# Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast September 2021 recap

**Source:** Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2021-10-02  
**Duration:** 117m 20s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pinball-industry-news/episodes/Pinball-Magazine--Pinball-News-PINcast-September-2021-recap-e186a1g

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## Analysis

September 2021 pinball industry recap covering Stern's Godzilla launch with innovative mechanics and $10,500 LE pricing, Pinball Brothers' Alien LV reveal and Queen prototype display in London, Chicago Gaming's announcement of Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharp developing Cactus Canyon remake code, plus discussion of supply chain pressures, Insider Connected QR system delays, and upcoming Pinball Expo.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Godzilla Limited Edition priced at $10,499, representing the first time Stern broke the $10,000 price barrier aside from Super LEs and Platinum editions — _Jonathan and Martin discussing Godzilla pricing; official manufacturer prices cited_
- [HIGH] Godzilla LE limited to 1,000 units and sold out almost immediately — _Jonathan states 'sold out almost immediately' after announcing 1,000 unit limit_
- [HIGH] Insider Connected QR code reader costs approximately $300 and accounts for roughly half of the $700 Pro price increase — _Martin and Jonathan discussing cost breakdown of price increases_
- [HIGH] Godzilla production delayed due to part shortages with games visible on production line but not shipped to locations yet — _Martin noting pictures of production line but games not on location despite promised date_
- [HIGH] Queen pinball prototype at London pop-up store is not playable, missing mechs, with gameplay disabled for display/jukebox purposes — _Martin visiting London store and describing non-functional prototype; display only shows 'gameplay is disabled'_
- [HIGH] Queen pinball designed by Barry Osler and Dave Sanders at Highway Pinball, later redesigned by Pinball Brothers from wide body to standard body — _Martin citing conversation with Pinball Brothers representatives and Dave Sanders' Pinside comments_
- [HIGH] Queen pinball prototype expected 6-9 months from launch; Pinball Brothers declined podcast interview, calling it a reveal not a promotion — _Martin reporting direct conversation with Pinball Brothers at London location_
- [HIGH] Queen game restricted to pre-1986 music due to licensing constraints based on touring history — _Dave Sanders' Pinside comment cited; Jonathan and Martin discussing why certain Queen tracks cannot be included_
- [HIGH] Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharp contracted by Chicago Gaming to develop new code for Cactus Canyon remake — _Chicago Gaming press release announced; Jonathan presenting as breaking news from official distributor_
- [HIGH] Godzilla features innovative moving building mech that rotates with multiple ball paths and captive ball magnet on Mechagodzilla toy — _Jonathan and Martin extensively discussing Godzilla mechanics during initial segment_

### Notable Quotes

> "I think you can best describe it as a sort of combination of Gilligan's Island meets Doctor Who...with the filing cabinet moving up and down. But it's far more complicated and enjoyable than that."
> — **Martin**, ~15:00
> _Describes Godzilla's innovative moving building mechanic using pop culture references; captures community fascination with new device design_

> "For the first time, apart from the Super L.E.s and the Platinum games for Batman 66 and Beatles...that's now the price going forward"
> — **Jonathan**, ~25:00
> _Confirms $10k+ pricing now standard for Stern, marking industry shift in cost structure_

> "I don't think Pinball Brothers have been involved in that...Pinball Brothers have redesigned it."
> — **Martin**, ~45:00
> _Clarifies that Pinball Brothers significantly modified Highway Pinball's Queen design rather than using it directly_

> "It's basically there for display purposes. It is and it's kind of like a jukebox really. It's just sitting there playing music and videos."
> — **Martin**, ~52:00
> _Describes Queen prototype as non-functional entertainment display, establishing it as reveal rather than playable game_

> "They didn't want to say anything more about the game because it's not the finished game. They really don't want this to be a launch or a promotion for that game. This is more about the pop-up store."
> — **Martin**, ~48:00
> _Shows Pinball Brothers' cautious approach to premature publicity; indicates significant work remains on Queen_

> "We now know that Pinball Brothers will be making a Queen Pinball machine sometime in the future. Most likely next year. Which is a very desired title and could really put them on the map."
> — **Martin**, ~58:00
> _Confirms Queen as major franchise win for Pinball Brothers; identifies strategic importance to manufacturer_

> "I haven't seen that before [the rotating ramp with magnet within toy and target bank reveal on Mechagodzilla]."
> — **Martin**, ~19:00
> _Community recognition of genuinely novel mechanical innovation in Godzilla, addressing long-standing criticism of mechanical stagnation_

> "Maybe we've reached the point where you can't come up with devices which interact with the ball in ways we haven't seen before. Have we seen everything?"
> — **Martin**, ~17:00
> _Expresses community concern about mechanical innovation exhaustion before Godzilla mechs demonstrated continued possibilities_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Stern Pinball | company | Released Godzilla pinball with innovative mechanics; increased pricing structure across all models; implementing Insider Connected QR system |
| Godzilla | game | Stern's September 2021 flagship release featuring moving building mech, Mechagodzilla toy, and breaking $10k LE price point at $10,499 |
| Keith Elwin | person | Designer credited with Godzilla playfield design; recognized for shot layout and mechanical innovation |
| Harrison | person | Mechanical designer of Godzilla game; worked on complex multi-mech integration |
| Zombie Yeti | person | Art director for Godzilla alongside Jeremy Packer; artwork received mixed reception from community |
| Jeremy Packer | person | Artist on Godzilla; contributed to artwork that divided community opinion |
| Pinball Brothers | company | Announced Alien LV with 1,000 unit limit and enhanced features; acquired Queen pinball IP; revealed non-playable Queen prototype in London |
| Alien (Pinball Brothers) | game | Pinball Brothers' licensed Alien game with LV announced at $10,695, featuring laser-cut xenomorph armor, lit backboard, rotating beacons, shaker motor |
| Queen (Pinball Brothers) | game | Pinball Brothers' in-development Queen live theme game; prototype displayed at London pop-up store as non-playable reveal; expected launch 6-9 months out |
| Barry Osler | person | Original designer of Queen pinball at Highway Pinball; design later redesigned by Pinball Brothers |
| Dave Sanders | person | Co-designer of original Queen pinball at Highway Pinball; posted Pinside comment on music licensing constraints pre-1986 |
| Heighway Pinball | company | Original developer of Queen pinball design before financial difficulties led to asset acquisition by Pinball Brothers |
| Chicago Gaming Company | company | Announced Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharp contracted to develop new code for Cactus Canyon remake |
| Cactus Canyon | game | Chicago Gaming remake of Williams classic; code development announced with Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharp as primary developers |
| Lyman Sheets | person | Legendary code designer; left Stern Pinball; newly contracted by Chicago Gaming for Cactus Canyon remake programming |
| Josh Sharp | person | Tournament player assisting Lyman Sheets on Cactus Canyon code development at Chicago Gaming |
| Gary Stern | person | Stern Pinball CEO; sent email explaining supply chain cost increases justifying $700-$1,300 price hikes |
| Jonathan Euston | person | Editor of Pinball Magazine; co-host of Pinball News PINcast; conducting September 2021 recap analysis |
| Martin Lev | person | Editor of Pinball News; co-host of PINcast; visited Queen prototype in London; conducted Pinball Brothers interviews |
| Rob Berg | person | Pinball Expo organizer; scheduled for interview segment on upcoming October show |
| Pinball Expo | event | Industry trade show scheduled for late October 2021; expected to feature Godzilla and other new releases |
| Insider Connected | product | Stern's internet-connected QR code gameplay system; $300 component cost; delayed implementation; registration site not yet live |
| The Mandalorian | game | Stern Pinball game receiving version 0.98 code update adding jump-to-wizard mode, challenge modes, scoring tweaks |
| Queen the Greatest | event | Pop-up merchandise store on Carnaby Street, London; hosts non-playable Queen pinball prototype until January 2022 |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Godzilla release and innovation, Pinball pricing increases and cost pressures, Queen pinball reveal and licensing, Pinball Brothers manufacturer pipeline
- **Secondary:** Insider Connected QR system development, Code updates and software improvements, Supply chain and production delays, Personnel movements between manufacturers

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Positive enthusiasm for Godzilla's innovative mechanics and Queen's licensing success tempered by concerns about pricing increases, production delays, and sustainability of $10k+ pricing model. Supply chain difficulties acknowledged but mitigated by understanding of external pressures.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Supply chain crisis globally affecting pinball manufacturing with component scarcity, labor recruitment difficulties, increased shipping costs, and rising material costs on wood and metals (confidence: high) — Gary Stern email cited; Jonathan: 'increased shipping costs, which have gone up massively'; Martin reference to wood prices already declining
- **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo scheduled for late October 2021 as major industry showcase; Rob Berg invited to discuss upcoming programming and reveals (confidence: high) — Jonathan and Martin discussing Pinball Expo interview segment; described as occurring 'end of October' with multiple weeks' notice
- **[design_philosophy]** Godzilla artwork by Zombie Yeti and Jeremy Packer received mixed community reception with Godzilla purists feeling brightly colored aesthetic (particularly green 'watermelon' Godzilla) diverged from muted original film tones, appearing more Avengers-like than Godzilla-authentic (confidence: high) — Jonathan and Martin discussing artwork division: 'Godzilla purists...feeling that it wasn't quite Godzilla-y enough, maybe a bit more towards Avengers in look and feel'
- **[design_innovation]** Godzilla's moving building mech with multiple ball paths and Mechagodzilla rotating ramp with captive ball magnet represent genuinely novel mechanical interactions addressing community concern about innovation stagnation in pinball design (confidence: high) — Martin: 'I haven't seen that before' regarding Mechagodzilla mech; extensive discussion of innovations not seen in recent pinball games
- **[licensing_signal]** Queen pinball restricted to pre-1986 live recordings due to touring history licensing constraints; excludes post-1986 compositions and certain high-energy tracks like 'The Show Must Go On' (confidence: high) — Dave Sanders' Pinside comment: 'they are not allowed to use any music past 1986...that's when Queens stopped touring live'
- **[market_signal]** Godzilla LE rapid sell-out of 1,000 units despite high $10,499 price point suggests strong demand for premium limited editions despite pricing concerns (confidence: high) — Jonathan: 'for Godzilla is limited to 1,000 units, so you would think that's not that limited, but apparently it was sold out almost immediately'
- **[personnel_signal]** Lyman Sheets transitioned from Stern Pinball to Chicago Gaming Company as primary code developer for Cactus Canyon remake with Josh Sharp assisting (confidence: high) — Chicago Gaming press release; Jonathan: 'Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharp Have been contracted to develop New and enhanced software For Cactus Canyon'
- **[market_signal]** Godzilla LE at $10,499 marks first mainstream $10k+ pricing outside special editions; $700-$1,300 price increases across all tiers driven by supply chain costs, labor, components, and $300 Insider Connected QR hardware (confidence: high) — Jonathan: '$10,500 price barrier, which, for the first time, apart from the Super L.E.s and the Platinum games for Batman 66 and Beatles'; Gary Stern email explaining cost pressures
- **[announcement]** Pinball Brothers officially revealed Queen pinball in development via London pop-up prototype display; first public appearance of game after Highway Pinball acquisition (confidence: high) — Martin's visit to Queen the Greatest store on Carnaby Street, London; non-playable prototype on display; Pinball Brothers representatives present
- **[product_strategy]** Godzilla production delayed despite parts visible on Stern assembly line; games not yet delivered to locations despite previously announced dates (confidence: high) — Martin: 'Well, they're not going to store them inside the factory...playfields piled up against the wall waiting for a certain part'
- **[product_strategy]** Godzilla's moving building mech exclusive to Premium and LE versions while Pro features static building with multiple internal paths; three-tier feature segmentation strategy implemented (confidence: high) — Martin: 'in the pro is a static building so it doesn't have that but it does have a number of different paths through the different floors as well'
- **[technology_signal]** Insider Connected QR system not yet live despite Godzilla launch; registration website inactive; implementation delayed beyond original timeline (confidence: high) — Martin: 'If you try, it'll just say the domain name is not valid when you put in your email address'; system promised to be live when Godzilla arrives at locations but delayed

