# Episode 48 - Sys 11 vs. Bomber Crew

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2017-11-19  
**Duration:** 76m 23s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-48

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## Analysis

Eclectic Gamers hosts Dennis and Tony discuss recent pinball news including Guardians of the Galaxy updates (four licensed songs confirmed), Dutch Pinball's Chinese manufacturing, and Highway Pinball's new Alien LE production. They announce an upcoming special episode on electromechanical pinball with Nick's North American Pinball Tour. The episode concludes with their System 11 tournament results (Whirlwind wins) and begins a ranked discussion of their top five System 11 games.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Guardians of the Galaxy by Stern will feature four licensed pop songs, up from the originally announced two — _Dennis reports confirmed songs include 'Cherry Bomb' and 'Hooked on a Feeling,' with two others being negotiated or not yet announced_
- [MEDIUM] Dutch Pinball's Chinese-manufactured Big Lebowski prototypes performed similarly to Dutch-built originals at the Dutch Pinball Open — _Dennis notes test run results and that Dutch Pinball does not expect shipments this year but hopes for finalized prototypes before January_
- [HIGH] Highway Pinball is producing new Alien Pinball machines in multiple editions including limited editions — _Dennis reports Facebook announcements and notes some final design details remain unclear to the community_
- [HIGH] System 11 was a 30-game series spanning the Williams/Midway branded era after their Bally Midway acquisition — _Dennis provides historical context on System 11's production scale and branding during Williams' dominance_
- [HIGH] Transporter the Rescue is the least-produced System 11 with over 800 units; Whirlwind had over 7,000 units — _Dennis cites production numbers to contextualize System 11's market success and availability_
- [HIGH] John Norris designed two unbuilt street-level games before Gottlieb terminated the street-level experiment — _Norris provided comment on Pinball News article detailing two games: Tic Tac Lotto (with pop-up tic-tac-toe feature) and a prototype that became Q-Ball Wizard_
- [HIGH] Malcolm Young, founding member and guitarist of AC/DC, died on November 18th at age 64 — _Tony mentions this as breaking news relevant to AC/DC pinball machine community interest_
- [HIGH] System 11 represents a transition from simpler to complex pinball games, introducing multi-level features, ramps, and rule complexity requiring memorization — _Dennis explains System 11's significance as a bridge era between early solid-state and DMD complexity_

### Notable Quotes

> "I just really enjoy taxing... but I like a lot about what whirlwind does, I think it's more feature-wise it's more impressive, I just don't think it shoots quite as well"
> — **Dennis**, ~1:07:00
> _Explains the tension between feature complexity and shot quality in System 11 game evaluation; Whirlwind ultimately won the tournament vote_

> "System 11 marks a transition from simpler games to complex games... it's the bridge to the DMD era"
> — **Dennis**, ~1:10:30
> _Core thesis on System 11's historical and design significance in pinball evolution_

> "If you've got money that you want to put aside and you want to get a pinball machine, you don't just want a beater... System 11 gives you choices, whereas most decent DMD games are going to run $2,000 or more"
> — **Dennis**, ~1:12:00
> _Highlights System 11's affordability advantage for collectors seeking depth without premium pricing_

> "They want to hear – it needs to be like a race. They want us to fight about it."
> — **Tony**, ~1:16:00
> _Acknowledges audience preference for competitive debate format over sequential presentation_

> "I don't have a ton of time on Radical but it's got a lot of flippers, it's got a lot of shots... it's one where the flippers work really well"
> — **Tony**, ~1:19:00
> _Sets up Tony's top-five argument with specific shot geometry and flipper design praise_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Eclectic Gamers Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by Dennis and Tony discussing pinball and video games; this is episode 48, recorded November 19th |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; conducted research on street-level pinball games and published article on Pinball News; organizing System 11 tournament |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; participated in Pizza West tournament; contributing System 11 top-five rankings |
| Nick's North American Pinball Tour | organization | Organization focused on electromechanical pinball machines; hosting Dennis and Tony for upcoming special podcast episode |
| Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Guardians of the Galaxy pinball machine with four licensed songs announced |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | game | Stern Pinball machine with gameplay reveal on November 20th at 6pm Central; confirmed to feature four licensed pop songs including 'Cherry Bomb' and 'Hooked on a Feeling' |
| Dutch Pinball | company | Contract manufacturer with China facility; manufacturing Big Lebowski prototypes tested at Dutch Pinball Open |
| Big Lebowski | game | Dutch Pinball machine in development; Chinese prototypes tested, no shipments expected in 2023 but finalized prototypes hoped before January |
| Highway Pinball | company | Manufacturer producing Alien Pinball in multiple editions including limited editions; has shipped units to pre-order distributors |
| Alien | game | Highway Pinball machine with second production batch including limited edition versions in development |
| John Norris | person | Pinball designer who designed multiple street-level Gottlieb games; provided comment on Pinball News article detailing Tic Tac Lotto and Q-Ball Wizard origins |
| Pinball News | organization | Published Dennis's article on street-level pinball games; featured John Norris commentary on unreleased designs |
| Jake Danzig | person | Podcast listener and first iTunes reviewer; attended Pizza West tournament with Dennis and Tony |
| Malcolm Young | person | Founding member and guitarist of AC/DC; died November 18th at age 64; relevant to AC/DC pinball machine community |
| Q-Ball Wizard | game | Gottlieb Premiere game from 1992; originally designed as street-level game before being repurposed with eight-ball device and ramp additions |
| Whirlwind | game | System 11 tournament winner with 66.5% of votes; over 7,000 units produced; Williams machine |
| Taxi | game | System 11 game runner-up in tournament; Williams machine favored by both hosts for shot quality |
| Radical | game | System 11 game; Tony's number five pick for fast-paced gameplay and shot geometry despite having more than three flippers |
| Bonsai Run | game | System 11 game with backboard gameplay feature; Dennis's number five pick |
| Elvira and the Party Monsters | game | System 11 game; Dennis's number four pick with strong layout and ball lock mechanics despite higher secondary market pricing |
| The 403 Club | organization | Pinball location in Dennis and Tony's area featuring System 11 games and other machines; hosts tournaments |
| Pinball Arcade | product | Digital pinball platform where many System 11 games are playable |
| AC/DC | game | Stern Pinball machine referenced in context of Malcolm Young's death; noted as performing well with vault editions |

### Topics

- **Primary:** System 11 tournament results and analysis, Upcoming electromechanical pinball special episode, Guardians of the Galaxy licensed songs announcement, System 11 game design characteristics and era significance
- **Secondary:** Dutch Pinball manufacturing and production status, Highway Pinball Alien machine production, Street-level pinball game history and research
- **Mentioned:** Host personal gaming and entertainment consumption

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Hosts express genuine enthusiasm for System 11 games, appreciation for research and community feedback, and optimism about upcoming content. Skepticism reserved for Dutch Pinball and Highway Pinball production capacity and timelines. Overall tone is friendly, collaborative, and engaged with the pinball community.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Highway Pinball maintains cash flow from recent Alien Pinball shipments to pre-order distributors, suggesting operational continuity (confidence: medium) — Dennis notes Highway has shipped Alien pins to newer purchasers with pre-orders through distributors, indicating ongoing revenue
- **[community_signal]** Pinball News article on street-level games generated direct feedback from designer John Norris with previously unknown information (confidence: high) — Norris commented on Pinball News article revealing two unreleased street-level designs: Tic Tac Lotto and Q-Ball Wizard prototype
- **[event_signal]** Multiple pinball podcasts converging on System 11 discussion topics during same period (confidence: medium) — Dennis notes Head to Head Pinball Podcast and another unnamed podcast also covering System 11 content, suggesting emergent community focus
- **[content_signal]** Podcast planning special electromechanical pinball episode with Nick's North American Pinball Tour scheduled for near-term release (confidence: high) — Dennis and Tony announce upcoming location recording with Nick's tour, with edited episode planned for quick release rather than standard two-week hold
- **[design_philosophy]** System 11 era marks transition from simple label-reading games to rules-based games requiring memorization and strategic objective completion (confidence: high) — Dennis articulates System 11 as bridge between simple and complex eras with multi-level features, ramps, and task-based gameplay
