it was just a lot of back and forth. It was a headache. This was the small box you wanted me to pick up. The coffin, I think, is probably where I'm putting it. It was massive. When I got it, I was like, no wonder you had issues. I don't think that might get accustomed. To be honest with you, I would have happily have taken it, but I knew I wouldn't get on with it. Yeah. So the airlines have got this thing where you add the length, the height, and the depth together. Yeah, okay. And if it's more than, I can't remember the number, but this was definitely more. Yeah. Because when I brought back the armor, they measured it at the freaking desk, fucking British Airways assholes that they are. Yeah. and luckily I was like I was actually I was worried but I was actually in by quite a bit and then I kind of thought the width of that I'm not convinced plus the fact I had two tons of oil to carry back well actually not that much but anyway I'm glad you got it yeah just spent like some of the week because up until the last because I've been building a I'm sorry I'm just going to stop moving my hands because my camera's having a fit. I was doing a playfield swap for someone from Funhaus. Yes, saw that. The person didn't tell me when they get brought it though that it was literally in bits. It's the first game I've built from scratch because it was everything was in bits, including the mechs were fully disassembled, including the head, which was a pig to put back together. But like, yeah, it was, it went all right. Like I've got, you know, I've ended up with a couple of things that you always do where you think that post isn't right or you know that bit of mail it just it needs to be replaced so i ended up with a small bill of materials to sort out like the parts that were missing um but yeah built in record time which was good considering his photos were like taken on the equivalent of a nokia 3310 i swear to god um so i ended up referencing a lot of online material to get the game built yeah the ultimate potato cam is the nokia 3310 yeah um well yeah i mean i saw some of the pictures of that and uh it did look like it was because normally your your pace is like but this definitely feels like it's gone slower oh yeah i mean normally i'd i would probably got that if that was a normal playfield swap i would have probably done it in half the time maybe a quarter of the time i think the main challenge was figuring out how the harness goes on because it although it naturally kind of somewhat fits he had left it disassembled for a good part of a year so a lot of the kind of what i would call the memory of the of the had been lost and it was just trying to find some odd ends where it's like where does that go and how does that fit together and it was just yeah it's just small things also figuring out how the hell the trapdoor mech works god that was fun And I was following the schematics on that for ages going, where does this piece go? How does that fit together? God, this is an absolute nightmare. So, yeah, I did it all in the end. And it was good because it ended up paying for my printer, which is hiding in the background over there. 3D printer. Because I have a camera. So that basically paid for that 3D printer. Because I had an original Ender 3, which for those in the printing world know is kind of a basic beginner's printer. This one is a Bamboo Labs and it's much more expensive. But it's just 10 times better. and it's helping me with my next project which is sitting in the back behind me which is my home brew kit so yeah, without it I'd be struggling it's quite good, I can print in what they call TPU so that's like a thermoplastic it's basically like rubber and it's really good for like building kind of like, let's call it I don't want to give away what I'm doing but let's just call it hittable things so it's great for pinball in that respect all will be revealed on that at some point in the future um but uh yeah so and then so no new games or so my wife's bought metallica le which i think i might have discussed last podcast but if i haven't yeah she went down the metallica le route um choice yeah i'm not metallica fan but i i appreciate the game design it looks in the animations and the lighting are stellar like Stern's just knocked it out of the park. Did you see Joel's Flip N Out Pinball stream on there? Yeah, I watched a lot of it. For the first time ever in a long time. I don't normally watch people play because I'll get bored after 30 minutes, but that guy I probably watched a good hour and a half on. The colleague he was playing with, that guy was a pro. Preston, yeah, he's a really good player. Really good guy. Very good player. He's a top 20 player, I think, in the world. Really nice bloke as well. I met him at a few gigs. and then I was very close to pushing the button on another game but I'll wait for you to announce that one because that'll be a different point in a bit so actually I'm trying to along with Pulp getting air freighted I'm trying to get my Metallica air freighted as well because I'm mad and actually I need to chase Phil on it because they're shipping they're moving actually my friend Jason Werdrick who's out of Chicago he got his and it came with they've all got one of four kind of limited banners that come with them as well, which is quite nice. Is that by default everybody gets a banner then? All the LEs, yeah. I don't think the premiums will get it, but all the LEs, which is great to hear. So I've been, you know, haste and make the LEs special again. This is one little small thing, I think, but I definitely feel that they've heard that message. Yeah, because you can emulate a lot of the LE features, can't you like the expression powder coats and all that stuff but yeah after watching Joel's streams if you're looking for it it's on Flip N Out Pinball's YouTube channel definitely if you haven't seen it definitely have a look at it because he's two things one Joel's set up to really capture the light show really well on the stream and Joel's a good guy good to listen to and he's yeah we hung out a little bit at Pinball Expo. It was good to see him. I'm trying to get that shipped over. When it arrives, I'll probably take it to the club for the launch. I'll start and do these launch events where they send a few prizes and we'll do a competition. We did that with X-Men. I took it to the club. Club folks loved it. They've done a code update, which definitely improved the game. What's the version on now? 0.92, I think. So you're fairly getting close to a 1.0 release then? Well, see, I don't as a coder, you know, I think you can go from like 0.91 to 0.92 and add one thing. Or you go 0.92 and 0.95 0.91 to 0.92 and add 10 things. So I'm always a bit, that number is meaningless. When they get to 1.0, you know the traditional thing for 1.0 is okay this is the full features of what you're trying to build yeah um and then you know anything else on bug fixes or bonus bonus points so um we'll see we'll see but i mean i think they need to get a new code release i think there's one imminently planned for two two reasons one they've added a bunch of features but also they've tweaked. So we were talking about this earlier, but X-Men is, you know, on Pinside, you see a lot of people suffering with the launch. And so when I first got mine, I was having a launch issue, actually with a not the auto launch, but with a plunger. And basically the game just on the back, the back leg just wasn't leveled, so I leveled it. And also, Stern, I've done one thing with this game that I've moaned about in the past, but in the past, Stern had these little kind of leaf things in the cabinet that just helped align the playfield. Oh, yeah. And the expression lights cabinet, of which X-Men is not one. Actually, when you... If you ever get your measuring tape out on an expression lights cabinet, it's slightly narrower. So on an expression lights cabinet, you don't need to center the playfield because there's very little movement. But on a legacy non-expression lights cabinets, there's still a huge amount of movement. And I've had this with my Bond. I had it with Foo Fighters. Not Foo Fighters. What was the game I had it with? I have seen people release, like, 3D prints to adjust the alignment. Yeah, so of the playfield. Yeah. Yeah, so. It's not down by the lock bar receiver area So to speak and it just forces the alignment Yeah so The problem is At the back of the game There's a lot of movement And if it's not square You know At least I've found That you get this issue But it's not It's an issue that's happened in a few games And I moaned to George Gomez I said George man for god's sake Fix this and he said he would look into it because and I posted this on the Stern Enthusiast page on Facebook because someone else was having an issue and I said look install these two things and I bet you this issue goes away and I think it was on I think it was Venom or was it Palm? I was going to ask you on the I remember. Was it the left route return? I've always noticed on some people's X-Mens it has a point where it kind of slows down and then speeds up again like it's going over a hump so to speak is that just the design of the ramp yeah so what it looks like is when you when you when the ball goes through it it does try and slow the ball down again because it comes onto that big corner right and if his ball's going too fast it i you know it will fly off but i think i i think the the i don't think there's a problem with that part of it i've not had any issues there but i just wondered if it sometimes like just didn't make it so what's happening is somewhere between the, so when it plunges and it goes around the back of the game something there is affecting the ball in some way, so the ball doesn't have enough momentum, so that thing makes it even worse, which means it doesn't it rolls back basically and drops out are the pitch too high? if it was something else? my pitch is maximum and so as I said I sent her the back of the play so not the front, the front's