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## Transcript

 Stern Pinball launches Godzilla Pinball Brothers announce Alien LV and reveal Queen prototype Lyman Sheets and Josh Sharpe team up on Cactus Canyon Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined here today with... I'm Martin Lev and I'm the editor of Pinball News and we're here to look back on all the events in the pinball world that took place in the month of September 2021. Yes, and it's been quite an interesting month. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, and well, if you are a regular listener to this podcast, you know that we almost say that every month, but in this case, it's absolutely the case. Yeah, if it is a quiet month, it is a quiet month, but this wasn't. No, absolutely not There's quite some news And aside from the headlines that we just mentioned We'll also have an interview with Rob Berg of Pinball Expo At the end of the podcast Where Rob will be telling you all about What's coming up for the upcoming Pinball Expo show At the end of October Yeah, at the end of this month We're in at the moment So it's only a few weeks away So yeah, Rob's going to tell us all the details All the excitement to look forward to in a few weeks' time. But we better start straight away and get on with all the news that there is, and we'll start with the news from Stern Pinball. Yeah, that's probably the biggest news of the month. Announcing and then revealing Godzilla. And I have to say I am very impressed with that game. It looks like a lot of fun. Yes, some very innovative mechs in there, especially on the premium and limited edition version, I think. Yes, I think we're all looking forward to playing that one And getting our hands on one Although not available just yet But hopefully soon Yes, soon I think there was a bit of opinion being divided Over the artwork on the game Where Zombie Yeti, Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) doing the art on that Lots of people loving it That's fair to say I thought it looked really good But I think maybe for the Godzilla purists It was a feeling that it wasn't quite Godzilla-y enough, maybe a bit more towards Avengers in look and feel. Yes. Brightly coloured, whereas the original Godzilla movies were sort of fairly muted in tone. And the green Godzilla, according to some people, looked like a watermelon. Yeah, I can see why people might think that, and I think Godzilla should have had maybe a darker colour, but that's not going to spoil the game for me. No, absolutely not. No, I think if it was darker, more muted colours, it would look a bit more like the Ultraman game from Spooky, which does exactly that, and I think it's in keeping with the original theme. But, you know, stern pinballs need to be bright and attractive and draw players in, and doing something which is, you know, too dull doesn't really work in that regard. So it's a difficult balance to make, But I think overall it looks great Yeah, and I take my hat off to Well, the entire design team I suppose Keith Elwin in particular I'm not that much into Godzilla But looking at this game I really want to get my hands on it Because it really looks like fun It does, I think That building which moves up and down And has multiple different ball paths on it that's something we haven't really seen ever, I think. I think you can best describe it as a sort of combination of Gilligan's Island meets Doctor Who. Yeah, absolutely. And also a bit like X-Files as well with the filing cabinet moving up and down. But it's far more complicated and enjoyable than that. It seems to have a lot of different ball paths and uh and even able to lock balls on top of it as well in the uh in the premium well let's just say this is the premium le where it moves up and down in the in the pro is a static building so it doesn't have that but it does have a number of different paths through the different floors as well even on the pro yes and uh now it's a dare i say finally some innovation that we've been that many have been looking for uh in pinball and some may say that this is a throwback to the early 90s but that's probably what we are looking for because that was sort of like the golden age in recent pinball history. Yeah, I think personally I was thinking maybe we've reached the point where you can't come up with devices which interact with the ball in ways we haven't seen before. Have we seen everything? But then not only have we got the moving building here, we've also got the Mechagodzilla as well which is a U-shape, it's a ramp, which leads to a magnet within a toy that grabs the ball, but then the ramp rotates around to reveal a target bank as well. So, I haven't seen that before. No, and I think the use of the captive ball magnet is also very innovative, which is basically at the corner of two parts, and it can grab the ball from both ways, and redirect it. Yeah, and drop it onto the flipper. Drop it on the flipper so you can make a shot. Excellent work by Alwin. So kudos and congratulations to the entire design team, and hopefully we'll see these games on location soon enough. Yeah, and to the mechanical designer of that game, I don't know who it is, but it looks like they've done a sterling job with that and being able to get several mechs as complicated as they are into that game. The mechanical designer is called Harrison, and let me bring up something immediately. For those interested in hearing more about the Godzilla game, there is a panel discussion with the entire design team available on the CERN Insider program, which is basically you sign up for that on their website and then you get access to these podcasts for free. That's free. That's free. It was originally, I think it was a lock-in period where you had to be a subscriber, a paid subscriber. After 72 hours, which already expired, the interview became available to everybody. And much to my surprise, there's now also a transcript of that podcast available. So if you don't want to listen to it and you want to quickly read about it, then that's also a possibility. So I figured I'd mention that as well. Yeah, I think they must have a sort of automated transcription service there because they did the same thing for when they launched the Insider Connected interview with George Gomez. and there were various bits of that where it said, like in brackets, inaudible, which kind of meant that the transcription service couldn't work out what was being said, whereas somebody who was listening to it in person would be able to hear it. So I guess that's an automated service. But okay, it's all good. Yeah, if there's anybody apart from you particularly interested, you can always go and listen to them and try and work out what's not in the transcript. Right. So that's great. Yeah. But with the launch of Godzilla, well, Godzilla being an enormous monster, we also saw enormous price increases. Oh, nice. Nice bridge there. One which is hopefully a little more reliable than the one in the game, which breaks in two. So, yes, there was an email from Gary Stern which basically explained the problems they've been having in paying for the staff in the factory. They were having trouble recruiting staff and having to pay an extra, well, it looks out as $100 a game, I think, on the build of each machine. And also price rises on components and scarcity of components as well. and increased shipping costs, which have gone up massively. We've spoken about all this before with Mike Kalinowski of HomePin about all the supply chain problems that are in existence around the world. But anyway, the net effect is that the, what is it, the gross effect? I can't remember. There's a $700 increase on the price of the Pro, a $1,200 increase on the price of the Premium, and a $1,300 price on the Limited Edition, which for Godzilla is limited to 1,000 units, so you would think that's not that limited, but apparently it was sold out almost immediately, so it certainly is limited. And yes, so that now means the limited edition total price is just shy of US$10,500. That's the manufacturer price. Just the price increase on the limited edition is good for $1.3 million. That's right, yeah. So 1,000 of those, and you've got, yeah, an extra $1.3 million just on those. So, yeah, it's... Regulations. It takes, you know, into the... Well, the $10,000 price barrier, which, for the first time, apart from the Super L.E.s and the Platinum games for Batman 66 and Beatles. So that's now the price going forward and that's going to be the price on all their remakes as well. They're not sticking to the original prices but don't you give the option of anybody who had orders in for manufacturers of older titles that they could back out if they don't want to pay that price but if they go back and remake any of their recent titles that's the price that you can expect to find. Yep. That's the way of the world at the moment. Prices are going up. I'm very curious to see whether those prices will drop once resources become more available. I heard that prices for wood already started declining because it's more available than it was a couple of months ago. True. It's also probably worth mentioning in mitigation or partial mitigation for those price rises is that Godzilla and all future games will have the insider-connected QR code reader installed in the apron. We mentioned this in the last month's pin cast. Yes. But it looks like the price of that for distributors is likely to be about $300. Yes, for a QR reader, that is. Yes, so $700 of that $300, $300 of the $700 increase on the Pro could, I suppose, be attributed to the Insider Connected QR code reader. Right. So maybe it's not so bad. But, yeah, that system's not actually live yet, Insider Connected. That's the Internet-connected gameplay that we spoke about before. They have said it will be live when Godzilla games arrive on location, but there are apparently some delays in getting Godzilla into production due to part shortages and basically delays in getting the parts into the factory. Right. Yeah. Well, it's a bit of a disappointment. It's always disappointing when something is announced for a certain date and then once the date arrives, it's not there. Well, I think they actually put a specific date when the game gets on site and the game isn't on site yet, so it's fair. Well, we've seen pictures of the production line at Sturm where games are being assembled, so you think, like, wait, well, they're not going to store them inside the factory. No. At least that's not what you expect. It's possible they are missing a particular mech or device. Oh, yeah, we've seen that in the past, that there's cabinets piled up against the wall, Sorry, playfields piled up against the wall Waiting for a certain part to be put on there I think the last time I saw that was with a Star Wars game By Steve Ritchie Where certain... I think they had a short story Death Star Max Or... The Michael model Yes Yeah Yeah. So anyway, if you do want to sign up for the Insider Connected, you can go to insider.sternpinball.com. You can't actually register at the moment, but as soon as the system goes live, you will be able to. If you try, it'll just say the domain name is not valid when you put in your email address. I don't think there's any specific advantage in registering early, because it's based on your email address rather than a username or anything like that. that somebody else is going to take first. So unless you're sharing an email address, I don't think you have a worry there. So we will obviously let you know, hopefully in the next month's PIN cast, we will be able to tell you that the Insider Connected is live and you can go there and register. And it starts scanning your QR code on the Godzilla games and any other games which had the system fitted to it. Right, okay. So, closing off the Stern Pinball topic, code updates. Yes, well, only the one this time, which is for The Mandalorian, which just came out yesterday, actually. We're recording this at the start of October. So, just yesterday, 30th of September, was version 0.98, which added in a feature which they tend to add into pretty much all their games now at Stern, which is be able to jump straight into the wizard mode from the gameplay menu. the spell which you get by holding the flip button. And that's what they've done here. They've added in the you have what I want challenge mode into the gameplay and I suppose with that they've also added, tweaked some of the scoring some of the lighting effects some of the rules and fixed a couple of bugs and spelling errors. So that's version 0.98 of The Mandalorian. Right, okay. So, well, that's it for our first headline. I suppose we jump right into our second headline regarding two sort of game reveals announcements from Pinball Brothers and it's rather interesting, I think about a week ago the limited version in short LV for Alien was announced with various mock-up images of what the game looks like, and a list of enhanced features. Yeah, although that game actually seems to have been shipped to various people already, or at least some aspects of it have been. The limited version has a whole bunch of enhancements, I suppose you'd probably say, as you would expect for the LV, which is limited to 1,000 units. which is kind of odd because I don't think they ever got close to even a thousand standard versions and then announcing a limited version with an even higher production run that sort of