# PNP 640- 5 Surprising Insights Post Star Wars Gameplay Vid+ EXPO UPDATE! **Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-09-17 **Duration:** 70m 28s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/pnp-640-5-surprising-insights-post-star-wars-gameplay-vid-expo-update --- ## Analysis Poor Man's Pinball hosts discuss their visit to Stern Pinball's factory for the Star Wars: Fall of the Empire media event. They cover Spike 3 hardware features (35% larger 18.5" screen, 2x memory, HDMI output, silent power), game overview with four multiballs and character-based modes, hand-drawn artwork by four artists across three cabinet designs, and C3PO voice callouts from 1000+ movie clips. They note the game ships feature-complete with solid code, appealing to both new and experienced players. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Spike 3 has approximately 2x the processing power and 2x the memory of Spike 2 — _Host notes they took notes during presentation and specifically confirmed 'two times the memory' from George Gomez's presentation_ - [HIGH] Spike 3 screen is 35% larger (18.5 inches) with significantly more color depth than Spike 2 — _Direct notes from Stern presentation; host states 'can produce way like thousands of tens of thousands of more colors'_ - [HIGH] Star Wars artwork was hand-drawn by four different artists with no AI used — _Direct statement: 'art was all handdrawn not by one, not by two, not even by three artists, but by four different artists' and 'they did stress there was no AI used'_ - [HIGH] Game features 1000+ clips from Episodes IV-VI Star Wars films — _Host states 'there are over a thousand clips from those three movies' with C3PO voice callouts_ - [HIGH] Star Wars: Fall of the Empire has four multiballs out of the box (Hyperspace, Death Star, Battle of Hoth, Jabba's Pit) — _Detailed gameplay breakdown identifying each multiball type_ - [MEDIUM] Stern employs approximately 380 people total with main facility in Elk Grove Village — _Host states 'they um had said there's 380 people I think they said work at Stern' based on factory tour information_ - [MEDIUM] Fall of the Empire code is more feature-complete at launch than Uncanny X-Men, John Wick, or Bond were at their launches — _Host opinion: 'this code's way farther along than like Uncanny X-Men was when that launched or John Wick when that launched or Bond when that launched'_ - [HIGH] Spike 3 games have essentially silent power supplies compared to loud Spike 2 fan noise — _Host notes: 'Spike 3 games apparently are like pretty much silent which would be awesome'_ ### Notable Quotes > "It's like pretty much a handmade product. They're making everything in this game... there's a big line of like 80 people like hand assembling these machines and that's why like a pro costs 7,000 bucks cuz it's like hours of like real human labor." > — **Host (speaking about Stern factory tour)**, Early in episode during factory tour discussion > _Explains manufacturing cost basis and labor-intensive production model_ > "The code out of the box I think is really fun... this code's way farther along than like Uncanny X-Men was when that launched or John Wick when that launched or Bond when that launched." > — **Host**, During game overview section > _Suggests Fall of the Empire shipped with more polished/complete code than recent Stern releases_ > "They used the double stripe that is just so iconic Star Wars around the edge of the back glass... it's like this exact same if you bought Star Wars toys as a kid... it looks like you've picked up the best Star Wars toy ever made." > — **Host (discussing George Gomez's commentary)**, Artwork discussion section > _Notes intentional design homage to classic Star Wars toy packaging aesthetic_ > "The HDMI output with audio... now we can just pipe that right in... I'm not going to put a $150 mod on all these machines." > — **Host**, Spike 3 features section > _Highlights practical benefit for streamers and content creators_ > "I felt like I knew what to do a little bit off off the rip... you just feel really immersed in it... it's such a great theme for pinball." > — **Co-host (on gameplay experience)**, Gameplay impressions section > _Emphasizes approachability combined with thematic immersion_ > "The force thing though, it takes skill cuz I never successfully did it... if you don't time it right, it's just gone." > — **Host**, Discussing 'Use the Force' ball save mechanic > _Notes skill-based save mechanic as challenge element_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Star Wars: Fall of the Empire | game | New Stern Pinball game running on Spike 3 hardware, featuring episodes IV-VI theme, four multiballs, character-based modes | | Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer hosting media event at Elk Grove Village facility; 380 total employees with ~80 in production | | Spike 3 | product | New Stern operating system/platform with 2x memory, 2x CPU power, 35% larger 18.5" screen, HDMI output, silent power | | George Gomez | person | Chief Creative Officer at Stern Pinball; presented Spike 3 and game features at media event | | Raymond Davidson | person | Code designer for Star Wars: Fall of the Empire; interviewed at Stern media event | | John Borg | person | Legendary Stern designer; interviewed at Star Wars media event; designed the game | | Kyle | person | Stern Tech School instructor; co-led factory tour with Jack Danger | | Zack Sharp | person | Stern marketing personnel; interviewed at media event about marketing strategy | | Jack Danger | person | Co-led factory tour at Stern facility | | MXV (Mike Vinacore) | person | Stern programmer who helped source 1000+ movie clips for Star Wars callouts | | Steve Bowen | person | Competitive pinball player from Chicago; played Fall of the Empire at media event, scored 300M+ on first game | | Seth Davis | person | CEO of Stern Pinball; presented at media event | | Poor Man's Pinball Podcast | organization | Host podcast; attended Stern media event with crew; noted this is longer episode than usual | ### Topics - **Primary:** Spike 3 hardware specifications and features, Star Wars: Fall of the Empire game design and features, Stern Pinball manufacturing process and labor costs, Game artwork and cabinet design (three tiers) - **Secondary:** Streaming infrastructure improvements (HDMI output), Pro vs Premium vs LE gameplay differences, Star Wars franchise licensing for pinball, Voice acting and callout sourcing (C3PO, 1000+ clips) ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Hosts are enthusiastic about Fall of the Empire's gameplay depth, Spike 3 capabilities, and factory tour experience. No significant criticisms; they acknowledge limitations of Pro tier but present factually. Strong praise for hand-drawn artwork, code maturity, and approachable-yet-challenging design. Positive commentary on Stern as employer and company culture. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Stern appears to prioritize HDMI streaming capability and silent power as key Spike 3 differentiators; suggests content creator ecosystem and noise complaints as design drivers (confidence: medium) — Host noted HDMI was 'like one of the main things I was hoping for' and Spike 3 addresses long-standing fan noise issue - **[community_signal]** Stern conducting factory tours for media/content creators as standard event offering; positioned to educate community on manufacturing cost basis (confidence: high) — Hosts attended ~20 person tour; Stern providing transparent look at production process to justify $7,000+ pricing - **[design_philosophy]** Star Wars artwork features intentional homage to classic 1977-83 toy packaging aesthetic (Kenner brand styling, double stripe design) as brand anchor across all three cabinet designs (confidence: high) — George Gomez called out the iconic double stripe integration; hosts noted 'looks like you've picked up the best Star Wars toy ever made' - **[licensing_signal]** Star Wars: Fall of the Empire uses authentic C3PO voice actor and 1000+ original movie clips; sourced by MXV for period-accurate callouts (confidence: high) — Hosts stated 'it's I think the real the real C3PO... it was that voice actor' and confirmed 1000+ clips - **[manufacturing_signal]** Stern production fundamentally manual/labor-intensive: ~80 assembly workers hand-assembling machines in sequential stations; no automation; justifies $7,000+ Pro pricing (confidence: high) — Factory tour observation; hosts emphasized 'there's not nothing back there is automated. It's people making the machines' - **[announcement]** Spike 3 hardware officially presented with detailed specs: 2x memory, 2x processing power, 35% larger screen (18.5"), HDMI output for streaming, silent power supplies (confidence: high) — Direct notes from George Gomez presentation at Stern factory; hosts emphasized taking notes to quote accurately - **[product_strategy]** Fall of the Empire three-tier design: Pro lacks 'Use the Force' button save (conventional ball saver), center ramp qualifier, sculptured toys (Jabba, Vader head, Stormtrooper) (confidence: high) — Detailed gameplay breakdown comparing Pro vs Premium/LE; hosts played multiple tiers - **[product_concern]** Fall of the Empire ships with unusually complete code for a launch title, compared to Uncanny X-Men, John Wick, and Bond at their launches (confidence: medium) — Host assessment based on playing experience: 'code's way farther along than like Uncanny X-Men was when that launched' - **[business_signal]** Spike 2 games may receive Spike 3 upgrades if demand warrants, but requires complete code rebuild (not backwards compatible); only 'mega demand' would justify effort (confidence: medium) — George Gomez mentioned this is 'a huge amount of work' and depends on title popularity; hosts speculate on potential Spike 3 versions of Godzilla, Stranger Things, etc. - **[technology_signal]** HDMI output (audio + video in single cable) enables easier streaming setup; current Spike 2 streaming requires two separate mods with two cables (confidence: high) — Host explicitly noted this was a key wish for Spike 3; practical benefit identified as avoiding $150 mods on machines --- ## Transcript All right, welcome back, punk rock pinballers. Hey there. You know what, Mike, I meant to tell you. I feel like we're the only podcast that doesn't have music on the intro. Do we know a musician that could help us with that? I don't know. Do we need a 5-second, 10-sec music intro? You be the judge. I feel like the listener should tell us. I don't feel like we need it, but I could make one. I mean, all right, people tell us. I just feel like when that animation rolls, it feels like, is the sound not working? Okay, but I don't know. People tell us. What do you think? All right, I just have to set stuff up and record a song. I can do it. I know how to do it. You got to have something in the archives there. Yeah, but it's got to be like cool, punky. Cool. Most of my stuff is like wussy stuff. Well, yeah, you said it. Well, we've got a big one today. All right. So, those people who have been asking for a longer episode, you are getting it today. Yeah. Um, so a few things we're going to go through today. We are Well, first of all, before we do that, thank you guys for subscribing. Yes, thank you for subscribing. Last couple videos got a bunch of new subscribers and lots of likes. Please like the video. It helps a lot with it getting more views. Like if you like it, please just click the little thumb up button on it. And if you really like it, like share it somewhere. That'd be awesome. That'd be so cool. Yeah. Like it, comment. Those are huge. Yes. And then there's a bunch of links in the description on where you can get merch. A lot of people have asked about that. We've got these cool t-shirts. We've got hats, cool hoodies. links in the description and I usually do a pinned comment or just go to anxiousandangry.com. You can pick up other band merch there. You can get some Off with their heads merch. He's got a sincere engineer. Sincere engineer stuff. He's got like a big naked ray gun thing going right now. Super cool. Some crazy cool like naked ray gun merch and records. They reissued the naked ray gun records. He's got I I think he's sold out of the new Dillinger 4 thing, but maybe not. I don't know. Check for that. