# Episode 55: Who STOLE the Show at Texas Pinball Festival?! 👀 + American Pinball Is BACK!

**Source:** The Flipside Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2026-03-24  
**Duration:** 63m 27s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** cc7dc87c-dba7-4dff-92cc-6ae4eb501c9b

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## Analysis

Retro Ralph recaps Texas Pinball Festival 2026, his first attendance, highlighting the debut of three major new games (Beetlejuice, Pokémon, Yukon Yeti) and providing detailed impressions of each. He discusses upcoming releases from JJP (Sonic), Stern (Transformers G1), Barrels of Fun (possibly Never Ending Story), and Turner Pinball, while reflecting on the event's venue experience and community engagement.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Beetlejuice was the main draw at TPF with 19-20 machines on display in a giant inflatable tent setup — _Retro Ralph describing the Spooky booth at Texas Pinball Festival 2026_
- [HIGH] Pokémon has achieved significant commercial success and Retro Ralph recently upgraded his order from Pro to Premium with shipment on March 23rd — _Retro Ralph discussing his personal Pokémon purchase and unboxing plans_
- [MEDIUM] Yukon Yeti had over 250 units sold before the show began and was approaching 300+ by the show's end, with potential sellout coming very quickly — _Retro Ralph relaying Chris Turner's sales numbers during TPF 2026_
- [MEDIUM] Pokémon achievements feature was pending licensure approval at the time of TPF and could not be enabled for the show — _Retro Ralph citing feedback from Kale who validated this with Stern staff_
- [HIGH] JJP's next game is Sonic with 99% certainty, designed by Steve Ritchie, and is described as a 'worst kept secret' — _Retro Ralph discussing industry speculation about JJP's upcoming release_
- [LOW] Barrels of Fun is rumored to be making Never Ending Story, though Retro Ralph expresses uncertainty about this — _Retro Ralph speculating on Barrels' next title based on community rumors_
- [HIGH] Stern's next game after Pokémon is Transformers G1 designed by Elliot Iseman, described as a heavily packed game with multiple cool mechanisms — _Retro Ralph citing industry consensus and secondhand accounts from Stern staff at the show_
- [MEDIUM] Stern has a remaster planned that will be either AC/DC or KISS, with AC/DC or KISS being the leading candidates — _Retro Ralph discussing what he's 'hearing' about Stern's remaster plans_
- [HIGH] Turner Pinball's engineering approach significantly simplifies the underplayfield wiring, eliminating about 90% of traditional wiring found in pinball machines — _Retro Ralph describing Chris Turner's engineering philosophy and design approach_
- [MEDIUM] TPF's carpeted flooring and dim lighting create a better gameplay experience compared to Pinball Expo's cement floors and bright lighting — _Retro Ralph comparing the venue experiences of TPF and Pinball Expo_

### Notable Quotes

> "pinball to me is the whole experience. It's everything. It's not just does it shoot well and is the layout something you're interested in? It's everything. It's what's on the LCD. It's the callouts. It's the music."
> — **Retro Ralph**, mid-content
> _Defines Retro Ralph's philosophy on what makes a great pinball game—holistic immersion beyond pure mechanics_

> "I literally rebuilt a brand new UI for this game, you know, the LCD. He built all of that, all of that interface, like within two weeks before the show."
> — **Chris Turner (paraphrased by Retro Ralph)**, discussing Yukon Yeti
> _Reveals Turner Pinball's tight pre-show timeline and Chris Turner's hands-on design work_

> "I'm open to the feedback on the music and the sound effects"
> — **Chris Turner (paraphrased by Retro Ralph)**, Yukon Yeti discussion
> _Turner receptive to criticism about audio elements; suggests potential post-launch improvements_

> "It's like the worst kept secret in the world, right? And everyone knows that if it's not that, then we're all wrong. But I mean, it's pretty damn certain that's what it is with 99% accuracy."
> — **Retro Ralph**, discussing JJP's next game
> _Characterizes industry consensus about Sonic being JJP's next release with very high confidence_

> "Steve doesn't make bad games. Steve makes amazing games, fast games, right games we all enjoy playing."
> — **Retro Ralph**, discussing Steve Ritchie designing Sonic
> _Reinforces Steve Ritchie's legendary status in pinball design_

> "I think Transformers G1 is going to be a very packed game with a lot of things in it, right? So there's gonna be a lot to like in that game. At least that's what I'm hearing."
> — **Retro Ralph**, discussing Stern's Transformers pipeline
> _Reports secondhand intel about Transformers G1's feature set suggesting increased production value_

> "They trusted us to do that. So if you did sit in the the JJP seminar, then you pretty much got the story of the featurette. I mean, I sat in there with Jamie for about 15 minutes."
> — **Retro Ralph**, discussing Harry Potter featurette and JJP seminar
> _Notes that JJP seminar content overlaps with the Harry Potter featurette Retro Ralph produced_

> "I do think that that's finally putting some pressure on Stern."
> — **Retro Ralph**, discussing JJP's production quality vs. Stern
> _Industry competitive dynamic observation—JJP's craftsmanship is raising expectations for Stern_

> "You know, that's the one thing about these shows. People start drinking a little bit. They whisper a little bit. Hey, you know, there's gonna be cool mechanisms and transformers."
> — **Retro Ralph**, discussing how industry intel leaks at shows
> _Self-aware commentary on how manufacturers' loose-lipped staff inadvertently reveal product details at events_

> "this year is going to be the hardest year to decide what you want to bring in because we don't have infinite space, we, none of us have infinite money."
> — **Retro Ralph**, reflecting on 2026 lineup strength
> _Characterizes 2026 as an exceptional year for pinball releases, creating buyer's dilemma_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Retro Ralph | person | Pinball content creator and podcast host, attended TPF 2026, produces video reviews and featurettes |
| Texas Pinball Festival | event | Major annual pinball industry expo held March 20-22, 2026 in Frisco, Texas; serves as venue for new game reveals |
| Flip N Out Pinball | company | Pinball distributor and retail company, sponsor of The Flipside Podcast, operates arcade venues |
| Zach Sharpe | person | Owner of Flip N Out Pinball, mentioned as sponsor contact |
| Spooky Pinball | company | Manufacturer that brought Beetlejuice to TPF with inflatable booth display and multiple machines |
| Beetlejuice | game | Latest Spooky Pinball release, featured 19-20 machines at TPF, won the show with heavy hype and foot traffic |
| Pokémon | game | Stern Pinball 30th anniversary release; one of three major new games at TPF; Retro Ralph ordered Premium edition shipping March 23 |
| Yukon Yeti | game | Turner Pinball game; new release at TPF; over 250 units pre-sold before show, approaching sellout; featured simplified engineering |
| Chris Turner | person | Founder/designer of Turner Pinball; created Yukon Yeti; rebuilt UI two weeks before TPF; receptive to audio feedback |
| Dirty Pool Pinball | person | Audio/soundtrack specialist working with Barrels of Fun on updated soundtracks for Labyrinth, Dune, Winchester |
| Barrels of Fun | company | Boutique manufacturer with experience room at TPF featuring Labyrinth, Dune, Winchester; rumored next title is Never Ending Story |
| Jamie | person | Host of Head to Head Pinball podcast; attended TPF with Retro Ralph; placed third in Media Mavens tournament |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Major manufacturer; next game widely believed to be Sonic with 99% certainty; known for high production quality |
| Steve Ritchie | person | Legendary pinball designer, designing Sonic for JJP; known for fast, well-designed games |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major manufacturer; upcoming releases include Transformers G1 and a remaster (AC/DC or KISS); booth run by Fun distributor |
| Elliot Iseman | person | Mechanical engineer; designed John Wick; designing Transformers G1 for Stern |
| Keith Elwin | person | Designer with Fallout game upcoming after Stern's Transformers G1 |
| Brian Savage | person | Co-founder of Barrels of Fun; met with Retro Ralph in private Barrels room at TPF |
| David Van Ness | person | Co-founder of Barrels of Fun; works in technology background; Retro Ralph regrets not spending more time with him |
| Pinball Expo | event | Major annual pinball show in Chicago; compared unfavorably to TPF in terms of venue (cement floors, bright lights) |