- **[event_signal]** Pizza West tournament recently completed with community participation including visiting listener Jake Danzig (confidence: high) — Dennis and Tony attended tournament yesterday with invited guest Jake Danzig; tournament results referenced as linkable resource
- **[market_signal]** System 11 games remain affordable entry point for collectors at sub-$2,000 pricing compared to DMD-era machines at $2,000+ (confidence: high) — Dennis explains System 11 affordability advantage for collectors seeking depth without premium pricing of newer eras
- **[personnel_signal]** John Norris provided historical context on unreleased street-level game designs in professional designer commentary (confidence: high) — Norris wrote comment on Pinball News article detailing Tic Tac Lotto with tic-tac-toe pop-up unit and Q-Ball Wizard repurposing details
- **[announcement]** Guardians of the Galaxy by Stern increased licensed song count from 2 to 4, with Cherry Bomb and Hooked on a Feeling confirmed (confidence: high) — Dennis reports official update with two confirmed songs and indication that other two are either pending announcement or still in licensing negotiation
- **[product_strategy]** Dutch Pinball Big Lebowski not shipping in 2023; targeting finalized prototypes before January (confidence: high) — Dennis explicitly states Dutch Pinball indicated no games shipping this year but hoping for finalized prototypes before start of January
- **[product_strategy]** System 11 games evaluated by hosts primarily on shot geometry, flipper quality, and overall play experience rather than theme or licensing (confidence: high) — Both hosts emphasize shooting feel, layout, and gameplay experience as primary evaluation criteria for their top-five rankings
- **[product_strategy]** Dennis corrected and updated information on street-level game cabinet dimensions after post-publication research (confidence: high) — Dennis measured his Silver Slugger and confirmed street-level cabinets were approximately 3.5 inches shorter in length than standard machines

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 19th. This is episode 48. I am Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to talk to you about a little bit of pinball, a little bit of video games, and this episode is going to be a little different. Yeah, probably a little short. As we noted in our last episode, it is looking like we are going to be, in a couple of days, on location with Nick of Nick's North American Pinball Tour, and we're going to talk about electromechanical pinball machines. And we're going to put that out as soon as I can get it edited after that. so assuming that doesn't fall through or anything we're going to have it's going to be a normal number but obviously we're not going to hold that for two weeks so we decided we were going to put out an episode today but then there will be another episode in probably Tuesday or Wednesday and then when you combine them together maybe the length would be around maybe a little longer than a normal episode but we just thought that would make the most sense because we do have a few things we want to cover but we don't want to go into video games in that episode and we don't want to go into pinball news that episode because we really just want to focus in on the legacy of electromechanical. So anyway, so that is that. What's been going on, Tony? Let's get our intros going, and then we're going to just keep rolling on through this. Well, I have been playing some games, but the games I've been playing have been, for the most part, other than the ones I'm going to talk about later, have been dictated by the fact that I have started watching Parks and Recreation, which I've never watched before, and I've been watching it on Netflix. So I've been playing games that I can half pay attention to or are turn-based. So I'm bouncing back and forth between the show because it went from eh in season one to halfway through season two it really picked up and now to the point where my wife actually sits at the end of the desk and watches with me while I'm watching for most of the episodes. So it's been just kind of a fun little thing. So I've been playing just little half-pay-attention games, not really deep games that require you to dig into. Other than that, I have been doing my normal work and chewing through audio books. and Andy Weir, the author who wrote The Martian, one of my favorite books of all time, and also one of my favorite audio books of all time. His newest book came out literally last Tuesday, and I sat down and I went all the way through it in a day. So that was really good. It's called Artemis, and it is very different from The Martian, But it's not like a different bad. It's just a very different kind of story than The Martian was. It's not like Armada was a very bad follow-up to Ready Player One because it was too similar but so completely different that it was just, it wasn't half as good as the first book that author put out. So this one actually was, it was really good. So I was pretty happy with it. Now I've moved into my next massive epic because the same day the newest book in the Stormlight Archive from Brandon Sanderson came out. So I'm starting to push through that. But the audio book of that one's almost 60 hours. so that'll take a while to get through yeah it'll probably take me into next week okay well you've been busy at least and I know you're going to hit on some of those games in our next segment I'm going to hit on some of the games in the next segment some games I will just say that there are some games that I'm not going to talk about but I have returned three games this week because I played them on Steam for like half an hour I'm like, wow, these games just aren't fun at all. So I just returned them on Steam. Ouch. Yeah, that's a record for me. I mean, I've returned a few games here and there in the past, but I literally was like, I'm going to try this game. Nope, I'm going to try this game. Nope, I'm going to try this game. It's a sequel to a game I love. No, it's completely different than the original game was. So it's just gone. That's unfortunate. But what have you been up to? Oh, not a lot. I had a work conference this whole last week. One time I think I ever packed a gaming console. I just don't do it anymore. I'm too tired after every day to get anything done. So I brought my Kindle. I didn't accomplish much in the way of reading. I tried to keep up on some podcasts, but I could really only listen in the mornings when I was getting ready. So that was just sort of subsumed most of that week. and the week before though I've made progress and so far this weekend made more progress in Shadow of War so I'll give an update later in the video game segment on that because I am much, much, much further in the game now. Beyond that, you and me and a couple other people went and did the Pizza West tournament yesterday and actually one of our listeners Jake Danzig is in town and he was able to make that tournament so we met him. He actually was our very first iTunes review before I even knew to ask for iTunes reviews. We had an iTunes review. Yay! Yes. Oh, by the way, leave iTunes reviews if you want. And supposedly it helps with our search algorithm. I don't quite know how that works, but that's what they say, they being everyone in the podcasting world. So anyway, that was neat. Those are like weird languages that just, I don't know, some people understand them really well, but I just know they seem like magic to me. the only thing I know is when I tweaked our podcast name so that it actually had pinball and video games in the main title we did start coming up higher on searches that's all because some people said on iTunes they they weren't finding us if they searched for mostly it's pinball because it's a smaller community with fewer podcasts so I and I did a check and on regular what I call regular podcast searching there was no problem but if I did just use the iTunes search, it didn't tend to show up at all, which was odd because pinball was in the description. But anyway, supposedly the reviews factor in a way as well. But after that one adjustment, we started popping up in the main list. So I thought it solved most of our problems. But so that's pretty much been it. Work and a little bit of pinball. And speaking of pinball, let's go ahead and move into the pinball section of the podcast. And I want to start with a little bit of news. There hasn't really been a whole lot, which is good. It'll help keep this episode light. But there were three updates that I thought we should go over. The first is Guardians of the Galaxy by Stern Pinball. They have announced, there's been a couple announcements. First, there was, they noted that there was going to be the original score music and then custom songs, but there wasn't going to be any of the soundtrack is what it sounded like when the original matrix for the features of the game came out. That's been revised. So first they said there would be two songs in, two pop songs as they called it, and now it's up to four, that there will be four songs. We don't know what all the songs will be other than Cherry Bomb and Hooked on a Feeling are the two that are confirmed. I don't know if they've decided the other two yet and they're just holding back on announcing them or they're still trying to figure out which ones they're going to get license arrangements for. So that's the news on Guardians and that the Dead Stream, Dead Flip Stream is coming soon, tomorrow maybe? I'm not quite sure. Next second news item, I have three. Big Lebowski by Dutch Pinball. They are a contract manufacturer that has the facility in China. The Chinese prototypes have had a test run now at the Dutch Pinball Open. Overall, I'd say the description was that the new models performed very similar to the performance of the original Dutch-built models. The