# Episode 183 - 2022 Year-End Review

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2022-12-25  
**Duration:** 132m 49s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-183

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## Analysis

Dennis and Tony from Eclectic Gamers Podcast conduct their 2022 year-end review on Christmas Eve, discussing personal holiday plans, household repairs, and a major focus on completing a 5K race that was requested by their highest-tier Patreon supporter Danny T. Both hosts recount their experiences running the 5K at a local community college with Tony's cross-country runner daughter, detailing their training, performance metrics, and race-day challenges including weather conditions, pacing strategies, and physical complications.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Dennis completed the 5K in under 30 minutes with an average pace of 9 minutes and 31 seconds, better than his training times — _Dennis explicitly states his gun clock time and chip time, providing specific metrics about his performance_
- [HIGH] Tony's cross-country runner daughter became ill during the race (throwing up) despite not having trained since cross-country season ended — _Both Dennis and Tony confirm the daughter got sick during the race; Tony describes her vomiting_
- [HIGH] The 5K event had approximately 597-600 participants despite announcer claims of 700-800 — _Dennis cites official 5K results showing 547 individuals, with Tony noting announcer discrepancies_
- [HIGH] Tony injured his ankle the night before the race when his dog ran away and he stepped in a hole while chasing it — _Tony explicitly describes running after his dog, finding a hole, and injuring his bad ankle_
- [HIGH] Race temperature was approximately 23-24°F on race day, which was warmer than conditions that followed — _Both hosts confirm mid-20s temperature; Tony notes it later warmed to almost 40°F the day after, then got colder_

### Notable Quotes

> "I didn't realize how many, I didn't know how popular things like this were."
> — **Dennis**, ~23:00
> _First-time 5K participant expressing surprise at event scale and attendance_

> "I finally saw the Santa. I tried to speed up at the end. I maybe increased my pace by 0.25 seconds. There was basically nothing left."
> — **Dennis**, ~1:45:00
> _Captures the exhaustion and final push to the finish line; humorous detail about the finish line marker being a giant inflatable Santa_

> "You didn't pick the easiest one to start with... I just mean that it's really cold."
> — **Woman runner to Dennis**, ~1:43:00
> _Encouragement from fellow runner; captures the difficulty of a December 5K for first-timers_

> "I got through about three-quarters of a mile. I'm like, this is going real good. That ankle's not bothering me. I'm doing real good. And I went in through a curve... my ankle popped."
> — **Tony**, ~2:05:00
> _Turning point in Tony's race experience where a different ankle injury occurred during the race itself_

> "Less than a mile, less than a mile, less than a mile. That is all I'm thinking is less than a mile."
> — **Dennis**, ~1:40:00
> _Captures the mental struggle of the final mile, showing the psychological endurance component of racing_

> "Why isn't this downhill at this part? This is nonsense."
> — **Dennis**, ~1:35:00
> _Humorous commentary on minor inclines becoming major obstacles during fatigue in the final mile_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; completed 5K race in under 30 minutes (9:31 average pace) in his first official 5K event |
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; participated in 5K race but injured ankle during race; has eldest child who is cross-country runner |
| Danny T | person | Highest-tier Patreon supporter of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; requested hosts complete a 5K race; himself a runner and marathon enthusiast |
| Zach Minney | person | Host of The Pinball Show podcast where Dennis is co-host; gave Dennis a Deadpool Premium pinball machine as a Christmas gift |
| Tony's daughter | person | Cross-country runner; participated in 5K race; became ill during race (vomiting) despite lack of recent training; finished approximately 4 minutes after Dennis |
| Eclectic Gamers Podcast | organization | Podcast co-hosted by Dennis and Tony; covers pinball and arcade games; has Patreon membership with varying support tiers |
| The Pinball Show | organization | Podcast co-hosted by Dennis (opposite weeks from Eclectic Gamers); hosted by Zach Minney |
| Broken Token | organization | Podcast covering arcade and pinball games; known for long episodes (often 2.5+ hours); listener Danny T previously wrote in requesting even longer episodes |
| Deadpool Premium | game | Pinball machine gifted to Dennis by Zach Minney for Christmas; Dennis had to relocate other machines (Firepower, Total Nuclear Annihilation) to accommodate it in his game room |
| Sinbad | game | Pinball machine in Dennis's garage since July; had been waiting for repairs to be completed before bringing into game room |
| Firepower | game | Pinball machine in Dennis's game room; was moved out to make space for Deadpool Premium |
| Total Nuclear Annihilation | game | Pinball machine in Dennis's game room; moved out to make space for new acquisition |
| TNA | game | Pinball machine (Total Nuclear Annihilation) in Dennis's game room; Dennis considering selling it |