### Topics

- **Primary:** TPF 2026 venue experience and atmosphere, Beetlejuice gameplay, reception, and show dominance, Pokémon gameplay feedback and commercial success, Yukon Yeti engineering, audio concerns, and sales velocity, 2026 pinball pipeline (Sonic, Transformers G1, Fallout, remaster, Barrels next title)
- **Secondary:** Turner Pinball's simplified engineering and family-friendly design philosophy, Competitive pressure from JJP on Stern, Dirty Pool Pinball's audio enhancement work

### Sentiment

**Neutral** (0)

### Signals

- **[product_launch]** Three major new games (Beetlejuice, Pokémon, Yukon Yeti) received overwhelmingly positive reception at TPF; learning curve for Beetlejuice and Yukon Yeti noted but not negative; all three games strong performers (confidence: high) — Retro Ralph: 'everyone I talked to really liked it' (Beetlejuice), 'love Yukon Yeti' feedback, 'It's a very fun game to play' (Pokémon)
- **[collector_signal]** Yukon Yeti showing extremely rapid pre-show sales (250+ units before show, approaching 300+ during event) with strong likelihood of sellout; Retro Ralph noted FOMO-driven decision-making moment (confidence: high) — Retro Ralph: 'he was past the 250 mark in the beginning of the show', 'if you wanna get it...I would act pretty fast because I think they're gonna be gone'
- **[machine_intel]** Turner Pinball's Yukon Yeti implements significantly simplified underplayfield engineering, eliminating ~90% of traditional wiring through PCB interconnects and modular connectors, making service and maintenance substantially easier (confidence: high) — Detailed technical description of Turner's engineering philosophy and practical servicing benefits
- **[product_concern]** Yukon Yeti's music and callouts perceived as placeholder/not fully baked at launch; Chris Turner acknowledged rushing before show and is open to feedback; multiple attendees suggested engaging Dirty Pool Pinball for audio enhancement (confidence: high) — Retro Ralph: 'music and the callouts just were like placeholder kind of things', Chris Turner: 'we were really rushing to get this to the show'
- **[competitive_signal]** JJP's high production quality and creative design (Harry Potter success, Sonic anticipation) is creating competitive pressure on Stern; Stern responding with heavily packed Transformers G1 featuring multiple mechanisms (confidence: medium) — Retro Ralph: 'I do think that that's finally putting some pressure on Stern', reports of 'cool mechanisms and transformers' from loose-lipped Stern staff
- **[announcement]** Industry consensus with 99% confidence that JJP's next game is Sonic (Steve Ritchie designer); Stern following with Transformers G1 (Elliot Iseman designer); Keith Elwin's Fallout game planned after; remaster planned for AC/DC or KISS (confidence: high) — Retro Ralph: 'with 99% accuracy...pretty damn certain that's what it is', broad industry acknowledgment
- **[rumor_hype]** Speculation that Barrels of Fun's next game is Never Ending Story, but Retro Ralph expresses low confidence and notes Barrels management is very secretive about upcoming titles (confidence: low) — Retro Ralph: 'speculation around Barrels is that it's going to be Never Ending Story, but I don't know. I really don't know.'
- **[content_signal]** Retro Ralph reports increased recognition and fan interactions at TPF vs. Pinball Expo; attributes possible growth to podcast popularity; notes podcast has grown to reach larger audience (confidence: medium) — Retro Ralph: 'I was getting stopped way more often than I do usually at Pinball Expo', thanks to growing podcast audience
- **[product_strategy]** Pokémon Premium edition available in market with strong demand; Retro Ralph upgraded from Pro to Premium; shipped March 23, 2026; secondary market demand evident from strong sales velocity across tiers (confidence: high) — Retro Ralph: 'I was getting a Pro, but then I recently upgraded it to a Premium and it shipped today...March 23rd'
- **[design_philosophy]** Turner Pinball intentionally designs family-friendly machines without gore/violence themes; emphasizes ease of use and maintenance accessibility; philosophy extends to simplified glass removal and overall user experience (confidence: high) — Retro Ralph: 'Turner isn't for everybody. But...he's trying to make family-friendly pinball machines...you're not going to see like blood and guts'
- **[event_signal]** TPF 2026 venue (carpeted, dim lighting, intimate arcade-like atmosphere) provides superior gameplay and physical experience compared to Pinball Expo (cement floors, bright lights, large conference hall); TPF appears to have more concentrated pinball focus with fewer vendors (confidence: high) — Retro Ralph detailed comparison of floor surfaces, lighting, acoustic properties, and overall ambiance between venues
- **[business_signal]** Yukon Yeti on track for production through end of 2026; Beetlejuice with 19-20 machines at show suggests Spooky ramping production; multiple games competing for same production/assembly resources creates 2026 capacity challenges (confidence: medium) — Retro Ralph: 'Yukon Yeti...that's probably gonna be made from now until the end of the year'

