# Episode 191 - Peaches

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2023-04-16  
**Duration:** 36m 54s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-191-peaches

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## Analysis

Eclectic Gamers hosts Tony and Dennis discuss light pinball news following the massive Texas Pinball Festival announcements. Topics include Stern's Foo Fighters production progress, Home Pin's This Is Spinal Tap trailer criticism, American Pinball's acknowledgment of air ball issues on GTF, Spooky's Scooby-Doo code update, and their Patreon poll naming Foo Fighters the "winner" of TPF. They speculate on whether non-Stern manufacturers will release additional games in 2024, with Dennis predicting Multimorphic and Jersey Jack will deliver, while Tony remains skeptical. The episode includes a rumor about an unnamed new pinball company launching later in 2024.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Stern is currently building Foo Fighters limited edition models with premium orders on deck — _Dennis reports 'are no notable delays that I've heard about' and everything is 'going according to plan'_
- [HIGH] American Pinball GTF experiences air ball issues caused by bent stand-ups, with backing plate reinforcement being manufactured as solution — _Dennis: 'American Pinball has announced...they are manufacturing a solution, like putting a backing plate behind you to reinforce the'_
- [HIGH] Home Pin's This Is Spinal Tap pinball trailer is poorly executed, focusing on model's face and sunglasses rather than showing playfield — _Dennis: 'there's not a single shot in the entire trailer that lets you see the entire play field' and 'It was a miss of a trailer'_
- [HIGH] Foo Fighters won the Texas Pinball Festival in a Patreon poll with 40% plurality (25 respondents) — _Dennis: 'The winner, with a strong plurality at 40%, was Foo Fighters'_
- [HIGH] Jersey Jack Pinball shifted to all-premium pricing model with no standard edition at $12,000 or more for Godfather — _Dennis: 'the quote unquote new price model that they have where there's no standard edition. Everything's over 10,000. Everything's at $12,000 or more'_
- [HIGH] Jersey Jack will likely release another game by TPF 2025 with over 90% confidence — _Dennis: 'I am highly confident JJP will have a new game by TPF next year. Okay. I would put my confidence at that at over 90%'_
- [LOW] An unnamed new pinball company is rumored to launch its first game later in 2024 — _Dennis: 'another pinball company that we have not seen a game from at all ever...planning to actually launch their first game later this year'_

### Notable Quotes

> "Everything is a contest, Tony. Everything is about winning. That's what pinball is. It's about winning."
> — **Dennis**, ~33:30
> _Frames pinball's competitive nature before TPF poll results discussion_

> "I don't think anybody puts another game out this calendar year. I think if anybody does, it'll be super late. It'll be maybe some announcements super late in the year."
> — **Tony**, ~37:15
> _Sets baseline skepticism about non-Stern manufacturer delivery in 2024_

> "it's time for Rumor Corner"
> — **Dennis**, ~46:30
> _Transitions to rumor section with recurring segment intro_

> "How convenient for them. So the head of our Russian division is doing this, but we totally don't know it."
> — **Tony**, ~61:00
> _Skeptical commentary on Nintendo's claim of no involvement in Achievka parallel imports despite head of Russian division's involvement_

> "I prefer it when they're in person. I like the couch."