doesn't make sense to me but they might still sell a lot of standard versions after that when the limited is long sold out yeah at least it is limited if you put a number on it no matter how high that number is. But the limited version comes with powder-coated armour, metalwork on the game, side rails, legs, hinges, that kind of stuff. It has a lit backboard at the very back of the game. It has rotating beacons that we saw on the Alien game from Highway Pinball, although they're a different design and a bit more squat, and I think the general reaction to that has been that people prefer the original ones, which are more true to the movie. It also has Xeno side armour, which is laser-cut. The area around the flipper buttons, that's been laser-cut in the shape of the Xeno. It has anti-reflective glass. One of the pop bumpers, I think, is now in a sort of open-egg design, rather than all being closed, which may or may not be a good thing. It brings back the lit-in-inner-cabinet side art, which the Highway Pinball game, or at least the limited version of that, had. And then Shaker Motor and some kind of limited apron on it as well, which is, I think, a metal apron compared to the plastic one. And the price of limited version, well, not entirely dissimilar to the Godzilla one. The Godzilla limited version is $10,499, and the Alien limited version is $10,695, which is an increase of $2,100 over the standard version at $8,595. If you remember, it wasn't a while, last month or the month before, I think, when there was a price increase given because they were originally listed, I think, at $7,777 and $9,999. So they've both gone up in price as well, and we've already gone over why that might be. But, so those are the features of the limited version of the Alien game. Yeah, and if you're interested, then reach out to your local or regional Pimble Brothers distributor, I would say. Yeah, exactly. But there's more news from Pinball Brothers, because just a couple of days following the announcement of Alien LV, a Queen pinball machine pops up in London. Now, Martin, since you're based in London, in the United Kingdom, what can you tell us about this? Well I saw this posted on Facebook and it was just a picture and no explanation what it was or where it was so I thought okay that's very interesting I don't know if it's it did say Pimple Brothers on it and you could see that under the display and I thought well I don't know where that is but I didn't really pay that much attention to it and then the next day it turned out that it was in London so I'm not actually living in London at the moment, but it's not a million miles away. In fact, it's about 60 miles away. So I changed my plans for the next day. And of all the things in this country at the moment, we are having a fuel shortage for vehicles. So getting petrol or diesel has been very, very difficult. It involves queues at petrol and filling stations of, you know, 40 minutes, an hour, two hours, just to try and get some fuel. But I thought, OK, never mind, I don't care, I've got to get in the car, so I jumped in the car, drove down to London, got on the Underground to Oxford Circus, and made my way to the new pop-up store, which is on Carnaby Street in London, and I do know where that is, and this store is called Queen the Greatest. and the reason I know it was Carnaby Street is because it wasn't that long ago that there was another pop-up store in there for The Who and they had a couple of Who Yeah, Them, yes Who They Yes But a different part of Carnaby Street but this was right at the very far end and it's basically a merchandise store selling officially licensed Queen Merchandise Yeah, stuff You know, mugs, jackets, t-shirts records, CDs, videos, you know, all that kind of stuff. Right. And on two layers, on two levels, in the basement, is sitting this Queen game from Pinball Brothers. It's blasting out music and playing videos on the display. And similar to Alien, it has an LCD in the backbox, but not an LCD in the play field like Highway used to do. No, I don't think that's going to be something which Pinball Brothers are going to bring back. It doesn't have a secondary display either on the screen, oh sorry, on the playfield, like Alien does, you know, for the lock. Right, okay. The reason I bring this up is, apparently this Queen Pinball was a design that was done by Barry Osler and Dave Sanders when they were both working for Highway Pinball, which eventually ended up with the finances of the company being the Pinball Brothers. And originally, I understand that the game was designed as a white body. It was, yeah. Yeah, and now it's turned into a standard body, but neither Dave Sanders or Barry also have been involved in that. No, Pinball Brothers have redesigned it. various assemblies within the game were in the original design, but they've been moved around. There's a large electric guitar upper playfield called Big Red, I think. No, Red Special. Sorry, Red Special, which is the name of Brian May's guitar. So that used to be on the left-hand side in Barry and Dave's design, and now it's on the right-hand side. and I think it's all been shrunk down, obviously, to fit into a standard body game and I don't think it's necessarily suffered much. I didn't see the original design, but there's nothing in there which you think, oh, that's looking very cramped or indeed that there's a huge amount of space in there either. It looks like it's a fully featured game and you never know if it was ever designed as a wide body. Right, okay. And although it's a prototype, it does have artwork on the play field, in the cabinet, and so on. Absolutely. It might not be the final artwork, but there is currently some artwork on there. I would say that given the approval process that they've had to go through in order to get that artwork approved, I can't imagine it's going to change easily, put it that way. I'm sure there were multiple revisions in order to get approval. You're talking about four band members, three of whom are still alive, I think. So you're trying to get approval from them or their estates for the likenesses as they are portrayed. It's not a photograph, it's not a photo montage. It's actually drawn based on photographs from the stage shows. and it's also worth pointing out that this is Queen Live which was the original licence that Highway Pinball had, it was for the use of the live live material from their shows, not the promotional videos and not from the records not the video recordings no, so the recordings that it's playing are their stadium videos basically from the shows which are still quite energetic Oh, absolutely. You're probably better, I'd say, in many ways. You know, you really get the energy out of it, and whereas, you know, a video is a video, and you've probably seen those a million times before. Right. But the key thing about this is that it's not playable. Okay, this is a prototype, and it there has... Well, really, the Pimple Brothers were contacted by Queen's Record Company and asked if they could bring the game to this store. Obviously, Big Ball Brothers have been working with the record company In order to get the music licence And the approval of the imagery And Big Ball Brothers basically rushed this game Into a complete enough state That it could sit there and give a good representation Of how the final game would look like There were some mechs missing on it There were some bits missing Which means it couldn't be played There were no balls in the game, I don't think Other than one captive ball and you can't start a game. On the display it just said it's not, gameplay is disabled. Right. So it's basically there for display purposes. It is and it's kind of like a jukebox really. It's just sitting there playing music and videos. Yeah. It's the only source of Queen music in the lower level of the store. I think they have music upstairs but it's a lot louder than that and it's doing a light show which looks very nice and there are a couple of flyers on top well there's a front and back of a flyer on top of the game so people can see what's in it and it's kind of like a preview it's the Pimple Brothers unfortunately there were two of them there while I was there so I was able to talk to them about this and find out all the details about the rules and the history of the game and the plans for it and it's probably about I reckon it's been six to nine months away from being on sale, being officially launched. This is not a launch, this is maybe a reveal, is the best word to describe it, and it's a reveal of a work-in-progress prototype game. So it's going to be very different when it launches, but exactly how different, we don't know at this stage. Right, okay. Well, since you talked to the Pimple Brothers, actually I was hoping to get them as a special guest on our podcast. Did you ask? Yep, I did indeed. They declined on this occasion Said that they didn't want to say anything more About the game because it's not The finished game They really don't want this to be a launch Or a promotion For that game This is more about the pop-up store And helping the record company out And obviously they knew People were going to find it But they didn't I think it was actually there for almost a day Before anybody in the pinball world Realised But they drove it over I think it was made in Germany Or assembled in Germany This game And it was brought over on the weekend And set up for the launch Or the opening of the store on Monday morning And I think by Tuesday people knew about it Well, that's how quickly it can go, people Yeah Of course, well A queen is a very desired theme for pinball Absolutely Yeah, so kudos to the Pinball Brothers for keeping that license to them, because I know other pinball companies would love to jump at the occasion to do that theme. I think you're right, yes. So they had it, but I don't think it was simply a case of just renewing the license in order to get it, because I don't think they've got exactly the same assets as Highway Pinball had, but they've certainly got an awful lot of stuff. I think it was 14 full-length tracks and video, or performances, I suppose is probably the best way of saying it, within the game. Now, I can't remember whether this is accurate or not, but someone did mention to me that the Highway Pinball game had some original music from Brian May in it somewhere. Okay. But I don know whether that going to be in this game or not Okay I did well one of the designers Dave Sanders did comment on the game on Pinside One of the things that he mentioned is that they are not allowed to use any music past 1986. According to... because basically that's when Queens stopped touring live, And so they didn't, well, they couldn't have done any material that they would release two years later that hadn't been written at the time that they were touring. So that makes sense. So there's a couple of people wondering why certain titles are not in there, like The Show Must Go On or something like that, which would be great for winning a free game or something like that. But, yeah, if that was recorded after 1986, then... Yeah, also I'd say you want games that have got high energy to them. Oh, sorry, tracks that have got high energy to them. You don't necessarily want slow or mournful songs like that. Okay, you could use it. It could be Who Wants to Live Forever. Yeah, I mean, do you want to just have that track in there just for that moment when the ball drains, whereas you could have ten minutes of another track. Right. Oh well. The interesting thing is we now know that Pivot Brothers will be making a Queen Pivot machine somewhere in the future. Most likely next year. Which is a very desired title and could really put them on the map. I asked whether there would be a limited version, a standard version, but they say it's too early to say at this stage. So we'll have to wait and see. But say, probably six to nine months. So the pop-up store in London is open until early January next year. The game is going to be there for that entire time. So if you're visiting London and want to have a look and pop along. Will it be there until EAG? It won't, no, because I think it's about the 9th of January. I think it closes and EAG is after that. So, yeah, too bad I'm afraid, and also it's they don't plan to make any changes to the game so the things that are missing in it, they're not going to go and install those, they're not going to update the software or anything like that what you see now is what you will see in three months time Right, so but it still will be interesting looking at the month of January where the EAG show trade show will take place it would be nice to combine it with a visit to that Queen store, or maybe to someone who is holding on to that prototype once the store closes. I imagine they will pick it up and take it back fairly quickly, but we'll see. I'll just do a blatant plug and say if you want to see lots of pictures and some video from that game, then head over to Pinball News where I think our lead article is currently featuring Queen. Yeah, lots of pictures in that article and really my compliments for you to being so quick reporting on it because I think you really provided the world with all the images that are now floating around. Yeah, thanks. It needed to be done. I think we needed to get some decent pictures so I was happy to change my plans and go down there, and fortunately I was able to get some