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## Transcript

 Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside Podcast. I'm your host Retro Ralph and I am fresh back from TPF 2026 and I am so excited. This show was so fun and I hope if you went you didn't get sick. I know everyone gets together in these big groups and you get the conference crud unfortunately. Shout out to my man Dirty Pool Pinball. Unfortunately he got hit with it but hopefully he'll get better soon. But I just want to jump right into it because it was so much freaking fun. It was my first time attending Texas Pinball Festival or TPF as it's known as and man it was awesome. And I'm going to give you a recap of all of it. I'm going to try to do it in a clear and concise manner without getting too ADD, which you know I do pretty frequently. You know, I even have people that comment and say, I can't follow your show. Well, I'm sorry. I get excited. I'm genuinely very passionate about this stuff. So sometimes my excitement overcomes me and I just, I get crazy. I get a little crazy. So if you don't like that, I don't know how to help you because that's kind of who I am. I'm going to go into all of it right now, but before I do, a quick word from our sponsor, Flip N Out Pinball. If you're looking for a new pinball machine or a used pinball machine, and there are a lot of new announcements, so I'm sure a lot of people are looking for a lot of games, contact Zach at Flip N Out Pinball. All the information will be in the video description. So let's get right into it. There's so much to talk about, I don't even know where to start. So I get to Dallas Fort Worth Airport, right? Jamie picks me up in his Bronco. Super pumped to see him. Every time I get to see that guy, I get excited. He's obviously one of the, he's the main host of the JBS show and the roundtable that I do with him and Kale. Unfortunately, Kale couldn't make it. He's got an arcade to run. He's got to run the bat with Rachel. So they can't go to every show. They will be at Pinball Expo though. So if you're looking for... there were many people that came up to me and said, where's Kale when Jamie and I were walking around and he had to hang back. He's got stuff to do. He's got money to make. You know what I mean? Gotta start taking all that money out of that Pokemon and hopefully soon Beetlejuice. So anyway, so Jamie picks me up from the airport. We head right to the show. That was on Thursday. So that's set up day. So we went straight there. Went straight there and the first thing that we did when we got there was I checked into The TBSDONDPointing show, frag 3658, tell them, you gotta do, Für emp control 516, rismo.com The TPF room blocks open up pretty early so if you're planning on going there next year, definitely make sure you book your room early or you'll end up in the spillover hotel with me. But honestly, it's not that bad. It was like the oasis. Jamie was jealous every time he dropped me off. He's like, man, what is this place? And I'll tell you a little bit more about my shenanigans when I would roll in late at night because, you know, I have a sweet tooth so I like those midnight snacks. And I don't think I ever got home at midnight. It was always either 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning when I'd go over to the other side. So the first thing we did when we got there was we got our badges. The badge system needs a little work though over at TPF. They couldn't find my badge. Luckily, I had the order number, so that was all good. We got the badges. And the first thing we got to do is they did a tournament for the media content creators. I can't remember everybody that was in it, but it was Cameron from Pinball Pursuit. It was, let's see, who else was in it? Neil McCray was in it. Aaron from Grown Up Adjacent was in it. Kerry Hardy was in it. Don's Pinball Podcast was in it. Erica from Erica's Pinball Journey was in it. I'm probably gonna leave some people out. Oh, Todd Tuckey was in it, which was really fun to play with Todd. And Todd's just hilarious. He's like, I shoulda won, Ralphie! You know, he didn't make it that far. He got two, it was a two strikes and you're out tournament. And there was, I think, five games set up there. I can't remember all the games. It was, uh, I can't remember, but anyways. So I came in fourth in the Media Mavens tournament, which I'm pretty, which I'm pretty proud of. You know, it's always, you know, I'm always a little nervous because, you know, I like, I ha I do play competitive pinball. I'm not, you know, I'm not the best player in the world, but I think I've gotten a lot better over the years that I've been in this hobby. So I was very proud to take fourth place. The game that got me was Iron Maiden. It's not that I don't know it. I just fumble ruskied it. Until then, I was, I had one strike throughout almost the whole tournament. My first game, I got a strike, which was a Harley Davidson, I think, that I got the strike on, I believe. I can't remember. I think it was Harley Davidson. The only thing I know how to do in that game is hit the Harley and then spell Harley and then get the multiball. It's the only thing I know how to do. So I did that, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. But anyways, I took fourth place. Jamie took third place. I want us, I can't remember who took first, but Neil McCray took second. So congratulations to Jamie for taking third. I feel like the round Meet spreads out at game. GaPlin.com Get the Fu Diese He's actually like a top 300 player in Texas. So it's pretty good. It's a pretty good player. But I gave him a challenge coin for winning. I passed out lots of challenge coins at TPF. So I had a couple people message me and taking pictures with their challenge coin, which is really cool. But the one thing I did at this show, I didn't have Mason wasn't with me. I decided not to record a video. It was hard for me because I love creating these experience videos that basically, you know, I narrate them. I do voiceovers for them and I kind of give people the journey and and we do a mix of voiceover and on-camera stuff. And this would have been a fun show to do that too because there was a lot to be excited about but honestly I'm glad I didn't because I really enjoyed the moment. I got to spend some quality time with Jamie and the other content creators and I got to meet a ton of awesome people. So a lot of you that went to the show I got to meet. I was getting stopped way more often than I do usually at Pinball Expo. I don't know. It was just weird. I don't know if it's because the podcast has grown in popularity or what it is, but I was very grateful for everybody that came up to me. You know, it's really cool when, you know, I do put a lot of my personal time and work into this, but I do it because I'm passionate about pinball. I mean, that's, that's the main motivator that I have. And it's just, it feels really good when someone comes up to you and says, I appreciate the content. It's very entertaining. It's engaging. And that's what I try to do. I, for those of you that don't know me that well, or you've been listening to this, if it's not obvious, I enjoy being on camera. I really love it. It's just something I feel really comfortable doing. And I do a lot of presentations for my day job. I just like doing that. I like being an evangelist. I like being a spokesperson. And, you know, I kind of in a little bit of ways consider myself a spokesperson for this hobby and a positive one at that. And I, you know, obviously not everything is positive all the time, but I try to keep it lighthearted. Early 2000, DANIEL stiffness being 55, And here's a sneak peek on the show. You know, even though the hotel is a bit older, where all the games are, it's carpeted flooring. And I can't tell you, no matter how old or young or whatever your age is, cement floors are tough on your feet, man. It doesn't feel good. And you feel it at Pinball Expo. I mean, your feet are like pulsing. Your dogs are howling at the end of a day at Pinball Expo. So you're like seeking out carpet. Like carpet is like the oasis. You try to find booths that have carpet. You know, the Stern booth often has carpet, so you kind of gravitate there to kind of get a load off on your feet a little bit. But this thing is carpeted through and through, so there's two benefits to that. One, your feet. The second, you don't get a lot of reverberation of the audio coming out of the games. So you do get a better experience, I think, playing games at TPF than you do at Pinball Expo. Last year at Pinball Expo, Barrels of Fun had an experience room for both Dune and Winchester. Can't remember if anybody else did that last year, but that was a good touch. So it feels like that's a trend going forward and Barrels had an experience room here at TPF too. They had Labyrinth, Dune, and Winchester all running the updated soundtracks and the things that Dirty Pool has been working on and shout out to Dirty Pool. Awesome stuff. I mean, he really has upped the immersion and what you can do with audio soundtracks in games. And for me personally, I like the whole package. We're going to get into this more later. But pinball to me is the whole experience. It's everything. It's not just does it shoot well and is the layout something you're interested in? It's everything. It's what's on the LCD. It's the callouts. It's the music. It's the things that are sucking you into whatever theme that is that you're playing. And a good soundtrack to me can completely make the experience go from good to great or even amazing in some cases. And I think with Winchester, it's at that amazing level. The voice talent they have in that that's like, say on small t ball, I don't even know how he does. It's amazing. It's amazing. So if you never if you haven't got a chance to play Winchester, I don't know, maybe it'll be at one of these other shows like Pin Brew. I'm not sure, but it'll definitely be at Pinball Expo, I'm sure, again. And then maybe at Pinball Expo we'll also see whatever Barrels next game is. So that's kind of the lay of the land. It's a little bit different