### Topics

- **Primary:** 5K race experience and completion, Patreon supporter requests and community engagement, Physical training and race preparation, Running injuries and setbacks
- **Secondary:** Pinball machine acquisitions and collection management, Holiday plans and family traditions, Home repairs and household maintenance

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.75) — Generally upbeat and celebratory tone regarding the completed 5K and personal achievement; light, humorous recounting of challenges (Unicorn Girl, false finish line Santa sighting, physical struggle). Some frustration with home maintenance issues and weather, but framed comedically. Strong sense of accomplishment and community support through Patreon relationship.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Patreon supporter Danny T successfully requested and incentivized a charitable 5K participation by hosts, demonstrating strong community investment in creator wellness and personal challenges (confidence: high) — Danny T joined at highest Patreon tier specifically to request 5K completion within 6-month window; Dennis credits Danny with initial ask and motivation for the event
- **[community_signal]** Multiple Patreon members engaged with content request process; Danny T's request built on Tony's earlier entertaining stories about walking adventures with cross-country runner daughter (confidence: high) — Dennis notes 'a number of people who said they wanted to hear more' about Tony's walking stories; Danny directly cited these as inspiration for his 5K request
- **[community_signal]** Zach Minney (host of The Pinball Show) gifted Dennis Deadpool Premium pinball machine, indicating strong professional relationship and financial investment in co-host (confidence: high) — Dennis receives Deadpool Premium as Christmas gift; Zach coordinated with Tony to keep selection secret; Dennis notes this is more than appropriate for gift-giving but couldn't refuse