> — **Dennis**, ~72:30
> _Preference for in-person speedrunning events over remote/hybrid formats_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Stern Pinball | company | Manufacturer producing Foo Fighters with production on schedule; has reliable delivery track record |
| American Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Galactic Tank Force; acknowledged and addressing air ball mechanical issues on playfield stand-ups |
| Home Pin | company | Manufacturer of This Is Spinal Tap pinball; released poorly-received marketing trailer focusing on model rather than gameplay |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Manufacturer of Godfather; shifted to all-premium pricing model; expected to release new game by TPF 2025 per Dennis prediction |
| Spooky Pinball | company | Released new code update for Scooby-Doo adding Scooby Snack multiball feature |
| Multimorphic | company | Platform-based manufacturer; Dennis predicts will release new module in 2024 |
| Foo Fighters | game | Stern Pinball title; won TPF 2024 in Patreon poll with 40% of vote; currently in limited edition production phase |
| Galactic Tank Force | game | American Pinball title; tied for fourth place in TPF poll at 8%; experiencing mechanical air ball issues from bent stand-ups |
| Godfather | game | Jersey Jack Pinball title; third in TPF poll at 12%; praised for flipper strength and value; all-premium pricing at $12k+ |
| This Is Spinal Tap | game | Home Pin machine; trailer criticized for poor marketing focusing on model's appearance over playfield/gameplay |
| Pulp Fiction | game | Pinball title; second place in TPF poll at 28%; described as surprise hit of show |
| Scooby-Doo | game | Spooky Pinball title; received code update adding Scooby Snack multiball; fourth place TPF poll at 4% |
| Final Resistance | game | Pinball title; tied fourth in TPF poll at 8%; Dennis's personal second choice (disagreeing with Tony) |
| Queen | game | Pinball title; received no votes in TPF poll; Dennis thought it was better than Scooby-Doo and Galactic Tank Force |
| Texas Pinball Festival | event | March 2024 event generating massive news announcements and game reveals; referenced as 'biggest news dump' and 'newsy dumps' |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; conducted Patreon poll on TPF games; made prediction on Jersey Jack 2024-2025 delivery |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; skeptical of non-Stern manufacturer 2024 delivery; attended TPF |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Post-TPF news and production updates, GTF mechanical issues and quality control, Manufacturer game delivery predictions for 2024, Patreon poll results naming Foo Fighters TPF winner
- **Secondary:** Jersey Jack Pinball pricing strategy shift, This Is Spinal Tap trailer marketing criticism, Factory testing vs. real-world field testing challenges, Rumored new pinball company launching in 2024

### Sentiment

**Neutral** (0.45) — Hosts express satisfaction with Foo Fighters production and TPF outcomes, but tempered by criticism of This Is Spinal Tap marketing and GTF design issues. Skepticism dominates discussion of other manufacturers' 2024 delivery capacity. Overall tone is analytical and measured rather than enthusiastic or negative.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Factory testing methodology may be insufficient; better-skilled testers during QA may not surface issues that emerge under high-volume casual play (confidence: medium) — Tony: 'the people who are testing in a factory test situation are also, for the most part, better players' leading to undetected real-world failure modes
- **[event_signal]** Patreon poll conducted on TPF games measuring which 'won' the festival; 25 respondents voted with Foo Fighters (40%) plurality (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'So I asked our Patreon members...which game quote-unquote won TPF...25 patrons respond to the poll'
- **[design_philosophy]** This Is Spinal Tap trailer objectively fails to convey game design; excessive focus on model appearance over playfield/mechanics represents marketing miss (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'not a single shot in the entire trailer lets you see the entire play field. It's all occasional super close-ups' and 'objectively it a miss'
- **[market_signal]** Jersey Jack's all-premium pricing model ($12k+ minimum) may constrain sales volume and force accelerated game releases to generate revenue (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'I just don't think they're going to sell enough Godfathers to keep them busy for the rest of the calendar year. I think it's just too expensive'
- **[announcement]** Spooky Pinball released code update for Scooby-Doo adding Scooby Snack multiball feature (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'spooky has uh released new code for...scooby-doo um which adds a new multiball and i think it's the scooby snack multiball'
- **[product_concern]** GTF experiencing air ball issues from bent stand-up mechs despite factory testing; raises questions about test methodology and real-world scenario coverage (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'the problem is as the impacts were striking those stand-ups, they were getting bent back more and more, which then gave them an angle upwards'