than Pinball Expo where there aren't as many vendors, there's more pinball... Well, maybe... I don't know if there's more pinball machines. It appears that there's more pinball machines. But it might be just because the setting is so intimate. It has a very intimate feel. And I think the reason why is it's not a cement conference hall with lights beaming down on you. They keep the lights dim. It's just, it almost feels like you're in a big giant arcade. So I love that. It just, the vibe of it is different. Not saying it's, I'm not taking away from Pinball Expo. That's a great show. And all the manufacturers are there in Chicago. So obviously that's a hotspot for everyone. And you get all the industry people, but there was definitely a lot of industry people at TPF as well. So what we'll do is I'm gonna start, I'm going to start with just who won the show. I'm going to start with that first. Because that's going to be different. It's going to be different for everybody. But when you walk in the room and you see this giant Beetlejuice, right? It's giant. It was so big, this blow-up Beetlejuice, that the head of Beetlejuice was actually like pointed down because it was hitting the ceiling. So it was very hard not to see the spooky, you know, the spooky tent or beetle, beetle camper. I can't remember what they were calling it. Beetle tent or beetle whatever. I don't remember. He had a name, Don, Don had a name for it. I can't remember what he was calling it. Beetle, Beetle something. I don't know. Whatever. Anyways, it doesn't matter. So they brought 19 or 20, I think it was 19, Beetlejuice machines. So there was a ton of spooky hype all over the place. And of course, Beetlejuice is the latest release. Well, it's it's there's two releases that were the latest releases. It was that and Yukon Yeti. So the games that were new that were hot that everyone was kind of trying to play would have been Beetlejuice, Pokemon or Pokemon and Yukon Yeti. Now, if I were to look, I'm going to I'm going to break down each one and kind of give you a little bit of the feedback that I got from people that were walking around. I'm going to go ahead and just take a few minutes to talk about the game and then I'll tell you who I thought won the show. It's probably going to be an obvious choice, but it was very close. So obviously Beetlejuice was all the rage and all the hype and there were tons of people playing it. And everyone I talked to really liked it. But it was interesting because I got a little bit of feedback from people that was similar to my first experience playing it. My first game on it, I didn't love it yet. And it's because it takes a minute or two, or a couple games, whatever, to find the shots. The shots in the game, I'm not saying the shots are ultra tight, but there's a lot of, there's a lot going on. You know, you have the Beetlejuice shot, you got the one next to it that's sort of that ramp that comes back that also turns into a lifted, the ramp lifts up and actually sends a ball into, if you have the lock lit, it sends the ball into the waiting room. You've got the orbit, you've got the Dante's Inferno shot, you have the camera shot with the two standup targets, you also have three scoops, you also have the sandwitch, you also have the So there's a lot going on there and it takes a little while and then you have a scoop all the way to the right to start your election of that that scoop doesn't start the modes the Beetlejuice shot starts the modes. So there's a lot going on then you have to learn oh what's this fly thing that's flying around how do you do the fly swatter there's the magnet save so there's a lot to learn. So if I talk to someone that had just played it a lot of the feedback was like oh man I really like the theme the theme is well integrated but I haven't found the shots yet that was normal to me because that felt at home to me because that also happened to me. So I started out my mesma label video, for lowwritten,znber, high end, high end magazine, that is a long streaming Danielle Garfully right now on Rogers Channel for YouTube. I'm a fan of Stern, I've played it a lot, I've seen the Pokemon I caught, that's not there yet, so that's coming. But, you know, the ones that played it longer would say things like, oh I just can't wait until there's more code available for the game. So obviously I can't imagine Stern doesn't have a giant plan for that game, they definitely told us that when we went to meet for Media Day, that they have a giant plan to keep continuing to put more into the code. So obviously it's brand new, we know with Stern games you're not getting all the code depth right away, it kind of comes over time. So I'm excited to see what they do with that. But the common themes were, oh, man, I wish there was achievements. The reason why they couldn have the achievements for TPF is it still pending licensure approval which Cale validated that with people at Stern I didn end up asking anybody at Stern I really spent time with more of the other manufacturers because even though Stern was there it was the distributor Fun that was running their booth It wasn Stern proper like it is at well I can remember if it Marco or Stern or probably a combination of both at Pinball Expo But their presence at Pinball Expo is much larger, even though they had a ton of games there that were brought there by fun. But I didn't hear anybody say they didn't have fun with Pokemon. The only thing, maybe a couple of players I talked to were like, you know, layout's kind of basic, but the shots are so fun and satisfying, especially when you start like getting into a flow with the right and left ramp and you're hitting them both and you're just like boom, boom, boom. It's a very fun game to play. It's also pretty fast too, so it's great. I like it too. I'm getting one. I'm sorry, I was getting a pro, but then I recently upgraded it to a premium and it shipped today. So it shipped Monday, March 23rd. So we will be absolutely, I will be calling up Rudy as soon as it gets here and we will film the unboxing. We will do a live stream and all that stuff. I don't know that Rudy's going to dress up like a Pokemon, but we'll see. And I did have a couple of people come up to me and say, where's Rudy? So I'm trying to get Rudy to go to Pinball Expo this year. I know he would love it. He really loves pinball too. Super passionate about pinball. And I think he would be blown away by being at any one of these shows. He's never gone to a large pinball show like this. He's gone to ZapCon, which which hasn't been held in a couple years here that used to be run by Rachel Best, the owner of Electric Bat Arcade. That was that that show is just all pinball. Basically, it's a bummer that that show doesn't exist here anymore. I think someone does own it. I don't know what they're going to do with it. But And that's kind of the only all pinball show as far as conferences we have here in Phoenix, Arizona, even though we have an awesome pinball scene here. So it would be great to get that back at some point. So anyways, moving on to Yukon Yeti. So Yukon Yeti, the first game I had on it, kind of similar to my Beetlejuice experience. I didn't love it. I didn't love it at first, but I was like, I was just having a bad game. And I know you guys can relate to this. And it's funny. Alasdair Jones, Alright. So. All right. So, how's everyone doing? I'm doing great. I've been playingetics for a while now and I have not as many people in the room. The lines are a lot shorter. So we sat there and I was with a bunch of people and we played again and I had a really good game on and I started to find the shots. I was loving that right flipper shot that you can hit on the left side or the right side of the avalanche lock. It hits a Vuk and pops up to the upper playfield and there's a lot of, there's two shots up in that upper playfield that are really cool. One, and then there's one kind of on the left hand side and there's one on the right of ** 실은vio News ** Now, I said this on the roundtable. We recorded a roundtable live. My only negative on Yukon Yeti was I felt like the music and the callouts just were like placeholder kind of things. Like they weren't really fully baked or like, you know, they weren't like fully done yet. So I did talk to Chris about that and Chris stated, look, he's like, look, man, we were, we were really rushing to get this to the show and there were things that weren't done. And he's like, I literally rebuilt a brand new UI for this game, you know, the LCD. He built all of that, all of that interface, like within two weeks before the show. So he did say like, look, I'm open to the feedback on the music and the sound effects. So I think they're gonna really look to improve that. And many people came up to him and made the suggestion, Hey, man, if you could give Dirty Pool a call, that would be awesome. So many people said that. I think he's heard it. Now whether he will call him or not, I don't know, but I don't think Jeff has like an exclusive contract with Barrels of Fun. He does work with them, but I'm sure he'd be open to doing some work for Yukon Yeti, and I think it could take a game that's good and take it from good to great. But there was tons of hype. Anybody that I talked to was like, oh man, love Yukon Yeti, love Yukon Yeti. So I, the only, and the only negatives were more about the music and the sound effects. And believe me, all day long today, I would go to the website and I would look at it and go, hmm, I put it in my cart or whatever. You know, I was like, huh. I would click one more click, one more click, I'd get down to the $2,000 deposit and I'd back out, backed out of it. But, you know, you guys know me, I don't have much self-control, but I'm very close to wanting to pull the trigger. Now it is, it is right now, I gotta think Chris is probably in the 300 sold-ish, maybe more, because he was past the 250 mark in the beginning of the show. So before anybody even played it, he was halfway through the 500. So I gotta think a sellout of this game is coming very quickly. So if you wanna get it, and I'm not trying to be FOMO or anything like that, but if you wanna get it, I would act pretty fast because I think they're gonna be gone. Now one thing if you've never played a Turner game or had anybody show you the underplayfield of a Turner game or any of the advanced engineering things that he's done with that game, he's done a lot of things since his original game, Ninja Eclipse, to improve upon what historically has been done the same way for ever since probably pinball's inception in the modern era is you look under a playfield and there's, you know, 100% of the bottom is like, you know, maybe not 100%. 