diesel in the car when I got back home to top up what I'd used. Right. Yeah, I was going to ask you to get home safely, but you did. Yes, we can now go on holiday this weekend with a full tank of fuel. Woo-hoo! Anyway, moving on. Yeah. I think that's everything from Thimble Brothers. We don't have an interview with them, unfortunately, yet, but hopefully before too long. Yeah. So Speaking of interviews I already mentioned that we'll be talking to Rob Berg Later on in the show What we also should try to do is Reach out to our good friend Gary Flower Who usually interrupts us During the show But I think it might be safer To give him a call So that we can put him in Where it's convenient for us Yeah because Gary was there as well So he went to see the Queen Games So he can tell us what his opinions were That will be interesting So shall we do that later on Or do you want to do that now Let's do it now Yeah let's get him on Because it's a good point He might be able to fill in some extra details That we haven't mentioned Okay so Okay I'm calling Gary right now Okay Good stuff So let's see Hi Jonathan Thanks for calling I'm a bit busy at the moment Come talk I'm just on multiball Talk to you soon Bye Well I don't think he's got multiball on the Queen game I don't think even Gary can do that I think there was Led Zeppelin music in the background So Okay well good for Gary for playing Led Zeppelin And apparently he got multiball Wow That should be one of our headlines really Gary Flower gets multiball Yes Well, must be breaking news. Okay, well, that's a shame. Never mind. We'll try and get back to Gary and find out what he's got to bring us this month. But moving on... Maybe he'll call back during the show. We never know. Oh, sure he will. If it's inconvenient, I'm sure. Right. So then there is a... Well, not sure whether we should call it breaking news. But the people from Chicago Gaming Just sent us a press release And we got it up front And I think in the meantime the news has been made Public or it will at least be made Public within the next couple of hours And that is that they are Announcing that Lime and Sheets And Josh Sharpe Have been contracted to develop New and enhanced software For Cactus Canyon Remake Canyon being the remake that has been already announced at the Southern Fried Gaming Expo a couple of weeks ago at that point it was already also announced that the game will have all new code and as it turns out none other than Lime and Cheats will be programming the game and is being assisted in that by Josh Sharpe And Josh Sharpe is no stranger to people who are a little bit familiar with people in the industry. That's fair to say, yeah. For those people who are wondering what Lyman's been doing, or was going to be doing, after he left Stern, well, he's now popped up at Chicago Gaming. Interesting, though, that Josh has joined him, because... Well, he's a very good tournament player, of course. Absolutely. But Lyman is more a programmer I guess Josh is more a rules guy So Very good combination Yeah, absolutely Yeah, I mean Josh works for Raw Thrills At the moment And this isn't This isn't replacing He isn't leaving Raw Thrills To do this This is a side project And Josh of course being The brother of Zach Sharp who is head of communications at Stern Pinball. And Zach and Josh both are being the sons of Roger Sharp, who you can read everything about in Pinball Magazine number one. The man who saved pinball in the United States in 1976. And he was also getting his own movie about that story. That's right. We already talked to Roger about that a couple of episodes ago. Yep. So Josh is certainly no stranger to pinball. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and talking about the remake itself, we were kind of expecting that to be revealed by now, having, as you said, been announced at the Southern Fry Gaming Expo. But this announcement today that they have been contracted to develop new and enhanced software for it kind of suggests that it's going to be a little while yet before the game is ready for, or at least a completed game is ready for production. I'm not sure whether that's the correct interpretation, but I did talk to Ryan White earlier today, and I asked whether there was any news about when we could see Cactus Canyon go into production, and basically he told me this was the news that was going out today, and he was not discussing anything else. Right. I'm not sure whether I should put it like that, It came down to that the announcement is that Lyman and Josh are working on new code for the game, and the press release didn't mention anything of the availability of the game anytime soon. No. We do know it's going to have an interactive topper to it, so that's obviously going to be an enhancement and a new code. So I don't suppose it's just that, though. I'm sure they're doing a full rewrite of the rule set and the display stuff, for the game. Right. But, well, I would imagine that if it was ready, they would have shown it by now, but that's just my interpretation as well. It would be easy to imagine that they are suffering the same supply chain difficulties as every other manufacturer of pinball, or every other manufacturer of anything at the moment. Well, that's a speculation. I don't know. So, and also, don't forget that at the Southern Flight Gaming Expo, Ryan White mentioned that they currently have five pinball projects in development. So, I suppose they're busy enough. It's not like they're just looking at the ceiling waiting for Kenyans to go into production. No, I'm sure. And they also announced the remake of Medieval Madness, I think, as well. in 2023, I think it was. Right. So, yeah. So they've got their production schedule sort of worked out, I think. Yeah, that is if you can get all the components to put the game together. Yep, that's right. Okay, so, yeah, I think that's all the Chicago Gaming news that we've got. So let's move on to, well, to Jersey Jackpinball and see what they've been up to this month. Yeah. I tend to say not very much other than that they have taken a second pinball line in the factory into well production I suppose you can call it yes I can understand the main line is still making Guns and Roses and on the second line they are building a small run of Willy Wonka limited editions yes which is well it's good to know that they're not their the supply of other games is not being held up by having to build Guns N' Roses continuously for the next I don't know six months or whatever however long their order books are so yeah other games are coming out which makes you wonder whether they'll be in a position to launch another title any time soon and put that on the second line or move Guns N' Roses over to the second line. So they could effectively have two projects or two current products. If they have enough staff to man both lines. Well, they have at the moment, it says. So, yeah. Okay. And there was some scorebit news as well. I'll let you deal with that. Yeah. Well, as you may or may not know, Jersey Jack pinball games have the scorebit system built in to their software. Other games can have A score bit added to them but they require The addition of a score bitron Hardware board Which then hooks into mostly The display cable And does a sort of Optical character recognition I think Of the scores And the features That you're starting and the Ball number and the player number And all that kind of stuff And effectively sends that back To the score bit server where you can then hook that into your scorebit app and register your scores and your achievements all that kind of thing or your um and the games that you played and now the scorebit along with dirty jack have added achievements into the system right isn't that something like basically copying what Stern Insider Connected is trying to launch. Yes, the same kind of thing. But none of them can claim exclusivity on that because achievements are something that's very common in the gaming world and on the consoles, the Xbox and the PlayStation and that. If you're playing games, you collect achievement awards as you work your way through each game. So that's a sort of standard gaming language, I think. Yeah, but it's interesting to see that Stern announced their Insider Connected, and then Jersey Jack is actually the one implementing it first in their games. Yeah, absolutely. But it's not just for them. It's also on older games as well. This is where it gets really interesting, in my point of view, because, yes, okay, it's great it's in the Jersey Jack games, but that's software which can be written for those games to include that. That's fine. but for older games now you are adding new displays onto your DMD or potentially your Alphanumeric displays that let you know when you've achieved certain when you've actually collected these achievement awards so your DMD will stop showing the score and the ball number and it will say you've collected this achievement which is effectively like adding new software to older games but just for the display it doesn't affect the way the game plays but it's kind of a layer on top of that which is also reflected back in your score bit personal record so you can see how you've achieved if you started the multiball on Twilight Zone or something like that then that's an achievement unlocked and you can go in and look on your app and see that you've collected that achievement and there'll be other games but it also puts it on the DMD which is something which I don't think has been done before. Now even Color DMD when they colorize the dots, that's great, but they don't change any of the information that's shown. Whereas this is actually adding new information onto the display, or new animations or new frames, which we haven't seen before. So I'm quite excited by that because now it's taking games which are maybe from the late 80s, 90s all the way through the 90s and now you've got new display stuff on your existing games. Does it all go back to early solid state as well? I think it will, although obviously it might be harder to actually display that kind of stuff. But there's no reason it shouldn't. What I was wondering about is whether they can actually turn numeric displays into alpha numeric displays. No, not if they weren't alpha numeric to start with. No. No. Well, it's... Oh, well, never mind. No, no. I think that's asking a little more than the system is capable of. But, yeah, I mean, it might be able to do things with the displays. I actually haven't looked to see how it hooks into alphanumerics or even just numeric displays yet. I think it would have to be sensing the display information. But they have various ways of getting the game information out like the newer Stern games, they actually hook into the memory itself and start reading that. So they have the interface. They don't sample the display data to try and get the information. They can get it directly from the operating system. But that's only the most recent ones. I think all the DMD games, you look and it says you basically route the DMD display through the school BigTron board and then back onto the display. And that's how it works. Interesting. And your Jersey Jack news? I don't think so. I think that's everything. I don't think there's been any code updates other than for adding the achievement stuff. Okay. Excellent. Then let's move on to American Pinball. Yeah, it was a similar kind of thing, I suppose. They're adding something which other company has added to their stuff as well, which is team play. Now, this is something which they will be adding to all their games, and it's the same kind of thing that Stern do with their game play menu. When you first start the game, you can choose whether you're going to just have everybody play individually or whether you play as teams of two people versus two people. you've got four players, or one versus two, or one versus three, or indeed put everybody all in one team. So you're all sharing achievements, sharing scores, sharing objectives, that kind of thing, and all working towards beating the game. And it's something which they are rolling out one, I think they're kind of doing it one game a month, and they did the first game recently, which was, what was it, was it Houdini? I think it might have been. and yeah I think was it a joke with Jack Danger and Deadflip, I think they did a stream where they unveiled this feature and played some games with it and yeah, it looked good fun it gives you all a sense, you've got a group of people together and you can all work on the same game rather than trying to outdo each other so you can be collaborative rather than competitive hmm, ok well That's very interesting I think that all started with Total Nuclear Annihilation By Scott and Easy See the impact that had Yeah Well he's Broken the mold a number of ways with that game Yes So no news from American Pinball Regarding Their upcoming title No Well we'll just have to wait And see Hopefully with Pinball Expo coming up this month, and Dave Fix being heavily involved in that. Dave Fix being the current pinball director, I suppose, at American Pinball. Who knows what we might see at Pinball Expo? Yes, David is doing a seminar there about what's going on at American Pinball. So, yeah, maybe we'll have something to surprise the crowd there. Right, okay. And the same goes, of course, for Chicago Gaming as well. Ryan White is also doing a seminar at Pinball Expo, and