only other thing I'm aware of is Dutch Pinball has indicated they do not expect to have any games shipping this year, but I think they're hoping to have some finalized prototypes built before the start of January. And the final piece of news that I have is on Highway Pinball, they are making the Alien Pinball machine. they claim that their second major I guess batch as you would think of it of Alien Pins is in production but this time it won't just be standard editions there they are going to build LEs I don't know if they've confirmed what everything is going to be on the limited edition models but they no one's really seen what a final one's supposed to look like is the problem so there's like some trim options and such but I'm still not wholly clear what's going on with all of that, but they actually went live with some announcements on Facebook, so that's why we know at least a little bit. Yeah, that's something. We'll see what actually ends up coming out of both of those things. I mean, we've talked at length about both companies in both situations, and I know we're both on the same basic place with them, so we'll see what happens, but I have no high hopes for either of them at this point. Yeah, I'm more skeptical on Dutch, but that's just because it's been so long since they've shipped anything, and it's unclear what money they have left, whereas Highway has sent Alien pins to newer purchasers that had pre-orders in with distributors, so they ostensibly have received cash for shipping those games out, so they still have a cash flow going on. But that's it for Pinball News Well I actually had just one Two things real quick to toss in there A. I did find it, it is tomorrow It is November 20th at 6pm Central The gameplay reveal on Guardians of the Galaxy And the other one Is just lightly touching on Pinball News But For those who Love ACDC and loved ACDC I did see where Malcolm Young died earlier this week where he was one of the founding members of ACDC. Oh, okay. I had not known that. Yeah, he was their background vocals and guitarist, and he passed on the 18th, so yesterday, actually. Very breaking news. Well, in a podcast world, very breaking. Yeah. It'll have been a week ago by the time half the people actually listened to it. But so, yeah, that's sad to hear. He was 64. It was a really good band. Still a good band. The good pinball machine. I love that pinball machine. Yep, I think they're doing probably quite well with their vault editions. I would assume so. It is one of those games that I wouldn't mind having one of. I would not turn it down. Well, that's generous of you. Okay. Well, next, some follow-up on the street level segment that I did for the last episode. I have a couple of corrections that I need to announce. The first was I made a boo-boo when I was talking. Yeah. This is the only – actually, this correction comes from me. I caught this as soon as I listened to the recording, but there was no real way to fix it. You couldn't just edit in a little thing like they do the edits for swearing on movies when they're showing them on TV where it's the really obvious, terrible edit? Well, I need to correct. I caught it when I – after I – I didn't catch it in the edit process. After I get done editing, I listen for any really egregious like dishwasher – that's not what happened with the dishwasher time we had, the dishwasher. Which, by the way, we're recording through Skype this time because we've been having this weird time compression loss thing going on with Zencaster. So if things sound different, it is because we are using a different recording approach. But anyway, so I always listen to the episode after I release it, but I don't always listen to it in a timely manner. I mean, I got to it within 24 hours. But anyway, I picked up on a word. I used the wrong name. so when I was going through the section where I talked about the MSRP and I transitioned from that to Jon Norris had an interview where he was talking about how he felt Gottlieb ran too many street level games what happened is I said Gottlieb said at one point at the start of that transition instead of Norris as if a person named Gottlieb had made the claim and I should have said Norris said this and instead I said Gottlieb said this The Gottlieb family wasn't really involved with the company when Premiere was owning it at that point. I did actually listen to some interviews with a couple of Gottlieb family members, but they didn't talk about street level, so I wasn't able to incorporate their interview into my notes for that episode. But that was a mistake, so correction noted. One other correction. It's more of an addendum, really. when I talked about the size of the street level games being smaller, I only focused on the space at the back of the cabinets, how they didn't need to drop the playfields lower to accommodate any ramps or anything. However, I, after the episode came out, had received a notification on Pinside from a user that the cabinets were shorter, I guess, despite what the flyers would say. And I knew that the flyers weren't accurate, weren't exact. so I finally took out my tape measure and I measured my silver slugger the length of the cabinet from back to the front and then I measured all my other games I have and yes they are shorter it was shorter than all of them approximately three and a half inches if you care so yeah they did shave a few inches off of the length of those cabinets as well so I mean it's hard to notice in a lineup because I line all my games up so that the flipper buttons are even so it's just a little bit shorter in the back but it's it's hard to tell because it's only three and a half inches but but yes they were sure yes and size doesn't matter no size size doesn't matter this is good so so those are the corrections uh some additional follow-ups regarding street level i had uh all my notes put together obviously to do the episode so over time after the episode went out, I worked on writing them up into an article because for me, it was a big pain to have to go and find so many different sources. And some of the sources that I had to rely on were audio interviews. And obviously those are very difficult to search because there isn't a transcript. So I thought it would be helpful to compile all the information into one concise article. Wasn't sure where to run it. Don, who guest hosted a couple of times, had suggested credit.pinball. I had already reached out to Pinball News because I thought maybe, but I think they really focus on modern news. But they indicated they do like to run articles that are more of a learning-oriented aspect. So I gave them the article. They ran it. And Jon Norris, who, as we noted in the last episode, had designed several of the street-level games. He actually wrote a comment in Pinball News Let Me Know About It saying, oh, he's provided some more information. So that was really neat. And I wanted to share that information here because it was obviously new and stuff we did not touch on. So what was noteworthy that he indicated was he actually had two more street level games designed, but they didn't get to be built because Gottlieb terminated the experiment. So the first one had never lived on and it was a game called Tic Tac Lotto. and the the gimmick for it was going to be uh it was going to have a tic-tac-toe ball pop unit and the way norris described it is there was a game chicago coin built back in 1964 it's not traditional pinball game but it's called crisscross pop-up and if anyone cares you can i'm not going to show no link it but it's uh it's on ipdb and it had a large window a little it had a pop-up unit, but it was in the backbox area. This game was going to have a large window, like a clear window, in the play field that would display the pop-up unit, the tic-tac-toe unit. And so that was going to be the big feature on it. But it was going to be a street-level game. The other one that he designed, he did actually get to repurpose into a very famous premiere game in 1992 called Q-Ball Wizard, which I'm sure, Tony, you've experienced in the pinball arcade, if not in real life. I've actually, yeah, I've played it in both, actually okay well it was going to be a street level game and then when it got repurposed norris added the eight ball device that's sort of at the back of the play field and the ramp obviously because street level games didn't have any ramps that ramp was added on later to become what is now known as cue ball wizard which was one of their higher production unit runs if i recall my uh premiere history so anyway uh so there were some it was i i did remember in one of the i think it was one of norris's interviews in fact that the it was very abrupt when management said no more street level it was a sort of like oh you had to stop and they had to immediately start doing full featured game design because i don't think they had any designs in the bank it's not like they had uh sketches and stuff ready to that they they weren't prepared to do the transition the management had just sort of it was just like okay no we're just not doing that anymore. Time to go full featured. But at least he was able to recycle one of those concepts And obviously World Challenge Soccer we did touch on He was able to take an actually built street game and he reused that when they had to rapidly put a game out to try and steal some of Williams' thunder. But I do have a link in the show notes to my article at Pinball News. Nothing really new is touched on. You guys got it first if you listened to the podcast episode. But I do have charts. So I have a table of the of the premier street level games. But I also did a 1989 to 91 examination of unit production numbers by all the major manufacturers. So if you are curious just what premier size was and what happened on their unit production during and just after the street level. But