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I don't know how to sit right now, but I'll figure it out. Yeah. Well, we had a big day. Different chairs. Different chairs. And honestly, we need it cuz yesterday we had a huge day, and we're going to tell you all about it. Um we went to Stern for um like a media release of the new Star Wars machine. Yes. Fall of the Empire. Fall of the Empire. It was a big day. It was a huge day. So, we're going to tell you about that. Um, we are going to, um, tell you about what we learned about the new Spike 3 system on Stern, which is pretty cool. We're going to talk about game overview, the cool artwork on the three different versions of this game. Um, some of the gameplay. We have some video that I'm going to try to edit into this, so be kind. I'm going to try my best. Yeah, we're not pro video editors, so we'll make it look as good as we can. Yeah, we're trying our best, but we're not videographers or video editors. No. Or the podcast usually sounds good because I'm kind of a professional audio engineer, but we're just working our way through getting the video editing stuff. We're getting better. Yeah, we're getting better. We also, for the very first time, are going to um share some interviews. We got to interview four different people at Stern. Yep. So, we're going to share some very short interviews with um Raymond Davidson who did the code for the new Star Wars. We're going to talk to Kyle from the Stern Tech School. He's going to give us some tips. That was awesome. Uh we talked to Zach Sharpe and as a marketing nerd, I got to ask him some questions I've been dying to know about. And Mike had a moment when we also got to meet and talk to John Borg about the game. Yep. Yeah. We talked to John Borg. We don't have We should have a John Borg behind us, but the Borgs are in the basement. I'm not going to carry one up for the And I just want to sit in comfy chairs after our long day yesterday. Yeah. I'm I can't get comfortable cuz I don't feel weird like leaning way back. I can't get the microphone over here. Do you need a pillow behind you? No, we'll be okay. We can pause it for a second. You can go get No, go. Keep rolling. All right. Get get comfy. I'm just going to lean forward. What if you put your butt back further? I'm just going to lean forward like this. Will be good. Okay, cool. Um, thanks for everybody sitting through that little thing. So, we got up super early yesterday. Um, we left the house at 6:30 in the morning, drove up to Elkrove Village, and got into stuff. Um, so we got to do a cool factory tour at Stern, which I've been very interested in doing that. And it was um uh Kyle and uh Jack Danger took us on a tour and there were about I don't know 15 other people, 20 other people maybe more right around that. A good group of different content creators and we got to see behind the scenes of how pinball machines are made and it was kind of mindblowing. Yeah, it was because I see a lot of times uh folks like barking about why are they so expensive? Why are they so expensive? Even like that the the Star Wars the Costco home plus one. But if you do this factory tour and they offer it if you're coming to a pinball expo next month, you can sign up and do the Stern factory tour. It kind of clues you in as to why these machines cost what they do. Uh there's just all kinds of stations. There's probably 80 people working back there. So it's like pretty much a handmade product. They're making everything in this game. Like some of the mechs I'm sure are imported. But all the wire assemblies and like stamping out the playfields. Like it's there's a big line of like 80 people like hand assembling these machines and that's why like a pro costs 7,000 bucks cuz it's like hours of like real human labor. There's not nothing back there is automated. No, it was it's not machines making these machines. It's people. It's people making the machines. And I think they um had said there's 380 people I think they said work at Stern and they have you know this main place that we were in where the the HQ is the offices and main production in the back and then an offsite warehouse of games which we didn't see but it was really cool. I was super um excited because the games that we saw being made in different stages um was was actually the Jaws 50th. So I feel like they did that just for me. Yeah, Jaws is on the line. It was pretty cool. Yeah. And I was also really impressed by everybody that we came in contact with um in in the production end of things or just people walking around the office. Everyone seemed genuinely happy and just like I mean they're at work so take that into consideration but like it it seems like a very nice place to work. It seems like they must treat their people really well. Yeah. And the factory workers as we're doing the tour they'll like smile at you and wave like hey. Yeah. It was really cool. Really really really cool. So maybe I've put some footage of in of that in here. I'm not sure. But when we um when we got there also we had um Seth Davis the CEO and George Gomez the chief creative officer maybe. I think he's Yeah, I think he's like the chief he like runs George runs like the design studio. So he's kind of the boss of everything that goes into the game. Yes. Yeah. So, they gave us a little presentation of uh the new Spike 3 um Spike 3 system on these and he also gave us a little preview of a sizzle reel of the the new um Star Wars machine and talked about some of those features. But the Spike 3 m um kind of the system, yes, that the the new game is on has some really really cool features. Yeah. Think of think of Spike 3. It's a new operating system. So, the easiest way to equate that I mean I guess with smartphones it'd be like when iOS does does an OS update or in like gamer terms it's kind of like going from like a PS4 to a PS5. Yeah. Because you've got it's got like an upgraded like CPU like does it say how many more times powerful it is? Well, I took notes. We couldn't take pictures, but I frantically took notes. So, that's why I'm holding this piece of paper because I want to get it right. But, um, the Spike 3 system has increased u processing power. So, I don't know if they said like how many more times powerful, and I don't want to quote George, but I I think it's like at least two times more powerful than the Spike 2 one. They said two times the memory. Two times the memory. So, your memory is good there. Yeah. So, that's probably like RAM. And then while the back glass artwork at the top stays the same, there's actually a larger video screen on it. It's um 35% larger. It's 18 1/2 in, has more pixels, and it looks badass. It looks great. And what's weird, if you just see like the Star Wars machine by itself, like you don't even realize it's a bigger screen necessarily because the the back glass, like Steph said, did not change. The back glass size is exactly the same. Mhm. So, it fits within that same area they have, but it it's when you look at it next to a Spike 2 game, it's like, wow, that is considerably larger and it's a higher quality display. I can't remember how many more times colors he said it does. It's It can produce way like thousands of tens of thousands of more colors than these displays do. And it it's a kick-ass looking screen. It looks so good. And I think that's about the perfect size cuz like the Jersey Jack has like a 20 whatever inch which is really cool. Like we have the avatar and that's really cool but then you don't get the back glass art. Yeah. I love the art and like the back glass art I think is one of the coolest things of pinball machine. You get you go Jersey Jack screen you don't really get that kind of it's just a different experience. Whole different deal. Yeah. It's a totally different and all right. So, other stuff that is coming with Spike 3 is um better networking and power handling cuz I don't know if you can hear these fans on this game on these games. Like the power supplies have a really loud fan. Spike 3 games apparently are like pretty much silent which would be awesome. Mhm. Although I kind of sometimes I take a nap over here and I like fall asleep to the sound of these fans. Yeah, that's a good that's a good trick. Oh yeah. Here I go. Yeah. Um, it's also going to have better Wi-Fi and um, let's see, new speaker lights to support upgraded electronics. Then something that streamers are going to be well, they they did not say this, but they um, they said that there is going to be an HDMI output with audio. Yeah. So do with that do with that what you will. There is one output. So you can take one HDMI cord, get your video signal from the from the screen and the audio signal in one cable, which is going to be awesome. Cuz if you want to do that now on like a Spike 2 game, you would have to do a mod, two mods. One mod to get the audio out, one mod to get the video out. And it's two separate cables. You could do that with one cable. Now, and while George and Seth did not say this, I am saying this, that's going to be a heck of a lot easier for people who might want to stream. People like us. Yes. So, as you notice, like if we stream Jaws or when we stream John Wick or the Black Knight, I have a camera on the score display. And now we can just pipe that right in cuz I'm not going to put a $150 mod on all these machines. The one thing I wish they' done with the HDMI is like put it on the coin door. Yeah, that would have been cool is put the HDMI cuz I'm assuming it's in behind the back glass. Yeah, I didn't see anything on the coin. And you'd have to route the cable down and out the bottom of the game. It's fine. At least it's there. Yeah. So, that's awesome. That was that was like one of the main things I was hoping for with Spike 3. It's like, give me an output so I can stream this easily. Yeah. And now we got it. Your wish was granted. Thank you, Mr. Gomez. Uh, and then they also said that depending on popularity of a title, as they create more Spike 2 games, it some of them may be upgraded to Spike 3. But again, it depends on popularity of a title. They did say that was a huge amount of work. Like they basically have to rebuild kind of the all the code of the game because it's not sort of backwards compatible really. So there would have to be mega demand, but it's possible. But it wouldn't be crazy to think that there may one day be like a Spike 3 Godzilla. They did not say that. No, they did not. They didn't say this. This is me speculating. Yeah, that you could maybe see a Spike 3 Godzilla or you could maybe see a Spike 3 Stranger Things or, you know, if they do an anniversary edition of any of those existing ones, I would bet you it would be like a Spike 3. Yep. But that's my speculation. Nobody at Stern