who knows what he will bring with him. Yeah. Just rubbing salt into the wound, the fact that we can't go. Yeah, yeah, I know, but... Oh, well, what are you going to do? Yeah. So, well, the past couple of months we've been talking about Deep Root Pinball and how that seemed to be like a sinking ship for those who are not familiar with the story. The company being funded by investment funds that were supposed to be investing in other stuff than pinball, I suppose. Yes. And the SEC going after them and basically freezing the entire company. So what can you tell us about Recent events Regarding DeepRoot Pinball You dove into that And you found some very interesting stuff Yeah I've been following it And we did stories about it Obviously on Pinball News I've heard that The staff there had a meeting With Robert Mueller Who's the head of DeepRoot Generally and all the subsidiary companies. He told them that there's no money for them to actually be paid, but they're not being made redundant at this stage, which I'm not sure is a good thing or not. I guess if they were made redundant, they might be liable or might be entitled to some redundancy pay. But he did say that if alternative job opportunities do come along, they would be free to take them, free or wise, maybe, to take them. because it doesn't really look as if Deep Root Pinball is going to, this is for me now, not what he's saying, but it doesn't look like Deep Root Pinball is really going to rise from the ashes of the situation we're in at the moment. Robert hasn't actually filed a response yet to the charges from the SEC, so he obviously doesn't need to yet. But all the bank accounts and all the assets of all the Deep Root companies have been frozen at the request of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FCC. Robert's not permitted to spend more than $10,000 on anything without court approval. And subsequent to that, his lawyer put in an appeal which asked for $137,000 from a trust fund that has been set up to be transferred to his counsel, his lawyers, for 50,000 of which would be for restructuring the company and his own personal finances in preparation for a potential bankruptcy filing. So I don't know whether that's the standard practice, that they reserve some money in case the worst comes to the worst, but that was being asked for. I don't think it's been granted yet, but they also asked for some funds to be made available saying, this is quoting now directly from the document, Mueller requested the court permitting to use up to £34,000 in his personal bank accounts to pay for child support, health insurance and other critical living expenses up until the time which his wife is expected to return to work after giving birth, which she's expected to return to work in March next year. He said during that time, Mueller expects to seek alternative employment. Hmm. Hmm. So he might be working at Starbucks. Alongside J-Pop, yes. Yes, well, he's certainly got plenty of experience, J-Pop. He's been a show on the ropes. there is a breakdown of what that money would be used for in terms of child support payments, mortgage payments health insurance payments and all that kind of stuff in the court document but I don't think we need to go into that at the moment that's sort of fairly personal details which although they are publicly available if you decide to check up on it the SEC will respond to this request from Moolah's council on the 6th of October so in five days time from now a week after that Rob will get a chance to have his say again and a final decision about that money will be made on the 25th of October so we have our headline story for next month we'll get his money the important point to come out of this is that there's been no request for any funds for the Deep Root businesses including Deep Root Pinball so there'll be no more money available for that company or any other company in the Deep Root family. They're not allowed to sell any of the assets or spend any money. So, effectively, they are all frozen at this point. So, nothing is happening with any of those. And that's usually a way to drive a company out of business. Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, until this situation is resolved, nothing is going to happen with them. And I guess people will just drift away naturally. because people have bills to pay, including Robert, and they don't all have that kind of money to rely on. So they will need to find alternative employment. And so even if the companies did get funding again, there's not supposed to be anybody actually around to work for them anymore. So I think that's pretty much the end of all those companies. right so now it's just a matter of seeing who ends up where yeah absolutely yeah oh well well too bad for Deep Root there is sort of a an interesting story that I'd like to add to this which is not so much Deep Root related although there is a connection one of the first games that John Popaduic designed under his zitware umbrella, if you want to call it that, was Magic Girl. And there's a couple of Dutch guys, three guys, that have been buying the game and trying to get it to work. And the story about that game, well, they've been working on it for over two and a half years, I suppose. But recently, Gerard van der Sanden of the Dutch Pinball Museum posted a photo of himself standing in front of three Magic Girl pinball machines, which he claimed were fully playable. Got some feedback of people that could not believe that was the case. And that made the team of, well, the Magic Girl team from the Netherlands, I suppose you can call it, decide to, instead of just posting a gameplay video, what they wanted to do was shoot a video with a professional videographer and explain what they did to the game to make it fully functional. Yeah. And I was asked to do an introduction for that video, which I did. And that video will become available in two versions, of which the short version will become available this weekend. I do not have a link right now, but it will be in the Pimple Magazine newsletter, which will go out later this weekend. So if you're curious about this game and what many say is probably the most beautiful box of lights they have ever seen, then I highly recommend checking out that video once it's available. And the longer version of that video will become available the 10th of October. I think that's a video that I saw an early edit of that video and it was about 30 minutes. Okay, not too bad. Yeah. Okay, and it's worth pointing out as well that despite you being Dutch and the guys working on this being Dutch, it's actually all in English. Is that right? Yes, the video is in English. being Dutch does mean English is not our native language so it might be not as easy to understand for native English speakers or other native language speakers But we give it our best shot. I'm sure you do. Sounds fascinating. So, yeah, I'm really interested to see what the guys have done with that. because certainly that game was unplayable as it came from the factory. Yes. Despite some people wanting to believe that it was a fully complete and fully working game. We all know it wasn't. And it's taken two and a half years working on it. I'm sure they've been very careful and meticulous in how they've followed the theme and the intention of the original game. Yeah, they tried to stick very close to what has been intended in the game. Although some things that they later found out, at some point the ball was supposed to be floating, and I really have no idea how you can make a ball float in a pinball machine. I mean, in Pinball Magic they did a trick, a visual or optical trick, where it seems that the ball is floating. Yes, that's right. That's just a mechanism where the ball is attached and that works. It's a fake ball. Yeah, it's a fake ball. But in this case, apparently the ball was supposed to float or rise up very slowly. The way they managed to get it to work is using an up-kicker and it just kicks the ball up and it's not floating or whatsoever. But it works. Yeah, it's on to the upper playfield, yes. Yes, and they've been very resourceful, I would say, with their solutions to get this game to work, but you'll see all of that in the video that will be released this weekend. Yeah, a couple of days, well, from now, and probably almost one day from the time you're listening to this. And then the full one the following weekend, so even better. Yes. Okay, I think that wraps up our Deep Root related news. Right, so let's move to our good friend Mike Kanalski's home ping company and find out what he's doing, because it was in our last ping cast, or previous one, I should say, not the last, he announced officially that this is Final Tap would be the next game. Right. And since then, not so much news on the progress of that. Yes, I reached out to Mike earlier today and he told me they are full speed ahead, making assemblies and boards to fill orders they already received from various home-paying agents all over the world. all over the world. Obviously, there's a couple of distributors, Nitro in Canada, I believe, RS Pinball in Austria, and there's a few more. Sorry if I can't think of who else to name. Highway Pinball in Australia, I think. Yeah, and I'm not sure whether Kingpin Games in America is also, or Pinball Star Amusements. Forgive me if you're not a distributor, or if you're a distributor and I forgot your name. But, so the first orders have been coming in, which is interesting, as nobody has seen the game yet. But apparently there's a lot of trust that it will be a fun game. And, well, like Micah mentioned, they're making assemblies and boards. And he did show a couple of photos on which general illumination LED boards are assembled or soldered together so that they can light up the game once installed. and if you see those pictures, what you see is a sort of a PCB with, I think it's rows of 10 by 10, so 100 little circuit boards, I suppose, with LEDs mounted on them. I guess they all get snapped off into individual boards and then screwed onto the playfield and wired in. Yes, that's the idea Because it makes no sense to have 100 LEDs That would be very bright So that's the only news so far From Homepin But I suppose it's good news And hopefully we get to See what the game looks like Very soon Yeah, before the end of the year It would be nice Okay, so let's move on Let's head back to the US And up to the North and talk about our good friend Spooky Pinball. Yes. Well, they did not put out that many updates, although they are intending to do more updates on social media. Turns out, according to their latest post, they are currently manufacturing five to six games a day in a four-day week, but they are planning to increase that to 40 games a week, which is like 10 a day over the course of the next four months and that's quite an increase I would say I would say yeah absolutely yes so that's going from a potential of 24 games over a four day week up to 40 so yeah almost a doubling but they are still hiring for all positions and so I guess that's probably going to depend on them them finding staff to work and produce those extra games. If you are interested in working for Spooky Pinball, as I say, they are hiring. The work is Monday to Thursday, 10-hour days from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. notionally. Right, so if that suits you, and I suspect they will all be roles that involve you being in Benton, Wisconsin. So if that's something which appeals to you, get in touch with Spooky Pinball. Right, yeah. And they also announced a code update for Halloween, which will become available October 1st, which is today. I just checked on the spooky Facebook page. It hasn't been announced there yet, other than that it would be coming today. But apparently this update will include 15 new clips from the movie, They are going for 19 in total But 15 have already been approved So that's going to be a big update For those that already have the game And a code update for Ultraman Is also expected later this month Which is the month of October of course Yes, and they're planning to work on new code For those games for the next 12 months So we can expect to see lots of updates and we'll obviously inform you about them here and detail how the game is developing over that time. Yes. Another interesting little fact, I suppose. It turns out that some or one of the inserts on Halloween appears to be smaller than the text that it's supposed to light up. the company is currently looking into how they can solve that, like either changing the artwork or changing the insert yes, that's probably not something you tend to notice unless you play the game in a really darkened room and then can't see what it says on it yeah, so I think it was just two letters I'm not even sure what the word was let's say it said multiball and then the double L at the end of ball was falling outside the insert and didn't light up so it lit up it would say multi-bar so um not not the the the biggest issue but something it would be nice to uh to have it sorted out and they're looking into it so right okay well i think that's about it for spooky i don't think we have anything anything else coming from from them yet so let's move over to your your side of the pond, or several ponds, and what's happening at Dutch Pinball with the Big Lebowski? Well, they're still steadily moving forward, as Barry mentioned earlier today when I texted