before the 1992 resurgence, it's a pretty nice chart. I worked really hard on it. So you can go take a look at it. So let's go to the last pinball segment, which is to wrap up our System 11 tournament. And the way I wanted to do is we had someone ask us when we were at the 403 Club, actually, a couple weeks ago, about talking a little bit about System 11. So in case you hadn't, Tony, I'm giving you a heads up. I want to go over what our top five System 11 games are. but before that uh we'll we'll wrap up the tournament results and then sort of talk about what what we think of is what's so special about system 11 because you and i we don't just sit around and work on boards all day so i mean fundamentally system 11 is just a board set so let's think of it from a player's perspective though and what we thought are or just someone who likes people who like pinball in general but anyway first things first who won i don't know actually i do know because i already looked it up it's already on the website and there's a link in the show notes to all of our past tournament results where you can go and see this plus any of the other uh tournaments that we have run ever since we started the podcast but the winner is whirlwind it beat taxi with 66.5 of the vote um i am not surprised i i was oscillating on this i did end up uh tony you swayed me i did end up voting taxi but yeah so did i i could easily you for you it was easy for me it was not but whirlwind's not a bad game i just really enjoy taxing yeah i like taxi a lot as well but i i like a lot about what whirlwind does i think it's more i think in a lot of ways feature wise it's more impressive i just i don't think it shoots quite as well as what ended up being the breaking point for me on it. But so that's it. That's all there. I mean, I don't have anything else to say because there was only two games left. Yay, whirlwind. Yeah, yay, whirlwind. So before going into our top System 11 games, I thought let's talk a little bit about what do you think, Tony, makes what's special about System 11? I guess what stands out? It was 30 games. So obviously it was an era for Williams, and they branded these games both as Williams and under the Midway brand because System 11 was in use after they had acquired Bally Midway. But I guess just sort of you've played a lot of them. A lot of them are in Pinball Arcade. We've played a lot of them. Todd of Big Daddy Enterprises owns a number of System 11 games. You see them at a lot of shows. The 403 Club has featured a number of them, which is one of our premier pinball locations. No pun intended by the use of the word premiere. So I just was curious, what do you think of, I guess, when you hear System 11? What comes to your mind? They just tend to be fun games overall from just a straight player standpoint, except for a couple of them that are really bad. Most of them are just solid compared to a lot of the games you – From the similar time era, you can look at almost all of them, and they're pretty solid. I know several of my tops list are System 11 games, and it's just because of how fun they are. Even some of the ones that don't necessarily have the greatest rules or anything are still fun games to play. And between that and none of them really have an aesthetic that I dislike horribly. Some of them have aesthetics I'm really not fond of, bouncing around. But some of the aesthetics are just a ton of fun, too. I mean, Dr. Dude has a great aesthetic that's a ton of fun. High Speed is always just one of my favorite games of all time. Taxi's just a fun, silly little game. So, yeah, for me, they're all about the fun. and an aesthetic. They're kind of almost a classic pinball feel because a lot of times it seems like when you're talking to somebody about their favorite pinball machines, from people who are not brand new to the hobby tend to have System 11 in their top five or top ten pretty reliably. Yeah, I think, well, there's a lot of exposure. It was a very successful system. Williams was such a dominant manufacturer at this stage that, I mean, a number of these games were really well produced. And I'm not quite sure which one was the least produced System 11. I think it's Transporter the Rescue, and that was still over 800 units, which was around what a couple of the street-level games even had. So from a rarity standpoint, that ain't all that rare, really. and some of these games like Whirlwind had over 7,000 units produced. So obviously you had quite a range of success. For me, what I think of as special about System 11 is it, as a board set, it marks a transition. I think of System 11 as the era where you went from simpler games to complex games. And obviously compared to something like Stern Star Wars or Game of Thrones or something, These are not complex games, but it is the bridge. It's also literally, to me, the bridge to the DMD era. So these were games that they had pretty good sound. You had multi-level features. So you had either multiple playfields, which weren't a new concept, but a ramp you started to get really heavy with the System 11 era. But the rules themselves started to exhibit a degree of complexity. So it wasn't just reading the labels on the play field anymore. But now you needed, if you wanted to know how to play the game properly, you had to start reading rules cards and memorizing things like how do you, what do you need to do to start locking balls for multiball? And what did you need to do in order to activate a particular, this is still sort of pre-mode, but there was usually some sort of objective that you were trying to accomplish. And the objective in many of them was to get to the multiball to start scoring the good points. But there were things, there were tasks to do, and there were generally more than one thing you could do that would give you a sense of accomplishment while playing. They're alphanumeric. You could start putting your initials in. So it wasn't just getting the high score and the high score being remembered, but you could actually go, oh, hey, look, I was the fifth best player on this game since it was reset. So to me, those were sort of the things that stand out about it. And because it's that transition from that simpler to more complex, even with the increase in pricing we've seen pretty much across all solid state era pinball machines, System 11 has remained relatively affordable for people that want to put a, they have money that they want to put in from a collector standpoint, but you don't want to, if you don't want to put in a lot. There are a lot of System 11 games that you can get for sub $2,000. So because of that, it becomes a – you've got a little bit of money put aside that you want to get a pinball machine. You don't just want a beater. You don't want something that's super simple. It gives you choices, whereas most of the decent DMV games are going to run $2,000 or more. This is an era where if you can get money together between $1,000 and $2,000, you can buy an already working machine that has some decent depth. So those are just sort of the highlights, I think, of when I think of System 11. So let's talk a little bit about our top games. And I think it's a sort of go in reverse order. You want to just do one-on-one? Well, like five, four, three, two, one. Right, right, right. But you do your five, I do my five? No, no, I think we do each category. It's more interesting. It's kind of funny because – Well, no, no, no. That's what I mean. You do your number five. I'll do my number five. Yes. Or do you want to do – you do your number five through your number one. No, no, that's – no one wants to hear that. No one wants to hear that garbage. They want to hear – it needs to be like a race. They want us to fight about it. Sure. And, you know, actually, it's kind of funny. I mean, System 11 is so prevalent. I'm not – and I don't think anyone's doing it because we've been talking System 11 for the last few episodes because of our contest. But I think the next episode of the Pinball Podcast is doing something with System 11. And there was another podcast I was listening to that also wanted to start talking System 11. I think it's – oh, Head to Head Pinball Podcast, the Australian one. They're doing – they were doing a game with some sounds from System 11. Obviously, that's too much work for us. I'm not putting together a bunch of sound clips. But kind of funny because System 11 has rotated into a lot of discussion on podcasts lately. But that's just because it's so ever-present. but uh sure i'll go ahead and uh i'll start uh my number five because we have as i noted earlier there are 30 to choose from so we got we got plenty of choices but my number five game is radical i don't have a ton of time on radical but it's got a lot of flippers it's got a lot of shots uh i think it flows really really well it's a very fast-paced game and so it's one i really enjoyed when we had it on location. It left too soon in my opinion, but as far as just sort of shot geometry, it feels pretty unique. I'm not, generally I'm someone that doesn't like games when they get beyond three flippers, but Radical is just, it's one where it's like, wow, I think the flippers work really well on it. And I just, I just enjoy the shots. I think it's got a lot of challenging shots and it feels really good if you can get some combos going on it. So that's going be my number five i don't really have a problem with that because i'd say more likely than not radicals probably my six or seven if i was going to really start stretching this thing out it's just off of my list right and i thought about doing top 10 but i didn't want to be here for an hour so well my number five is Banzai Run Banzai Run is one of the games that uses a backboard gameplay feature that's actually enjoyable and fun and it doesn't feel nearly as silly as a lot of the other ones. And it's just one of those