actually said that. No. Um, let's talk a little bit about the game overview. Yeah. So, the game, cuz that's why you're watching this, is the game. The game Fall of the Empire. Fall of the Empire. It's pretty badass. And the code out of the gate, like the code seems really pretty full cuz all the main shots are for like a character. There's like a Luke one and a Han Solo one and a Chewy one. And there's mode. There's already like a mode for every character. And there are four multiballs. Mhm. On the premium and the LE, there's like a center ramp that's down. Starts down and then you hit this sketchy target up the middle that shoots the ball back at you pretty fast. Then the ramp comes up and you can hit that for like a hyperspace. So there's like a hyperspace multiball. Well, that center shot too is super repeatable. the center shot, you can drill it. Like I was able to hit three or four times in a row. And so that's that's like the friendly shot in the game. It's kind of your bailout shot. Like, oh ball's coming quick. What I shoot for? Go up the middle. Yeah. So like being super repeatable means it's kind of easy for everybody. It, you know, it's it's approachable for for newbies, but also like there's some challenge. It's, you know, still challenging to get through the modes if you're more experienced. Yeah. cuz I think a lot of newer people that aren't are not aiming their shots. They tend to hit the ball up the middle a lot and that shot's real makeable. It's not too tight. But to the left of that shot is the Death Star shot. Mhm. That shot's not easy. No, that shot's hard. It's tight. Yeah. Uh you have to hit it once and then it opens the Death Star and then you can lock three balls in there and get the Death Star multiball. It's so satisfying when you hit it. It's awesome. It's an awesome shot to hit. It is not easy. And then to the left of that is a little deal. It just goes up and there's a little like saucer, like a little curvy deal and a saucer at the top of this little lane. And that is the Luke. That's the Luke shot. And it that's also right next to the the at the at stands between the uh dust star and the Luke shot. But you can lock three balls in there. That's a virtual lock. Like you go up there and it'll lock it and it kicks it back out. Once you lock that three times, it starts the battle of Hoth multiball. And if you beat the battle of Hoth, it'll at at mech he like falls down. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. Super cool. So there's there's the hyperspace multiball up the middle. There's the Dust Star multiball. There's the Battle of Hoth multiball. And then over on the right side, and that Luke shot, by the way, it's easiest off the left flipper. It's a backhand almost like the left ramp on Venom. Similar spot on the flipper. When you can find it, it's pretty repeatable. It's real hard off the right flipper. Over on the right side, there's kind of a tall plastic ramp that's got this like kind of spiraly deal where the ball goes down. That's like the Jaba Jaba's pit. Mhm. And on the premium and the LE, there's like a sculpt. There's a Java sculpt on those that's like lit up. Yeah, it lights up. It's cool. You don't like interact with it in any way, but it looks cool. There's a multiball you can get there. I can't remember what that one is called, but there's So, that's your fourth multiball. So, off the rip, the game has modes for every character. There's a Darth Vader scoop on the left. That's your mystery. And I think if you light extra ball, you collect it there. or maybe the extra balls on the orbit. Can't remember. You have four multiballs. You get characters for every mode. I think the only thing you're really lacking yet is uh wizard modes. Mhm. So, it's And like I don't get to wizard modes anyway. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be fun right out of the box. We played it with a few other folks and it was u it was so fun and um Steve Bowen tore it up. Is it Bowen or Bowen? Is it Bowen? Oh, I don't even know. I need to look him up now. He's a really great player. Is he from Chicago? Yeah, he lives here now. He's a killer player. We played on the the like the hub challenge. Did a little uh video and we played some with them. I beat Steve in the second game, but he didn't have a good game cuz he tore it up. Yeah. He was like 400 million on the first game, something like that. Over 300. Yeah. So, he was jamming out. That guy's so good at nudging. So the game play, like a good player can shred the game, but like he didn't beat the game. So there's enough code in there because I I I think this code's way farther along than like Uncanny X-Men was when that launched or John Wick when that launched or Bond or Bond when that launched. It's like the code out of the box I think is really fun. Uh the game's fun to shoot. It feels like a John Borg. Oh, we didn't talk about the uh on the premium and the LE there's a a you can use the force. Yeah. With the action button to save the ball. To save the ball and it can go a couple different ways and it's more powerful cuz if you hit standup targets there, you know, there's like little standup targets in front of like all the ramps and you can spell force. And if you spell like half of force, you kind of have the ball say, but it's weak. And then if you complete force, then it's like stronger, I think. Yes. And I think when it's weak, it will the force with magnets takes the ball from the, you know, from the drain area. Not in the drain, but just behind the flippers back to the um what do you call that area? To the in the ball. Oh, into the plunger. Yeah, it shakes into the flapper area. Yeah, cuz I think you can save it from the left out lane, too. Yeah. And it I'm pretty sure it takes all the way around. Mhm. So, the force thing though, it takes skill cuz I never successfully did it. Well, the other way the force works, I think, when it's supercharged. We could be wrong, but it brings it back up into the playfield. A middle drain or Yeah. will catch it. And I think Steve was able to do that a couple times. He has the force. He's got the force. I didn't have the force cuz if you don't time it right, it it's just gone. So, it's really challenging, but yeah, there's definitely some skill so you can save the galaxy once and for all. And then like the ball say when you have a ball save going, it's like Yoda's eyes. Oh, his eyes are We did film that. Like Yoda, it's like Yoda's head right between the flippers and his There's insert lights behind his eyes. His eyes are like flashing. It's super cool. Like I I really like that. Oh, and we did not mention the call outs for the game. Well, yeah. So, th this game is really focused on what people call episodes four, five, and six, which I call the first three Star Wars because I'm old. Mhm. But it's four, five, and six. So, Star Wars, um, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Yep. A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi. Okay. Yeah, New Hope. It's for the Star Wars nerds. Anyways, um so it's focused on that. So the artwork is all uh revolving around the characters and the moments of those games uh or the moments of those films. And it's pretty awesome because I mean as as a Gen Xer that's those are my Star Wars. Yeah. And um so the the cool stuff is that art was all handdrawn not by one, not by two, not even by three artists, but by four different artists. That's right. Cuz they had like a the artist did the character models, right? The character drawings, and then they had a person that specializes in like likeness and like fine-tuning. And they did stress there was no AI. Yeah, they did stress. There's no AI used in this art. It's all hand drawn, hand painted, whatever you want to call it, but there's three different back glasses and cabinet. Yeah. And they're all pretty amazing. Yeah. And I don't know if I took pictures of all of them, but you know who did? Stern. So, everyone probably by the time you see this, if you're a pin, like a hardcore pinball nerd, you've probably seen the the Stern sizzle reel. Uh maybe we should even link it in the description. Yeah, we'll link it in the description and probably a link to the game on Stern's website. Yeah. So you can like fully see all the different models because I'm sure we're going to miss some details here. I'm pretty sure they probably took better pictures and video. They probably have better pictures than us. But my favorite back glass I think cabinet art was the premium. Yeah, me too. I think the premium looks the best. I think what was really cool and George called this out that they used the double stripe that is just so iconic Star Wars around the edge of the back glass. So he said people have thought like oh the back glass is smaller with Spike 3 and it's kind of an optical illusion because of how they integrated the Star Wars like uh brand artwork. It's It's like this exact same if you bought Star Wars toys as a kid, you know, it's got those couple lines that go all the way around the the edge and says like Star Wars at the top. Yeah. And that is around all the different back glass art. So the the back glass looks like like you've picked up like who made those toys, Mattel or Kenner? Maybe Kenner. I haven't heard that name. But it's like there's like a new Star Wars wars toy at the at the KB Toys. Uhhuh. remember KB Toys still a thing? And so it looks like it'd be a package for that, but like a really kick-ass, like the best Star Wars toy ever made. And the the premium back glass, it's like got all your main people kind of right there in the middle. And then kind of in the back almost translucent, there's like Darth Vader's head and you can see his hand like reaching almost reaching over them. Uh the ali back glass was more kind of battle of Hoth based had some like I don't like some tie fighters and stuff on that. Uh more looked like battle of Hoth based and then the pro back glass I know the pro cabinet art is more like Return of the Jedi and I can't remember exactly what that back glass looked like but maybe we have it. Maybe it's playing right now while I'm talking. don't know. We don't know. The other thing that um our friend Mike Vinikour helped out with was there are over a thousand clips from those three movies. Yeah. Thousand clips. A thousand clips. And all of the callouts are C3PO. Like Yeah. I was about I was going to say that and then you changed the subject, didn't you? Well, I want Yeah, I did. It's C3PO and it's I think the real the real C3PO which I don't know really what that means. Is that guy still I think it was that voice actor. Huh. Cuz it is C3PO like talking to you doing all the call outs. Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah, it's pretty great. And you just it I um Well, do you want to talk about the gameplay a little bit? We kind of did a little bit. I I described the shots. Well, I want to say that like my experience in playing this your experience in my experience in playing it and I'm not a great pinball player. Played a few games and I feel it was really fun and I'm not really a super Star Wars nerd like at all. Not at all. You don't really even like it. No. Mike caught up on all the shows on Disney and I feel like you're a Star Wars nerd now which is great. I love that. But uh you really do get I felt really immersed in it. Mhm. And it's maybe it's cuz we've been playing for a little while now, but I felt like I knew what to do a little bit off off the rip clearly if you spend more time with it. But it's such a great theme for pinball. I'm so glad that this is what the third fourth Star Wars pinball maybe fifth. Maybe fifth. I mean because there was that old like real rare one. There was the the pinball 2000 one which is kind of like the revenge from Mars. There was the other John Borg one, the Data East one, which people love. There was the Steve Ritchie one. Mhm. There might have been one other Mando. Mando is like sort of counts. I mean, it's in the universe. It's in the universe. So, this is like maybe the sixth one. Yeah. Was there a Sega one? I don't even know. I don't know. So, it's it's like the fifth or sixth or seventh Star Wars pin. We were watching a podcast the other night and Zach Manny said he'd be fine with one every five years. And I think probably you could do one every 5 years. Yeah. I mean, it's a one of the biggest franchises in the world. Mhm. And I I feel like what's interesting about Star Wars is there are people our age who were kids or maybe a little bit older than us when it came out and every generation has had their Star Wars and their parents introducing them to Star Wars since then. Yeah. So, it's just a a really smart licensing deal. Yeah. Cuz I remember there was a period when your sister's kids were like Frank was five. Yeah. Five or six. And like he just wanted a bunch of Star Wars. Yeah. My sister told him if you want to be a Jedi, you have to like fold the laundry. That's how you get your Jedi power. Uh-huh. So like they're into Star Wars and like I don't think they're into it now cuz they kind of outgrew it, but they'll probably come back to it. If there were movies out, they would probably go see He's in, you know, Frank's in high school now. Mhm. And probably 5 10 years from now, he's probably be he'll probably be back into Star Wars cuz he'll want to reminisce about when he was 6 years old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, really super smart. But the game I loved the I love the artwork. I love the feeling. I love the experience. The toys on the Ellie and Premium. So cool. I didn't play the Pro, so I can't really say anything about that. I don't think you did that. I played the Pro. the main difference in gameplay. So, you're not if you're thinking about a pro, there's no big difference in game play other than you don't have the force. It's like a conventional ball saver. So, there's no button on the force. And then the center ramp on the LE and the premium, which starts down, and you hit a shot to lift it, that doesn't exist in the Pro. It's the ramp is just up. Mhm. And you have to do I think you have to hit like the right ramp or something. You have to hit something to qualify the center shot. Yeah, because the center shot is too easy. So that you have to hit a different shot to qualify it. But that's I think gameplaywise that's it. But what you are missing is a lot of the sculpts. Yeah. And they're cool. So there's no Java sculpt. And then on the right and left sides, there's a there's like a Darth Vader head and there's a Stormtrooper sculpted head. Those are not in the I think the Millennium Falcon was in the pro though, right? I think so, too. And I think the little at thing, the AT is in all. So, if you're thinking just strictly for just game play, go pro. The pro is fine. It's totally fine. And I'm usually like we're us both of us are usually like pro people. We have a Wick pro, Zeppelin pro, Foo Fighters Pro, Black Knight Pro. Like most of our Sterns are pros except for Jaws. I'm Kenny X-Men Pro. So the pro is fine for gameplay. I think I like the cosmetic upgrades enough and I love the back glass and the back glass on the premium that that's if we get one or when we get one that's will probably go premium. The LE looked really cool though. It has LE's got the speaker lights. LE has the expression lights already in it. The premium has uh the the cabinet is ready for expression lights, but you'd have to buy them. You could not put expression lights in a pro. No. The powder coat on the LE is like a cool blue. Mhm. Uh the LE looks really cool. And I think the LE over the premium has upgraded sound. Yeah. It's got like separate tweeters. Yep. But all of Spike 3 games have vastly improved sound over the Spike 2. They can go way louder and like way louder without being distorted. And John Borg like played the game and cranked it up. Yeah. On the premium and it was loud. I wanted I didn't get to hear the LE cranked up. I should have done that. Well, they said they're making 770 LE also. So, we'll see. See, I hope that goes really well for them because they're really cool. Yeah. 770LE because of the Star Wars was released in 1977. Oh, is that what they said? Yeah. I missed that. So that's why it's 770 Ellies. That's pretty cool. They also the Ellies are going to be shipping midepptember which is next week. Yeah, next week Ellies will be shipping. So I bet they put it probably goes on the line like Monday. Yeah, I bet. Or maybe even today. Could be today. I think they were waiting on some final licensing approval, but that was mostly digital. Oh, like the the code code base, so they can probably make the the game. Yeah, cuz somebody had told us they they literally are going on the digital assets that are on the screen that the Disney legal team literally goes frame by frame through it. Yeah, they had to approve every frame of footage. Crazy. And I did ask, is this the same team that you dealt with for the home edition? And they said, "No, it is not." Oh, different. It is not. I guess that was originally because this is the Disney I'm sorry, the Star Wars home edition that's currently at Costco is kind of like a updated version, the plus update of the other one. So that was originally approved eight years ago, I think, is what they said. So totally different team. So I think all they had to get approved because the home edition plus has achievements which Mike Venor designed and we watched him like we played that game with Mike and he I think he got about every achievement. Yeah, he got 10 million. He was shredding this game and he's getting all these achievements and I'm I was impersonating Mike saying I made you cuz he's racking up the achievements cuz he made them all. It's great. He's like this is the first time I've played it logged in. It's just like boom achievement. Achievement. Achievement. He had like high score number one on the game that the game that's in the Stern lobby and there's some killer players that go through there and play. Yeah, it was pretty fun to watch. But that game's fun to play. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, yeah, Mike got Mike Vinikour got over 10 million. I think I got 300,000 on my game. I might have had almost three million. 2 million. Yeah, I did suck. I think I cracked a million. I think I was around 2 million. Not two million, probably one something. But it was fun though. Mike crushed us. It was fun. And it is a real pinball machine. It's a real pinball machine. And um George Gomez had said that the cost and Seth um said that the uh the relationship with Costco is awesome. Costco's super happy with the sales that are going through. Stern is super happy with the store, the sales that are going through. And we saw a lot of those uh are made and ready to ship back out to more Costco. So that's pretty awesome for pinball. Yeah, they had like probably like a hundred or so of them in boxes. It was like the final shipment going out to Costco's. I think they said it was sold like double what the Jurassic Park one did. Yeah. So that's that's awesome. I think I wrote that somewhere, but maybe I didn't. So we've covered Spike 3. Yep. We've done an overview of the game. Y we should probably roll an interview. Before we get there, I just want to go through like timeline of this thing a little bit because you're probably curious when you will be able to see this. So, the Ellies are shipping midepptember, then they'll do the pros. And if you are in Colorado, uh they're um they're anticipating that these are going to be ready to share at the Colorado Pinball Pinball Showdown, which is September 18th through the 21st. So, it's like next weekend. Yeah. Yeah. Or this coming weekend. No. Today's Today's the 11th. The 11th. That's next weekend. It's Riot Fest weekend. Okay. We'll be at Riot Fest. Um and then they also George confirmed that accessories for um Fall of the Empire will be available by the end of the year. So, how about that? I think they did say too that the accessories for the n for the game after this one are going to be ready when the game launches. I think I heard someone say that. Oh, really? They didn't say what I don't know what the next game is. They didn't say that. But I think at least like the topper for the next next game is going to be available like right when the game Oh, LE would come with the topper. That would be nice. One other thing I want to mention that we didn't hit on is everybody is, you know, talking about tariffs and things are increasing in price and they told us that the pricing is remaining the same. And the last time that Stern did a price increase, we weren't into pinball. We weren't around for it, but it was three years ago. And a lot of the parts that they source, I thought found this so interesting, a lot of the parts they source for the pinball machines come from the Midwest. So Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, they called out. So that's pretty awesome. And and part of the reason why they are not uh increasing prices is they're part of their determination to grow pinball and you know continue to make it as accessible. I mean it's an expensive thing, let's be real. Yeah. But they really want to grow pinball and kind of a a rising tide lifts all ships sort of thing. Yeah. So I understand that the games are it's it's a crazy amount of money to buy pinball machines. like it's a huge investment and I think a price increase they probably know would have hurt them badly, but their costs to create these things have gone up. Yeah. So, they're just kind of eating that in the in the margin. Yep. And I feel like they're including as much like the Star Wars has as much stuff in it as any of the other last, you know, five or 10 games. I'm sure there's going to be some folks when you see the game play like it's not innovative like cuz it's kind of a fan layout. I mean it feels like a John Borg machine which I love. Oh, you do? Yeah, I do. I love a John Borg. So like Google thinks I'm talking to it. Every time I say John Borg, Google wants to say something over there. Maybe she likes John Borg too. probably everyone loves a Borg, but like the the layout is not, you know, there's nothing like mindblowing in this layout where it's like this is something that's never been done in pinball. Like I think the the Jedi ball save is pretty new and unique and innovative. Yeah. But in terms of like the shots, it's like it shoots like a John Borg. It shoots like a John Boorg and it's super solid. Um it's two flippers. Yep. The the other thing that I wanted to mention that they they talked about was pinball's small as a whole and that the there's there's been a lot of rumblings with people outside of the US uh especially in Europe kind of butt hurt that this Star Wars machine is not coming to Europe and that Stern did not secure the license for Europe or Asia and um it what As we understand it, the Lucas film Disney folks, Disney International actually didn't think that pinball was large enough, didn't think that pinball was large enough to go into those markets. So Stern has