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, December 24th. This is episode 183. Happy Christmas Eve, Dennis. How the hell there, Tony? Oh, it's Christmas hanky time. It is. For the perfect time to bring out the Mr. Hankey. Mr. Hankey, the Christmas poo. He loves me and I love you. That's vicariously. He loves you. I forgot the rest of the song, so thank you for remembering this. It's been too long. Too long. So I'm Dennis, and here we are. Year-end review. That's the episode. It's the 2022 year-end review. Normally, we do that the very last episode that we are going to record in a given year. and I should have noted I didn't even think about it at our last episode to warn people that we would record on a day different than our usual Sunday because Sunday is Christmas and we are busy because it's Christmas. Busy. Busy. Quotations. Yes, busy. Busy. In reality, we probably could get through all the Christmas stuff and then just have still done it. I dare not. I dare not. So I'm bringing Chinese over to my parents. That's what Christmas is going to be. My mom, like, gathered up whatever presents she got me and dropped them off in a big trash bag. And I'm just, she's just like, so I asked her, so am I just, like, supposed to open these before I come over? And she goes, yep, just open those up. All right. Just sit there by yourself and open those up. And then bring cashew chicken. Like, okay. It's like, yay, Merry Christmas. Single tear. Rolling down. No, the Chinese thing is a fairly new tradition of ours. Of course, it's stripped straight out of A Christmas Story. Right. But, like, it just became a lot easier. I think once there was a realization, like, I don't have any expectation that anyone cook on Christmas. It's like, do you think you could bring Chinese? I'm like, as long as they're open, and they are. So, it works. Absolutely. So, what are you doing for Christmas? Oh, normal family stuff will be done by lunch. Okay. See, that's normally how it would have been in the before times. Right. We'd have all gathered at one person's house, mostly watch, like, my niece open her presents up, which is what would take the longest because, you know, she's a kid, so she gets the most. And then we'd eat. And then it would basically be done. I might watch a movie or two or something. Yeah. Now we'll just do stuff at home, us and the kids, and that's it. So nothing. No, we don't go do the huge giant family things. We do on occasion, but not in the last couple of years. Yeah, we did when we were really young. But once we were getting around high school age, we always just kept it immediate. So we are going to have a recap of the 5K stuff here in a bit. But before that, any other things that have happened over the last couple of weeks that you wanted to touch on with the audience? No. I mean, there's been nothing special. I've played the same games I was playing last time. I haven't. I'm playing the same games, still reading the Dark Tower books. Ah, yes. Still. It has been a very, like the only thing vaguely interesting is the dishwasher broke. So we've returned to hand washing dishes until the part came in. Your wife told me that the water kept running into it. Yes, and it would fill up and it would overflow because the valve was broken and the part just arrived the other day. So now I need to go tear it apart and fix it. My dad came and helped me when I replaced the dishwasher that I had. Back when you lived here as a housemate, you remember, it was the one that came with the house. It finally gave out. This was a few years ago. We went to install the new dishwasher. Oh, it was such a mess. Like, all the hookups were different, and we had to – it was bad. It took – what we thought – this is a running joke with us, but my dad will usually make a time estimate on a project, but we should always, like, triple it if it's anything that we haven't regularly done before because there's always something that's, like, a weird hookup that doesn't exist anymore or the connector breaks when you're doing it because it rusted. And it's just like, it took hours. It took hours and hours. But I like it. It's a great, much better dishwasher than the one you remembered. Yeah. I looked it up online. I did the whole, oh, this is what the dishwasher is doing. And they're like, oh, if you have hard water, it's this. It's the valves going out. It won't fully shut. I'm like, well, yeah, we definitely have very hard water. And it was like a $14 part. But it's Christmas time, so shipping took a while. Yes, yes. Apparently, because I heard about this last week, I think. Yeah, yeah. The part arrived on Thursday. And then yesterday was so cold, our dishwasher is not plugged in. It's hardwired into an electrical box. Oh, okay. I understand. So to shut it off, I have to throw the breaker. But with what breaker it is, because my house was built in 59, so the breakers make zero sense. They make no sense at all. So to throw that breaker, to take that section of the kitchen off, because it only takes one wall of the kitchen off, it also takes out two of the three bedrooms and the bathroom. Oh, wow. That's a lot on that circuit. So, I said the place was built in the 50s. What an interesting distinction. It's just like we can run the oven or the dryer. We can't run both because it trips. Because they're on the same circuit. Wow. So, and since it was, you know, a wind chill of like negative 15 yesterday, I was like, Well, I don't feel like turning off power to the kids' rooms and the bathroom when it's negative 15 while I take what should, according to the online stuff, take me 20 to 30 minutes to fix because I know reality is it's going to take like two hours. So I was like, I'll just wait until it's slightly warmer. We can continue to hand wash. Yes. Like the old times. It's the old times is what it is. Making them earn their allowances. That's what it is. Yeah. No, I'm a big believer. and having kids do work. That's right. That's why you had them. Yeah, I did. Okay. That's why everyone has them. Okay. Well, the only thing I was going to touch on, I haven't really done a whole lot other than, obviously, as most of the listeners know, I co-host another podcast, The Pen Ball Show, which I do the opposite weeks that we do this show. And during that episode, the host, Zach Minney, had announced to me through a weird convoluted phone call from a Canadian who I couldn't tell who it was. It was an unknown caller call that he was giving me a pinball machine for Christmas, which, of course, is way more than