really easy but the back still moves quite a lot, there's still quite a lot of play in it because it doesn't have these little things so once I've sat on it I wouldn't say every single plunge is perfect on the manual plunger every plunge is perfect unless you don't plunge fully right on the auto plunger I'm going to say 95 out of 100 make it round. I did have this other issue at the club where the kitty shot, the loop, the figure eight shot was rejecting. But again, the game just wasn't level. So, I mean, and this is the challenge. It's probably why a lot of pinball designers chicken out at doing complex designs like this, because if you don't have that kind of lab environment set up. Well, that's what I'm thinking, right? Because every game is hand-built, So you're going to get variances on where the ball guide sits, where the ramp sits. Yeah, exactly. So Stern announced that they're putting out kind of a fix-it kit, which is great that they're reacting to it for those that have got the issue. Honestly, right now, I've played the game earlier today, bulletproof. But there's clearly a few folks. How have the hands been and all that? All reliable? Still working fine? Yeah, so the finger I had to adjust because I've got the pitch high. so it's got this it's actually quite cool it's got this kind of adjust mode where you flick the ball into it and it kind of self adjusts oh okay like the thing for the thing flips yeah exactly so I had to do that but once it was done it was fine and that's purely because I've got my game like probably 8.5 degrees pitch wow you play that hard I hate floaty games I can't stand games that are floaty I find that the hardest thing, it's hard to predict where the ball's going to go but yeah I mean I've really unfortunately I've been travelling a lot last couple of weeks so I've barely played the game but I'm loving it they do need to get, I think we've all been on the same version of code long enough now they do need to get a new version out so looking forward to that and in the code apparently they've tweaked the auto plunge power settings so So when you got your X-Men, because I think this is a new thing now, isn't it? Did you get an achievement that was just for you to say, hey, you won the game? Yes. Well, it's called an unboxing achievement. All right. That's very good, though, to be fair. It is. And it's easy for them. It doesn't cost them a penny to do it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it's a cool little thing to say, yeah, you – You were the new unboxed guy. Yeah, indeed. I'll see if I can get it to come up whilst we talk but yeah and I've also got a launch party thing we did a launch party for X-Men at the club. Because that's good for them to also recognise the buying potential of people as well right for their own research because then they can go this guy buys a lot of Noon Box. 100% I was trying to get them to have I got the hero run let me visit my trophy room as they call it the my badges. Here we go. Whoops. Whoops. Stop, stop, stop. Yeah, so here we go. I don't know if this will work, but that's the... Oh, yeah, I see it. For those who haven't got a camera on for this podcast. Yeah, so it's... Oh, here we go. It was trying to zoom in there. Yeah, it registers the date as well. Yeah, which is cool. So, you know, what I said, I did say to them, like, okay, does that mean I'll get all my games back counted? I think what they should do, right, and it's just an idea for Stern, like, if you bought, like, ten new boxes on your tenth anniversary, they send you something. Yeah, so I have no doubt that once you, like, fire up five games or something, something's going to happen. Or once you've bought three Elwins, you'll get like an Elwynn love badge or something I'm absolutely sure that's well if they don't do that they're missing out there's stuff they can do to reward them it's easy it costs them nothing but it generates engagement with their customers it would be mad for them not to do that and if you look at Steam the way it does it's kind of badges it's all good I've actually been trying to complete some Elvira stuff because they had a special mission for Elvira this month I've got one more day to finish it off but I've got one I've got all of them except two which is actually quite interesting because I haven't played Elvira that much and actually I bought another one for the club so there'll be an Elvira in the club I was going to ask you, how do they handle people that would then just cheat and say take the glass off. If you're on location, you get a different badge in the home user collection? No, so on location you get double points. But, yeah, look, if you're going to cheat, you're going to cheat. It's just, you know, you're still a no-one but yourself. So, that's the way they kind of look at it. It's kind of an honour system. But, yeah, it's it's not perfect, but it is what it is. You know, we can all, with pinball, the ability to take the glass off is always with us. And yeah, so looking forward to getting a vibe in the club. I think the club members are excited about that. We did an X-Men launch party and we did a critical hit. So critical hit is this kind of tournament where we give out these kind of cards. Let me find one. Hold on. aren't following on camera. It is quite funny that he actually has a dynamic camera that is tricky. Ah, did it follow me? It did. Although it's given up at the end. Oh, there he goes. Here we go. So, you get these cards. There I think 40 of them Okay Oh yes because you had to play Roadshow didn you Your favourite game So this one you have to cover the displays for the entire game. So me and Greg got piled on. Greg got a lot of it. He really got piled on. It was kind of funny. I don't think he deserved it. He's too nice a guy to deserve it. the last time I did this, Wayne Johns got piled on which I won't lose any sleep over sorry Wayne but Greg got piled on and basically at any opportunity to get me to play fucking Roadshow people did it so I ended up playing Roadshow three times but actually I was quite pleased because I think I won it twice and came second on the other game so it shocked people I knew how to play I just go Miami and hit the spinner It's hard to lose But yeah it was a great gig And Yen won it In the end And Sergio won the X-Men Thing we had a nice big picture of everyone There were about 50 people which was great How's it been going in the club You happy with the football Happy with the attendance Yeah so look I think financially we're okay And let me say okay is that the right word we're we're where we need to be to survive right but I would like for us to be doing a little bit better not because I want to make tons of money but because I want to reinvest it in the club so you know there's a few things we want to do we want to put a better kind of a mini kitchen in at the front so that people can make teas and coffees. Right now we've got no way of doing that. And now that we're in a mall, health and safety is a bit more on our minds than perhaps it was or perhaps it should have been in the old place, right? And there's a couple of other things we want to do around signage and stuff like that. And we wanted to cover one of the windows, but we just don't have the cash for it. and actually thanks to many of our members who have moved to pay in advance which is a massive help because when we were doing all the sums for this, I think I mentioned this before and this was kind of my cock up we were doing a cash flow model but I'd forgotten the cash flow model where to pay up front for the rent so yeah I mean it's not ideal, it's not killing us but it's not as it's just made things a tiny bit more difficult than than we'd have expected and particularly next year we got the insurance we got an insurance bill and the rent coming out at the same time which is really challenging for us uh cash flow wise but in saying that we're we're i think i mean we've got the money we're not worried about it um but we're not like in the Old Place were able to build up a little bit of a nest egg for emergencies. So we had the flood and we had a couple of other things happen at the club. So we had to do some of the toilets and we got the back room carpeted out. But right now we just don't have any money for that. And we'd ideally like to get a few more members. What you're meaning is a rainy day fund, basically. Yeah, exactly. Just a few quid in the bank. Just to improve the place and do things with it. We don't have a lot on the walls. What about just putting forward a bit of a public event, see if you can get people just showing up on the day for something? Well, we're doing that with our tournaments, mate. So we run a tournament once a month. And, you know, that's pretty crucial to the club survival because we'll do great. But, you know, there was a Sunday, you know, and it's peaks and troughs. So a couple of Sundays ago, we had a really quiet day, which kind of freaked me out a little bit. Because, correct you, if we got a lot of them, we might have some challenges. But, you know, I think just a one-off in the Carl Weathers wasn't great. Yeah, the Carl Weathers's getting rough at the moment, isn't it? Indeed, very rough. But, look, I mean, everyone, I think it's the thing, everyone that comes is astonished by how great the venue is now. It's so much better than the old place. And we got a So we got a couple of things happening 6th and 7th of December We got, it's our birthday It'll be our 6th birthday I think, yeah I think 6th Maybe 7th, I can't remember, but it's our birthday And Matt's Organising a few gig, a few Tournaments over the weekend, so hopefully When it comes to that, and then Just before New Year we do the Turkey fry up, Turkey leftovers fry up We call it, it's a big tournament It was massive last year for us Hoping it's big this year If you search for If you search for Pimbo Republic in Turkey on Matchplay You can register there On the 6th and 7th Just turn up at 10 o'clock On both Saturday and Sunday We've got stuff