- **[rumor_hype]** Unnamed new pinball company (not Turner/Ninja Eclipse) planning first game launch later in 2024 (confidence: low) — Dennis: 'another pinball company that we have not seen a game from at all ever...planning to actually launch their first game later this year'

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Collective Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, April 16th. This is episode 191. I am Tony. And I am Dennis. We're back. I think we got a little bit of light news. Light news. Light news, which isn't too surprising because we came off of the biggest news dump of newsy dumps, when it came to pinball at least. Well, and TPF was an insanely huge news dump for pinball compared to what TPF has even ever been in the past. It was insane the amount of stuff that occurred in that month of March. That is very unusual for pinball. And there's no way we could spread it out because it would have been weird to be all like, here, let's space out all the news that everyone knows about. Hey, guys, it's our third episode since TPF, and we're finally going to talk about GTF. Yeah, GTF. So real quick, thank you, Nolan J., a new Patreon supporter at our basic level. We appreciate all the Patreons who have been supporting the show and continue to choose to support the show. And we're going to put a little bonus thing up. Tony had an idea about if you want to explain it. Yeah, we have seen, both of us, not together, but have gone and seen multiple movies lately. We both saw Super Mario Brothers and D&D, so we're going to talk about it a little bit and put it out there for the people on Patreon. Yep, something totally unrelated to – well, actually, no. There are video game versions of Super Mario Brothers, obviously, and Dungeons & Dragons, and there's a pinball machine for Dungeons & Dragons. and two pinball machines for Super Mario Brothers. So in fact, it does kind of link, but we'll put that movie discussion in just as a Patreon audio at any level. Again, because we don't normally promise any particular items to individuals, but we do like to give things to those that have chosen to support the show. And in fact, I have a poll that we'll be talking about later in the pinball section that I did to get some more feedback. I love the polling feature on Patreon. It's actually, I mean, now that Facebook doesn't have a good one, it works so much better. But what's been going on besides seeing the movies? Other than seeing the movies, I have – I know I've talked in the past that I did a big reread of The Dark Tower. And now I've gone and I've started doing a reread of something that's a bit lighter than The Dark Tower. I have been rereading the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi. You know John Scalzi because on a TPF last year, I think 2022's TPF, we listened to the audiobook of his novel Red Shirts. Yes. But he's one of my favorite current sci-fi writers. So I've been rereading that. I've been considering as well when I finish rereading that series, maybe doing, I don't know. I've got a couple ideas out there I haven't decided on, but I've come through the series pretty fast. Other than that, I have been playing more Horizon Zero Dawn and more Jedi Outcast. Yeah, something like that. Fallen Order. Fallen Order, yeah. Fallen Order. Yeah, but he isn't out. Right, but Survivor, because Survivor comes out next week. So I'm not going to get it right away. I never do. But I've been playing more of Fallen Order and just looking into that. And, of course, keeping up with all of the Mando and all that. Yes, yes. It's been a very show-heavy period right now. Up until the summer, it really is. So I've been doing that. Tony came when he came by this morning. In fact, I was watching Hunters 2, which is the Nazi hunters fantasy show that Amazon does. I saw the first season years ago. I didn't realize there was going to be a season two until relatively recently, and I didn't know it had come out. So I'm enjoying that. And otherwise, for me, it's been a lot of work stuff. We're now transitioning away from the legislative period to when I have a conference. So April is when the legislature is off for most of the month in Kansas. and they get to come back in May and then they usually are out by mid-May and no one really cares about that. But it gives me a window to do most of my conference planning. My main conference that I do, we call it our mid-year meeting, is actually at the end of June, but I like to open it up at the start of May for registration. So I try and get it all arranged in April. And so I've been working on that. It's a lot less stressful than, I don't like conference planning. It's a lot less stressful than legislative work. So I'm just going along with that. And otherwise, mostly just watching shows and i did want to bring up something before we move into the pinball section and we talked about a few episodes ago we know we got that that slew of uh random unknown i should say unknown steam keys and one of the ideas we really liked was uh the submitted suggestion of giving those codes out to listeners that would be willing to kind of do a mini review and so i figured let's go ahead and do that so if you are interested in a steam code email eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com I don't know what game you're going to get. I'll give you a code as long as I still have some. And the condition for you emailing it is you are committing to emailing us. You don't have to send us