anyone should be spending on Christmas presents. And he knows that I can't refuse it because it would be rude. So I'm like, I'm in this weird bind. So I was like, OK. And that arrived and it was it's Deadpool premium. so I did spend time last week moving my firepower and my total nuclear annihilation out of the game room because Sinbad has been in my garage since July and it did take me a little while to change out and fix all the stuff I wanted to fix on it but it has been done for months and I wanted to move it in and firepower out and I just kept putting it off and I had forgotten I had to take the backbox off firepower to get it through the door so I'm doing all of that had to hook it back up make sure the sound wasn't working. I put the cord on wrong on one part that wasn't clearly labeled to. I hooked the wire up, but I hooked the wire up backwards. It was one that could be flipped. It didn't burn anything out, but it was like, oh my gosh, what a pain. And then I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll get rid of TNA to bring in the new game, assuming that... I didn't move TNA out of the game room until the game arrived, because Zach wouldn't tell me what it was. He said he had consulted with you, and then you told me that you didn't know what it was, just that you guys had talked and generated a list as best you could of potential games. To be fair, he generated a list originally, and I went through the list and went, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, there were a lot of no's. It's like, these ones make sense. Well, it is a game I really like. I don't know. I was trying to remember if I had ever played a premium. I couldn't distinctly remember it. I did check. I must have at one point though because I did have a Pindigo photo. I think there was a premium of $403 for one. Yeah, and I think that's what it was. They had a Pro originally and then this year or, yeah, I think it must have been this year or late last year, I must have played it again and they must have had the premium instead. So, anyway, it was a very nice gift and I'll keep that over TNA. I wasn't playing TNA as much anymore. Right. So, we'll see if I can sell them or not. But now the garage is full of pins that I, like, I can't really fit anything else in right now, in right now, because I still have, uh, Eric's space gambler is still in my garage, uh, which, that's not my game, so that shouldn't really be here anymore, and then now Firepower's in there, and then I, I cleared enough room to stick TNA beside those two, but there ain't no any more room unless I, like, reorganize the whole garage. And you don't even keep cars in there. I don't, I don't, but I got the virtual pen in there. I got the old main cabinet in there. And then there is a whole lot of old electronics. I'm finally, like every week I go and I fill my dumpster bin with old electronics. I didn't realize I've got like a dozen computers around here that I don't even know. I don't think they were all mine, but I don't know. I can't remember. So every week I just fill the bin with stuff that doesn't need to be, you know, things that don't have lead batteries and stuff. Pull hard drives and dumpers. Yeah, L-Sound systems, space heaters. This week, there were a pile of broken space heaters. I'm like, why do I still have all these space heaters? Into them they go. We've just got to let that stuff fly. And the city here does battery drop-off for batteries and stuff like that, and electronics drop-offs a couple of times a quarter, really? Yes, I just need to do it. Yeah. Because I do get the notice. and then I'm just like, I'm tired. That's my excuse for everything. I don't want to drive a half mile to drop this stuff off and dispose of it properly. Nope, I'd rather just let it sit here forever and be safe. That's the way my strategy is set. Take care of it. It can't pollute if I keep it in the house. It stays safe. So anyway, now for listeners that do not care, this is going to be your running trigger warning. So we're going to talk about the 5K. So let me give some context. One of our Patreon supporters, highest tier Patreon supporters. Oh, let me actually give thanks to our latest Patreon members. We did have one new one that joined us over the last couple of weeks, Chris, at the basic support tier. So welcome to the Patreon membership. We greatly appreciate it. We appreciate all of the tiers of people that choose to give us support. Welcome. And so anyway, back to one of our high support tier individuals, Danny T on our Patreon. He made the initial ask. Now, Danny, I referenced Danny once upon a time. I didn't remember his name, but another podcast that I listened to, Broken Token, which covers arcade and pinball games. he, I just remember they would do listener emails and he had written in and said that he wanted them to go longer and longer, they're a monthly show but it's their shows are long, like they're the longest in arcade, in terms of just average show duration the longest of anything that I know of that covers arcade and pinball in fact, they're only shorter than Hardcore History Oh, wow. I mean, they're long. So like four hours is nothing. I think maybe one time they broke four hours, but their show would commonly break two and a half. That's crazy. It's a lot. And he wrote in because he wanted them to be even longer because he runs marathons, and he runs all the time. And so apparently he listened to this show because before we had the Patreon, he wrote to me at one point. He goes, oh, hey, Dennis. Yeah, that was my email over on Broken Token. well um so when he joined as a patreon member at the highest tier he's like you know what i went we were asking people on our patreon like what do you want us to do like i share monthly babies first with all the patreon members we've done special audio things for the for the patreon members but he his request was because he had heard this he is being a runner and then the other part of the blame is on you oh no it's probably me for the summer that's right because Tony was talking about his own walking adventures because his eldest child is a cross-country runner. And so Tony, doing stuff to get in shape while at those events, was sharing all of these stories. Now, in your defense, they were pretty entertaining stories. I know. Actually, we had a number of people who said they wanted to hear more. So anyway, Danny's like... I've not been exercising very much lately. So Danny's like, I want you to – I'm going to support you at the highest level, but