with him. And not much other news to report, although you apparently found notice from Koon, their programmer. There is a software update coming that addresses a couple of bug fixes that came into play, no pun intended, after the previous code update of last month. Oh, yeah, I think it's actually already available. It came out just yesterday, the 30th of September. It's version 0.57, the previous one, which you also told about was 0.56, so it's a minor. increment on that. They fixed a couple of issues. There was a problem with the power supply making a clicking noise, which I think is now sorted out, and people have mentioned about how the bowling mechanism was making quite a lot of noise in the game, and that's now been changed, so it uses the motor somewhat less, and the noise is subsequently rather lower as well in volume. And and changed the ball search as well, so the common places where the ball was liable to get stuck are triggered first, and fixed a couple of minor bugs as well. So, you know, not major changes, but, you know, nice that Korn was able to get those fixed pretty quickly and get that new update out, I'd say, at the time that we were recording this, 1st of October. It's not even publicised on their page, on their website, or on their Facebook page. It was just on the pin side, I have to notice it. Right, okay. And it's interesting to note that I don't think we should expect any minor updates for the Big Lebowski anytime soon, as the goal is that the next update should be 1.0. Right. Which is a rather big update, I suppose, that should include all the modes, the wizard modes and everything. Yes. So they're working on that But I don't expect that to be ready In a couple of months So let's give them time They're still building games And I'm happy for that as well And that's all the news from Dutch Pinball at the moment Okay so Let's move to Multimorphic Of course they've got a couple of Small items of news this month The first of which being that they've Added wireless updating of game code previously Wi-Fi if I'm not mistaken yes that's right previously you would have to plug in a USB stick in order to put new game code on them but now you can do it over Wi-Fi so that seems to be the way that companies are going so that's good news if you have a P3 machine and want to update your game code speaking of which there is a code update for one of those games, Slaughter's Apprentice actually the most recent one last month. Yep, as you would expect. Early days for that game, so updates will be coming, I would say thick and fast, but they're becoming not infrequently, and if you have the wireless data software in your P3 game, you'll be able to do that wirelessly, and I haven't looked into exactly how it works, but it might be able to even update itself automatically without any intervention, which would be an option. You would hope. Like magic! Yeah, wow, very appropriate. Yeah, it's very good. Yeah. As I said, only a couple of small items, but wireless updating is a nice feature to have, and well done to everyone who's been working on that at Multimorphic. Right. And speaking of well done, compliments to you for our next topic, which is the pinball adventures. You discovered something that I had not discovered yet, so kudos to you on that one. What can you tell us? Well, we've mentioned several times how the Pinball Adventures, and you remember there's a company which is developing the Punny Factory, and has a whole list of other titles that they say are in the pipeline. Elements and there's this Fushi Gang coming. Yeah, none of which have actually been produced yet. And we were wondering what had happened, because their website just says, new website coming soon, all their Facebook stuff disappeared. Actually, pretty much all their social media stuff had gone. quite a red flag yeah you'd think so but apparently I was told that they are still updating on Instagram they have an Instagram account pinballadventures and if you go on there you can see pictures posted, one picture at a time but it's I think the last one was from four days ago and then a week ago they're doing fairly regular updates on there showing limited progress on the putty factory they're still asking for some or asking some fairly fundamental questions like, you know, which type of cabinet do you prefer? Do you prefer the printed one or do you prefer the embossed cabinet? Because we saw this when Plenty Factory was first announced a long time ago. They were going to offer the cabinet in different styles. I think they're coming down to one or the other, and people will get to tell them which one they prefer. The only thing on there, I suppose, which is actually that interesting, is that they say the Punny Factory has 250 different puns in the game code, of which a maximum of 50 will be used in any game, any one game. So they say there's plenty of variety in there. So you shouldn't be seeing the same ones over and over if they've got that many. Okay. Although I have to say, if those are the puns that you see on their Instagram account, I'm not sure what to think of it. Yeah, some are a bit of a stretch, but hey, you know, they'll probably just flash up fairly quickly and you probably won't even notice what most of them were unless they've actually written them out for you. You don't have to spend time working them out. But it's nice that they are producing updates. So, yeah, Instagram is probably your place if you want to keep an eye on what Pinball Adventures are up to with the Puny Factory. Right. Okay. Since we're crossing the globe, let's head over to our friends at Haggis Pinball in Australia. What can you tell us? Well, basically nothing. I was able to find out. Last month's fairly comprehensive video showing the operation they set up in Australia to build the, well, first of all the Celts game and then the Fathom revisited. there's been pretty much a silence from Damien and the team down there so I haven't got anything to report from them unless you have no I don't either then let's move on to other news I suppose there's two topics to address one and then we get into our interview with Rob Lourdes so stay tuned for that but one of the rather, I suppose you can call it exciting and sad at the same time events happening the past month was of course the Museum of Pinball auctioning off their entire collection of pinball and video games yes, it's a sad sight to see having, you know, you and I have been there and had a chance to enjoy and be amazed at the scope of the collection that was there to see it all gone. Every single machine there has been auctioned off. I'm not saying they were all necessarily sold. I think they all went somewhere, but that place has to be cleared out in time for this month when the cannabis farm is moving in. So it was a real shame to see all those go under the hammer. They went off in two events, each three days long, There was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday three weeks ago, and Friday, Saturday, Sunday last week as well, where, yeah, it was fairly evenly split in terms of the value of the game, or at least the price of which the game sold for across the two auctions. But I think everybody in the pinball side, certainly, was gobsmacked at the prices some of these games were going for. Yeah, those were usually not the prices that I pay for games. I don't think they're the prices many people pay for them. And I think quite a lot of people were looking at their collections with different eyes this time, thinking, well, wow, if all those games sell for that kind of money, then mine must be worth that kind of money. And we've seen that as well in prices for items for sale. People have said, well, this sells at the Museum of Pinball for this amount of money, so mine must be worth that amount of money. I think that's a good reference. I'm afraid a lot of people that bought games from the Museum of Pimmo will end up being disappointed as some of the games were not in the greatest shape. Yeah, I think it's kind of assumed that if it's a museum, it must be museum quality and therefore must be pristine and exhibit worthy. I don't think that's the case at all. No, no. obviously no disrespect to anybody but obviously these games were put on display and they were working multiple technicians sometimes on a game each with his own ways of fixing a machine which not always benefits the game I suppose again no disrespect because obviously these were all volunteers but I do remember that some of the games did not play that well. And it could be a matter of taste as well. But if you bought a, well, let's say a $10,000 game, you expect to receive a good functional playing game that will bring you a lot of joy. Yeah, especially if you could have bought that same game for $5,000 from somewhere else, that wasn't the Museum of Himmel. Right, yeah, that was the most surprising thing, but I suppose that's the benefit of getting nationwide or even international exposure to such a large collection being arched off. I mean, even the New York Times wrote about it. Yeah, it was on CNN. It was covered nationally, as you say, and internationally. So it was no surprise that there were an awful lot of eyes watching the Captain's Warehouse auction, auction warehouse I should say, website to see how it's going. Yeah, I was rather surprised to see the most expensive item being sold. Well, actually I was surprised at the price that several items were sold for. But there is this game called Rat Race which is a prototype that Williams made. It's a sort of a game with a playfield that can with a joystick you can angle in every direction. Basically you have to make the ball follow a certain path. It's almost like one of those little kids toys that you get in a Christmas cracker or in a dollar toy shop or something where you steer the ball around a maze and try to go through various lanes and avoid dropping into certain holes, you know, just holding your hand, but it's an arcade cocktail-sized game. Right, yeah, and the fact that you're operating it with a joystick and not necessarily physically touching the edges of the playbill makes it rather more difficult, but the story that I understand is that Williams built ten test games, put them on location and they earned terribly. Nobody liked it. So the whole idea was abandoned. And one of those ten games ended up in the Museum of Pinball and it sold for, if I'm not mistaken, over $40,000 hammer price and then taxes added to it resulting in $51,000. That's correct. That was the most expensive lot there, and the lot number was 1,340. So you can see there were a lot of items for sale. But yes, it was $40,500 was the hammer price. And yeah, there was one of those games in the UK at one point, and I think somebody was offered a very large sum of money to send it to the US, and it might even be the same machine. I don't know. But I played it over here. I didn't think it was anything great, but it's rarity value, I suppose. Yeah, I suppose so too. So the good news is if you have one of those games because it just got a lot more expensive. Yeah, well, valuable anyway. And the second most expensive game at the auction, the second highest price for each, was actually for a very modern game. It was the Pirates of the Caribbean Collector's Edition from Jersey Jack Pimble, which is obviously not in production anymore. so if you wanted one and you missed out, you'd have to buy one from someone who had it. But that went under the hammer for $32,000. When you add the buyer's premium and tax onto it, it takes it to $40,686. So $40,000 for a Pirates of the Caribbean Collector's Edition. Right, and that was... Do you know whether that was the free disc? initial prototype or I don't believe it was I think it was a standard in box game didn't say it was a proto game right so and then the runner up the third third runner up being Elvira's House of Horror Horror yeah really tongue twisting that one yeah another collected edition game with the with a bit of Elvira's sofa material included with it that sold for $26,000 with a total price after buy premium and tax of over $33,000. So these are the kind of prices which people were paying. And if you're looking at the, let's say, electromechanical games, because there were quite a few electromechanical games, I think on average, I'd say they probably sold like for $1,500 to $2,500 a piece. There were some very rare electromechanical games, I'll definitely admit that, but there were also games that shouldn't be that difficult to find, and still raised or went down for a price that I have difficulty selling it for. Yeah, like an El Toro, for instance. I mean, that sold for $2,000, total price $2,500. Sky Kings was the same, I'm thinking like a King Tut, sold for $2,600 before tax and buyers premium. I don't think there was much really that was going below $1,500 there. I think the cheapest game that was sold went for $1,000, where you have to keep in mind that I think the lowest bid that you could do on a game was $500 and then it immediately increased to $1,000. You couldn't jump up $100 or something like that. It was only once the games were Orchard of Life. Yeah, it varied, but depending on, I think, if they were like the $20,000 games, they would go up in the $500. if they were much lower, they would take smaller bids, smaller increments on the Horeham, I think. Anyway, the total raise was $27 million, including the buyer's premium and tax, $5.4 