told the international people like if there's a demand if if there is a demand, they're willing to I'm using these words, invest in that. But um I can only imagine that it has to be a pretty significant investment for that license. And if they're if they don't think the demand's there, it doesn't seem like a smart business decision to pay to invest in something that you're not going to get a return on. And I it almost sounds like it's not even that Stern decided to not do that investment. It almost sounds like that the Star Wars international that the the ones that hold Europe and Asia that licenser didn't want to do it. I I don't know if it's even fully Stern's choice to say like if we do this we'll lose money. Well, yeah, they it sounds like that that licenser basically said no. They didn't think that pinball was large enough for that for that franchise in Europe. That's the licenser. Yes, the licenser said that. So, it's not like people in Europe, if you're mad at Stern, like I don't think this is I don't think this is their fault because I it sounds like it's the licenser saying like, yeah, you need to show us that this is going to do better than we think it's going to do. Which is why they've asked people in Europe like call your distributors and say you want it because I don't think it's Stern treating you as like a second class market. I think it's the licenser saying like, "Yeah, people don't play pinball here. We don't want to do that." And they and the Lucasfilm Disney International and the domestic version of that, they like to do sponsorships. They like to do those partnerships. I think somebody had said that that uh licensing has done over $46 billion in sponsorships. So they want they want uh they want to do those things, but I guess they want to make sure that they're successful. They want to protect the Star Wars brand, I would say. So the license holder probably doesn't want to do a product that's viewed as like was a failure or like a flop. Yeah, I can understand that. So if you're in Europe like and you know a distributor, call them and tell them you want this machine if you want it. Yeah. All right. Interviews. Interviews. We'll start out with Raymond. Yeah. So, we did a quick interview here with Raymond. We try to keep this We try to not be punishers to these guys cuz they're working that day. Do you want to explain what a punisher is? A punisher is somebody that uh just doesn't that that really lacks like social skills and will if they encounter people that they are fans of or that they think are important will just like they will get them and they will not let them go and they will just talk and talk and talk and talk because they're so excited. They're so excited. But I mean I I don't even know what the channel was is I saw like an old video old interview with Gomez. It was crazy from some fest where he clearly had been doing like interviews all day and this this guy had poor George in there for like an hour and 15 minutes and asking a lot of questions that like you could just look up the answer like and like we didn't want to be that. So, we try to keep these to like 5 to 10 minutes, just a few questions. So, don't get mad if we didn't ask like what you would want to ask. Let us know what you'd want to know because I'm sure we'll get another opportunity at some time. We'll probably have all of these guys back on. We're going to have John Borg come over here anyways. Let Borg come over here. I mean, I did not He did not say he was going to fix a couple of my games. I'm just manifesting it. He's probably a pretty good tech. I bet John Borg probably he'll come down here, tweak up dial in a couple of our games. Yeah. Um, but let's So Ry, what did Ray do? Ray did the code. All right. And he did the code for like his most recent was Metallica Remastered, which is that's Lyman Sheets code, but like all the additional things on it was was Raymond. It's badass. Ray, I think they call him Ray. But I think that's his name in the game. Like when his insider connected name, I think might be Ray Day. Okay. Yeah, we call him Raymond. Raymond. Let's listen to Raymond. All right. Hey everybody, it's Stephan and we are here at Stern's headquarters in Elgrove Village, Illinois. It is absolutely spectacular and super excited to ask a few questions of Raymond Davidson, right? Yep. And what's your title here at Stern? Uh lead software engineer. And tell us about your role on Star Wars, the new Star Wars. Yeah, so I was kind of the um the lead programmer uh kind of in charge of making sure all the software gets in. So they make the play field and then I have to make it do things that you make it sound really easy but I know it isn't. No, no, there's a lot that goes into it. So yeah, I've got a question Raymond about that. So you've done software on like mo mostly music pins before, right? Yep. Yep. Metallica Rush, Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we love all of those. But this is like your first like non-m music pin that you're kind of lead on. Yeah. Yep. So what what's it like when you've so Metallica Rush like pretty wide open in terms of what you can do like with the story, right? Whereas now you're like coding rules for Star Wars. So like Yeah. So that actually it changes a lot of how you approach your rules because you can't just stack things willy-nilly where you're like doing all this stuff at once even though that would be cool from a rules perspective. You got to respect that people want to see the narrative of the game unfold. Um, and you got to show the moments of the movie and the storyline has to make sense. You have to have a logical like, okay, if I do these things and I get this wizard mode and it makes sense that I get this wizard mode because, you know, it's themed appropriately. Um, and but you also have to have the pinball still be fun. So you can't just have it be a linear path where every game you're literally starting from New Hope and then doing all the events of that and then doing Empire Strikes Back. So you kind of the way I describe the uh philosophy we went with is it's like little windows into times of you know scenes in the movie and with when you're in the window everything plays in order. It gets put front and center, but you're allowed to jump around. Um, which gives the game a nice varied feel each time you play it. Cool. Yeah. So, like this time I might go for the at at multiball and the next time I might go for the Death Star, but I could do them independently kind of at my choosing as the player which one I want to start first. Not chronological, right? Yeah. Unless you choose. Unless you want to. Yeah. So, when you're when you were got tasked with this job, you're doing Star Wars. Did you like go hardcore binge on the movies to like take watch them um and and and be like uh yeah that that scene will work great here. Um also uh Mike Vinikour was a huge help. He's like a huge Star Wars fan and he right at the beginning he's like I want to help on your project Ray. And I'm like okay yes we need as much help as we can get. And so he he did a lot of the first cutting of clips and and things and then I kind of went through and and my other programming partner Andrew uh he also helped picking the various scenes because there was just so much to do on this game. Um so we had a lot of a lot of people helping. Yeah. Because you've got three movies to cover where a lot of things happen. You can't fit it all into a pinball. But I I got two games on it so far. I really enjoyed it. I love a John Borg layout. He's actually my favorite. He's somehow it's like fast and smooth but in your face but also familiar in a weird way, you know? He's he's great. Yeah. The like a Johnborg machine is almost like if you're into music, it it's almost like a Ramon's song that maybe you've never heard where it's like instantly like I feel like I've heard this song before, but it's new and it just feels good. It's like catchy. Yeah, it's like catchy. All right, two questions left. one, since a lot of the people who watch us are new to pinball, do you have a like a main tip that you like to give to new pinball players? Uh, well, I mean, shoot for the flashing lights. So, so first of all, you can aim the ball. Um, and it's not just all about not draining. I think that's a lot of people don't realize that there's actually objectives. So, if if you're looking for objectives, just see kind of what's lit up and try to, you know, if you want the ball to go towards the middle of the playfield, you flip earlier. And if you want it to go towards the end, you kind of have to wait a little bit and that can be scary. Um because people are afraid of it going down the middle. Yeah. But um you know, just keep practicing and uh and kind of if you missed a shot on one side, overcompensate, try to miss it on the other side. Um and just kind of dial it in that way. Um yeah, just lots of practice, too. Lots of practice. All right. So, this last one again since a lot of our fans are or viewers I should say are music people, music fanatics, you are, you know, a music pinball guy and I know like you love all of your babies equally and your favorites change all the time, but in this moment right now, do you have a favorite music pin that you like playing? Uh, it's hard not to go with the Metallica Remastered. Um, which I I kind of helped bring to the modern era, but was based on a game that was kind of already done and it was already done so well. So, I I had a lot to already work off of. Um, so I love the Metallica. Um, and I'm also really happy with um the Foo Fighters one that that I worked on because that we kind of got to do our own little story with that a little bit. Um, and I just love the shots on that game, too. That game's really cool. Ray, that's one of Steph's favorites. Yeah, I totally agree with you. We've got the Foo Fighters at home. I love it. Don't have a Metallica Remastered yet, but I think Metallica Remastered, we just ranked our favorite music pins. It was number one for both of us. I gave the right answers there. Well, there's no wrong answer in pinball, that's for sure. Um, so congratulations on an awesome new game and all of the hard work that you and the team did. I I can't wait for everyone else to experience it. It is absolutely incredible. Well, you guys are going to love it. Um, big big deal. Big day here at Stern. Yeah. Thanks, Raymond. Thank you so much. How cute is Raymond? Yeah, I think I think Raymond before we interviewed him, I think he was seemed a little fearful and thought like, am I going to be punished? I felt like he did. He I I had to lure him, but then I think he enjoyed the interview. I hope he did. So, thank you, Raymond. Yeah. Thank you so much. It was really nice of you. All right. Who's up next? Next. Who is up next? I don't have the list. It is our friend who's taught you how to do a few things on the Stern machines. Oh, we're gonna do Kyle next. Yeah, Kyle. What's K What's Kyle's last name? Did we I forgot to look it up, but we just call him um Tech School Kyle. Tech School Kyle. Kyle also is a punk rock fan. He's got Jawbreaker tattoos and I happened to be wearing my Jawbreaker shirt yesterday. uh under my punk rock pinball hoodie and I saw his tattoos and during the factory tour there was like a pause and I went up to him and I'm like you're a jawbreaker guy. You're a jawbreaker guy aren't you? And he's like yeah and I like showed him the shirt and he's like yeah. So, not only is Kyle like super knowledgeable from the on the technical fixy