going on I think I think the other I mean the other challenge we've had is We had a kind of a bit of a number of game issues that took us a while to get on top of just because they all kind of happened at the same time and actually always breaks yeah and also things that we've not seen break before kind of break where we've had to get where we haven't got the parts in the club so it's a bit like when you let me borrow that godzilla and then the snowboard decided to go hey i'm gonna die today and that's it yeah i mean that was a bit frustrating but at least we I mean, we got it fixed in the end, which is great. But, yeah, I mean, if stuff, when you have a failure like that, there's not a lot you can do about it. But luckily there's a few and far between. I'm hoping that the Spike 3 release is a little bit more robust in the fact that it can deal with a component failure. I'd like to see less of a daisy chain kind of reaction because it feels like a Christmas light analogy. Do you know what I mean? Like the old-school Christmas lights. If a bulb goes, the whole thing stops. Yeah I mean for me Well I think it depends on the failure I think if you do lose a board So and again depends on which board If you lose a CPU board then all bets are off But I have seen You know a couple In fact we had it with our Game of Thrones And no board failed on that And Took a while to get a replacement during Covid Oh yeah partially And But the game played you just lost a bunch of feature functionality at the back of the games, but it still played. For me, Godzilla, because you had a failure at the beginning of the chain, everything died. Yeah, and it was the scanner, wasn't it? Yeah, the QR. Yeah, the QR scanner, which is ridiculous. But disconnect it, the game's okay, right? That's the... Yeah, it was, yeah. You can still play the game if you disconnect it. I'd rather have it so that software-wise just went, that's dead, carry on. Kill it, yeah, exactly. If you're on location and you didn't have time to come down and look at it, because, I don't know, you're an operator and you're running different chains around the area. It could be losing you money. That's why I'm hoping in the next iteration to kind of build a little bit of, I mean, turn a pinball. That's something we need to discuss as well, actually. It's funny, I was watching his tour with Kerry Hardy and he was talking about how he's built like a lot of added resiliency into his software so that it basically can handle failure, which I think, again, that's good seeing it from a boutique kind of. Yeah, I think, I mean, most games, like if you've got a switch that isn't registering and it detects that, it'll cope with it. Or you turn, like in Iron Maiden, if you turn the diverter off, it changes the game to be like the pro. so there's stuff like that you can do but when you lose like a big circuit board and of course this is the thing that knocks me when I mean I've only had I want to say actual proper node boards I think I've had two failures in the lifetime of my stern life that was Game of Thrones and oh no I've actually had one one node board failure which was Game of Thrones and then Malvira, the CPU board was dead on arrival, but they replaced it. But the thing is, when that node board failed, it just locked the whole game up. And what you want is okay, the board's failed, we're kicking it out, but we can still play some element of a game. Of course, if it was the node board with the flippers attached, you probably don't want people putting money in it. In certain instances, yeah. You want it to have some, as you say, the diverter logic. You want it to go can we get this through in a hobbled state? Exactly. And also, you know, typically these things happen when you least expect them. Yeah. Yeah, so, look, I think, yeah, things are going good at the club. A couple of new games hopefully arriving for Christmas, which I haven't spent a lot of the last two months travelling. I'm looking forward to spending a bit of time at home playing games and literally sleeping in my own bed. I came home from, I was just in Japan at the weekend, I was absolutely shocked but I did find I found a pinball machine in a new location so there's an arcade, I forget what it's called but it's in Aqaba but the they had a Simpsons and when I was there the guy was actually cleaning it and I was like oh cool and I had a kind of a slightly broken English chat with him and but it's actually got me in the mood to buy a Vuelix. So if anyone's got a proper Vuelix that wants to sell it, ping me. What's that, sorry? It's the Capcom. Sorry, not Capcom. Tato made this cabinet, a modern cabinet for flat screen displays for arcades. Oh, wow. Okay. And if you Google it, people import them from Japan, but I think they look pretty cool. The old school was the kind of candy cabs in Astro City, cabs, Astro City 2, et cetera. But they're like still CRT. I don't want a CRT cab. I have heard there's a lot of arcades these days in America, not in America, in Japan, are very much like, what do they call it, the trading card games where you put your card down and then they have a lot of like rhythm-based games that you can play. Mate, the rhythm-based games that I would have played. The rhythm-based games are huge in Japan. So they've got this one that looks like a washing machine And it's like The guy playing it is like some sort of freaking ninja Like And I'm like holy shit And actually shout out to Chief Coffee In London He's got pinballs downstairs And a Japanese Tokyo arcade upstairs And I think he's got A load of these games The other one is Groove Coaster Which I really like we have to kind of follow a line it's again and also DDR is still massive there and the washing machine game there's a freaking queue to play it the place I was at they had like a list of names you had to write your name down and then you take a seat and wait for you know the other guys to finish because these guys are so good they're on it for like hours so you might have a long way I've got a video on them I might post it in the Facebook group but it was cool to see when I went to Japan at the kind of heyday of the arcades and it's kind of depressing to see it right now where do you remember like Sega World in London Sega World Sega World in I mean Sega had hundreds of arcades across Japan hundreds of them they're all gone they're all gone and there's still some arcades there it must be more difficult I suppose for people in the arcade hobby versus the pinball hobby because pinball hobby although it's you know obviously nowhere near as popular as it used to be it's still got a large proportion of people buying new new products while in the arcade world it's more like you've just got what you've got and you only run out I suppose of games to buy because there's only so many games you can Pine over There's no one really making the kind of Arcade games you have at home You're not going to have like Raw Thrills With their kind of drastic park Like the size of a house So you know there isn't many games You know Sega's gone And all the other guys that were in this space Have kind of pivoted probably more to consoles And PC gaming Yeah so And honestly it's depressing I mean I remember being there That heyday thinking I was in this, this was in Aqaba there was this huge hallway it was massive and just rows and rows and rows of candy cabs and they were rammed, they were all massive they were heaving especially the beat em up scenes right fighting games and shoot em ups fighting em ups, shooting em ups, driving games that was the kind of three things and then you had the odd kind of weird fantasy star type thing but you know I was there I was there last year and it was you know and I was kind of sad there about having gone back I saw a tour video of Capcom's what do they want to call it their flagship store and it's like okay there's an acknowledgement of Mega Man Street Fighter and stuff like that there's no actual arcade machines but you can play Street Fighter it's like it's all cranes like those oh that's a good fleet way actually redemption machines Oh yes, so let's have a laugh at that No, actually I mean crane games So the arcade I was in The first two floors were nothing but crane games And you know it's like Jeez When you see that In places where the crane games used to be They used to be like just arcades everywhere Video games everywhere It is depressing It's a different landscape isn't it Yeah, in some ways okay we've still got video games via consoles and PCs etc but you know they're not the same sort of games like playing they're not built for like coin up yeah so playing King of Fighters or Street Fighter in the arcade was just so much fun so yeah look if anyone's got a Vuelix cabinet, no I don't want a Tulix I want a Vuelix Pygmy because I'm keen to buy one but it needs to look nice, I don't want it beaten up and ideally low latency 1080p one um but i'm definitely going to get one because i kind of miss i used to play those games a lot when i was a kid i was never good at it and that's what that's kind of what got me into pinball because in in my local arcade um which is called ellie amusements on loathian road in edinburgh it's not there anymore like so many arcades but um there's always a big queue to play and actually there's a bunch of guys that we used the roles there would always be playing for like a quid they would have these kind of pound coin games and i would like they were so good and i would always lose my money but then i kind of started playing pinball because what the queue you got on the on the games was huge um whereas the pinball machines no one was ever playing them so and that was that was kind of initially got me into pinball but then i kind of moved to a different town and kind of lost track playing it but yes let's move on yeah to the announcement of the century. You've been waiting for this all your life, pinball fans. Every day you've been banging on the desk saying, yes! I want redemption. And you'll be pleased to know that those customer-mind-focused people at Jersey Jack Pinball have delivered. It reminds me of, like, Safecracker, when they did that attempt to the tokens, right? Coming down at last. That was fun. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. To this day, I've only ever seen one, but I've never seen it in action, so to speak, popping the coin out. Ah, yeah, no, it's cool. Although you kind of have a heart attack when the coin hits the glass and rolls down. You're like, shit. I've got a couple of coins, actually. We had one in the club for a while. It's a fun game. It's a fun game. Yeah, but back on Jersey Jack, I mean, I'd rather they've gone down the route that Stern did, which was the achievements. I just Every Jersey Jack forum is basically Saying the same thing What cocaine are these guys on Here's the other thing I'm hearing that the system that you have to buy So is You have to buy a system for it And I don't know if this is true But I've heard this number from two people So A bit of salt If you're calling you'll be chucking the salt on And But I'm hearing it's $150,000 for the system. No way. Yeah, and I'm like, really? And I'm like, does that come with 15 pinball machines? So I don't know if that's true. It could well be wrong. You'll never make your return on investment. No, exactly. So that can't be right. I mean, that was my take. I was like, nah, I just don't believe it. But anyway, I'm hearing it's a super expensive system. well if it's over a grand it's not worth putting in well i'm trying to think why would it be maybe a couple of grand like for lights and some sort of thing but oh right you're thinking like an actual full-on display above it and all that other junk maybe yeah i don't know like if you're going to go down the redemption route and you're in that kind of avenue where you're advertising to kids i absolutely would say just buy a crane machine at that point it's going to 100% it's cheaper, and you'll make more money from it, and it doesn't break down as often. I mean, I've yet to see anyone really speak in favor of this. And also, I mean, the other thing is, Jersey Jack just talk nonsense. They said this was the first ever. Stern have had a redemption capability on pinball machines for, like, 20 years now. you can buy if you've got a Marco speciality it's got a ticket dispenser sort of thing it's got a kit to convert your game and if you go in the menus you'll see it Turn Redemption on and off I don't know if anyone's done it recently with a Spike 2 game but I saw a Sam game it kind of proves a point though there's no market for it exactly 100% mate and this kit's cheap I think it's $100 or something and if it's true that there's Jersey Jacks in the thousands, then I think this is dead on arrival. But honestly, redemption pinball. I mean, part of me wants to go and get, like, the top ten players. I don't know what they're trying to do, though, right? Because their market is people in their 40-plus, majority probably in their 50-60-plus, and they're like, these people aren't going to live forever. We need to entice the younger generation. So they're thinking about the long game. But, yeah, I just, I don't know if that's the right way of getting them enticed in pinball. I really don't. I mean, look, they call them family entertainment centres. It's the new word for arcade. Right. And these aren't aimed at 20-somethings. They're aimed at kids. Ten, yeah. You're playing a bit of bowling. You're doing some crazy golf. You're playing some redemption. you're spending $400 to take home a £3 bit of plastic from China you see all the Gen Z people they do little TikTok videos where they go this is the way to cheat the system and get the maximum ticket return and it's just like it's nuts it's a money making enterprise I can see why they tried to go into it I just don't really understand why pinball works I just can't I mean, it's like a Jaguar. They've just basically pissed, you know, they've done something that's not related to their market whatsoever. Yeah. And isn't going to, I don't think it's going to drive any, you know, it's not going to drive any new value. I mean, I'd love to be wrong on that because if it is, if it was to create a new pinball boom, then great. But I personally don't see it. And again, you know. I honestly think Jersey Jack completely missed the boat because they've got the cameras built in they've had them for ages they're not really utilised they could easily have built and I say easily, it's not super easy but it would have been doable to have a situation where you could have a land play, so to speak not a land play, like a WAN play I should say where you're going to be competing against someone else in your area who also owns the game see a little picture of them on the screen exactly because you've got it all ties in the technology's already there they've got the software i know they could do it but for some reason they've completely ignored that and gone down chasing an avenue i think that just isn't going to lead anywhere yeah well they they had scoreboard on all their games and with achievements and okay it's not as integrated as as as the stern system it was there and they just killed it for no reason i was astounded but actually my daughter in the club I haven't updated the codes which takes it out so it still works, the scoreboard still works so if you're in the club you can still if you scan in you can with scoreboard you can that's the thing that you want right, that's where all gaming went, online play yeah absolutely, you look at Xbox and Playstation and any, I mentioned Steam earlier they've all gone down this achievement route and Stern's achievements there's no question that's been a success for them at Expo they were banging a drum on the data that they had they're doing these challenges imagine all that information they've got around the demographics of their players the amount of time they play a game how well they're playing a game they can gather all that information now and you know so you know hot take the most played game on location from Stern is Venom yeah good earner apparently Yeah, so who would have thought that, given the Pan has got my Venom. I love it. It's great. It's a fun game. I'd encourage everyone to go play it. I think it's that whole mechanism of levelling up your character, isn't it? Yeah, that could be. But I think it's just, you know, it's a game where you don't need to be Einstein to figure out how the freak to score points on it, you know. Yeah, I was going to say, I love it when a game you can just say, follow the lights. Yeah, exactly. And that is 100% true for that game. But yeah, look, what I'm pleased to see is Jersey Jack spending money on things that customers don't care about. Just I just shake my head I hope that they yeah I shake my head Well they just need to hopefully listen to the feedback from the consumers and maybe try again That probably the way to put it Well, I mean, they're owned by a couple of billionaires, so they've got money to burn, clearly. But that, to me, I mean, I'd be interested to get more feedback from. They announced at IAPA in Florida, which is this. Actually, if you ever get a chance to go to IAPA, If you're in Florida when it's on, you should go because it's like insane. The Florida Convention Center is literally the size of Wales. And they just ram it with everything. And I was there a few years ago with a wife. We were on holiday in Florida. Just coincidentally, the last day the thing started, I said, oh, we can just nip in here and have a look. And it was insane. They had kind of literally kind of small roller coasters to pinball machines. They had a popcorn department that was like as big as a floor in Debenhams, full of different types of popcorn machines. They have outdoors. They had a bouncy castle section that was literally a Disney car park sized. You could jump on any bouncy castle you wanted to. It was freaking nuts. It would be a must-have coordination effort. total that there. Yeah, I mean, a load of stuff on managing your audience and your tickets, how do you get in, barriers, all that sort of kind of theme park related stuff, right? Yeah. It kind of made EAG look like a bit of a sideshow, really. But this is where they announced it. All the pinball manufacturers were there. And this is where they announced this redemption, just I don't know what to call it. let's leave it and move on I think the final nail in the coffin I hope not I think JJP do make good games they're not well they've made two good games I think they do their best to try and make a very premium looking product and let's face it they set the bar for me when it came to light shows with Guns N' Roses I think the game might not have been my favourite but the light show was impressive yeah I mean look I just get it I use this term ball and flippers what's the game all about get that right and then yeah have your light show have your amplifier playing the music loud get your big screen on there but get a game played to be great that for me is crucial they need another Elton John but just with the right theme for me yeah no I mean absolutely and I mean it's interesting to see a few Elton Johns have changed hand, which is kind of what I predicted because it's not the deepest of games. Okay. And they're starting to move. You can pick one up for about eight grand now. Wow. Which is somewhat shocking. Yeah, well, you know, there's a Venom that's gone for ten grand. It's lost six grand. So if you're like... This is the pitfall of buying new in box. It really is. I mean, we don't want to go too much down the pricing avenue. We've done it too many times. Yeah, I know, but it is. I think if you're going to buy a new box, be prepared to keep it. Yeah, or just be prepared to lose a lot of money. Or don't buy it and wait to pick one up cheap. Someone's got to buy it though, right? That's the thing. I mean, that is the thing, right? And, you know, there's a couple of my games. I've got Led Zeppelin LE, and I'm probably going to sell