games that every time I've ever played it, even when I've done really poorly, I've really enjoyed that game. Yeah, I was just now thinking, would I put Donzai Run in my top 10? Maybe. It would be around 10th if I did, but I like it. I mean, I enjoy the game. I don't know. The backbox is a bit of a one-trick pony to me, so it doesn't stand out to me other than it is innovative, extremely innovative. So I give it a lot of props for that. It won't be in my top five, obviously. Obviously. My number four would be Elvira and the Party Monsters. I think it is, again, a really good layout. I'm not a huge fan of the – you know, Balak stealing, it's interesting. Do I like it? Do I not like it? I guess it depends if my ball has been stolen or not. So after yesterday in Grand Lizard, I'm not liking it too much. Overall, it's funny. It's got some good sounds. It's sort of quirky. I think the ramps feel pretty good. I like the shot setup better than I do Radical. It's a bit more traditional in its layout. I do like, though, that the ball lock generally – I like it when you've got set so you have to spell eat to do it. I think that makes it quite challenging because that means you have to get back into the inlanes. Uh, barbecue bonus is nice. Uh, not the most balanced game, but most of the system 11s aren't. So saying that, saying all that aside, I just think overall the package is integrated really well and the layout feels pretty good to shoot, which is my general role for most, uh, most games to be in my top list. So I just, I think it, it sells for more than I think it should. And that's just because it's got Elvira on it. but so it wouldn't be a game i would buy but it's a game i do really like to play and we had it on location for a while and i did enjoy having that experience when we had it at the 403 club so elvira is my number four yeah elvira is not a bad game at all um it's just when i think of an elvira game i think of scared stiff this sounds suspiciously like elvira won't be in your top five Tony suspiciously I have suspicions yeah we'll find out won't we I think I already found out by that I can't do that that's too hard for me I don't have enough vocal fry you don't have the vocal fry to get that not enough to pull that off I bet you it sounded really good in everybody's ears listening to so I ain't in it and out so they're going to enjoy it My number four is Dr. Dude. And for me, Dr. Dude is a fun game with great aesthetics and wonderful call-outs. And every single thing about it just makes me happy to play it. Okay. Dr. Dude is in my top ten. Definitely. It's not in my top five. I probably would put it around seventh, actually, if I was to give it a number. Sixth or seventh. It was close. It was really close to getting in. I don't like the mystery awards on it. It's kind of what kicks it out of my five. But yeah, it was a game I actually did not like originally. And it really grew on me because it does make you shoot around quite a bit if you want to activate the multiball mode, and I respect that. Yeah, the first time I saw Doctor Dude, just looking at the back glass and everything, I'm like, oh, this game just looks like just cheesy and terrible. But I actually enjoyed it. I thought it was fun, and it works, and the call-outs are fun. Yeah, it was one of those games that really surprised me when I actually played it compared to just my first thought of it. Yeah, it's got that Party Zone aesthetic, which Party Zone's later, obviously. But I do not like Party Zone. Oh, I love Party Zone. Party Zone's trash. I don't know why you like it. I like trash, apparently. You do. You probably like Indy 500. Oh, wait. No, wait. That's the one you just like. I don't have anything that's Indy 500. But we're going into the WPC era now, so we're going to reign this in. Number three. Number three for me, I'm putting Whirlwind in here. I've said it at least twice during this tournament. I think this is one of Pat Lawler's best designs. In fact, I might go as far as saying it's his best layout short of Dialed In. I don't – because I've never been a huge Addams Family fan. I like it all right, obviously, because I have Jurassic Park, which is just poor man's Addams Family. But anyway, yeah, Whirlwind, spinning discs at a great deal of randomness. It's got a very challenging left ramp shot to be used by the third flipper. It's got a fun ball lock mechanism with the – he used later with Funhaus where you get them on that left side where you can plunge them off. And seller shot's good. It tries to make you shoot around quite a bit and does later on, especially when you have to hit all the targets to start lighting up your incoming tornado. So I just think it's really competently put together. I like the sound package. I think it's a lot of fun. And it's got the best topper in all of pinball. So for those reasons, it's my number three. I won't disagree about the best topper. The topper in Whirlwind is a lot of fun, and it's really awesome. for me Whirlwind is the game that is fighting with Radical for that number 6 or number 7 spot which is sacrilege because I know everybody loves Whirlwind and I think it's a really good game it's just not my favorite out of these games and I think a lot of that comes to I know one of the big differences between us is the aesthetic isn't nearly as important to you as the playing and the aesthetic is important to me as long as it plays well and has a good aesthetic i'll like it more than if it plays well and the aesthetic isn't as good and for me the aesthetic whirlwind while it's nice it doesn't quite hit me in the same way some of these other ones do you live in kansas tornado alley what is i know and and this game just won the tournament i know I know. Hey, I don't know if I ever voted for Whirlwind throughout the tournament. I don't remember if I did. Maybe the first round. But I think I voted for whatever it was against every time, and it had nothing to do with me disliking Whirlwind and everything to do with me liking the games it was up against just a hair more. For me, Whirlwind, I know it's a game I'll play. It's not a game that I avoid like a lot of these. or there's even a bunch of System 11 games that it's like, I'll just save my quarter for a different game. But Whirlwind's not one of those. It's got a lot of fun features. It's just when I think System 11s, it is not like the first thing on my game list to go to. Well, that's fair enough. Here comes the hate mail. Well, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. I'll probably be the one to check it, but I'll forward it on or just tell you, go in and read this nasty gram that you got because you just trashed Whirlwind and voted against it even with Bugs Bunny. I didn't vote against it with Bugs Bunny. That's the rumor. No, no, no. Bugs Bunny is one of the worst games ever created. Better theme integration, so it won. It terrible It one of the worst games ever It better theme integration though Number two My number two Comrade Taxi Taxi I really like Taxi I love the shot flow It probably is my favorite Mark Ritchie game. Yeah, I think I'll go ahead and commit to that. I love the sound call-outs. I like the skill shot. I think it's a lot of fun with a little whirl, whirl, whirl thing. I think it's pretty challenging. and everyone seems to play a little different because it depends on how that spring is on that shooter rod in terms of how that's going to plunge out. I like trying to go around and collect all the passengers. I enjoy the ball lock shot over – I like the pin bot thing. I think the – I love the bell when you get the jackpot going on, and the crossover ramps are cool. It just overall, I think it's put together really, really well as just an excellent, excellent flowing game, excellent playing game. So and I realized I think I just skipped your number three. You did. I got you so upset about what you did. You skipped my number three. So anyway, but that taxi is my number two. So let's do your three and two now. So because, yeah, we just got so. Oh, my gosh. I've seen such a tizzy. It's easy. I tell you, I do declare. OK, so. So apologies for that. I just realized I was staring at my number three the whole time thinking you've just tore it all apart. And I had to move on. But okay, so let's do your number three and then your number two. My number three is Penbot. I like Penbot a lot. It's a lot of fun. It's got some fun shots. The way the skill shot can make or break it in tournament. because if you can reliably hit that and your opponent can't, it can be completely overpowering. But it's just a fun game. I like it. I like the aesthetic. It is my favorite of the pen bot, Bride of Pen Bot, Jack Bot. My favorite of them is Pen Bot, and I like it. It's number three. Okay. I can't object to that. I really like Pen Bot. Yeah, I figured you couldn't. My number two is Taxi. Taxi is an awesome game. Oh, so we have one that we rank the same. Yeah, we have one that we rank the same. We both rank Taxi at number two because, yeah, Taxi is one of my all-time favorite games, and it's awesome. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's lots of fun. Well, the reason why I obviously can't object to your number three is my number one is PenBot. I don't have a lot of time on JackBot, so it's hard for me to say. I'm not sure I really care for its it's definitely more complex I don't know though if I like how it does its payout thing for points but we're really not talking about jackpot so in terms of pinbot as you noted very challenging very lucrative skill shot in relation to how a lot of the other points in the game flow I think the game is very challenging if you want to try and advance planets those are not safe shots this is a game which I think it remains very hard with its center post installed. So it's got a pretty, I don't think it's the easiest ramp shot in the world to hit. It's not the hardest, it's not the tightest, but it's got a challenging shot there. It's got a kick-out hole between the ramp and the visor. The visor features, obviously, the most impressive, it's the most gimmick-looking thing on the field. I really like how off the plunge you can try and do that. it's got I don't know I want to I kind of want to call it a secret skill shot it's not really a secret it's not really a skill shot but if you can hit that lit the lit target on when the visor is cycling you can open it in one shot and so it's very satisfying when you do and you don't have to go and light up everything manually you got that you get the two ball multiball going it's fun to relock the ball in the visor when you're when you're in the course of doing that it's fun to try and keep both of those balls in play. It's the only thing that I dislike and still it's my number one. So I can't, the only thing that I think is unfortunate and what probably keeps it out of being number one for a lot of people is that it feels like you can play the entire game with one flipper. So yeah, I can see that. Yeah. It's just, there's not a lot that you need. there's really nothing ultra lucrative that you need the left flipper for. So you end up wanting to use the right flipper a lot because that's where the ramp is. That's where the kickout hole is. You can get both visor shots from both the kickout holes in the visor with the right flipper. And the stand-up targets that help advance the planets in the lucrative fashion are on the left. So I think they're stand-ups and not drops. I don't remember. But anyway, overall, it's my favorite System 11. I love the sound package. The art package is good. Python did a good job with it. It's just overall, of all the System 11 games that I have played, it has always been and remains my favorite one. So what's your number one, Tony? Because it's not Pinbot because that was your number three. Yeah, and it's not Whirlwind because it's not even on my list. I know. You put it down at like a 30th or – no, you said it was better than Bugs Bunny's 29th. Yeah, yeah. My favorite System 11 is called Furry Cops. It's not Furry Cops. But it is one that's probably not going to be on a lot of people's top five. Millionaire. Wow. No. That won't be in anyone's top five, so that's why I guessed it. I haven't even played that game. That's because it's awful. Yeah. But it's high speed. And it's hard. even me having put it there because of every System 11 game there is especially the ones I enjoy I can sit down and play High Speed like continuously just game after game after game after game and have fun and it's the same way with the sequel High Speed 2 The Getaway I can just play that game when High Speed 2 was down at Nubz when we went there after finishing a bad run at the pizza west tournament i have had days where i've gone down there and i've just burned my remaining quarters playing the getaway and i've gone to other places and played the original high speed and i've just said it's like oh i i just went through almost all of my quarters playing just high speed i it's my favorite system 11 it's one of my favorite games ever and i know i've said that about several games, but if I was to sit down right now and just pick several games to set up in my house and have forever, I would have a High Speed and a High Speed 2 right next to each other because I love both of those games so much. Now, why do you think that a lot of people wouldn't have High Speed in the top five? I think because High Speed 2 is a better game, I think most people would put another System 11 up there, even in a System 11 only list, just because there's a, what is for all intents and purposes, a better version of High Speed out there. But I like them both. So I'm putting it at my number one slot. It is my fanboy. It's my fanboy pick. Okay. Yeah, I don't know where I would, I mean, High Speed is definitely a top half game for me. I haven't really thought about where it would shake out in my, I actually don't have a ton of time on it. I've played it some. I played Getaway a lot more so I'm more familiar with it I have played Getaway a lot more too but I've put a lot of time in on High Speed as well because I know at least at one point I sat down in front of one and played like 15 straight games I may be wrong on this I wanted to think High Speed might have been the first System 11 I'm not certain it's been a long time since I tried to look into that and I'm not looking right now but yeah I don't object obviously it didn't make my top five well I knew when I put it down that it would not be that it would be kind of an out there game but I just enjoy it cool All right. Well, if anyone wants to post on Facebook when the when the episodes live or write in or whatnot and mention what they think of as top fives, feel free. We're always there. A bunch to choose from. Don't put millionaire, though. And when you want to send all your hate at me for having high speed on the top and and not having whirlwind in it at all. Apparently, don't put whirlwind. If you have whirlwind, apparently don't put it in your top five because Tony don't want to hear it. oh I'll hear it I understand it I'm not saying you're a bad person for having it in your top five I just disagree he kind of said that you're probably bad it's unfortunate no no I'm sure you're bad for some reason but having whirlwind in your top five is not a reason for you to be bad so much whirlwind hate okay well we're done with pinball for this episode so let's go on and move into video games Tony do you have any updates from the past episode where you had a major piece that you put together on loot crates? Yeah. Um, the big loot crate thing, uh, kind of fell out with the release of battlefront two. We talked about that one a little bit, uh, leading into, uh, our, or as part of our discussion last time and with battlefront two came out, uh, EA like tripped and fell on their sword and let themselves into fire, uh, on the whole micro transaction and loot boxes thing. Um, there were tons of stuff hitting out there where, uh, even with how they have things set up initially, uh, it was looking like if you wanted to unlock everything without using loot boxes, it would require you to play eight hours a day for like years to unlock everything. And if you wanted to unlock characters, you would have to spend a couple thousand dollars to unlock everything with the microtransaction purchases. And in the course of their responses, as the upswing of hate started, they managed to get the most downvoted post of all time on Reddit. I don't know how bad it is now. Last time I saw it, it was like negative 650,000 votes. They tried to salvage it. They did an AMA that went real bad because most of their AMA was, yeah, we know people are upset and we'll look at it. Yeah, no, no, we don't think we're going to change this. So I'm curious. Do you think that Electronic Arts is going to rename itself as Electronic Farts because they're making such stinky decisions? No, I don't think they care. I think they're just going to own it and be like, we're EA. We don't care. We'll do whatever we want. Now, didn't Disney intervene in this? Didn't the mouse have to move in? That's the rumor of what it was because EA was doubling down. They did make a change. They reduced the cost to get people. they reduced the cost to get your cards and unlock characters and this and that by 75%, but it was still really high and really insane. And they were pretty much online locking down that, no, this is what we're doing. We'll look at it later. We'll look at it later. We'll look at it later. And then all of a sudden they spun a 180 out of nowhere. And they're like, you know what? we've removed the ability to spend money to purchase crystals to get stuff in game completely. We're going to do a complete redo of the system. And this is all paraphrasing. They're going to look at this thing, and they said the ability to purchase crystals will return eventually, but they want to rebuild the system around progression and actual gameplay. and the rumors that are going around is that EA was getting such terrible news because, I mean, this was hitting BBC, CNN, all the big news networks were starting to carry this stuff and talking about the new Star Wars game that has gambling built into it and the word is that the mouse stepped in and was like, whoa, you're making Star Wars bad. you need to shut this stuff down now. So they went and spun from being very defensive and we've made a few changes. Yeah, we made some balancing changes, but that's it. We're not taking it away to also be like, yeah, we shut it off. It's gone. And everything I've read states it's because, yeah, the mouse walked in with a billy club. Okay. Okay, well, I guess I could imagine that in the sense that Disney has its reputation to uphold. Interesting, because they normally don't like to intervene much, it seems, in the video game side. They just want to license, license, license. Right, and my big thought is because of what the license of Star Wars is, the fact that there's a new Star Wars movie a month out that is to be a big thing, to suddenly have Star Wars being smashed in the news everywhere probably hurt their PR and marketing plans. And so it was a step into, whoa, we don't want this negativity out here right now. Just stop. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, obviously with that buildup in the gambling tie, that in particular is not going to resonate well with such a family-oriented company. Yeah, because I know while not in the U.S., I know several European countries have actually started looking into it, looking into if they need to apply their gambling rules to the game, which would make the game pretty much unsellable in some of those countries. Yeah, it was good that you did the Loot Crate episode just prior, because it's apparently gone from timely to even more timely. Timely, yeah. Timely-ist. I don't know. Timely. Time lost. Yes. Time lost? Something. Speaking of EA, Respawn, the makers of Titanfall, I guess they're now a subsidiary of EA. Yay. Yay, that's just what we need is them to fill another game with microtransactions and to destroy another fan base. Well, yeah, I saw an article, I shared it on our Facebook page where Respawn was noting that they weren't going to lose any creative freedom purportedly. EA won't meddle with them. And maybe in the case of Respawn, it's true. I mean, I don't know. There are instances where we – EA has mucked around, obviously, Battlefront. Poor DICE has, I think, gotten the short end of the stick with EA several times, but maybe Respawn has more pull. It's kind of like how Activision does not seem to mess around with Blizzard. Blizzard gets to do what Blizzard wants to do, and Activision gets to make money by letting Blizzard do what Blizzard wants to do. So I don't know. EA just closed the studio, though, and we talked about that. And so there's some thought about if that, you know, if EA doesn't like if Titanfall 3 doesn't do what EA wants it to do, does that mean Respawn could be on a chopping block with one bad game or just like Visceral was? Yeah, yeah. That's the I think that's the fear that a lot of people really have or the the EA-ification of Titanfall 3. Right. I think some people blame Electronic Arts for Dead Space 3 being what it was, which I only ever played the first Dead Space. But Dead Space 3, I guess, was less of a survival horror feel and more of a, hey, look, let's shoot a bunch of soldiers feel. And so FPS'd it up. Or TPS, I think it's third person. That and the whole let's get rid of single player games, because that's what Visceral was working on, a single player game, and was shut down and locked out and thrown away. and it's just one of those things that makes you wonder if these big companies are going to continue doing single-player games at all. Yeah, there's been a lot of talk lately about how games as a service is just what you have to do and there's still some single-player experiences being made by some companies but it seems some of these larger publishers have really pushed to move away from it. And I'm personally not a big fan because I like good single-player experiences, but it is what it is. Yep. I'll just have to see. We will. Oh, well. All right, Tony, what have you been playing? Well, of the games that I have not returned, I've been playing Bomber Crew, which I don't know. For some reason, I'm suddenly thinking, did I mention this at one time in the past? I, you know, I can't, maybe you mentioned it, but. I might have mentioned it. I don't think I actually went deep into it. Bomber Crew is a roguelike game where you are managing the crew of a bomber in World War II. And what you're doing is you recruit your crew. They have different staffs. You send them to the places where they work the best. and you let them, and they handle your bomber while you move the bomber around in an actual combat zone. So it's not like you're flying the bomber. What it is is you have a mission and you order the pilot to take off and the pilot flies and the navigator will come up with nav points and you got a system where you can it lets you you can look all around the bomber and it lets you target and lock onto certain things So the navigator will pop up a navigation point So you go and lock on the navigation point, and the pilot will fly to the navigation point. You lock onto enemy fighters when they come nearby, and your gunners will shoot at any enemy fighter that is targeted and within their fire zones. and you have a flight engineer and a bombardier and a radio operator. So you've got all these people that are part of the crew, but you have to move them around to fix damage. The engineer has to fix damage or do medical, and you have to reload ammunition to your guns. And while you're doing all that, you also are making bombing runs on targets. So you'll have to go to your bombardier and open your bomb doors and drop your bombs on your targets, or use your cameras to take pictures. So it's very much a management simulation type game, and it is a lot of fun. And like most roguelikes, it starts out seeming, well, this isn't that bad, and then it punches you in the face a bunch of times as you can have like one or two bad runs, and then suddenly everything's almost impossible. It's a lot of fun. I've been enjoying it. it's got a, because your crew members all are named, and they're like randomly generated, so they all look different, and they have different names, yada, yada, yada. And when you log into the game, you actually have a big list of the fallen board that you can look at, and it's just the names of your crews that have died in combat. Because you can lose one crew member in a fight, or you can lose the entire crew. Like, I've lost seven crews now. But all in all, it's just kind of a simple little roguelike. I like it a lot. I don't think it is as high up on the top of my list as, like, Binding of Isaac or FTL, but it's definitely up there when it comes to roguelike games. What, if any, continuation features does it offer? Do you gain anything? Are there things that you can carry over from crew to crew that help make it easier over time? Yeah, you've got stuff that you have unlocks that you unlock as you play through. I haven't started a new game, even though I've lost seven total crews, and I start over with my bomber having to be rebuilt. so I might lose everything I've spent on my bomber. So my new bomber is just straight out of factory. It doesn't have any upgrades, and it's an all-new crew. But everything that's been unlocked by the play so far is already unlocked. So I don't have to run several missions before I can unlock or to unlock the better machine guns or the better engines. I just have to wait until I have enough cash on hand to pick up the upgrades for those. Now, if you started a whole new game, I think it would be a little different than that. But I haven't started one, so I don't know for sure yet. The game just launched in early October. I want to say it was like the 7th or the 17th or something like that. and it was one of those little games that took off way, way better than they were expected, than the producers ever expected it to. So I know that they've got three bits of DLC planned, paid DLC planned, and they've also got a bunch of free additions planned for this game and a lot of quality of life updates. So it'll be kind of interesting to see how this goes, and one of these days I might start a new campaign. But we'll see. I've just been having fun with it. Well, as I noted, the only game I've really been playing with any time beyond my continuing my Gems of War stuff, which I have nothing new to report, is Shadow of Earth. No, Shadow of Earth. Jeez, that's a poor name. Middle-earth Shadow of War, or as we commonly call it, Wardor, because it's the sequel to Shadow of Mordor. I am quite a bit further now. I believe I have all regions unlocked. I have, I think, all but one last fortress I need to claim. So I have played through a tremendous amount of the story and a tremendous amount of the army management aspects. The army management aspects remain the highlight. The story is awful. It's just sad. It's so, other than some side stuff with some of the orcs, it's just so serious. Which, it's Tolkien, I get it. But it's also, it's so weird because everything else, then you're going with all these orcs and they're busy talking smack all the time and it's so silly. It's just, it's kind of odd. But the, it's really, the siege stuff is neat. I don't, it's, I don't know. It's hard for me to explain because you have all the siege management stuff now. So you have your army and then you can use your money that you earn from scrapping gear that you find in completing side quests and such. And you can upgrade features like, oh, I want to have flaming catapult attacks to help me when I attack a castle and stuff. But it's really go in and take the circles. So I don't know how meaningful those options, like I've never had a problem taking a castle is maybe the way I should say. As long as, and maybe that's because I'm doing it this way. And so maybe that means more if you don't wipe out all of the commanders. but I always take out all the defenses first. So I go on all these side quests and I go and have to deal with all these orcs that are manning the barricades basically. And if you take one out, you remove a major defensive feature. And I did try and attack one once when I hadn't taken anything out and it was really bad. My face, it came off. My face came off. And so – and if those captains have subordinate lieutenants, I try and capture them. I try and bend them to my will and flip them and turn them into spies, which they'll help backstab the guy if I go in and attack, and I will go in and attack eventually. So that aspect remains very strong. The features that they have added to the orcs, it's much more diverse than it was in the first game. That really shows it does feel like you're constantly meeting different orcs with different stances and stuff. I think I've only ever had maybe two orcs that have used the same encounter line with me, so they gave a decent variety to that. I'm pretty sure I know which orcs are Dixie Reinhardt-voiced now, because that voice actor did some of that work from Overwatch. So I can kind of tell, because there are some orcs that kind of sound like grumpy Reinhardts. So I'm pretty sure that's him. Side quest-wise, I really like doing the army stuff. There's a lot of collectibles like there was in the first game. It's hard to get excited about it. They kind of tell more of the story of Middle-Earth and such, but there's such small tidbits. It reminds me of when I played