an audio file. Just email back to eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com your summary of what the game is and the key thing though is to say whether you recommend or don't recommend that people buy it. That way it can get and then we'll read those out. Right. Is the plan. And you don't have to get it to us by the next episode or anything. Obviously, we can't make you do anything. But think of that as the condition, and it's open to anyone. If you're willing to give us a few sentences about what the game's like and whether you would recommend someone buy it or not versus you getting it for free, that's how we'll give out as many codes as I can, and we'll see if we run out. And if we don't, we'll come up with something else. We're going to come up with something else to play some codes. Yep. So speaking of codes, this is the code for moving into the pinball section. And as I noted in the intro, there's just not a lot here. So I'm going to hit a few news items really, really quickly just so people feel informed. The first is Big Shock, but Stern has been building Foo Fighters, and my understanding is currently they are building the limited edition models. So a lot of people who have been ordering premiums, I think you're on deck. So, you know, everything seems to be going according to plan there. are no notable delays that I've heard about. Yay. Second item. I didn't ask you about this ahead of time, Tony, because I figured who cares? I had actually, I saw a post on this on pin side and I finally went and looked at it, but, but home pin. Okay. Okay. Home pin, which did Thunderbirds and has more recently done the, this is spinal tap pinball. They have put out a trailer for spinal tap pinball finally uh it's an odd choice are you familiar with it oh yeah we actually did have a conversation about it when when it first came out it was in a group conversation okay i forgot which i forgot which group group talked about it because it was the one where i was like have you guys seen this and everybody's answer was no i haven't i saw it was out but i haven't seen it yet so it's a minor cut it was oh it is it's it's bad yeah it seems to be if i were to give it if i was to give it inspiration i would say it was maybe inspired by the like hyper-sexualized demolition man williams style uh thing that they used to do with you know you take the attractive woman and just let her like drape her over the pinball machine sort of yeah It was very... But unlike that, there's not a single shot in the entire trailer that lets John Youssi the entire play field. It's all occasional super close-ups of certain sections, and most of the time it's focusing on her face and her heart-shaped sunglasses. Yes. I don't get it. I don't get it. It is... I get it if you were trying to sell the sunglasses, because we saw a lot of those. Right. We saw a lot of images of the sunglasses. The game, though. It feels like such an attempted throwback to, like you said, the 70s, 80s type of. But here's the thing is, that doesn't hit anymore. And that does not lay out the way you think it would. And especially when you don't really show anything from the game. That just makes it worse. Yeah, it was a miss. I can't even say it was a miss for me. This is a miss of a trailer because it doesn convey the game at all Right It just objectively it a miss But good luck to them I guess Next American Pinball Okay. A lot of people – we didn't really note this in our review of our game of GTF that we played in Texas because I don't think we experienced it. But a lot of people have been finding that when they were shooting the tank with the stand-ups that block the tank toy on GTF, that they were getting a lot of air balls. Air balls that were hopping over the flippers and then draining straight down the middle. I heard some people discussing it while we were at TPF, but I didn't experience it, so I didn't really talk about it. We didn't experience it in our gameplay. However, yes, a number of people have run into this issue or have seen it streamed. And apparently the problem is as the impacts were striking those stand-ups, they were getting bent back more and more, which then gave them an angle upwards, which then resulted in the air balls. So American Pinball has announced – they've kind of declared this as a minor issue and that they are manufacturing a solution, like putting a backing plate behind you to reinforce the – which is a solution to it. So anyway, they've acknowledged that, yes, this minor issue does happen and that they're addressing it. So I don't know if that fixes the game. But if you've not seen this minor issue happen before, how much playtest time was put on the game? You know, there are many questions, Tony, questions that may be need of answers. But we are not the ones to gather those. All we can do is say, you know, I've seen this is a question that's come up on a lot of things. Like, remember the Demogorgon on Stranger Things and how like no one could get the ball into the mouth of the monster thing because it was just like it wasn't tested enough. Right. Or Rush and how many iterations of scoop protector that they end up going with on that lower scoop. It was like four versions of airbags trying to protect that scoop because it was just getting mangled right away, but their test didn't catch it. So, yeah, I've come to find that maybe it's because they've moved away in this