it because I've also got a premium, which is actually on loan to Medway Club. Shout out to the guys there. But I'm thinking, when am I ever going to bring this? I love the game, it's a great game, but it's competing in an ever crowded set of great games. When am I actually ever going to bring this back in my house? I suppose that brings us on to our next game, which will be Spooky's next release. I was very much on the fence to buying that, because I am out of space, and I've sacrificed something. And you can't choose what, right? At this moment in time it's got to a position where I'm like, I don't really want to get rid of anything anymore. I just want to keep growing. This is where my advice kicks in on this, right? Because it's tough. Get all your games running with audits on, right? Okay. And at the end of the month, look at the audits and see what you're really playing. Sometimes it's a game of, though, if you don't play it a lot, but you know that if you want to get it again, will you be able to get it? That's the question. Yeah, but I see. I really feel that's a very rare thing and I think I'll give you a good example for me Circus Voltaire is probably the one I would consider getting rid of but I don't think I'd ever be able to get one again if I got rid of it I don't think you'd want one again that's the point because if you wanted that again you'd be playing it that is the point so I mean I did that with, what was the game I sold thinking I could pick one up again? I think it was, was it Spider-Man? So I sold it because I was, no, it was Ghostbusters, right? Right. Ghostbusters and Spider-Man. I sold both of them, right? And I don't sell a lot of games, so you know, I was like, what are you selling that for? I was like, well, you know, I like it, but I sold both of them because the audits were both the lowest, right? And everyone's like, oh, you're mad selling Ghostbusters. I was like, yeah, okay, I'll pick up another one at some point in time. And there's been a few on the forum coming over, yeah, the price is a bit higher than probably what I'd like, but I've never actually woken up and said, right, today I'm buying a Ghostbusters. It just hasn't happened. Spider-Man, same. Again, I like the game, it's a good game. Well, it's like Star Trek for me, right? I bought it the second time around, said I'd never get rid of it this time, and I still got rid of it. I don't think I'll get a third one, though. It was one of those things that I had nostalgia on it because it was my first game. And I thought I really did like it. But when I got it again, I was like, it's all right. Yeah, exactly. That's it. And that's why I think if you sell something, if you're not playing it, you know, then you won't miss it, basically. I'm looking at Medieval Madness, right? I don't play that game often at all. I'm never getting rid of that game. I've worked so hard to get that one the flip side to that that is one game where I would miss it I know I would it's still for me it's the pinnacle it's a fantastic game I'll tell you what I like just quickly I was playing it virtually because I can't never find anybody who's got the goddamn game Totan I know you'd be like that no I like it Total shit. I love the way the ball, it's a bit like Metallica, right? It's got the magnet where the ball sucks in through the core, the magnet core, so it disappears. I love stuff like that. I like the magic of pinball. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not the worst game in the world, but, I mean, unfortunately, that game, so for tournament players, all you do is just hit the genie. Yeah, I heard it's got broken code. Yeah, you just constantly hit the genie. It's like, this is boring. But it is There's a lot of people out there That have polished the shit out of them They're like They've got ones that are literally Encased in glass So you can't touch it It's a lovely looking game But gameplay wise It leaves a lot to be desired I think that's why I was tempted to get the Alice But then I was like Alice? It's weird actually I think Alice is still available in the UK to buy I mean Look at Player Alice, I liked it But it wasn't There was still The layout had issues It wasn't perfect It wasn't a disaster of a game There were some nice moments With the little screen that they had And things doing stuff But It's not If I got that game, actually my wife loved it She thought it was awesome She was like, get one of them I was like, no, because you don't play pinball often enough, and I'll end up selling it. So, you know, it was okay, but it wasn't like – it wasn't setting the house on fire, right, the world on fire, rather. So, whilst, yeah, okay, it looked nice and it played okay, but some of the shots at the back felt a bit kind of, how does that work? and I also didn't think well the code it's a brand new game so the code's not going to be there but they needed a lot of work to do on that it wasn't it wasn't like Raza from freaking Deep Root which was like the worst game one of the worst games I've ever played or freaking ABBA it's interesting talking about that because obviously that again Carrie Hardy when he was interviewing that Turner Pinball guy, it turns out he obviously bought a lot of the stuff. Yes, he did. And he said he's actually going to make his own kind of version of the lock bar LCD screen. It won't actually be on the lock bar anymore. It'll be like technology will be on the phone instead. Yeah. I'm thinking probably what he means by that and it was just a guess at the time because he hasn't really gone into it, is that you probably can then drive some of the light effects and that through the phone and do stuff with the phone, so to speak, to change certain things in the game. Yeah, maybe just be able to, you know, change the settings or something like that. Yeah. I mean, anyone – yeah, look, again, that stuff's so interesting, but it doesn't sell pinball machines, you know. It's – you need a decent game, a decent theme, and something that's fun, basically. So I – you know, and actually, the Ninja Eclipse game, we didn't talk about it. No, we haven't really given much line back to it. I played it – I mean, so I played it in Chicago. Right. A year ago, right? Yeah. Oh, so he played it when it had the original cabinet, not the... Yeah, so... And I forget his first name, but the Turner guy. Andrew Turner. Andrew, that's it. So I was playing it and I was enjoying it. And I said, Andrew, mate, this is a good game, right? I can see potential in it. I told him a couple of things to tweak. But here's your biggest issue. People see that cabinet and they think you're a joke. Yeah, sizzle. Yeah, they think... I said, mate, they just don't take you seriously. He's like, is it really that bad? I said, honestly, if you, let me tell you, right, I'm going to give you a bit of homework. I said to him, look, get a full-size cabinet, stick the game in a full-size cabinet, just one, just one game, bring it to TPF, and I'll bet you everybody's tune changes. He did exactly that. Fair play to him. He retooled it, got it in a cabinet, brought it to TPF, and it was like the queue for it was like round the door. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? All down to the form factor. and also he did tweak the game I was amazed how much work he got done in the space of six months to be fair to him it sounds like the company he's built from it is not really his primary job he's obviously got some severe financial backing to do all this yeah I mean yeah so he seems to be dedicating a lot of time to it is what I'm getting at as well he's super motivated he's one of these guys that when he says he's going to do something and he does it, which is always great. He's passionate about pinball, but honestly he's one of the nicest blokes I've ever spoken to. I got that from the video. He seemed to be really, really nice guy. He takes feedback, follows up, recognises that there's multiple viewpoints. I think Cary Hardy's video, if you haven't seen it, definitely go watch it. Definitely. Just don't watch the one about Haggis, because it's full of nonsense. nonsense but anyway um yeah it's full well he gets a guy on yes the guy he gets to comment on haggis is someone who had to go up in ball and failed to um and i'm like maybe that's maybe he's not the best guy given opinion uh he was the guy that originally had the medieval madness license and he he failed to deliver it basically um long story but i won't i won't bore everyone now but This is back in the deep darkness of the pinball craze part one where loads of companies appeared and disappeared quickly as they appeared. With games like Predator and Alien and etc. Yeah, exactly. Cowboys and Horse Manure, there was plenty of. Anyway, the Toronto Pinball, great job. they said they were going to make 300 games they've sold out it was 100 I can't remember it was a low number low risk for buyers, low risk for them they can learn a lot by doing 100 games and then come back stronger it's kind of what Spooky did when they first launched I do feel very familiar ground to where Spooky started out yes and let's use that to pivot to give me some sugar baby have you seen the movies? of course I wasn't talking about a movie aficionado here but yeah like Bruce Campbell man he's massive he is a superstar I've met him twice actually have you? nice so I found there are certain people in this world that I've just got to meet them and he was on the list I specifically went to an event to meet him but then I was at another event where he was there and it was in the US a kind of, not big comic con but a kind of sideshow sort of one one was a horror focused one and he was like a fucking superstar it was literally like you know Harrison Ford turned up at a Star Wars gig it was like the wall just stopped and gave thanks, it was insane and I did a chat with him and there's another thing he was in I don't know if you saw it, Burn Notice, it was a TV program Ash vs Evil Dead, yeah well yeah, no so Ash vs Evil Dead was okay there was