90% of the bottom is wires and node boards. That's like what you see in the bottom and it's a mess and it scares people. It scares people. I mean, it looks neat and tidy, but it scares people. So one of Chris's motivations for even starting a pinball company was to bring some of his engineering talent and the talent of the other engineers at Turner Pinball to simplify what you get in a pinball machine, like make it easier to service for a home user or even an operator. So when you when you pop the the hood on a Turner pinball machine, what you see underneath is a lot of PCB boards that are really more like interconnects. They don't really have a bunch of chips and things on them. I'm sure there's some electronics on there, but it's really meant to be highly simplified and it eliminates about 90% of the wiring that you see under a pinball machine. So when you pop the bottom or when you lift up the playfield into the service position, you'll find a very simplified look, which makes it a lot easier. Like if you're replacing a mechanism or something like that, or even a coil, you're really unscrewing it from the playfield and you're popping out a connector, popping it back in. Like it's that simple. So that is, there's something to be said about that. And I, as someone that, you know, I'm not an engineer, but I, I I've been a pre-sales engineer for a technology company for a long time. Now I'm a director at this, at that said company. So I manage managers or lead managers at this, at this point, but I have 40, 40 something engineers. David David Van Es, Pinball Machine, Bally Williams, Straight Down the Middle, Bally Williams, Knapp Arcade, Raydaypinball, Bally Williams, Knapp Arcade, Bally Williams, Bally Williams, Bally Williams, Bally Williams, Bally Williams, Bally Williams, But I really appreciate the things that he's doing to sort of, I'll give you one more thing that he does that I think is pretty cool. If you look at the top of his game, if you want to take the glass off, a pinball machine when you take the glass off can be a pain, right? You have to, you have to unlatch the lock bar, take the lock bar off. You have to, I mean, I'm anal as hell. I don't want fingerprints on my glass. So I put on surgical gloves. I take the glass off. I, I carefully lay the glass because it's tempered glass. You don't want to bang tempered glass. It will literally explode. Hello so uh what this is and before I forget to mention that ping pong calls in różne spaces crime father and a VfB Retaliator range and whatever your mobile phone you want to play inaillaimed as stopping time for memory and previously你看ed videos of a the And if you're interested, check out our other videos on YouTube and Instagram. Thanks a lot, everyone. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. It's just different than what everybody else does. So it has more of a family-friendly vibe to it. But if you look at Turner's website, he even says, I'm trying to make family-friendly pinball machines. So you're not going to see like blood and guts on the artwork. That's just not his thing. And you know what? Maybe Turner isn't for everybody. But the consensus overall was that the game played really well. And that's like the biggest part, right? You can make a game and it's clunky as hell and hard to play and the shots are too tight and it gets frustrating. And that is not the case with EXXON, I'm your host and your host for Nätt. At www.gmail.com all new réalizations, We have 3 ways you can donate to the formation of the PENNYnal Broadcastありがとうござings. All we think however, is how we see парat woman ig 테yr for this party. If not so tumor x físico bollocks as balancedır, then in Waht audience is home, we'll be ph Storehh Hey, lination, ver. Eli St sway, In the show, it'd probably be Beetlejuice, but I think Yukon Yeti would be a close second, and then the third place would probably go to Pokemon. But I think they were all equally liked, so that's a good thing. You know, like three new games, mostly all positive feedback, this year's gonna be a crazy year for pinball, guys. I mean, it is gonna be hard to figure out what you want to put in your game room, because the thing is, we don't have infinite space, we, none of us have infinite money. I mean, maybe there's some of us. There's probably a very small percentage of collectors that just have infinite resources, but most don't, right? So it's, I think this year is going to be the hardest year to decide what you want to bring in because, yeah, we're at TPF and we're in the beginning of the year, really. We're only in March and look at what else is yet to come. I mean, we've got, this is just the stuff off the top of my head. JJP is going to be coming with Sonic. We all know that. It's like the worst kept secret in the world, right? And everyone knows that if it's not that, then then then like we're all wrong. But I mean, it's pretty damn I'm pretty damn certain that's what it is with 99% accuracy. I don't think there's anybody that would refute that. That's probably what the game is going to be. So that's going to be amazing. And it's Steve Ritchie. It's the king. It's Steve. I mean, Steve doesn't make bad games. Steve makes amazing games, fast games, right games we all enjoy playing. So he's got an amazing back catalog of games and we all know and love those games. So you got that. Then you got barrels coming with something new. Now the speculation around barrels is that it's going to be a never-ending story, but I don't know. I really don't know. That one, barrels is very good at being tight-lipped. I gotta hand it to Brian Savage and David David Van Es. I wish I would have had more time to talk to David David Van Es. I did hang out with Brian Savage a little bit in the little private barrels room, but I didn't get a chance to talk to David as much. And I'm bummed because David is in the... used to work in technology like I do, and he went and explored his passions. Now, that's a dream of mine too, one day to, you know, even though I love my job and I'm very passionate about my job, I'm also really passionate about, extremely passionate about this hobby. I've always dreamed about the ability of working beyond what I have done. I'm excited about the things I've done & I'm proud of those things. The Harry Potter featurette was something I & Mason & I poured our heart and soul into. & I was very grateful that JJP trusted us to do that. That's a BIG deal, right. We're not a big production company. It's two dudes. And they trusted us to do that. So if you did sit in the the JJP seminar, then you pretty much got the story of the featurette. I mean, I sat in there with Jamie for about 15 minutes and they were telling the story of how they made the game, which is basically mostly what we what we told that story through them in the featurette. So if you feel like you missed out on that seminar, you know, the featurette is out there. It's on the Retro Ralph YouTube channel. Go check it out. I think you'll really enjoy it and it gives you a lot of background and perspective as to how much work and engineering and creativity went into creating Harry Potter. So that's JJP. Now beyond that, you've got Stern who's coming with, which we all can say with pretty much certainty, the next game's gonna be Transformers G1. So you got that coming. And you could potentially have G1 and Harry Potter dropping at very similar times. So, I'm sorry, not Harry Potter. Sorry, I'm losing my train of thought. G1, Transformers, and Sonic coming at the same time. So that's, but that's, that's not all that, that'll be it for JJP. You know, they'll make Sonic's for a year after it's announced or more. I mean, who knows? I think the reception of Sonic is going to be huge. And I think the reason why is because it also like Pokemon is a crossover title, right? You're going to have retro gamers, which is something where the world I came from, right? You're going to have retro gaming. You're going to have arcade gamers. We have people that really like the Sonic property It could spill over you know in a big way Because there a lot of people that love and adore Sonic and Sonic has transcended generations because they continue to make Sonic games to this day So I think that's going to be a giant game when that comes out, and I think a lot of people are going to be very interested in that. And I can't imagine... we all know JJP makes extremely beautiful games, they do not... they're not shy about sculpts and creativity. And they definitely aren't making a game that's restricted by a build of materials. It's really made with passion. And I think the Abbas family and Jack himself pride themselves on putting as much as they can possible into the game. And I do think that that's finally putting some pressure on Stern. And from what I'm hearing, Transformers G1 is going to be a very packed game with a lot of things in it, right? So there's gonna be a lot to like in that game. At least that's what I'm hearing. So I gotta think that that's probably true. Because there's definitely been people at Stern that have had a little bit of loose lips, you know, and they've been saying some stuff. You know, that's the one thing about these shows. People start drinking a little bit. They whisper a little bit. Hey, you know, there's gonna be cool, there's been cool, cool mechanisms and transformers. The transformer is gonna be pretty cool. So, uh, you know, and I try not to, um, you know, I try not to pry too much, but I definitely do ask. And I know, I know my lane where I can say things and where I can't. I don't