Internet world of doing test location games that the situations, the sanitized situations of factory testing are such that they're really not coming up with all the real world scenarios. Right, and I think that's a very valid point because the people who are testing in a factory test situation are also, for the most part, better players. so they're not getting so so games aren't necessarily getting beat up the way they do when you've got kids who are just sitting there smacking the the flipper buttons or players who are more like myself who aren't great and will sit there and brick things from a weird angle because you're close to having the shot dialed in but you're just not quite there so you just you just keep bricking the shot at a weird angle until it causes until it bends something just a little bit out of place that somebody who is had better control than myself uh would may be making the shots clean so it's not as big of an issue so it could be just a quality control testing issue that the testers are too quality that's an interesting theory actually there's a lot of logic to it so yeah that could very well be in play i agree uh last news item is uh spooky has uh released new code for you know we're desperate for news i never cover code updates because i think they are the most it's the most pointless thing because i have to think how what percentage of our listeners own any given game that i'm going to give a code update on and i think it's really small like single digit percentages so and that doesn't matter which game it is i i feel the same even talking about like a godzilla code update but anyway so there's a code update uh for scooby-doo um which adds a new multiball and i think it's the scooby snack multiball Thank you. The trauma is coming back to me. Yeah. I can see it in your eyes. They're like bloodshot now, and there's like a twitch. You've got a slight twitch. Yeah. I had a boss that had the eye twitch when he was getting upset, so we always knew when we were starting to trigger him. Yeah. It was really blatant, really blatant. Okay. So next up is – before we move off, I want to do one final thing. This is the poll I mentioned that I did with the patrons to Eclectic Gamers podcast. So I asked them, because everything is a contest, Tony. Everything is about winning. That's what pinball is. It's about winning. Now, you don't beat the machine, but you're trying to beat your opponents that you play against. So I asked our Patreon members if they would please pick out of the seven games that we picked as our big seven. So Foo Fighters, Godfather, Queen, Final Resistance, Galactic Tank Force, Scooby-Doo, and Pulp Fiction. the seven kind of quote-unquote newish games. I say newish because Queen and Scooby were a little older, but for a lot of people, TPF was the first time they really had a chance to play them. And ask them not which game was their favorite, not which they were most looking forward to, but which game quote-unquote won TPF. Just like how when we had E3, it was always like which company won E3? Well, which game won TPF? So we had 25 patrons respond to the poll, and the results were as follows. The winner, with a strong plurality at 40%, was Foo Fighters. Congratulations on being correct. Yes, yes. That was in alignment with what we thought was the best game of the show. So number two at 28%, which isn't surprising to me, is Pulp Fiction, which I think was probably the surprise quote-unquote hit of the show. Like if you didn't know anything going in, I think more people seem to be excited about Pulp Fiction than anything else. So third place was Jersey Jack's Godfather at 12 percent, which I'm not too surprised. You know, it's going for a very different strategy than everything else, right? It's the one where it's like we've got the most LEDs, we've got the most ball path returns, and we also got the largest price tag. So but, you know, they've made a lot of really positive changes. You know, like we talked about the flipper strength was there on Godfather didn't feel mushy like a lot of JGPs did. And and that it seemed like maybe you were getting more bang for your buck versus this than Toy Story. I just need to refer back to the episode, but I'm I'm pretty sure these are aligning exactly with my picks. Yeah, not mine, because, you know, obviously my my my number two was was Final Resistance. speaking of final resistance it tied at fourth with galactic tank force which does not align with your picks no with 8% and then scooby doo got 4% of the vote and no one voted for queen which is understandable yeah though I thought queen was better than scooby but I also thought queen was yeah better than galactic tank force so you know it is what it is but anyway thank you everyone who voted and again you can always become a patron member at patreon.com slash eclectic gamers podcast for as low as one dollar a month um last item before rumor corner in the pinball section i thought we might have a a really quick brief discussion i don't see any reason to drag the episode on but i kind of thought i asked this of someone else uh uh online and i was just thinking you know this is gonna be a good topic for you and i to talk about so obviously we've had this huge sort of metric ton of pinball just come out here in March, in and around March. And so I just wanted to know, Tony, aside from Stern, because we know Stern has a production schedule