a couple of bits that were like I watched season one I can't remember, there's more than one season I think there is, well I only watched season one so if there's another season I haven't seen it it was okay, it wasn't I felt I was trying a bit too hard at times no, there's another TV program called Burn Notice and it is if you haven't seen it go download it, it's really good he's in it and he's freaking hilarious in it it's classic Bruce, it's a character that literally was made for Bruce Campbell and he fucking nails it anyway, Evil Dead I actually watched it on the plane back from Japan I was laughing my ass off at it, it's such a funny film I tried to get Holly to watch it but she just, it's old, right? And the problem is that if you haven't watched it when it was released, it looks dated. Yeah, it does, but it's still, I mean, she's missing out. She got bored, she fell asleep halfway through and I was like, I'll just watch the rest of it out there. Well, maybe watch Army of Darkness. I tried to make her watch the same, she just wouldn't do it. For me, that's the thing I was going to say with the game. I know there's call-outs that reference, obviously, Hail to the King, This is My Boomstick, all that sort of stuff. if it doesn't say stop shop smart shop s smart or whatever it is but use that as well like all that stuff it's it to me but i do dick too yeah to me it's like army of darkness was probably where i would have positioned it rather than one and two one and two it's kind of like i know everyone says one and two is different and yes it is a continuation i'd say for anybody has never watched Evil Dead. I'd just say watch Evil Dead 2 and then watch Army of Darkness. You don't really need to watch the first one. The first one is... I'm kind of glad they did the second one because it's literally a remake of the first with some polish. Even Bruce says he couldn't get rights. He wanted to redo it and then he couldn't. So then he went, all right, screw it. I'll make a sequel. And that's why they talk about that a lot with Bug where he says these are two different films. He's right, they are two different films. Yeah, two different production companies, etc, etc, yeah. But I disagree with Berg around him saying that we've done two because they are very different films. It's like, realistically it's the same damn film. Nah, it's the same movie. I mean, the second one is the one I watched. Army of Darkness is hilarious. It's just, it's like a Bruce Campbell fest. It's freaking hilarious. The way it ends is a bit shit, but I think that's why they tried to address it with the TV series right yeah but it's it's popcorn entertainment you're not going to have a divine kind of reawakening it's like Schindler's List it's low thought epic entertainment but if you haven't seen it please go and see it it's hilarious get the DVD out or watch it it's probably on Netflix it'll be on Prime for sure or Apple TV but yeah it's great so I've I have made potentially the mistake another massive pinball career mistake by placing an order for one of these I'll say to you I was so on the fence with it because it's like I love Bruce Campbell the theme nailed it for me and when I saw the trailer I thought, oh, this looks like... So the thing that made me decide on it is they've kind of gone a bit simpler on the game. Right. So spooky games, they quite often go overly complex on the mech, and you spend your life fiddling with the damn stupid things, right? Yeah, because they break. Yeah. I mean, and actually on the pin side, it's hilarious about reliability, et cetera. but nonetheless I saw it it's there's a debate, is it a fan layout or not it's definitely a partial fan layout but the game looks a lot simpler it looks like it might even be it might even have tournament potential it is a wide body which actually I didn't really realise someone said it to me I was like what, it's not a wide body and then you look at it and you think holy shit it doesn't look like a wide body I don't think it's going to play like a white body so I'm excited about it because I love the theme I love Bruce Campbell but I mean it literally is a last chance saloon for spooky pinball if it arrives and I have the same shit show that people have had Oh I see what you mean from that perspective I'm not to be honest with you I would have bought it I would have been on the phone the minute they started taking orders except for the fact that I'm really nervous about how reliable this game's going to be. And if it's not reliable, I'll get rid of it. And it'll be a shame. I think it's a valid concern. I mean, we've seen it time and time again. We had Scooby-Doo on location at Pinfest and it broke. We've had Looney Tunes where the board was... Halloween. The board on Halloween. Big failure on the relay boards. Alice Cooper. You'd occasionally get a multiball. They've got a history. Unfortunately the multiball was in the bottom of the cabinet So it was hard to make any sense out of it You know They've got form for And also you know I can't remember was it Spinner Was it Scooby-Doo Or was it One of the games where When you look at the And you'll appreciate this Probably more than I do but When you drill into wood For a Spinner or a Mech if you're not going into a t-nut you're basically going to have a game that breaks or falls apart absolutely and loads loads of the stuff they've got i think it's halloween my rick and molly i remember the um launcher wire form yeah back then they didn't know how to thread so they powder coated the the end of the uh rods and then what they did is they they pushed it through the hole of where it sits in the playfield and then bent it upwards and then hot glued it that He's Rick and Morty's legacy. It's hot glue. Yeah, they use a lot of hot glue. It's janky. Same with TNA. You cannot put that on location. There's a debate on the pin side thread right now. All these people that send about issues are all talking bollocks. It's like, well, you can either listen to us and learn, or you can ignore us and go bust. Eventually this shit catches up with you. I don't doubt that. Now they've matured everything, right? I think Scooby-Doo is probably getting to a position where it's a bit more operator-friendly. But I think they're just not, for me, operator-ready yet. I think they need to get... I went to play Looney Tunes again. It's another thing I would have bought on the spot. So, exit Texas Pinball Festival, turn it on, hit the start button, have a really great first ball. Ball goes in the trough, game gets confused, game stops. And I was like, no thanks. I mean if you can't get look there's nothing more basic than you lose the ball and you get a new ball if you can't get that right fuck's sake you shouldn't be in pinball so anyway good tip I remember that when I'm coding mine ball fight logic it's interesting you bring that up because obviously I've been loaned Labyrinth by retro arcade specialists shout out to them and I did have that issue one time the ball got the game logic got all screwed up because it was like it just didn't go into ball search the ball got stuck somewhere and it just didn't go into ball search and I thought is that because it hasn't realised that the ball's stuck or is it because there is no ball search it was a bit like it's bizarre I mean I just it's the one thing Stern have got 100% right like if you get two balls on the playfield for whatever reason and you let it drain it never screws the game you've got a Williams game like you know I don't know I'm trying to think of one that's got a ball lock but you lose In an old Bally Williams game, if you block a ball and then that ball somehow gets free for whatever reason and you've got two balls in the playfield, you let that ball go, you'll lose the other ball too. Whereas Stern, I don't know how they've done it, but it knows somehow to do that. If you're a tournament director and you get a game that goes unreliable, this is the one thing I always know. If there's two balls in a Stern game when there shouldn't be. I know that if you drain it, it'll be fine. And I've done that quite a few times when the balls, usually because the balls have got magnetized and need replacing But yeah I just think that such a basic thing to get right And also the flippers you know the feel of the flippers they definitely got better You know TNA was good but Scott did a lot of work to get that as good as it was But ACNC kind of went a little bit backwards. Is it not stone coils? No, no. It's not the coils. It's the whole, there's no, on TNA at least. I swear they were using flipper mesh. No end switch. nah they're Williams mechs there's no UX on TNA you may be right I don't know for the life of me I thought they were using the same Paul and Link as Stearns do nah it's Williams but I mean and then you know Halloween the flippers were just shocking trying to get it up that all those playfields holy moly I don't know what they were thinking I think you know my bet, right, is Barrels of Fun's next game is Fifth Element. Only because if anybody knows Fifth Element well, the alien that basically plays Multipass before she becomes a human is cladded in this kind of beetle-style armour. It's like a gold-looking armour. It's very distinct. And during the original promo of Labyrinth, the head of that armour is purposely placed, I think, right next to the topper of Labyrinth. Right. And I thought, well, that must be them signifying that's their next game. So I'm kind of hedging my bets and going, my wife, right, diehard Fifth Element fan, she will watch that film 20, 50 times over and never get bored of it. So I know for a fact I can buy that game and she wouldn't care. She'd be like, you should be buying it because if you're not, I'm going to buy it. So I'm kind of like, as much as I wanted Evil Dead, and banking on that being announced in Jan. But we'll see. Yeah, I mean, so I think by then they should have made all the games and it'll be, what, two years since they've been up and running. They definitely need to get