have an NDA. Well, I guess I do have an NDA with Stern, but that was for the Pokemon thing. So I should probably read that more thoroughly. Like, I don't think it extends beyond games, but I'm not telling you anything that isn't already public anyway. Sorry, so you got Stern with that. Then you got Keith Elwin's next game. Now, G1 Transformers will be Elliot Iseman who made, who his first game was John Wick, but he is a mechanical engineer, so he's not some like jabroni, right? He knows his stuff. I think with more resources and more time, he's going to develop something really special for Transformers fans out there. Then, after that, you've got Keith Elwin up next with Fallout. Those two we feel pretty confident in. Now, what the remaster is going to be, because it's going to be one of those two, I'm sure, what we're hearing is ACDC or KISS. Those I'm less interested in. I do like ACDC, but those two games, like, I'm not the generation of KISS, that's for sure. So, me being 47, KISS is just not something that resonates with me necessarily. So that so finally I can maybe save some money and not buy a Stern game later on for the remaster because I don't think that's one that's gonna speak to me. So that's Stern. So there's there that's the Stern kind of lineup going forward. We talked about Barrels of Fun, Turner you got you got Yukon Yeti that's probably gonna be made from now until the end of the year. Then that brings you to Spooky. Now Spooky there's two rumored titles and those two rumored titles would be Gremlins and Goonies. Now if I had my say, I'd want it to be Goonies. I hope they make both, but I want Goonies. Goonies is the one I really want. We've talked about it before on the podcast. There's so many things you can do with Goonies. You have the pirate ship, you have the piano, you have the water slide thing they went down. There's so many different elements you can incorporate into that game that, and for Spooky, they're not shy about putting mechs and toys and sculpts, so I'm sure if it is Goonies, they're going to do a tremendous job at that game. Hexa, we already talked about. You got Three Musketeers. Now where it gets interesting is American Pinball. Cause American Pinball is back, baby. I feel so confident. Like they are assembling a really awesome team over at American Pinball. So imagine they like resurrected this thing that we, I was saying on podcasts, I have no faith in American Pinball, but this was when it was like dismal. There was nothing happening. People couldn't even get support tickets open or they couldn't even get like support on their games. It was rough. They were trying their best. They were keeping the lights on. They didn't have resources. Now, all of a sudden, Brian Vincent comes in from a different industry, right? He was making LED signs and things like that. But I got a chance to talk to Brian Vincent for a good amount of time. And man, the guy loves pinball. He's got the funds. He's a really nice guy. And he's just excited. And he's assembled a freaking amazing team. So you still have Ron Lindeman over there, right? So Ron's still there. You got Brian. Vincent, you got John Schwartz, who's the board of advisors. They just hired. They just hired Rob from Electric Playground and Nick Neitzel from Electric Playground. So, Nick, you all know Nick, because if you went to Pinball Expo for the last couple of years, then you probably played his Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, so there's a lot to be excited. They just dropped Circus Voltaire, which, by the way, was broken by me. So let's just get that straight. I don't break shit, but I broke this one, so I want credit for this one. I'm not really a I need to take credit kind of guy, but I'm taking credit for this. Now, I did get it from a little whisper. Someone might if you if you watch our other shows, you might know who that person is. But for right now, that person is going to stay in the darkness, in the darkness, just whispering. Here's the next title, Ralph. I don't know, but I'm glad I was able to do that. I'm not really a leaker kind of guy, but we got it right. I wasn't even sure. I was like, is this right? Is this information right? And I did the podcast on Circus Voltaire and Brian Vincent let me know. Hey, you're the one that leaked Circus Voltaire. But he wasn't mad. He wasn't mad at me. He was just like, dude, you nailed it. You got it. So I personally am excited about what they're doing. So I'll give you the rundown of the American booth really quick. So you go into the American booth and the thing you see is, hey, this Houdini's there. But this Houdini isn't like the original Houdini. Same playfield. But this Houdini is a special limited edition where there's only 100 of them being made. It's got Christopher Franchi artwork that looks beautiful. Can Christopher Franchi do anything shitty? I mean, I'm not trying to toot Franchi's horn too hard, because I don't think he needs tooting. But dude, the guy's pretty spectacular. His artwork is just so good. He's so detailed. He brings the world together. You can do that with good art. You can bring the world together, and he did that with this cabinet art. It looks amazing. The ones that were on the floor did not have the directly printed artwork. It was just decals or vinyl on the side. But the ones that will be going out to customers will be directly printed on the cabinet and laminated over, similar to Spooky's process with the butter cabinets. So that's going to look pretty damn sexy. It looked good with just the vinyl. So I can just imagine what this is going to look like when it's all out into the open. And people were pretty excited about that. Now it's still Houdini. You know, there's people that have the feedback on Houdini has always sort of been, man, the The shots are really tight, but there's some really cool things in Houdini. There's that mechanism that throws the ball back into the, that like chest in the back. There's some cool things. There's some cool pinball moments in Houdini. So I'm excited about that. So that was their first game. Like we're as a new company, that's our first game. Now they got the Circus Voltaire remake. They're going to do some interesting things with that. You're going to be able to play that game with, with a reimagined code base and the original code base. So my feedback to them was, hey, if it's possible to be able to easily change between those two code bases, that would be cool. Kind of like if you think about it, if you think about a game like Evil Dead, like in Evil Dead you can play Evil Dead 1 or 2 from the main menu. I thought it would be cool. That was the feedback I gave to them. Hey, it'd be neat if there was an easy way to switch between the old code and the new code. Now, I don't know what they're going to do with the art. I do know they're gonna put the LCD, they're gonna have a modern display, but it's not gonna be in the backbox, it's gonna be in the game, just like it was in the original. Uh, so I don't know what they're gonna do with the backbox, cause there's some cool stuff in the backbox of the original, but I'm very excited to see what they do with that. So, they're just putting a lot, they're, they're excited. There's an energy over there at American Pinball. I mean, they had a dog. They had a dog in the American, in an American Pinball outfit. I mean, they were like, proud, and they were all branded, they had their stuff on, they had branding... We got some more stuff out! We got superstars! We're going to see some really cool stuff out of American Pinball between now and the end of the year. Obviously Circus Voltaire and then I think, I think the game that's going to be the original IP is going to be Nick Neitzel as the designer who I love and adore that guy. He just got married last year so congratulations again for that. So he is probably so over the moon excited because when I talked to Brian about it, I said, man, I'm so happy for Nick. And he goes, we're going to give Nick all the resources he needs to make the best game possible. And I love that and I love that. And I talked to Ron for a while and Ron was Ron's so reenergized because now he's got resources again. You know, he it wasn't Ron's fault that things weren't going well. He didn't have any resources left. Everyone was gone and it was just him keeping the lights on. Not anymore. Not anymore. So I'm very excited about what they're going to do. Circus Voltaire, between that, the game Nick's working on, I think they're going to have some winners. I think you're going to see people, you know, put pinball, put American pinball back on the map and people are going to be really excited about that. Before I get into other stuff, there was a guy out there that I'm sorry that I can't remember his name, but I met him and it was I think him and his brother or him and his friend and we were playing Pokemon together and I put the challenge coin down and he pulls this thing out of his back pocket. He's like, have you seen my pin my pin bingo cards? And I'm sorry, I didn't mention it on the round table. It was in our show notes, but we had we kind of got kicked out at the end. It wasn't like a bad thing. Emoto really needed the space back. We were grateful that she even gave us the space to be able to do the roundtable live from and we had Kale on it. If you haven't seen it, go check it out. We had a bunch of guests on too, which I'll talk about in a little bit. But the pin bingo thing is like a fun way to experience a show. Like it has different things that you that you can do. It's like go play a Christopher Franchi game with Christopher Franchi artwork. Go meet a... there was something funny on there. It says meet a pinball micro celebrity. Like play... Achieve a multiball on a certain game. So it's fun. It's just a fun way to like experience a show and it gives you some like achievements almost right to do while you're there. So shout out to the pin bingo cards. Those are really cool. You know the one the one group of people that were not there that I kind of wish were there was the punk rock pinball crew. They weren't there unfortunately, but