that actually delivers, what companies do we think, if any, will get another game out this calendar year? So it has to be a company, obviously, that's already gotten a game out, basically of this list that we've spoken about. Do you think anyone puts out another, other than Stern, that we've talked about, like Jersey Jack or Chicago Gaming or whatever puts out another game this calendar year. So it has to be before the end of December. No. I don't think anybody puts another game out this calendar year. I think if anybody does, it'll be super late. It'll be maybe some announcements super late in the year. Possible. But even then, I don't see anything, an actual release this year. Okay. I think two of them will. Really? Yes. I think Multimorphic will. I do think they'll get another module out. Okay. It counts. It counts. It counts. Okay. No, you are right there. I do agree with that. I'll be honest. They didn't even cross my mind because I didn't think about a module. Okay. Well, and I do mean not like a third-party one. You mean like a full-up module module. Yeah. I think a new first game that has got a not module I do think that they will release it I can see that because I be honest I didn even think about them when I was thinking about them So that one And I do think that I'm going to go ahead. This is my more gambly pick. Hope Springs Eternal. Well, and I think Jersey Jack will. I think you're right, late in the year. I don't think it'll be the summer. I almost said them, but I don't think it'll actually happen this year. I think we'll get announcements, but I don't think we'll see games. The reason why I'm picking them is twofold. One, the strategy that JJP has done, regardless of when they've been ready, every time they've dropped a game, they've had some immediately ready to ship, and I don't think they're going to deviate from that. So I think if they do an announcement, they will have like 50 or 100 or whatever built. So they'll actually be able to deliver right away. And kind of like with Multimorphic, they'll be able to – they can turn out a module much faster than they turn out systems, and they have to sell systems to sell modules. So and then I think even though I fully expect Godfather to perform better than Toy Story did because of the quote unquote new price model that they have where there's no standard edition. Everything's over 10,000. Everything's at $12,000 or more. I just don't think they're going to sell enough Godfathers to keep them busy for the rest of the calendar year. I think it's just too expensive. And because of that, they're going to have more incentive slash pressure to move to the next game and the next game and the next game to get a new theme that will move people. Now, will it be actually like Steve Ritchie's new game, for example? I don't know. But that's where I'm picking them. But I don't think the rest are going to get a second game out this year. I can see where you're coming from. I can see where you're coming from on that argument. And I'd considered it myself. I just don't think it will actually happen this calendar year. I may be wrong. I am highly confident JJP will have a new game by TPF next year. Okay. I would put my confidence at that at over 90%. You don't think that they might try, though, to get it at Expo? They might, but I don't necessarily know that they have the capacity because they've tried to get games out more rapidly in the past. Yes. and they've always run into issues. They have, but credit where credit is due. It is well under a full year between Toy Story and Godfather. It is. So that's where I'm coming from. They might have finally, under their new leadership and all of that, they finally, I think, gotten to the point where, plus a lot of supply chain issues aren't there anymore. Right. But I could very well be wrong. But what I'm not wrong about is that it's time for Rumor Corner. rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner Dennis Graceless got the news before Napa Cade get that right Tony yeah okay so this is the latest rumor that I've got another pinball company that we have not seen a game from at all ever And here's the rumor as well. Not Turner Pinball and their Ninja Eclipse or whatever is planning to actually launch their first game later this year. Who told you about the Eclectic Pinball Company? This is just supposed to be secret. We're going to be secret and safe. That's the motto. Keep it secret. Keep it safe. What would be our first game if we did a pinball theme? pinball machine? What theme do you think we'd do? It depends upon how meta we wanted to get. I mean, if we wanted to go with a real license or if you just wanted to be meta hilarious. Or if you wanted to be basically kicked up better than somewhere between homebrew and full-op. I mean, most companies do start original because it's not the right answer so they always do it uh and we'd probably be no different so we probably could do you know pinball the pinball like we had talked about in the past pinball drama yeah pinball machine that's right i mean it would be a good uh like proof of concept test of people you know to experience our build quality and everything but were you rumored tamed wasn't much of a man rumor corner the pinball machine i think i think the sound might grade on people if I just put that music on loop when the ball is in the plunger. It would be the T2 plunger music. It would be