side of the mechanical side of the pinball machines, he's a punk rocker. Punk rock fan. Super cool dude. So, nice. We asked him a few questions about like being noobs owning a pinball machine. He gives you some tips on Everybody has a tip on how to play. Like a little tip if you're newer to pinball, like a tip to improve your game. Yeah. So, let's listen to Kyle. Come on in, Kyle. One more interview uh with the punk rock pinball team and we have our new best friend, Kyle. Kyle, what's your last name? Sperry. Sperryi. And what's your title officially? My business card says I am a technical support engineer. I finally have an engineering title even though I've never been to school for it. Well, congratulations. Thanks. Well, you have a whole series of really cool videos on Stern's YouTube channel. We've watched a bunch of them. Stern Tech School. Yeah. Stern Tech School is the series. Those are like playlists on the Stern channel. Yeah. So, check those out if you need to figure out how to work on a Stern pinball machine. Kyle's got some awesome tutorial videos. I learned how to rebuild flippers watching those videos. Mike is a student of your Stern Tech school. Awesome. Excellent. So, we have a question for you um about maintenance. Yeah. So, let's say we are pretty new to owning pinball. We've just owned pinball machines a little over a year and we went crazy and started with one. Now I have 16. Yes. But let's pretend I'm getting my first brand new machine today. And as a new pinball machine owner, what are say two or three things I should do in terms of maintenance to prolong the life of my machine? Okay. Um, one thing I like to tell people like when they get a new game is like become intimately familiar, right? You're going to take delivery of it, take the glass out, make sure everything's tight, right? Like open it up. Like whether this is new or old, right? Whether you're buying a used game or you're taking a game out of a box, it's always good to just do like a once over. Make sure that everything is tight, everything looks good before you start putting it into operation. Right? Games that get put in trucks take rough rides sometimes and you never know what jiggle loose. Um, another thing I like to tell people is like pinball games are not like a car. They do not have a maintenance schedule. Like every 500 games, you better go and change the flipper oil. No, you don't need to do that. like address problems with the game when you see something, right? If the game starts to get a little dirty, get in there and clean it. When you get into your game and clean it, it's another good time to check, are the rubbers looking okay? Oh, look, that one's starting to crack. Let's replace that. Little preventative things here and there. Um, and the third thing I'd say is like maybe just don't be afraid of it. Take it apart or like remember a human built it so a human can fix it, right? like you do not need to be afraid of treating it rough. It doesn't need to be treated with, you know, white gloves. It's not a Tiffany egg. Um I don't know, maybe those are sorts of things that I'd like to tell people to just instill confidence. I think become confident manipulating and working your way around your game. Okay. I love all of that. And then watch the Stern Tech School videos if you have a specific issue like Yeah, they're very well done. You've got the the shooter rod one, you've got the flipper one. Yeah. trying to address like common things, right? Like like how can I adjust my flippers? How do they work? Right? Some people are visual and they maybe they need to see and be told how things work. Otherwise, there could be people that just can look at something be like, I get this, you know? So, we try to address some common things, but then also try to address things that are like game specific, like how do I work on this thing on Jaws or how does this complicated thing come out of Jurassic Park or you know what I mean? How does the Kong come out of King Kong? You've got one on that. that I saw. Yep. I have a controversial question question. I love these controversy. On a new stern, so we don't have to think talk about all the different types of pinball machines in since the history of time, but on a new modern pinball machine, what do you recommend? How how do you recommend cleaning it? The playfield. Yeah, cleaning the playfield. This is cuz this is And if you don't want to step in, it is it's very controversial. Yeah. I'll tell people it's like you ask 10 people, you'll get 15 different opinions. But, okay, I've been doing this for I think every single pinball game I've ever cleaned, I've used Novice number two and a microfiber cloth. You don't need to use a ton. You're not going to take the paint off. A lot of homeowners, you know, that you maybe only play your game 10, 20 times a month. I mean, it's not even going to get dirty enough. Yeah, we're those people. You might not even need novice. Just use a dry rag and get some of the dirt off. But a little bit of novice on a rag and go for it. I don't like waxing games because I don't like how crazy slick and slippery the ball gets. But, you know, it's your game. Do what you want. But novice. Okay. So, you're saying no need to wax like a modern clear coated playfield after you novice if you want to. It depends. I guess it's Yeah, but it's not doing harm if you choose to do it. Absolutely not. But you should be aware that some waxes like you might see at the car store is going to be called a cleaning wax. Um, those can be more abrasive than like a novice, which is a very fine fine fine fine plastic polish, right? So, your car has a lot more clear. So, having something that cuts a little bit is going to do a good job at keeping it shiny. You don't want to use something that abrasive on a pinball game. So, if you're going to wax your game, like a pure carnuba wax would be my uh recommendation. And I do that on my EM. I don't do it on my modern games, but I'll do it on my 80s and '7s games. And you don't use Novas on those. Only if they're really dirty. But like that's the thing is, you know, I bought a lot of those games 10 years ago. I clean the dirt off and now I just wipe them down when they get dirty, you know? Okay. So, and the wax does make it fast as hell. Like it makes it so We've got a friend who waxes his balls. Like that person likes hard pinball. Pinballs, you know. Well, you know, this is a family show. Uh he waxes the pinball. He notices the pinballs. Yeah, we know two people that do that. I waxed my TNA, my total nuclear annihilation once and it was like so unfun to play for a long time because the ball just like teleported back and forth and I was like, "Okay, anyway." Yeah. Last question. Do you want to do the um music pin one? Oh yeah. Two questions. And two What's your other question? Well, I'll do the music pin one. What What did you have for the other one? The other one that we've asked everybody. Oh yeah. Sorry. The other one we've asked everybody, you've probably seen it already, but you're as a certain employee, you probably can't talk about a dream theme. Yeah, I don't think you should. I'll just ask I don't think I'm supposed to. We'll have you come down. We'll do this a different time. So, this question right now today, what is your favorite music pin to play today? Right now. Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden. But it changes. I mean, and that's natural. Could be different next week. Mustang actually has a really cool soundtrack. I think I maybe I mentioned this on your tour. I mean, it's got a lot of music in it and Mustang has a pretty bitching soundtrack. Cool. We'll have to play that one. Let's go play it now. All right. Yeah, let's go play it. But first, you have to answer the last question. Last question. Lots of new people, lots of great players are watching this, but a lot of new people. What is your one tip for a new player? Learn to control the ball. Learn to catch the ball. If you're playing on location, it might be worth like 50 cents or a dollar just to play a game of pinball where you're not playing. But trying to catch, stop, and then learn to aim your shot, I guess, is like a secondary. Catch the ball, aim the shot. But that's where I'd say that's what I'd say. Great. Nobody has said that yet, but that is great. And we used to we're and we're not good players yet. I'm average. But we when early on in Jaws, like we did play two-player games at Jaws where you had to catch the ball and then we could see who could catch it and then hit the most intentional shots in the game. Yeah, we'd have to call it. No, that's awesome. Like you got to call your shot. Like I'm going to hit North Beach from you're catching it, you're trapped up. Hit North Beach. We didn't hit it very often, but like that is a great tip. Um yeah, I mean because you get a lot of people just to expand on it, right? Like a lot of people a don't realize there's rules in pinball and b don't realize that like it is a game of responding to what it's trying to tell you. Right? This light is flashing. Catch it. Shoot it. Right. So like learning how to intentionally stop the ball. I've been trying to learn how to drop catch and live catch for like 15 years. I still can't do it. But you know hard. But that's the fun of pinball, right? Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Like you just keep improving your skills and some days are better. Some days the sun shines on your face. Some Some days it doesn't shine. Some days it doesn't. All right, we're gonna go play Mustang and see if we can't drop catch and live catch. Maybe a dead bounce. Let's give it a shot. Let's go do it. I mean, Kyle, he Look how tall Kyle is. He's so tall. Cuz I'm just about 6 feet tall. Yeah, he's he's a giant. A gentle giant. Yeah, for sure. So nice. He gave us a He gave us a jaws the the fin cuz our fin is got a little weird. Mhm. It was like not registering right and he was showing us how to fix it and he's like I have one in my office. I'll just go get you. I'll just go get it for you. And he just gave us the Yeah. He was like the finch for the jaws. That way you don't have to go through your distributor to or your dealer to get it. And we just cut out the middleman on that one. Yeah. Just got it straight from Kyle. Thanks for that, Kyle. Thanks again, Kyle. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully he's not getting in trouble if any Stern uh bigs are watching like Kyle's giving out Jaws. What the hell? We'll give it back. We'll ship it back if you're in trouble. And then you can ship it back to us. What the hell? What the hell, Kyle? Um the other thing Kyle I think he said he commented on one of our posts about Mustang. He did. And as a music pin and I got to play that one and it was pretty fun. So, it's a Ford Mustang pinball machine by Stern. Yeah. Who designed that one? I don't know. I I meant to look it up. I'm going to look it up as you talk. But it was really cool. And as you look it up, I I'm also curious the one that was in Stern's lobby where they just have these bazillion machines. Uh it was a special one. It was numbered out of 500. And I was wondering like you tell me did they was it just a like a limited edition thing that they did? The Mustang. I'm gonna see how many they made. Who do you think designed that based on shooting it? I don't know. Borg. No. Steve Ritchie. Nope. It's Trudeau. It's a fun game nonetheless. It's unfortunate that How many did they make? It doesn't even say how many they made. Well, no. This is a solid state. I thought it was a DMD game, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a DMD game. Oh, it is a DMD game. It doesn't tell me how many they made. I think it was kind of shortish run. It's worth 4,700 to $5,400. See one out in the wild. Give it a hop on it. Give it a ride. It was pretty It was pretty fun. And there is some pretty great music call outs on it. Y All right. Next, we've got a couple questions for the senior director of marketing. I think that's his title. He'll tell us. He says his title on the thing. He's He's some kind of director of marketing. Yeah. Mr. Zach Sharpe. Yeah. Zach Sharpe of the um famous Sharp family. Is Zach Sharpe the one that coached up Jack Danger on how to play pinball? Yeah. Him and his dad, Roger Sharp. Zack and Roger. Yeah. Made Jack Danger the player that he is. This is the legend. And oh, what a player that is. I mean, he is a player. He's great player. He's better. Probably better one-handed than I am two-handed. Also a very tall human. Very tall. Not as tall as Kyle. Tall. Yeah, Kyle's taller. But two tall drinks of water there. I'll tell you that. So, let's um let's hear me ask some nerdy questions about marketing to Zach. All right. Okay, everybody. We are not stopping with these really quick interviews with super cool people here at Stern Stern's headquarters in Elkrove Village. And we have Zach Sharpe. And Zach, what's your official title here? uh senior director of marketing. I love it. And you may not know this, but and you may not know this, but Mike and I work in marketing, too. So, we love to talk to other marketing people. Our brains never stop. It's a fun field. It's so fun. Um and wanted to ask you a couple quick questions that we've been curious about kind of as marketers. And the first one is I'm really curious when you're um developing you know working on as a team on ideas and considering different properties and licenses and and that sort of thing. Um how much do you look at consumer u behavioral data I'll call it like IRI or neielen to determine like what kind of crossover there may be with specific hobbies or interests or properties. Do you guys do that kind of stuff? Oh yeah. I mean we take everything into account because I mean not only from like a domestic market but we also have to look at a global scale too because some properties might perform well you know in Europe but not necessarily in the US. So, we take all things into account. And then to your point, is there any kind of crossover? And we saw some great crossover with uh Dungeons and Dragons. We're kind of that like not nerdy culture, but gamers very passionate about, you know, their property. And we saw some like really cool synergy with that licenser and that game. Um, obviously it always helps when you have a really fun game, too, because then what's a better marriage than a good product, a good theme, and a fun pinball machine. Well, I we think you hit it out of um the ballpark on that one. And it just as a follow-up question to that, is that how you landed on Dungeons and Dragons? Was it really like based in data a little bit more than Not like holistically based in data? But I mean, we definitely take it into account cuz I mean like there's also the element of just licensing in general because I mean one of the big questions is like, oh, how did you land on that license? Did they approach you? Did you approach them? You know, no offense to us. You know, we're asking Lucas to do Star Wars. It's not vice versa, right? But then, you know, there's bands that approach us like Metallica with the remastered. They saw that we did a Rush machine with like the LCD. We did a Metallica, you know, 15 years ago with like the old dots, but they saw a new version with the pinball machine having the LCD, and it's like, well, we want that. So, it's like they're approaching us and it's like, that feels cool. Yeah. Twist our RR Metallica. I guess we'll do another pinball machine with you. Well, I love the Metallica. Super cool that they reached out to like that's got to feel very cool. So, congratulations on that. And we love the remaster. It was the top of our list of when we ranked our favorite uh music pins that was number one. It's so great. Yeah, we each had a list that was number one and mine number one on yours both. We Yeah, we love it. And Dungeons and Dragons, while we were driving up here this morning, we were talking about what a smart move that property was just to bring in new new players into the world of pinball. So, like, yeah, kudos. Well done. And I I hope it's been a big success for you guys. Absolutely. Yeah. I think it was cuz there was a a big kind of computer YouTube channel and you sent him like a D and D to unbox. Yeah. Linus. We love that. And there were some I'm not going to say his name. There's a grumpy pinball guy. It's like that's so stupid. Which one? No, I'm trying. There's a lot. We don't say his name on this channel, but it's like he's like that's so stupid. It's like that video got half a million views. Yeah. So, I was calculating that on the write up. Let's say half a million people watch that. Okay. Mhm. If 1 half of 1% of those people decided to go play a pinball machine, that's 2500, I think. Right. A half of a percent of 500K. It's 2500. I'm not a mathematician. We're marketers. We're marketers. We think like a music and pinball channel that But if that video got 2500 people that had not played pinball to go play pinball Mhm. of that 2500, I bet you like 50 to 100 of them are now playing pinball regularly. Yeah. So that you nailed it with that in my opinion. And what's great is we there there's a false narrative that we gave a machine away. That's not to keep. It was just to borrow the machine and create content. So it wasn't even like giving away a machine. And I think he even said on the video like this isn't mine. Like he's setting it up. He's a he's a fan. Uhhuh. Yeah. Real smart move. So, thank you. We are cheering and rooting for you guys really hard. So, and everybody in the community for sure, but um I know sometimes even though Stern is the biggest pinball manufacturer in the industry, you're you're not a big company. Oh, I mean in the global scale of the world in terms of big company. I mean, take a poll on the street. Do you know what pinball is? Like ping pong. They still make those things. Like trying to shift that narrative and every year, every product launch, we we shift that narrative. Yes. and we're rooting for you and we're thank you again for um inviting us to come here today. It's been awesome and we can't wait to share this with all of our our buddies. Yeah. And that's what kind of we're doing here. Like the channel we're talking on right now. Uh we've been around almost 10 years and most of you have been watching like hundreds of punk and indie bands come play in our basement. Uh and we've got, you know, almost 11,000 subscribers now. Then we became pinball addicts. And we think punk rock and pinball kind of oh hand in hand. When when I was younger, you know, I've been playing since the 90s. We'd play at venues all the time. More venues should have pinball machines. Every venue. So, we're kind of trying to the correct answer. Pull in like some of you pinball curious music people into pinball. And I love what you did with the D&D kind of crossover there. So, I think we have kind of a unified goal here to grow this thing. Let's go do it. and then and maybe even win a game. So, we've got our D and D sweep stakes going on right now through September 28th. Oh, wait. What? Uh yeah. Okay. Is everybody joining insider connected in the email? No. So, you can get two entries, but one you fill out a form. It's on our website. We have it on social. We posted it again for a while for a few months now, but it's it's closing up. So, if you've already done it, I Yeah, I think that's why I forgot. And menopause.com. So, no, we will tell everybody about that. That is awesome. Thank you for that reminder. And then one last question. Yes. Because we've had I think most everybody we had in today cuz a lot of people watching this channel, we have some hardcore pinballers, but a lot are new. If you're giving me let's say I've I've only played 10 games of pinball in my life. I know you're a good player. Thank you. What's the first thing you're going to tell me? Like, Mike, you need to practice X if you want to get better at pinball. Um, I kind of have like three things. One, don't be afraid to nudge the machine. I mean, these are commercial grade pieces of equipment. So, just told Diana that from sincere engineers. We just taught her that. Yeah. The game will tell you if you're being too rough with it. So, riskreward, but don't be afraid. I mean, the game won't bite you. Um, shoot the flashing lights if you don't know what you're doing. The game does a really good job of telling you what to shoot for to advance. And this sounds counterproductive, but don't be afraid to not flip. So, there's this move called the dead the dead flip, which you can let the ball kind of bounce off of a flipper to get control cuz that's what it's kind of all about. Don't just be reactionary, you know, seball hit ball. Like, try to slow it down so you can aim your shots. And that's kind of like my go-to tips and tricks. The dead flip on it, I think, is huge cuz play one-handed. It kind of forces you to learn how to let the ball bounce around. You can kind of see how much like the ball is not in danger even though you think it would be. So obviously if the game's on free play, you can do that more. Paying a dollar a play, you might not want it. But it's nice to have one at your house and it's on free play cuz I was practicing like dead flipping and in and some months ago and just amazed like how many times you can let it just bounce back and forth and back and forth. Like you don't flip. Y well it's scary. It's terrifying. Sometimes you just have to get out of your comfort zone and try something new. And like Pippy Longtocking said, I've never done that before, so I'm probably pretty good at it. One of the first guys I saw dead flip was our friend Joe Sharp. Unrelated, but also a fantastic pinball player. It's in the name. It's in the blood. We would play tournaments and finish in last place. And I'd watched Joe and CJ and like like they're not even flipping it. What are they doing? So the dead flip. Listen to Zach. It works. And with that, you've had a long day. We'll let you get back to it. It's never a long day in pinball. Yeah, right. Sure. We could could be bank. This is a great day, though. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And we're back. Thanks, Zach. Yeah, it was super nice to meet Zach. What a like very cool, nice guy. Real nice guy. All right, the grand finale. Mike's moment. This one I had to try to keep it together and I I I was a little bit nervous for this one. I I think I could hear it like because I just mixed like the audio from it. But I did have to tell him to put the mic talking into the mic and then he did it for a second and he put the mic down lower again. But he did a great job. If he comes over, he can coach us up on pinball and I can coach him up on that. The microphone it should be close to your mouth. Yeah. He's so cool. He's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. And he's just such a chill guy. John Borg. John Borg. Yeah. Like, so let's see what John Borg We just got a couple questions about designing this new Star Wars pin from John Borg. Yeah, we're not screwing around here, John Borg. All right. Um, hey everybody. We are absolutely super excited um that we have John Borg here with us on Punk Rock Pinball. My favorite pinball designer. Pleasure to be here. on board. Mike has been preparing questions on the We live in Bloomington, Illinois. We drove up this morning. So, we've been preparing these very specific questions for you and we know your time is valuable. So, get to it, boy. Yeah. First question. So, you were tasked with doing this new Star Wars machine. Yes. You've done the data east one, which is a fantastic game. 33 years ago. 33 years ago. Yeah. 33 years ago. Talking to the mic. Um, so when you got tasked with this one, like when you're starting your research, was your first move to like binge watch these? Oh, yeah. I binge watch I think I spent a couple months um looking at scenes and pulling pulling speech and timestamps. That that that's the big thing, timestamps, you know, cuz all the all the dialogue that's from the from the films, I have to be able to provide a list so that that stuff can all get pulled and found uh quickly and easily without someone having to, you know, search through and find everything. So, you're taking notes, hitting pause, like right going going back, going back, going back, going forward, go back, go forward, go back, get the time stamp right. So, how soon do you want to watch the Star Wars movies again? You know what? I want to watch some of the other ones now. Yeah. I don't know. You know, there's a couple that I haven't seen. I never saw Mando. Oh my gosh. Well, I have And I love Bill Burr. And I' I've meant to meant to see it, but I just haven't had a chance to. So, when the rumors were swirling around earlier this year that there may be a Star Wars coming out this fall, I just want you to know, you can tell your friends at Disney, it reignited a spark in Mike and who has not watched any Star Wars in years. And he went deep. Yeah. He started with Manda. And do you want to know why I did this? Why? Because you were designing the game. Oh. And I'm like, the new Stern is going to be cuz I wasn't a big Star Wars guy. Mhm. You hear that, uh, Disney? I wasn't a big Star Wars guy. There are some people that know a lot more about Star Wars than I do, but I've I know a lot. And but some of these guys just they know it all. Yeah, I've heard Mike Venor knows a bunch. Mike Vor is really sharp. Um, so yeah, Seth and George both, you know, have some some pretty pretty depth in-depth Star Wars men knowledge, too. So, so I hear the next Stern's a Borg. It's going to be Star Wars. So, I'm like, I'm going to get back into this. Awesome. Because I'm going to like this theme because it's the Borg and I'm going to want to have the game. So, John Borg and Stern Pinball got me back into Star Wars. Thank you. Awesome. And I have just one other question and then we can let you go and we can eat some lunch. All right. So your pinball machines, your your layouts are kind of notoriously a little bit challenging like especially on the outlanes. A lot of people say I tend to shoot really good on your games cuz Are you talking about getting bored or just the out? Talk about kind of getting bored. Yeah. Well, I put I do I do add rubber there now. I don't have that wire form that's right at the like on Monsters. Uh Monsters Monsters has the wire on the right. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody I went to a show on once and I saw a girl. She had a t-shirt and it showed a picture of the out lane and the return lane and the slingshot and it showed the ball bouncing into the out lane and it said I got borged underneath it. And then that's when I I like I got to start give I got to give him a rubber ring. I got to give him a mini post at least sporting chance. Give us something to bump off. But when you So you've got a theme now like Star Wars like the new Star Wars you want it to be challenging for a great player but you also want it to be approachable for every noob. Yes. So, how do what do you think of what goes through your mind in terms of the layout to find the balance where like this is hard enough for like tournament guys, but it's still approachable? Um, like the center shot on this game, the ramp goes up and and you most novice players flip with both flippers in some cases and they shoot up the middle a lot. So, I put that there. So, they're going to be rewarded when they hit that shot. They're oh my gosh, it went through the back panel. It came out over here and now I hear it's back on the flipper again already. Um, I just made sure that, you know, the Sarlac pit is an easy shot. It's kind of up the middle. The Death Star shot is up the middle, kind of sorted to the left a little bit. And it's a hard shot. And that's the one that you if if the Death Star wasn't hard to defeat, then we wouldn't have all these movies. That's true. Death Star should be hard. You got to just pound away at the Death Star. And I played the one game. I got the Death Star multiball. So, it's it's And I'm not great. I blew up the Death Star one today for my first time. Nice. And it was awesome. The game goes, the flippers die, ball goes out, you know, you get the you get the uh uh you get the you know, oh my god, I can't believe I just did this. The pinball moment, and then all of a sudden the lights go all blue and then it goes all red and then the ball comes back out and you then you got to go back and you got to defeat Death Star 2. So you get and then all the character modes are there's three modes for each one. So there's a lot of depth in the game, too. So you're going to be busy. And that's like already those modes are in there already. So, it sounds like pretty deep code. It's pretty deep. Pretty deep code at launch. Probably more than I'll be able to get to a player like me. It's very enjoyable to play as it is right now. Amazing. It's not not completely finished yet. Yeah. Having played three games, I I really enjoyed it. Can't wait to get one. And that's all we have. Save is painless. Awesome. That's all we've got. Okay. And you usually we ask like, do you have any advice for a new pinball player? But I feel like on Star Wars, you just told us what to do. Yeah. You got to practice using the force magnet at the bottom of the playfield. Okay. So when you spell the J and the E in Jedi, the action button light. So if the ball drains and it comes down toward the the magnet in the middle below the flippers, right when it gets to about the magnet, you hit the button and it propels it up the the right part of the outline and it goes right back into the shooter lane. There's a little opening there. I got to go expand. So you have to time that like you have to hit at the right time, right? When you look down, when you're looking down, you can see a little bracket that we added that kind of helps bump the ball toward the magnet. Right when it hits that bracket is when you want to hit that button. It goes and it goes right into the shooter lane and gives you your ball back. Awesome. Use the force. Use the force. Thank you so much, John. Thank you very much. This is awesome. It was nice to meet you both and congratulations on an amazing game. Everyone's going to love this. This is incredible. Enjoy Fall of the Empire. Mike, I think you did a really good job with those questions. Thank you. And you you didn't like really fanboy out. I I tried not to. I did tell him it was my favorite designer as you saw. It was kind of I asked John John and Raymond kind of a similar question because I just wanted to know uh I just wonder like when you get a theme like what where the hell you even start like like I'm doing the Star Wars pinball. What the hell? Mhm. Where am I going to what am I going to make it do? Yeah. I also had a per pmenopausal hot flash during that one. Did you? Oh god. Sweating. Mhm. Sweating it out. Yeah. I was like, "Oh my gosh." And that room was cool. That was like the coolest room in the thing. There's a little bit of background noise in the in those, but I was able to get most of it out. There was like some construction going on behind us. But yeah, it was kind of warm in the in the place. It was a warm day. It was a warm day. Yeah. All right. I think we can wrap this up. But before we do, Mhm. I got a package in the mail. Oh, yeah. Let's see this. I forgot we were going to do this. I know. I did, too. We're going to do this at the beginning, but we're doing it at the end. I don't know. I don't know what's in this, but this is something from sincere engineer addressed to me. Yeah. It arrived today in the mail. It's Did you know she was going to ship me something? I had no idea. I have a guess. Do you have a guess? I mean, I think your guess. Let me feel it. No, just let me feel it. I think you're right. Let me think you're right. I think you're right. Let me see it. I have an idea what this is. I could be wrong, but I think I'm going to guess it's a DVD of the movie Dirty Work, which is so a awesome if it is cuz I don't think we have a DVD player. No, I don't know that we do. Like none of our computers take take No. And I don't think my Xbox Does my Xbox take it? I have the Series X, but I don't know if it takes discs. It might. All right, I got my thumb in there. Really wrapped up good. I think it's a Dirty Work DVD. I could be wrong. Oh, it's even more than a Dirty Work DVD. It is a multi-feature of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Dirty Work, Married to the Mob, and Men at Work. I have seen the other three. And then we did kind of we watched Dirty Work the other night, but I fell asleep. Sorry, you only made it like 20 minutes in and fell asleep. That's what I do. I think our Xbox might play DVDs, so we may have to go down in the basement and watch Oh my god, the dirty work. Cuz I think I love dirty work. This might be that. Is it like an extended cut? Cuz I think she said there's like multiple No, that was like dirtier work or something like that. I think she said um this is amazing. This is amazing. Diana, you rock. And oh, postcard. She's got a postcard with cute the the full band. That is ridiculously cute. That's a That's a good idea. Yeah, it's a great idea. Sincere Engineer postcards. What a good merch idea. That's a really good like merch table deal. And then she said, "Hi guys, I tried I tried buying just Dirty Work and they sent me this fourpack." LOL. Enjoy. Um, it's my favorite movie ever. Thank you for telling me about pinball. I'm a fan, Deanna. So, because she is a fan because she's been like messaging you her favorite game. Did we talk about that in the last five? We did. Yeah. Halfp price nights on Wednesdays at uh Dave and Boston. Yeah, we talked about that last episode. Yeah. She's a fan. The days all blur together. Uh-huh. So, she's going on tour soon. Go see her. Challenge her to a pinball game. Yeah, when she's coming to your town, send her send her a message, comment on on her social post, and name the place and see if she shows up. This is officially going to be by far the longest episode. We warned you. It's a long one. You could they could watch it in a couple parts cuz even without the interviews, just us talking here is like almost an hour. Woo. It's like a feature. It's like a feature film. It is like dirty work. It's probably almost as long as dirty work. We just made a movie. We did. This is not a podcast. This was a movie. All right. Well, thank you guys. We will see you next week. Yeah. See you. _(Acquisition: youtube_mirror_subs, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7f041b2f-8941-4a76-a7c9-d92e6b697dba*