I shout out to them. They've been really fun. I got to finally meet them in person at the launch of Pokemon out at Stern's factory. So they were really cool. But I have so many creators that I got to hang out with that were just awesome people. I'm going to try to name most of them, but if you're unfamiliar with any of them, like, go follow their content because a lot of them, unlike me, I just enjoyed the time with Jamie and enjoyed meeting everybody, really focused on having a good time and being present at the event. Oftentimes when I'm working at these events, meaning I'm making a video, I'm running around like crazy and it feels a bit more like work and I don't have as much time to stop and talk to people. I always do, but I'm running around. I know it bugs Mason because he's like, you stop every five feet to talk to people. We're trying to film a video. But one of the things that I get the most energized from is hearing from people that watch this show and people listen to this show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Like, I just I get a lot of energy out of that. And, you know, if you don't if you never went to a show, of course, people leave comments on your content and say, I love this. Thank you. This was great. But when you meet people in person, it's just a different thing. It's just a different thing. And I really, I really truly enjoy that. And I get a lot of like, I get a lot of joy out of meeting the people that support the content, but also we're, we're, we're the same, right? I just happen to have a podcast, but we're all nerdy about this, this amazing hobby. So it's very cool to meet everybody. And I can't remember everybody's name, but I met so many people that regularly either watch the Ralph and Rudy streams or the Retro Ralph content or even the podcast. So that was really cool. But I got a chance to hang out with Kerry Hardy, the mayor of TPF. I joke, but it kinda is. But anyways, I got to eat with him at Perry's, which is the steakhouse across the street. And I had probably the biggest pork chop I've ever eaten in my whole entire life. And it was a damn good pork chop. Kerry was talking this thing up, and I went over there with Kerry, his wife, Jamie, and that pork chop was freaking amazing, man. It was amazing. Amy Firth Good hug, Kerry, you're a good hugger. I'm sure your wife appreciates that. Maybe kind of weird, but I liked it as much as I did, but it was a good hug. So I got to have some time with Kerry Hardy. He played in the tournament too. And while Kerry and I did not have a face-to-face, face-off pinball, but he did not succeed in beating me in the tournament. So he had two strikes and he was out of there. So, uh, but playing tournament pinball, uh, even if it's fun and friendly, like it was, even though I was probably taking it a lot more serious than most, uh, you know, if you've seen the Ralph and Rudy streams, I take pinball very seriously. I mean, I joke around, but I do get upset when I lose. I, I just do. It just is what it is. But I was in the zone. I was in the zone. I played pretty well during that tournament. I'm just kidding, Kerry, but maybe one, maybe, maybe one day we can maybe at expo, we can do like, we'll pick a new game and play and see how it goes. It'd be fun. I got to hang out with Jamie the whole time, which was awesome. Jamie introduced me to naps, to nap time. So I never do nap time, but not with Jamie, obviously. We were in different rooms. I didn't nap with him. Just wanted to clarify that in case anybody wants to start that rumor. But I was not I did not have nap time with Jamie, but Jamie would go take a nap. I'd go either walk across the street or take the shuttle or an Uber or whatever. I did walk home at night because it was a much nicer out, but it was really hot in Texas, just like it is right now. Like, I don't need my jeans fused to my legs. So that was cool. It was so fun to hang out with Jamie that way. And because I wasn't filming a video, I really got to have a lot of fun time with Jamie, which was cool. I got to spend a good amount of time with Aaron from Grown Up Adjacent. He's such a good dude, gentle giant, the guy is very tall, very tall man. You're like, whoa, this guy is tall. But awesome dude, really nice guy. Got to meet Neil McRae. We all know Neil's a little cranky, but he's a good guy. He's a nice guy. Got to meet him. Um, got to hang out a lot with Rob, um, from Electric Playground, now American Pinball, and Alec, uh, that's gonna be holding down the fort at Electric Playground. Uh, I did see Nick a couple times, but I didn't get to talk to Nick as much, which is a bummer. I would liked to have some time with him And uh and I talked to basically the rest of the American crew all all super nice guys Erica pinball journey was everywhere She was helping run the Marco tent with all the homebrew stuff which she did an amazing job Dirty Pool had this very cool thing that anybody could participate in. Tell me this isn't the coolest thing. So the homebrew community has a hard time with callouts, right? Like where do you get callouts from? Like most of them probably have to make them themselves. Dirty Pool is contributing his own time, which I thought is very generous of him, Subtitles by the Amara.org community Subtitles by the Amara.org community So if you've never seen Cameron and his wife, they do these really good little tutorial videos so you can learn how to play the games. And they brought their baby there and their baby was probably the most chill baby I've ever seen in my whole entire work, the whole entire life. Didn't cry, he had this cool little like trucker hat on, coolest baby I've ever seen at a pinball show. So that was pretty cool and they were lovely people. I've been hanging out with Jamie a lot. He says lovely everywhere. He says people are lovely. I don't use that usually. I would say they're nice people or good people, but lovely is like a Jamie word, so I'm integrating that into my vocabulary now. Emoto was everywhere, and the rest of the Marco Specialties team really did a good job in the homebrew section, and I'll stop right here and just get to the homebrew thing really quick. The homebrew was off the charts this year. I want to say there was 12 homebrew games. The ones that stood out to me was Top Gun. If you didn't see it, Jamie and I did a stream of Big Trouble in Little China, another great one, Pokemon was there. The one with the smokestacks on top, I can't remember. There's a bunch of them. So I'm sorry that I'm leaving a lot of the games out, but all those games are great. And the innovation and the creativity that comes out of there is awesome. There's one thing I did want to mention about the homebrew area, which is really cool. So there's this kit that's going to come out, I think later this year, and it's called bootleggers. It's going to be this kit that's going to be a build it yourself pinball machine. So it's going to have everything you need to build it and put it together yourself. This is awesome. And I think it's going to be offered from Marco Specialties. I'm going to definitely buy one of these kits and build it at home. And maybe I'll even document the process and just film the experience. I've never built a pinball machine before, but I think this would be a way for a lot of people to get into the hobby. Robby, like there's a lot of people going out and buying that maybe can't afford a full pinball, a full-size pinball machine. They go out and buy in like that Wonderland Amusements thing. This to me is going to be like a much better experience than that Wonderland Amusements thing and you're building it from scratch. But it's going to be like easy. They're going to have video tutorials on how to do it. So I'm excited to like see where that goes and and definitely I'll be supporting that project and who knows like maybe you could take the dirty pool recorded call outs and put it in that game that you build yourself which would be really cool. Aaron over at Fast Pinball obviously he's very involved in the homebrew community because a lot of the homebrew games use his board system which I've talked about before his board system is tremendously easy to work with. Another great video I love to work with. It's in Predator, it's in a bunch of other games too. so I added a shaker motor to my Predator. It was super simple. It was like plug in a couple things, I didn't need any real instruction of how to do it. And that was awesome. Manu from Mystery Pinball Theater 3000, he's the one that moderated our stream, the Marco stream. I did post that on my Facebook page. So if you go to Retro Ralph LLC, or just type in Retro Ralph on Facebook. I'm a big fan of the Facebook community. I'm a huge fan of the Facebook community. I can't believe it. I'm up to like almost 11,000 followers on my Facebook, which I, I don't know, I never would have thought that my Facebook was stagnant for a really long time. And I started to feed it content, just kind of like in between when I make either this podcast or a long form content. And it just, it blew my mind at how quickly that grew. So I appreciate everyone. But Manu did a great job and he's all over. He was all over the homebrew area too. And if you don't, if you've never checked him out, go check out Mystery Pinball Theater 3000. He's building a Matrix virtual machine right now or a virtual pinball machine, which will turn into a physical homebrew game at some point. So I did watch his stream on it. It looks really cool if you're a Matrix fan, but right now what he has, it's he has it in digital form and then it will eventually be a game. And I know a lot of people have wanted the Matrix. I think Matrix is a tough license because I don't think you can get all the assets. So it may not exist in any form other than a homebrew game. So I'm sure that might make it to Pinball Expo this year. So that'll be cool. Got to see Todd Tucky and the TNT crew. They're always fun to hang out with. Todd's just, I don't know, endless energy at his age. I hope that when I'm Todd's age, I have as much energy as that dude does. Unfortunately, there were people that I wished