so bad. I don't think I could own a T2 because of that stupid beeping. We'd have to do something evil like the Paragon Beast Slayer pop because it's rumor corner so in one of the corners have a pop that's dangerous as could be in a corner. Something like that. That'd be interesting. Well, what's also interesting is video games because we're ready for the video game section, Tony. Video games are amazing and there's much fun. And everything's even better because everybody has achievements now. So you get blooks, blooks, blooks, blooks, blooks, blooks. Because video games have nothing but groups purchasing each other. It is being reported now that Sega is in talks to purchase Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, for a billion dollars. So are Angry Birds still a good seller? Apparently, I guess. I mean, there's still lots of Angry Birds games out there. I just don't know. I haven't played one in years. Is Sony upset about this? That was my first thought when I read it. I was like, man, I wonder if Sony's going to file a restraining complaint that it'll make Sega too big. Yeah, Sega too big. It's going to make Sega too important. We can't have Sega file a thing. To be humorous, it would be a Microsoft file, an injunction for it. Lord of the Rings Golem. I haven't heard about that in a long time. It was delayed. Yes, I knew it was delayed. They have made a new announcement that they have actually gone through, and there is an option you can choose when you're setting up the game to play so that all of the elf voice lines are an actual Tolkien elvish. You have to spend extra to get this premium edition to get access to it. Yes. You've got to pay those voice actors. You've got to pay for the extra voice actors to talk in Elvish instead of just whatever other shows of language it is. It's some normal language. It's only like an extra $10. Yeah, I don't know. But do you really? It was listed as being a for true Tolkien fans. It's the Patreon for Lord of the Rings Golem. Yeah. I still don't know about that game. I mean, a sneaky, sneaky, golem-based game. I don't know. It sounds interesting, but they did do the correct thing, and the special edition is the press edition. So Nintendo, obviously Nintendo is huge in the news. Super Mario just came out. Like, most successful video game movie ever. What a shock. Yeah, no kidding. It's like, ooh. But it's also the largest animated opening now, or the second largest animated opening now. Its opening weekend was bigger than Frozen or Frozen 2 or one of the Frozens. Peach, I love you. And with this star, we're going to rule. And if you want more of that, it'll be in the Patreon. Dennis is going to sing the whole song for us. Peach, peach, peach, peach. But Nintendo, like many game developers and companies, in March of 22, Nintendo pulled out of Russia. Right. there are now reports that the head of nintendo's russian division uh who is currently who's basically only job is to maintain legally required um contractual and administrative stuff that they have to have they're not selling games they're not doing anything like that well he is the head of a new company that he set up uh called uh Achieve Achieveka He should have named it Das Vidanki Kong Oh that would have been so good That would have been good But it Achivka And that company is importing new Nintendo games as a third-party importer into Russia. But that's not supposed to happen. That's not supposed to happen. And when Nintendo was asked about it, their response was that they have wound down all Russian operations except for those required by legal, contractual, and administrative requirements. And they've confirmed that they've been looking at Achieva as a business partner to honor preceding commitments to supply a repair and warranty service for existing products already in country. And when asked about them importing new products, they stated that they are aware that some companies are doing so, but they're not affiliated and have no involvement in the parallel import activities. Well, how convenient for them. So the head of our Russian division is doing this, but we totally don't know it. I didn't know. Yeah. And because video games are short and sweet this week also, we're going to go ahead and end with Summer Games Done Quick. Oh, I do like that. Charity. They are. They're coming up shortly. It runs from the 28th of May to the 4th of June. They haven't released their schedule now. The schedule is, we'll see. It's interesting. There's a couple highlights in there I find humorous. They're doing a Michael Jackson Moonwalker Any Percentage. Oh, okay. They're just doing a Peggle Deluxe Any Percentage, which, okay. I mean, I remember playing a lot of Peggle when it first came out. It's kind of that Arkanoid-y bounce around. Yeah, I mean, that one seems, I mean, I guess there's not a lot of RNG to that, so that's probably a pretty easy one. That would be my thought. But they're doing Maniac Mansion at 8%. Okay. The time estimate is 8 minutes. Yeah. If you know what to do in Maniac Mansion, it can go very quickly. Yep. They're doing a Halo 3 Legendary run. I think I've seen them do that a few years ago. And there's a Final Fantasy IV pixel remaster any percentage. Oh, okay. So that could be interesting. I like the Final Fantasy runs, even though they tend to take an entire – they're like, we're going to do a Final Fantasy run. We'll start it at 10 