another game out. I did always say they will only make their announcement when they finish their production run, which they do. Yeah, which I think is the right thing to do. Otherwise, you just piss off customers that are waiting. Yeah. For sure. But, yeah. I think, like, for me, it looks stellar. I love Christopher Franchi's work I think his artwork is second to none as much as people would say Zombie Yeti is the best I honestly think Zombie Yeti's artwork is very stylised to him you could always say that's a Zombie Yeti piece Iron Maiden ok I'll give you that maybe that but I would say with Christopher Franchi he has that way of just detailing he's very good with other people's IPR like Batman, Guardians Evil Dead, he's very good at taking an IPR and producing something that fits the IPR yeah exactly it's not like the IPR fits on it, it's just faithful to it but look I often think, a lot of people say it's a zombie yeti colour blah blah blah but I think that's what Stern felt I'm looking at four zombie yeti games five actually if you include Godzilla and yeah there's some like Venom and X-Men is very similar but then Foo and Deadpool Foo Fighters is quite different, Godzilla is different I don't know I still think he's got that kind of bubbly colourful edges to things and don't get me wrong it's nothing like I'm criticising his work I just think he's got a recognisable style I think most of the time I'd agree with you but I think different artists have got skills and talents and different things. And actually, I think one of the great things that Jersey Jack did was the Godfather art. I mean, the game's sadly not where it should be because of the code, but the artwork on it was astoundingly good. Did you see they finally updated Pirate's Code, by the way? Yeah, I know. They added the Wizard Mode. Wow. I just despair of what I just don't know what the mindset Is there There's a lot of people That work there that probably work their asses Off But the leadership I just think what Anyway hopefully Yeah we've talked to them about JJP You went with a topper I'm assuming as well I mean I think The whitewater rule applies to this game no topper and you lose half the value of the game basically it's insane it's got to be the best topper I've ever seen yeah I think the Labyrinth one's pretty decent I've bought a Labyrinth topper I'm very happy that Jim Henson Productions have been working with the puppetry on that one where is your Labyrinth by the way? it should be like next week or week after next I think so it's on a boat yeah it's past basically the UK was the last to get theirs because we have CE certification that we had to get and they didn't have that and they were trying to figure out how to do it the whole Europe needs it I don't think it did in Europe no CE 100% you can't sell shit in Europe us in Europe then I should say but yeah once they had that CE certification done the games had been sat there ages being done they just needed to get the paperwork to say it's all been signed off. So I think they're on their way now. So I got told, I think, like, last week that they were finished and ready to go out the door, as in, like, shipped. Awesome. That's good to hear. Just a quick one on American Pinball. So I was helping out Rob with a pinged Dave Fix, because he was having some challenges with GTF. So there's new code out for GTF that improves the game massively, according to Rob. Still a couple of issues with it, but... What's your views on American Pinball then? I don't know what to tell you. It feels to me like they need to be more focused on delivering games that people want to play. I'm worried that the next title is Cuphead, I must admit. Yeah, that scares the shit out of me because I don't think it's the theme. That's not a theme that I think is going to carry with people. Not in the volumes they need, basically. No. But also, you know, they've got Whitewater 2 sitting in a cupboard somewhere, apparently. Is that Scott Danesi? Not Scott Danesi. Sorry, the guy that got made off. Nordman. The guy they just had a big public argument with. So Dennis Nordman, did he make, sorry, I forget, did he make Whitewater, the original one? Yeah, Whitewater, the original one, Elvira. I saw from his Facebook post him saying that, you know, how the story went of how him being different from what David Fix said and then he said there's a couple of designs I'm making my own now and I'll be selling it to whoever buys it basically and he'll make it with them so I thought well maybe does that mean Whitewater 2 has been No I think at least the game whether it's called Whitewater 2 who knows but at least that design I think is owned by American Pinball whether we'll see it or not I think I mean for them to promote Barry's BBQ over Whitewater 2 feels... Just bizarre. Yeah. I mean, I just struggle with that. I get it, right. Barry was obviously someone that David was very fond of and he held it as an homage to him, but I feel like it just wasn't the game that people wanted. When you've got a business that isn't exactly firing on all thrusters, the last thing you do is do a kind of tribute to your mate that's going to sell 10 games and one topper. You know, it's just not... It's a shame because the game layout apparently resonates with people. They say it all through Squirrel. I like it. I've played it. I mean, it's got one issue, which is they've got to dial the flippers in because otherwise you can't hit the ramp shot. If you've got a game that's got dialed in flippers, it's a huge amount of fun. But, you know, I don't know too many people that wake up saying, you know what I really like in a pinball theme? Barbecue. Yeah. That, to me, is the bit I struggle with. I'm pretty shallow when it comes to that. I was discussing this with Van earlier. because he was buying... Well, I think he's thinking of buying an Evil Dead as well. Yeah. And for him, like, theme is 90% of the purchase. It is for me as well, I'm not going to lie. For me, if it isn't a theme I want, I'm not going to buy it. It's as simple as that. They can shoot the best thing ever. The theme's a terrible one, I'm just not going to have it. Yeah, I can live without the theme if the music's okay. If I don't like the music, I can't play the game. I think theme and music almost like even steven with me yeah yeah rush um it's a great game i just can't stand the music and i just and i and i just don't want to play it because of that um but uh it's a great game and it's got it's you know it's a it's it's been coded really well but um i just hear that noise coming out and i just want to run for a mile basically um yeah i mean i think ap i think if you believe the internet rumours you know and of course remember Dave from Pinball Info the oracle the oracle of all pinball knowledge he's becoming, are you sure that's not your burner account? I wouldn't call it Dave I haven't been on the forum in months I haven't really looked at it often and then answered to me go on the forum and just read this evil dead thread and I was like what? and he's like there's someone on there with some different opinions I don't know that guy is banned basically but I was surprised because there was some homophobic statements in there and then there was some blatant swearing I was like the swearing is okay but I just don't yeah I just don't I mean he's working on a homebrew version of Evil Dead. Apparently. Which I guess is what's wound them up, that someone's beat them to it. But Dave, look, when you've done your homebrew, let's bring it down here. We'll get the real Evil Dead. We'll stream them and we'll let the world decide which is the better game. I have a feeling I know who's going to win. And sadly, Dave, it's Probably not you, mate. But, you know, wake up in the morning. He could make the best game ever. Who knows, right? Yeah, okay. All those in favor of him making the best game, put your hands up now. I think the same thing you said for anyone making a comment about a game they haven't even played yet, which I find is weird. Exactly. You cannot have a predisposition on something until you've played it. Yeah. I mean, you can have a view on what you see. Oh, yeah, of course. But you can't tell whether it's good or bad. It's like Venom. Oh, yeah, for ages I thought that game looked like crap. because it looked down at me, but then I played around yours and I was like, this is fun. Yeah, it's just, you know, John Wick as well, so I've been playing a lot of that. I think I'd be too crap to play John Wick. Well, it is a tough game, no question about it, but I'm really enjoying it, and Tim's done two decent code updates, another one's coming next week, I think, ahead of Thanksgiving, and it's a fun game. I'm enjoying it, and again, it's got a lot of shit, but I'm really enjoying it and then you know it's going to be a bumper pinball Christmas for sure and we need to do our Christmas special with Christmas jumpers on I should have my lab rip do you know where that is right and I'm going to say this now I think I haven't responded to Chagas and again if you're listening mate sorry I did see your message a while back Chagas is that Chagas that his... I think he brought the jaws for Pinfest, right? Yeah, his half-life for owning a game is measured in minutes. Because he asked me for my opinion on Labyrinth, so I'm going to say it here and then tell him to listen to this. So, look, I've had this game for the best part of three, four months now. I'm still playing it. The irony is now, when I get my game, I think the excitement's going to be gone, because I've already got it, in a way, if you see what I'm saying. I think it is hard, and I'm not going to lie, that game drives me up the wall sometimes with its geometry. It's just got some weird scenarios where the ball will come out and it feels like it's cheating you. Ouch. Yeah. You mean it's frustrating? Yes. That is dangerous. Do you know what I mean? In that respect. You hit the wrong shot, it's going to drain you. It spits the ball out too fast. It's going to