million to the museum. I don't know what the museum pays captains' auctions for their services. I mean, the captains' auctions take the buyer's premium, so they get a nice, I guess, almost, well, a million and a half, I'd have thought, out of that, or a million two. It's by the Notch and Company too. Yeah, it's not a bad business to be in, plus whatever the museum paid them. I don't know whether the museum did pay them anything, but who knows. But it was, yeah, I mean, I think at the start the captains said they reckoned it would be about seven million and they were on the money, literally, with that. Right, okay. And if you want to get all the prices and report on what happened, then check out the Pinball News article that lists every day's auction prices and the totals as well. Right, okay. And what's also interesting to note is that John Weeks, the owner of the Museum of Pinball, or previous owner of the Museum of Pinball, I should say, will be doing a seminar, a Q&A, where he will be talking about the Museum of Pimble and the recent auction at the Pimble Expo show, which is later this month. Yeah. Speaking of which, I think this would be a good bridge to cross over to our interview with... That's what I was going to say. Yeah. Ross Burke, the organiser of Pimble Expo. If anyone can tell us what's going to be going on, it will be him. So, yeah, let's go over to Rob, and he can tell us all about the events. Have you guys seen our seminars for this year yet? Yeah, absolutely. At the schedule right now. Yeah. I mean, the seminars, every year, you know, I think I've reached a new high. But if you look at it this year, this is the first time in Expo history I've had seminars throughout every day every lunch normally I have a break for lunch there's no break to do lunch I mean there is so much going on it's unbelievable I would like to say I'm almost glad I'm not there because I know that the exact opposite is true but I can imagine if I was there and trying to cover all these seminars it would be, well, it would be impossible almost. Well, Jonathan, knowing me, maybe the way you do is, I don't take a second-hand look at anything. I want to go all the way in everything I do. It's just my nature, how I'm wired. Right. I always try to one-up myself every year even, you know. Right. This was great. I'll do it later next year. It seems to me that you're... Is there a way to... Is adding more tape? No, I don't think so. More days. It's the only way I can fit more stuff on. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's crazy. But, you know, I enjoy it because a lot of people are really interesting, and they're a part of the hobby. And for me, what makes this year especially interesting is I've pulled out a lot of guys that I bet through Facebook that typically aren even attendees of Expo so to me that was a real fun part of the show doing it The one guy in particular that okay the one guy in particular that I was really excited to get, he goes by the name of Rocket Bow Wow. Yeah, sounds like the dog's excited. Yeah, let me find this guy. His name real quickly here. Hold on, guys. I've met so many people, but yet I can't remember their names. Well, that's going to be the, I mean, missing out on the seminars is one thing for us. But we hope we are able to watch these online. But missing out on all the people that you usually run into, have a chat with. Yes. That's the toughest part. So here he is. It's Andy Sokol. Oh, yeah, I was just looking at him. About 3D printing? Yeah. So what happened was he had a presentation he did on Facebook earlier in the year, and it was just on the posts. And he created posts, normal posts are either red or white. Yeah. And he made the posts sort of like wood-looking posts, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. I mean, but that's just the beginning of it. So I told him, I said, you are onto something here. I said, you've got to keep going with this. So then he's made a tremendous amount of a variety of the credit buttons. And the credit buttons match the theme of the pinball machine. So that is really cool. And then he's doing the beehive plunger shooters. Like they have on the old gauntlet games. Yeah. No, they're either solid red or solid white. But what he's doing now, he's made them multi-colored. Red, white, blue, gold. And, you know, I guess whatever the theme of the game is, he's going to do it. Now, when I talked to him recently, back to the post again, he's making posts that look like bowling pins. With the idea going, like, the Valley Strikes the Spares, or the earlier gobbledygook game, Bowling Queen. Yeah, or the 300. yeah so you know he's just he's adding another mod dimension that no one's really talked about before but they really are fun yeah and it's easy to easy to implement in your game as well exactly so he's going to be there showing all his stuff i'm especially excited about that because it's something new and different i mean people make toppers and people do the the side mirrors and this and this and that, but Vince was really different. It's fun, and it's not, you know, too pricey. Right. So he's the one guy, and, of course, it's always a pleasure to see Pat Lawler come back. We did his Fireside Chat. He's always been a big attraction for this show. And, you know, this is the year that we're going to have all the major manufacturers, but, you know, American Pinball, you know, with Dave Vicks now working for them. It really increased and expanded what they have done and what they will be doing and the games they're coming out with. Now, you're also expanding the show into the realm of video games and retro games as well. How did that come about? Well, you know, I'm seeing more and more of the shows that are similar to Pinball X-Bone, but I see more and more shows integrating other aspects of the video and gaming industry. And as you know, for the past couple of years, we've had Doc Mac come in here from Galloping Ghosts with his video games, and they were received well. As a matter of fact, he's bringing 50 games this year. But my son collects the retro stuff, the old GameCube and Dreamcast and N64, some of the systems. and we've gone to a lot of their shows and there's a lot of energy in their shows and a lot of the games that were developed for that industry were recreated in a commercial form, you know, by the major manufacturers, whether it be Williams or Ballet or, I'm sorry, Williams or Stern or whatever. They have versions of these same handheld games. So, you know, the artists kind of intermingled and they produce some of the games for the video games and the video sector of it. So it just seems like it's one big happy family to include them. So this year we're going to have between eight and ten vendors on that retro video game aspect of it. And we'll see how it goes. You know, I don't want to turn the show into a retro show by no means. But there'll be one little section of it for those people that are into that. and it's a counterculture that's a little bit similar to the video game guys. So they're kind of on the same page. So we have a couple of seminars on that part of that industry. So for those people that will be there, it should be interesting. As a side note, one of the guys that does the, they call it the International Video Hall of Fame. Oh, yeah. but they are going to be inducting, it's going to be in print, so it's no secret, but they're going to be inducting Gary Stern. Yes, yes. Into the video hall of fame. Yeah, you know, that's intriguing to me. A long time since Gary Stern did a video game. Well, he probably does. The old Stern produced a lot of it. Well, that's a long time ago, so. So, I mean, I've got a lot of them, but, you know, when you see some of these things, You know, it brings back a lot of memories for him and his family because they were a big part of that industry when it was really hot in the 80s. Right. Okay. Well, that's interesting. But I'm just trying to stick here. You know, Stern has got so many seminars. Starting at 4 o'clock, Stern is just going nuts with all those seminars. One guy who did bow out was Doug Watson. He was going to be speaking this year, but because of COVID, he was concerned about it, so he bowed out. But as quickly as he bowed out, I put some new speakers in his place. And for me, as many speakers as we got, if someone else reached out to me and said, hey, I want to speak, it's like you're walking through the Utah where I'm going to put you. So in this case, it was interesting. But Doug bowed out like on a Monday, and then Wednesday, not knowing that, the guys from the homebrew community reached out to me and asked if they could speak. so I got a hold of Mark Sittian and Ryan McQuaid they're right there man they can't wait to talk about their stuff the seminar program is really packed why don't you tell about the number of games that's being brought into the show because you're in a new location you're going to Schaumburg which will be the first time at the Renaissance Hotel PEC seminar program. What else is there to do if people are not attending seminars? Well, we are having, I myself am bringing over 100 games. Sterling's Promise between 40 to 60. Jersey Jacks is 20 to 30. American Pinball around 20. So that's all I know. You have to realize that a lot of people come here, and the last thing they show, bring in games with them. But I've been committed by phone. A lot more games are coming in, almost to the point where I'm not sure where I'm going to put them. So this year's show, between the seminars, the games coming in, the speakers, and the tournaments coming in, which I'll speak about in a second, it's got to be at an all-time high. And we have advertised so much, not only through Facebook and other social media, but also radio in the Chicagoland area and billboards in the Chicagoland area. and finally I did something I've never done before but between three magazines Sports Illustrated Gentleman's Quarterly and People's Magazine I'm advertising full page ads in all three of those publications which they claim will reach over 1 million eyes wow looking at the results of the recent banning auction it sure helps if you get the New York Times involved as well. So here's a suggestion for you. Yeah, well, I know that the guys down there at the Bain Museum, including Chris Campbell with the Captain's Auction Group, he had put posts on his website, and he's sending out email blasts to his customer base about the expo. Okay. Wow, that's something. Yeah, plus, you know, John Weeks, the guy that ran the Bain Museum, He will be speaking on our show. Yeah, that's especially interesting. Yeah, that would be very interesting. Now, one of the things that you touched on just now was people who were concerned about COVID and keeping safe. What sort of assurances or comfort can you give to people that are a little concerned about coming to a large public gathering like Pinball Expo, that they will be safe and that all relevant measures will be taken to keep them that way? Yep. You know, we're following the protocols set up by Cook County. So right now, in the Chicago area, it's a mask event. You must wear a mask. So there'll be masks everywhere. There'll be mask stations. We'll bring a loaded mask down, and there'll be sanitation stations. We sell the sanitation, you know, the alcohol-based. Yeah. We'll have multiple stations for that throughout the location. And we'll do our best to wipe down the game. I mean, it gets to a point where you try to do everything every minute of every day. Just when you think you do everything covered, someone says, hey, you didn't clean that game in the past two hours. So, you know, we try to be as diligent as we can. But we just hope that we catch everything and do everything that we need to do to make everybody feel safe. Okay. Well, one other thing which I noticed while looking on the website was it said that to get the group rate on hotel reservations, they need to be made before Monday the 11th of October. Is that still correct? Do people have just a few days now in order to get their hotel reservations in if they haven't already done them? to get that special rate, yes. I mean, otherwise it may be ruined, but the pricing will go up. So there is still time to get it. And, you know, I'm wondering if you have something else to get. Guys, the tournaments we're having this year is unprecedented. And I mention that because I have a guy coming down here that he's with the National Air Hockey Team. Now, this is something we don't normally talk about, you know, at Expo or even at any show anymore. But this guy is Chicago-based and they're going to have an air hockey tournament there. And it's not going to be crazy like a pinball tournament, but it's open to anybody, so there'll be prizes for that. Also, Bay Tech is coming down. The people that make skee-ball, they're coming down and they're having a skee-ball tournament. Again, you think it won't be major tournaments, but they're going to have it at their booth. They're also going to have a Killer Queen tournament. Now, I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with that, or Martin, are you familiar with that? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that huge, great arcade piece. Yeah. So, you know, we don't normally have this up on our show, but I saw that Killer Queen down there at Logan Hardware a couple years ago. I said, what in the world is this thing? so they're bringing two Killer Queen units down there and they're bringing up their team of people to score it so that's going to be crazy you know there's so much going on in tournaments alone is that no matter what sector of Expo you come for whether it be the tour whether it be the seminars whether it be the tournaments everything is going to be at a fiery pace man there's going to be so much happening there forget about sleeping you don't have a prayer there's no need to sleep because so much interesting things going on here and opportunities for fun and games, we had that pink quest guy from down again if you remember him scavenger hunt he had these little I don't know the name of what he's doing gnomes or whatever he's using he put them all through the place and you got to find them and whoever finds him gets in a drawing for more prizes. I mean, it's just going to be fun no matter what you do. And then Walter Day will be there with his trading card table. Yep. People will be back. And that fun with pinball, guys. Were you there last time when he came to Expo? Fun with pinball? Bow and carriage, you mean? No. Fun with Pinball is the guy that has the, he shows how the bumpers work and how the bumper works. Okay, yeah. Do you remember that guy? I think I've seen him. I can't think of his name right now. He was inside one of the halls there. I think it was Mark Gibson. Oh, right, yes. Do you guys remember him? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. He's got a website. It's like a hands-on exhibit where you can go up there and you can see how, like, a pitch and bat works. It shows the inner workings of all these components. Okay. So if people want to find out more, where should they go to look at the schedule and to get more information and to buy tickets for the show? Everything is on the website, pinballexpo.com. Let me allude to one more thing, guys. Project Pinball is coming back and those proceeds go to that charity and they claim they're going to have a massive auction this year. So that's going to be crazy. Okay. And in a good cause. In a good cause. And the people that are into these retro games they're going to have one area there with just these systems going back from the early 80's all the way. Everything from GameCube to Xbox, you know, the newer stuff, PlayStation, all these different stations or units will be on display not only to look at but to play. So, you know, I can hardly find the breath to talk about everything. It sounds like you're going to be out of breath before you even start the show. Are you going to be okay to actually be there the entire time? yeah I'm going to have to be there man it's just exciting for me to see this come together I've always done the seminars since day one and it's always been a a favorite part of Expo for me but all these people we have speaking they're interesting people and they're making the effort to come to the show so you know kudos to them there's another guy coming here for the first time that I found through the internet his name is Ryan Tanner Pets P-E-T-C-H this guy has made a slew of custom pinball cabinets. Oh, right. And I've seen pics of them. They are so over the top. It's just so cool. It's like you've never seen anywhere. Right. Okay. And what I also see looking at the seminar or at the schedule of events, people can buy into a raffle and win a Stern Pimple Machine. That's correct. So we had that last time too, and I think it's a nice little perk to come to Expo. You can buy one ticket and win, you know, who knows. I remember the old days, Tim Marley used to buy 500 bucks for the tickets. He always wanted to win these games. But, you know, it's just a little bit of everything for everyone and it's so interactive and we're getting the women more and more involved We have a women's tournament, several women's tournaments, actually. And we also have a free game. But if you look at Friday at 12 o'clock noon, Emily Brooks is going to be a moderator. She's our first woman moderator. But she's going to do a deal called Pinball Luminary Showcase. Right. And she's going to cover a group. A bunch of artists. Zombie Yeti is there, Randy Martinez will be there, Ryan Cravens, and Bill Brooks. Now, Bill Brooks is your husband, but, you know, I met them years ago in Fargo, North Dakota. They have a company called Fargo Pinball. It was like a pinball club for the local community. And we hit it off, had a good time. I've seen them several times since. But this Emily Brooks is a very interesting lady. She is involved in so many things in their local community. plus she's what they call a Mrs. North Dakota. You know, the beauty pageant things, they have Miss Iowa, Miss Illinois, Miss this, Miss that. Well, she's a Mrs. North Dakota. Okay. Seems a little contradictory, but okay. Yeah. They have the older one, but they've gone through the first phases of Miss, you know, being single in these pageants. Do they also have a Mr. North Dakota? Well, we haven't seen that yet. We'll have to ask Donald Trump about that one. Are you thinking of applying, Jonathan? No, I'm not in North Dakota. Oh, not yet. No. Yeah, but we've got to live through the UK. We'll get you there, bud. Okay, so if people want to buy tickets, they buy them at the show now, is that right? They can buy them through the internet or they can buy them at the show, yeah. and there'll be tickets available all the time there. The tour, of course, is always a major attraction. And there's so much happening, guys. My head spins this year. I don't know why. But people just miss interacting with people. They miss coming to the shows. I know the shows are slowly coming back, which is exciting. and it's just unfortunate about this crazy mass thing especially for those people coming out of Europe that they've cut you guys off in November, how they picked November I'll never know it's annoying but anyway I feel very envious of all those people who can make it and the action kicks off at I guess at 7 o'clock on Wednesday night with your regular bumper blast welcome party but of course everything's going to be different being in the new venue. How is that working out? What improvements does that give you, apart from the extra space, being in the Renaissance as opposed to the Western? Yeah, excellent question. So two years ago, you know, the Western had approximately 25,000 or 28,000 square feet of space, and that was the whole hotel there. this year we've gone from 28,000 square feet to 66,000 square feet over double the size right it's incredible what this also means is everybody will be under one roof so all this action will be happening continuously and we won't separate you know any other rooms like Club with Pinball was in one room in the one year and then Stern had their party in one room so this year everything is going to all happen in one room it's going to be electrifying I guess to say the least and any other features of the hotel? because one thing that was always a problem with the West End was it was very much cut off from other attractions and other facilities. Is the Renaissance in a better place for that, being in Schomburg? Yeah. Let me say one more thing before I forget. But Ron Coon, who gives that talk Friday morning. Yeah, first one of the day. Coffee shop talk, yeah. He will be bringing his DJ equipment again. So he'll be there Wednesday night rocking and rolling. and he's also coming back Saturday night. So it's Halloween around the corner there, so we're going to have a festive evening Saturday night with music and excitement from him. So that's going on. To answer your question, though, Schaumburg, where the hotel is, is the center of action of multiple restaurants, multiple activities to do. There's a shopping area there, Westfield Ball. this is, you know, Mark shopping there. Yeah, we've been there. Yeah. So that's special. Tons of restaurants around there, like I said, and a lot to do. So, you know, as I used to say in the early years, the Everything for Everyone show, there's just so much going on at this year's show. And even the website, you guys have to admit, it's quite expansive compared to what it was in the past. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah, there's a lot of information on there. make it very informative and just to give an idea you know, it's a lot of work putting these shows on that you guys can imagine and even the guys in the UK you guys are the ones I really admire the most because accessibility of games in Europe has got to be a whole lot harder than here in America so you know, it's just amazing you guys can do what you do but it really breaks my heart, of course, that Europe has cut off from the show this year. Not only Europe, I suppose Asia as well. Oh, yeah. The one guy, Oscar, the guy from Spain. Oh, my gosh. You would have thought the guy was, you know, didn't break down in tears, but darn close to it. He just broke his heart. They had this November 1st cutoff. I mean, all you guys. I mean, this is the chance to see your friends and to connect and for you guys to just to see everybody firsthand and get some tidbits that no one knows about. You know, everyone suffers from this. Yeah. Oh, well. It's out of our hands, I suppose. Now, let me ask you a question. Can I come to Europe? Yes, you can. Yeah. Well, you can certainly come to the U.K. It's fine for Americans to come in and go back, but not the other way around. It's ridiculous. By the way, once again, we'll be bringing the Spanish games to Expo, so people had a good time with those last time. Oh, yeah, that was fun. I saw actually quite a few games I've never seen before and some very interesting ones. Yeah, it is interesting. The homebrew guys will be back, so those games are always fun as well. Oh, yeah. Your talent will be spotted. That's right. Yeah, they end up being signed up by major companies quite often. Yeah, exactly right. Okay. Well, thank you for your time, Rob. Yes, thank you, Rob. To come on our show and tell us a little bit about what's in store for people attending Pinball Expo. For those curious, let me remind you of the dates. It starts October 27th in the evening with the Bumper Blast Party. And it continues until Saturday, October 30th. And Teardown will continue until Sunday, October 31st. But the main program and the tournament will continue also until that day. And the main program closes Saturday, October 30th. So that's four days of Pinball Expo fun. And as a previous attendee, I can say, well worth attending. So if you are in the possibility to go, unlike us, then I recommend go there, play pinball, meet new people, make new friends and enjoy the new locations as well which was your first view there I would also want to mention of course the autograph station that's always a fun part for me and we've got we have more people coming this year than we've ever had so that's something else would be always exciting for me to have that great, ok, thank you very much Rob Burke thank you Martin, thank you I'm going to miss you guys. Martin, you're my number one AV guy. My eyes will be crying every day when I'll say, Martin. Mine too. Martin, maybe we can consider burning your fingerprints and I can put on some other person's fingerprints on you. I like your thinking. We'll see what we can work out. All right, guys. Be safe and thank you for reaching out. Well, there you have it. Rob Burke at Simple Expo. I believe Rob was calling from his cell phone And his wifi reception may not have been That well So there were a couple of hiccups Yeah, we apologize for that Never mind You were able to get the Key points I think out of that interview Which I won't bother recapping Because I think Rob does it better than I do Right, okay So yeah And that sums it up for recap of September and looking forward to Pinball Expo which is October 27th to 30th if you're going there and join the show we're very jealous that you get to go and we don't still never mind I'm hoping to be able to do some coverage of it anyway but we'll have more details of that nearer the time once we actually get there and things are absolutely confirmed. Other than that, I'm still hoping to get over to the US in November, and if I can't get to the Midwest Gaming Classic, which you and I were both scheduled to go to, that's right at the start of the month, then maybe get to some other events like the Houston show, and maybe IAFA over in Florida, and maybe, well, who knows, might make it up to New Robert Englunds for a certain famed pinball show up there. But nothing confirmed yet. We'll work on that, and I'll let you know the details at the end of October. Right, okay. So, well, that sums it up for this recap. My name is Jonathan Hewson of Pinball Magazine. Thank you for your attention. Martin, do you have anything to add? No, I'll just say thank you for all the nice comments. We went to the UK show and also comments that have been posted online about various coverage and how much people enjoy this pin cast. And it's always nice to get good feedback and, you know, if it's got suggestions as well. So keep that coming in. And we look forward to seeing you again in a month's time when we'll be looking back on all the events in the pinball world throughout October 2021. which should be an exciting month so stay tuned and we hope to report to you early next month ok until then from us goodbye

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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