the very popular, except with me, game of Dark Souls, where all the item descriptions were like the meat of the content, and it was just a pain to try. I don't like having my story told through item descriptions. but anyway uh it's just if you want to know more about some of the broader strokes they've got that they they filled out some things with some of the other quests and stuff like you learn a little bit about some of the ringwraiths and who they were as men and so they've got some things that kind of work but you know you don't really care because they're ringwraiths then they're bad yeah but what is working is unlike with mafia 3 even though a lot of this is fairly repetitive in the grand scheme. There are enough diverse activities that feel like I'm advancing or making my main goal more achievable that I can play for hours usually and just be like, okay, I'm just chilling, going around, capturing my orcs and stuff. Eventually I'll get frustrated after a while, but I'll look up and I'll be like, well, I've been playing it for three hours. It's probably a good time to go ahead and stop. So it's just, I'm not just tearing through the story on it. I've been really big about trying to capture a bunch of orcs and kind of make my fortresses. I do my Meku Meku Fortress build and make it all nice and shiny and devastating. So I do that sort of stuff. I've done some of the online vendetta missions and things. My main reason why I don't like to do those, though, is the load times are horrid. Are they? Yeah. I mean, once you're in a zone, it's okay. But going from zone to zone. They had that on the first game, too, where the zone to zone loading took some time, as I recall. I think it's just because it's loading a bunch of the whole zone. The thing is, when you do a vendetta in a zone, it has to reload the zone. Oh, that's... And then as soon as you finish the vendetta, it has to load your iteration of the zone back. So it's just sort of like... It's sad that a load is really what makes me not want to do that, but I don't. I don't like to do that. So yeah, overall, yeah, fun. It's got polish. so it's an iterative improvement of Shadow of Mordor but beyond the orc so if you like the orc management stuff I think you'll really really like it beyond that it's not really a better game so that's really all is it a worse game or is it pretty much just the same pretty much the same except they improved the whole orc nemesis thing that's the improvement that's where all the effort went that's fine I can accept that graphically I don't think it looks any better In fact, I think compared to some other games that are coming out, I think it looks a little subpar. But I think it's not any worse than Mordor looked. I think that it's just like, we're going to put it all in. It's all in the orcs. The whole Vendetta orcs tracking, all that. That's really cool. I like all those improvements. I think it plays better for those reasons. But everything else is going to be just like what you remember from Mordor. They didn't really bother to improve anything else. We'll have to see. it's still on my list of games I want to play at some point and try. Yeah, I'm enjoying it still. That's good. That's good because I really enjoyed the first one. And now they're doing a Lord of the Rings TV series because that's what we need. Yeah, I haven't looked into that yet. So, yay. Well, I've got one other game that I've played. And I don't actually even own this game yet. they had a free Steam weekend for Endless Space 2 which is a 4X that is pretty highly regarded and has been on my Steam wishlist for a while so I've been playing it over the course of this free weekend and I'm probably going to end up picking it up because I actually have been enjoying it it seems it follows all the basic 4X tropes like you would expect but it actually seems to play a bit more on the strategic level. And what I mean by that is for what I've put into it so far, which is between four and six hours, it seems to have a lot less micromanaging than a lot of 4X games out there seem to. So it has not been as... You don't spend as much time down in the weeds controlling, doing little changes and this and that to it. you're not settling a planet and then moving people from that planet to other planets and settling another planet in the system. I mean, it just kind of works overall as you can settle more planets in the system. You just kind of naturally settle the planets in the system. At least that's how it's played with the specific race I've played. I've only played one race so far. Maybe it's a little different with a different race on how settling goes, but it also goes very light on the actual ship combat for your Navy. You design your ships. You design their defenses, what weapons they have. You get to optimize your ships, basically. and you get to pick overall like general battle strategies and you can put together a couple of different forces as you get enough ships and get enough command levels. So you can do, well, I've got two little forces doing a pencil move or whatever, but the actual combat is just you can watch it, but you can't actually control it once it starts. So I've actually gone so far as I've just turned the watch off and it just auto-completes once I put in my strategy. so it's very much more of a strategic level, not a down-in-the-weeds tactical, which is interesting because compared to a lot of the space-based 4X games, especially the ones that I enjoy, they put an emphasis on the tactical combat as kind of a break from what your normal combat or your normal play is, like Sword of the Stars had a very heavily personally controlled tactical combat the original the new Master of Orion the original Master of Orion, Master of Orion 2 were both the same way where this is very much a strategic level game where it's just like well here is the initial plan I can change I can choose different basically the tactics they're like cards where you choose you get to choose one and your that specific force uses that card uh that tactic which gives them bonuses or whatever and makes them act in a certain way and they try and maintain a certain range based upon how you set them up and this and that but once you've said all that to give your to give yourself the best odds you just auto complete because i mean you can watch it but you can't change anything so the watching is just to watch ships blow each other up so it's been fun though and it's got a lot of interesting takes on races and abilities and it seems to go a little deeper into the kind of governmental type setup for games like if you are the race I'm playing now is a democratic race and every 20 turns they have an election and And when they have their elections, the different factions within my government gain and lose power. And what laws I can put in place, what things I can do, like even up to your ability to declare war and all that stuff is all modified based upon the factions that are currently in control and stuff from the elections. So I've actually had it go to where at one point I had the pacifists were in complete control, and I literally could not declare war. I could defend myself. I could fight pirates, but I could not do anything to an opposing player. Okay. I remember one of the Civilization games did that. Yeah. So it's very – I'm enjoying it. I'm looking forward to trying another race. I think I since I've been kind of learning it as I go I kind of got myself painted into a corner because I might have set the difficulty too high for a very first playthrough of the game so I kind of got myself to a point where it's like I think I'm just too far behind to actually do anything other than like hold on to my tiny little sliver and hope I don't get smashed so I think I'm probably going to be starting a new game here before too long yeah that's easy enough to have happen but i could see why you'd start higher since you've done so many 4x games before right and i normally i normally start higher on i i normally start on at least one of the in the middle if not middle to higher difficulties and this one is it's you got just enough differences and each race seems to be different enough that i might turn it down a little bit lower on my next playthrough just so I can, until I get a good feel for it. Okay. Well, that sounds good. I don't have anything else to cover. I don't really. I know several episodes ago I talked about Factorio, and I haven't played it a lot since my initial play because I've been having issues because it's very much an optimization-type game. where you're trying to optimize your actual play to create better factories and better layouts and stuff. And I've started watching a tutorial, basically. And now that I've actually learned a lot of stuff from this tutorial, I've started playing that game again. And I'm much more into it than I was after my first several hours of playing it. Now that I'm seeing the mistakes that were probably obvious, it would have been obvious to a lot of people. And to me, they weren't as obvious now that I'm seeing them and seeing how better to lay things out from an efficiency standpoint. I am getting more play time into that game as well. But we'll see. Well, assuming everything happens as planned, we should have another episode in a few days about EM pinball machines. and if for some reason that doesn't come to fruition that's alright we'll be back in two weeks we'll do the one in two weeks regardless two weeks reminder we can be reached on facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast you can always email the show eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com we're on twitter and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and until the next episode I'll say I'm Dennis and I'm Tony goodbye

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7b9f3366-9da1-447d-ba31-0c4fc680e318*