drain you. There's two types of game in that frustrating category? Go on. There's one, it's frustrating because you don't have the skills, right? True. So in the game for that, Jurassic Park and Walking Dead, right? Yeah, absolutely. But if you have got the skills and you can nail it, those games are like top play. That's what I mean. I'd hard put Labyrinth in that category. Right, okay, good. If it's in the other category, we should... No, no, it's more like... I see how that guy played Metallica. Sorry, I forgot you mentioned his name, but... Preston, yeah. Preston when he I wish I had half the skill sets that guy had like the way he controls the ball is like poetry emotion I was just like the way he just controls it like you know it looks like for me I'm just like yeah I would have drained there and he just manages to make it recover like it's normal and I'm just like anyway but the point being I think when I'm back on Labyrinth the theme as long as you love the theme you will like the game and you will enjoy it but if you are crap like I am, you're going to get frustrated by it. And I feel like it's not a newbie friendly game. It's not like Fear of Magic where you feel like you're a god. Because every shot you make is gold. You really do need to be accurate with your shots. That's all I would say. So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of... Yeah, what you don't want is the frustrating game like Ghostbusters. and it doesn't matter how good a player you are. Oh God, it's not Ghostbusters. No. Yeah, it's not. It doesn't matter how good a player you are. When that ball comes out, the pop's at the top, there's nothing you can do. It's going straight down the middle. There's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. And you're frustrated because you've been shafted, but it's not because of your skills. No, it's far from that. It's more like the game's just like you brick a shot, it's going to punish you for it. It's not forgiving. Like Fear of Magic, God, you can brick any shot you want on that play field, I swear to God, and it just goes, yeah, all right, just go back and try again other than the trunk but like yeah it's uh to me it just feels like yeah if you're if you're a mediocre to poor player don't go buying labyrinth um if you're if you're decent and you can control the ball or you like a challenge and you know jurassic park and you can say right i enjoyed that then you'll be fine indeed agreed um so um final thoughts uh we're coming up to the glorious one and a half hours mark. Yes. So I kind of did chuckle at everyone having to go at the chum bucket on probably one of the best games of all time, Jaws. It's such a great game. I haven't played it since the code updates, but everyone needs to know. Oh, man, they've just so nailed it. And if the rumors are true that Keith's doing Kong, that is just like a fact to Phil put me on the list for Kong now I mean it's just do you think he'll then do a Godzilla vs Kong just complete the trilogy that is what is coming it's what I hear I don't know if that's true but it's what I hear that would be quite cool I'm not going to lie it would be awesome that would be a massive great line up it would be a great, and that's a theme that just sells like hotcakes, man. Monsters, yeah, absolutely. Godzilla and Kong and the two of them together is like, why don't we just make more money than we can ever dream of? And it's kind of weird how that works so well for pinball, but you've got Avatar where two companies try to go at it and both games are shit. We won't go too much into it, but I just think Avatar is like, everyone's maybe watched it but it's not a film you want to re-watch but it's the I mean it's massive I didn't realise I'm going to come clean I've only seen the first half of the first movie and I thought it was such pants I turned it off I mean I went to the cinema for both so it's the biggest Avatar 1 and 2 are like the two biggest grossing movies not by a little bit but by a huge bit yeah it's massive so but it just doesn't seem to translate into pinball from what I think. I think the biggest misstep JJP ever did is they don't tie the video sequences into what's going on in the game. It's just playing in the background. It's like you're watching the movie whilst you play pinball. There's just obvious things they could have done. I think Avatar's a little bit better for that, but it's still not where it needs to be. As an example, I remember there's a part where the audio's not even syncing up with the video. Yeah, I know. I don't know what that's about. Hopefully that's just a coding issue. I'll tell you one thing I want to see Spooky do properly while I remember. They don't enable vertical sync on their videos. So you keep getting tearing every time a camera pans. And I noticed on Evil Dead, and they definitely have the issue with Halloween. I don't know why they just don't enable it. On the back? Yeah, on the screen. So there's no V-sync. So you get that horizontal tearing. That's easy to fix. I know people out there, they'll be like, what the hell is he on about tearing? If you ever play a video game and you don't have like G-Sync or Adaptive Sync or just standard VR, you will get tearing when you pan the camera. And that's exactly what is going on on Evil Dead. Watch the trailer back and watch some fast moving areas. You'll see the kind of choppiness of the frames coming into play. And I just don't know if that's because they can't enable it because their software will kill the performance of the CPU or if it's just because they don't, even notice. So I'd love them to enable V-Sync. Yeah, or at least use, like, for video all they need is 24 frames per second. They don't really need 60. Yeah, true. And then, you know, the rest of the frames they can do the pinball overlay. So it feels weird that they've got that issue. I suspect they might just not know that they can do that or they haven't thought about it. Yeah, it's a good point. That's the thing. It's just those little polished moments. It's like, you know, Stern were banging on about this, what the movie footage for John Wick looked like on their LCD. And I was like, yeah, whatever. But actually, when you see it, it does feel like it's another level up compared to anything else on the Stern LCD. And the Stern LCD is like the crappiest screen on the planet. It's freaking terrible. Man, quick one on that. I spent the best part of half a day going through Alibaba and AliExpress trying to find a screen that will fit my cabinet that fits my requirements in terms of color saturation you know color was srgb yeah yeah color yeah match so the percentage resolution size dimension thickness is bloody there's so many variants out there indeed indeed and uh not an easy thing to go down so look we'll do uh we'll probably do a christmas special in a few weeks time. You'll have your Pulp Fiction and Metallica maybe at some point. I hope so. Us in the poor seats will be waiting for our Metallicas to arrive for our cargo. I can't imagine that this year, but you never know. It's January, right? It's got to be January. Yeah, I would have thought so, but you never know. If it arrives, you can come down and play it, mate, if you want. Holly will bite your hand off on that. It does look good. And I'm trying to think, did we miss anything that we wanted to talk about? Yeah, so just for those that might be interested, I'm hearing that the next Stern game is Dungeons & Dragons to be announced either just before Christmas or just after, and it'll be at CES. Wait, another announcement after they've just done X-Men and Metallica? Mate, they've got a big factory to keep ticking over. Wow. This is the thing I was laughing at you Who are these bozos On forums that say Stern are in real trouble now Because Spooky have launched Evil Dead What the fuck are you talking about Stern can put out 500 games in a week In a week In a freaking week So when some little guy comes along And don't get me wrong I'm not saying that these guys are bad I thought it was really nice that Spooky congratulated got congratulated by Stern. Yeah, Stern, of course. They're sensible when they do a new game. Look, the industry doing well does well for everybody, right? Yeah, I genuinely feel happy for Spooky. I don't know what it is about people. Oh, Stern are in trouble. Now I'm like, no, they're not. It's just... Well, it's like, what is it? 800 games and then it's done. Is it 888, something like that? 888 games. Yeah, they're going to sell more that in prose for whatever the next game I just find it hilarious that people compare the two it's like no they're on a different level and Spooky's not trying to be Stern and Stern isn't trying to be Spooky there's space for both of them right there's always space for a bit like the number two and number three spot exactly anyway Scott good to catch up everyone we'll be back Christmas do keep an eye out on for some we might do some kind of Christmasy bargains. Actually I might unwrap, I've done Pinside Santa. Here's a quick one for you. Did you buy anything for Black Friday? Not yet. Not yet. Here's a little hint for everyone else that there might be some upcoming deals from certain UK sellers up on Friday so keep your wallets ready. Yep, get your credit cards ready. Right, we are at an hour and a half And we will see you in December Scott, it's been a pleasure Yep, can't see you now And we will see everyone Next month And just with that, remember folks Pinball To enjoy it, you play it So go play it Visit a location If you're in London, come to Pinball Republic But go visit a location, stick some money in the games And enjoy them and if you've got loads of games in your house invite some of your friends round for Christmas actually I'm doing one on the 13th of December, if you want to come along, come along and you know, let's enjoy the hobby over Christmas but on that bombshell we'll bid you farewell Goodbye Bye bye

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 6ecc3890-fcc9-4d96-8fed-93cd09c87c34*