were there that were not there. Um, Joel and Jared from Flip N Out were not there. I don't think Tom, if Tom from Fox City was there, I did not see him. I know Travis from Pinball Company and Triple Drain, he wasn't there. So none of the Triple Drain guys were there that I know of. If they were there, I did not run into them. I think all of them were not there because we were chatting it up for a while. So on Instant Messenger, but I believe all of them didn't, couldn't make the show for various reasons. I was hoping the Flip N Out Pinball guys were going to be there, you know, Zach, Ken and Greg, but they were not there either. But I know they probably wanted to be, but they were probably sitting back at the home base trying to take orders on all these new games that everyone's wanting. So that's cool. And then, special shout out to Kevin, formerly of Buffalo Pinball and now of P3 Multimorphic. He joined us on our podcast, our Roundtail podcast, and he's such a nice guy. I've been watching him from when I started, you know, with Bro, Do You Even Pinball or Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball? I can't remember what for some reason right now I'm a little brain dead but yeah he's awesome so he got to join the show that was kind of a pleasure because to me he's kind of like someone that I never really met in person and so there's a little bit of like I don't know what do you call it fanboying a little bit so that was really cool I was a little giddy knowing that that he was joining and you know I just think in general if I was to summarize the show it's just it was it was it was really fun it felt intimate it felt like it was a little bit of a I'm a big party with a bunch of people that just love and adore the hobby that I do. And I had so many good conversations. I wish I could remember everyone's name that I met. I think next time when I go to Expo, I'm going to force myself to take pictures with because people took pictures with me, but I don't have those pictures. So if you do have pictures that you took with me, and you're listening to the podcast, send them to RetroRalph1980 at gmail.com. I would love to put them on my Facebook page just because those are cool memories that I made with all of you and I just wish I would have done that. But you know, you're running a million miles an hour and you're not really thinking about it in the moment, which is good because that means I'm enjoying the moment that I'm having with people versus thinking about a picture. That's something I always try to like be in the moment and that was really my goal for this show was be in the moment, enjoy the show. And I want to thank Michael Grant. So he didn't give me this jacket. This jacket came from John who runs Eureka Heights. So he gave me the Stern Army jacket. That's why I'm wearing it. It's and it was funny because I think it was, I think it was Pinball Star. I saw him the first person I saw at the show was with the Pinball Star guys. And he, uh, there was a comment on something he posted and says, why does Ralph always wear a jacket? And the reason why I always wear, have a jacket in the conference, I have no excuse for wearing the jacket in my house because in my house, I'm actually hot in the studio right now with the jacket on. But I wear jacket a lot because I live in a place that's usually a hundred degrees. So I'm usually cold all the time, especially in a, in a freezing cold air conditioned conference room or conference hall. I'm going to be really cold. That's why I'm always wearing the jacket. That's the reason. And why wear the gloves? I've explained this numerous times and I know many of you make fun of me and I don't care about that. I don't care that you make fun of me for it because honestly I have really sweaty palms. So do you really want to play a game with my sweat all over the lock bar when I'm done with the game? No. And for me, my hands slide all over the lock bar because they're that sweaty. That's gross. No one wants that so I wear the gloves. Even though my hands probably sweat a ton in the gloves, my sweat isn't getting all All of these are great shows, and I'm not slipping and sliding all over the lock bar. But I did want to thank Michael Grant for inviting Jamie and I to the Stern Army Party. Obviously, I'm not a location, so that was a nice little treat to hang out and see a lot of the Stern people there, and that was awesome. So in summary, this was a really awesome show. If you've never been to TPF, it has a totally different vibe than Pinball Expo. They're both great shows, but I think the thing about this show... I think because maybe it's not, it doesn't, it didn't feel like a big giant conference hall, even though that's what it is. But I think because it's carpeted, they kept the lights low and down most of the time. So it had like an arcade feel to it and things are closer together and less spread out. So there's, you're always kind of bumping into and running into people, which I love. I love that. So it has a more intimate feel, I think, because of the proximity of all the booths and stuff to each other. Uh, so that's great. Um, I guess the last thing I'll mention, I did go and play, um, Portal. I hadn't really put much time on Portal. I have a new appreciation for Portal and it sounds like Multimorphic has some things. They didn't have a new game there. Uh, and I did talk to Jerry for a little while and Jerry was relieved that he could just enjoy the show too. Uh, but I think he's clamoring also to get a new game out to people very soon. And I think there's some changes happening with the P3 Multimorphic that, uh, you Kevin didn't spill the beans at all. We pressed them. He didn't say anything. He's tight-lipped. That means, you know, and I know he does public relations for his day job. I don't know if he still does that. I think he does. So I think he works with Multimorphic, but it's not like a full-time thing, I believe. He does work with them, though. I could have that wrong if I do. Someone please correct me. But yeah, the Multimorphic booth was pretty hoppin' the whole time. And the show itself had this dragon theme with this big animatronic dragon when you first walked in. So it's cool. They had food trucks out there. So the food was good. Although I didn't watch. I didn't eat the food truck food. But but from what I hear, the food truck food was good. And then I can't remember the gentleman's name. He goes to I know he goes to TPF. I know he goes to Pinball Expo. I don't know if he goes to other shows, but he brings this homemade ice cream and it is spot on. Really good. And I had I can't remember what flavor I had now, but it was really good. That day, Jamie and I did not eat much. We had literally ice cream for dinner. And then I, on my walk back, I was hungry because I didn't eat anything, and I got a box of Skittles, which I ate in bed. And I ate all of the Skittles, but one I couldn't find. And I was frustrated because I wanted that last Skittle before I passed out in my bed. And then I woke up in the morning and I had rolled all over my bed on top of a red Skittle, Ride and run x'd 304. We were with Aaron from Grown Up Adjacent and we were opening all these doors to find this room that I was talking up because I'm like man it's VIP it's gonna be this like amazing room that could be even pinball machines in there so I was talking this thing up like this was gonna be this like crazy room that we were gonna walk into and it's funny because we finally found the door it was upstairs where the tournament room is it was literally the last door we open it up we rush in there and I'm like look guys and it was basically two tables and This is... I'm a fan of Pinball Expo. I've met a lot of creators. I've met a lot of people that listen to the show, support the content. So thank you for that. And I can't wait. I don't know. Maybe I'll go back next year. We'll see what happens. But I don't know. I just truly enjoyed the experience. So I'm excited to, I'm excited to, for Pinball Expo. That's going to be my next show. You know, we're a bit away from that, but, but hey, it's more, more pinball shows to I'm going to look forward to and I hope to see you guys there and meet even more people that listen in to support the podcast. And I'll get more of those challenge coins made and I'll have a bunch of them for Pinball Expo. And I will throw them on the glass if you're having a game and hopefully you can get one of those and take one of them home. But I think for Pinball Expo I may print a QR code on the back of it. So the front of it will be the logo and the back of it will be the QR code. Because there were people I, there were a couple people I gave it to that weren't aware of the podcast. So if I had the QR code they could go to the podcast. Guys, but anyways, thank you everybody that I met, everyone that came up to me. You're so, you're so gracious with your time. We had great conversations and I got to nerd out with a bunch of people that feel the same way about pinball as I do. 2026 is going to be probably one of the most amazing years in pinball in a long time. So we have a lot to look forward to. So save your money. I don't know. It's going to be hard to figure out what games to buy this year. That's for damn sure. But we'll figure it out. And I want to say congratulations one more time to Turner Pinball because Chris really created a special game. I just, if he can tweak a couple things, man, he's going to take something from good to great. And I don't know, I have a feeling that thing's going to sell out. So if you're like a Whitewater fan and this is one you want to have in the collection, I'm not trying to FOMO you. And I know there's a lot of other games coming out this year, but you don't want to miss out like a bunch of people did with Winchester if it's a game that speaks to you and it's something you're interested in. Thank you so much for listening. You guys are the best and we will see you on the flip side. See you guys.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v4)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 6f455ee3-030e-45b1-9813-8f8f51ef1d08*