p.m., and they'll get done around 8. I don't usually watch all of those. I watched all of 10. I stayed up all night once when they did 10 that included a blindfolded section where they did a bonus thing where if they raised enough extra money in the lead up to the final boss, the guy would reorganize his inventory to whatever you need to reorganize your inventory through. But he would do it blindfolded, and he did, and it was kind of impressive. there's also a Legend of Zelda run being looked at that includes a blindfolded segment so I'm not sure what segment would be blindfolded for that but that could be interesting it is still going to be a partially online event so hopefully they don't have the issues they ran up into with last summer's event the cheater where where the gentleman was playing a video of him doing a speed run and faking holding the controller and doing the speed run while not actually doing it, that people figured out because none of the sounds matched up with the movements. Yes, clicky-click-click. Yeah. Oops. I was just trying to prove that the system is flawed. That's just for charity, man. Yeah, just for charity. Just do it the right way. I prefer it when they're in person. I like the couch. Yes, they are better in person. They're better in person. So nothing else really huge. The ongoing, nothing's really changed in the ongoing Microsoft and Sony discussion, other than Microsoft is now running ads in the London tube about the purchase. and Sony is angry because a game that was never said to be coming to PlayStation, the Redwall, coming from Bethesda. Right, Bethesda game. It has come out that originally they'd been discussing doing a PS4 version and they stopped developing it when they got bought out. And so now Sony's using that as the excuse. See, this just proves that they'll just stop making Call of Duty 4. Yes. PlayStation. Yes. All the proof. Yeah. We know that they've said they'll do it for a decade. They've guaranteed us a decade, but that's not real. It's all illusions. It's all illusions. We can't have them move from being the number three company in the world for video game production all the way up to being the number three company in the world for video game production. It's too powerful. Too much power. It's just too much power for them to be number three. Do it. I don't know. With a couple of the other purchases that have happened recently, they might not even be number three anymore. They might end up being a number four. Yeah, it's tough to say. Because, oh, I can't remember the name of the company now. In Europe has made a bunch of big purchases, so they're up there with Tencent now up in the upper limits. Take-Two? No, not Take-Two. The people who own Take-Two. Oh, is that Vivendi? Yeah, yeah. I think it's Vivendi. Okay. Or the people who own Vivendi. They're the people who own Lord of the Rings now. Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't – you know, I never really paid much attention to the parent companies involved in those various things. Is that the same company? Who owns Rockstar? Because Rockstar is not independent, is it? It's owned by someone, I think. Embracer Group. Okay, Embracer. So Embracer Group. I know we've talked about them on the past. Yes, we have. We have. Though I don't know if Embracer owns Rockstar. So Embracer Group owns Nordic. They're the parent of the Nordic Group. And they started out as kind of Nordic, but they have all of Amplifier, which includes a lot of small companies, all of Crystal Dynamics, Eidos, all of Coffee Stain, all of Gearbox. All of the Saber Group, Zen Studios, Tripwire, Snapshot, all of Saber Interactive, THQ Nordic, PlayOn, which includes Warhorse Studios and Flying Wild Hog and Deep Silver. yeah they've got a lot of large companies DECA Games Asmodee which is a tabletop gaming group and then they own Dark Horse Media which is Dark Horse Comics and Dark Horse Entertainment and then they own all of Lord of the Rings and such now Middle Earth Enterprises C77 Entertainment Bitwave Games, Clear River Games. They own a lot of people now. Yeah. Now, Rockstar is owned by Take-Two, which Take-Two owns 2K. Okay. Yeah. So those are the two big publishing labels that Take-Two has. Take-Two is the third largest publicly traded game company in Americas and Europe after Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts in terms of the market cap. Right. Which, according to Wikipedia, is about $13 billion U.S. Okay. Well, interesting. yeah because Embracer is more than just video games video games are only a small section of their conglomerate yeah of their group so but we'll see how that stuff all ends up breaking out over time but for now I guess that's it that's everything this one was fast that wasn't a lot of news so it is what it is but for those that want to reach out to us you can always email us at collectedgamerspodcast.gmail.com You can visit us at Facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast or support us on Patreon.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as Eclectic underscore Gamers. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks, and maybe there'll be more news. Maybe there won't be. We'll just have to wait and see. But until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. And I'll talk to you all next time. See ya.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7f7070b1-b2f3-42c7-8351-4dc785d6df1c*