I want you guys to do a 5K, like an official 5K. And I believe he said he wanted it done within six months of the start of his Patreon support. So – because initially I told Tony this, and again, this is why I'm saying skip ahead, folks, because I cannot tell you how many minutes this is going to be. But it's going to be a while, so just be aware. Just click that fast-forward button if you hate this. so anyway he uh you know i mentioned that to tony and tony's like well yeah i mean we could probably do something like that in the summer i'm like well he gave us six months according to the deadline and then tony's like okay here's a run upcoming in the middle of december maybe it won't be too cold because you mentioned this when i told it to you to you your cross-country daughter And what was her reaction? She's very excited. She wanted me to run the whole thing, and I laughed at her. I didn't know about the laughs. I did. I laughed in her face. Did you laugh like Schmaug? No, I did not laugh like Schmaug. Wow, that sucked. That was terrible. I can do better than that. Schmaug. That was good. We had a request for the Schmaug, so I had to tee that up. But, yeah, no, I full on, I laugh in her face. I was like, that's not happening at all. So, anyway, because that was last weekend. We did that last Sunday. Yep. And so we'll recount this because I think we have tails that we can tell based on this. Oh, yeah, we have tails. We had already talked about what we were trying to do to kind of get ourselves in. Because I never ran a 5K race before. The furthest I ever think I ever did, I can't even call it particularly competitively, but like for physical ed class in high school, they required us to run two miles. That had been my extent of any official run length. I'm impressed that you didn't call it PE. It was physical ed. I had to make it sound fancier. In physical ed, I ran and did this. Back when I was in my boarding school. We had to do it with the blazer and the tie on. They required it as a blazer run. The blazer run. We weren't those sort of blazers. We were trailblazers. So, I guess to tackle that day, let me just give the initial stuff. So, Tony had, I think it's someone you work with a few years, was going to run with us. We made a team. Yeah, we had a team of four. We had a team of four, because you got a discount if you did a team of four or more. So, Tony handled the arrangements to get us our stuff, and we paid Tony. And the fourth person couldn't make it, because they'd been ill, basically. They had black gloves. He had the RSV that's been going around. Oh, RSV. Okay. Yeah, he'd been out almost the entire week leading up to the raid. Yeah. And he was like, we'll see how I feel. He's like, I can't. I just can't. Yeah. So in the end, it ended up being you, me, and your eldest. Correct. The cross-country runner. Correct. And your wife came along, and you picked me up, and then we went. Because it wasn't too far from here. No. It's just down the road. Right. Local community college. We get there, oh, gosh, probably about 50 minutes early. Yeah. We get a good parking spot. Yeah. Got a great parking spot, actually. I was like, holy crap. I didn't realize how many, I didn't know how popular things like this were. Yeah. Because I'd never been to one before. I mean, I ran, me, the gentleman from work who was going to run with us, and my daughter ran in a 5K over the summer. Oh, he was the same one. He was the same one. ran in a 5K over the summer, and it was a smallish 5K, and there were still like 300 people. Yeah, this, based off of, I mean, the announcer kept changing how many people were there. Your wife got a large kick out of this because he ranged from over 800 people to almost 700 people. I think in the official 5K results, it was just under 600 in terms of where I saw number of individuals. I'd have to go back and check. I believe it was 547. Which to me is still a lot of people, but that ain't 800, so I don't know. I don't know. It was cold. His vision probably blurred. So we go inside, stretching, warming up. and then we go and the way this functions because there's so many people they described it as a shoot which made me feel kind of like I was cattle going to be cold or at the very least dewormed I still remember one time in Arkansas when my grandfather had a chicken farm but he did have some head of cattle as well and I think one time sorry it was 597 ok so 600 almost 600 So anyway, I kind of felt like a cow. They have the fast people, because this is a fun run, but they have the fast people go up front so they don't have to dodge people to try and set a good time or anything. So I'm seeing little signs along the way of people kind of being like, this is sort of where this pace is and whatnot. and whatnot. Now, before we started this, Tony told me that he told his daughter that in response to her wanting Tony to run the whole thing, that he was like, I'm not keeping up with you. That's Dennis's job. And I'm like, uh, I haven't. While I was originally training at a 5K pace, after my leg injury, after that nerve or whatever was hurt for a couple weeks, I resumed my training, but I never got back to doing more than two miles. So I wasn't doing 3.1 anymore. And I'm like, so we're going there. We're going into the shoot. And Tony tells his daughter, okay, so Dennis is going to start with where you're at, but don't wait on him, which is absolutely true. I said, yes, I will stay with you as long as I possibly can. But, you know, if you can go faster, go fast. Don't define yourself around thinking that I need to stay in view. I don't think I'm going to get lost or anything. Which they had it very well labeled, so it wasn't a big deal. And then Tony went back further in the shoot. I went back to reality. Tony went back in reality. I could see in front of me somewhere was the 9 minute 30 second sign. And I'm like, okay. But I looked and I tried to find a 10-minute or 10-minute, 30-second sign, and I didn't see those. And I thought, well, it probably doesn't matter too much at this point when you're this far back. So I don't know. Did you want to recount your experience first or do you want me to recount my experience first? You go first because I think mine's funnier. Yours is funnier, I think. But yours is tragic. Is it tragic? Is there a tragedy to it? It's both. Why not both? Okay. So Tony's daughter and I start basically side by side. And they fire the proverbial gun, and we go, and we're going along. And it's fine. It's a huge mass of people. His daughter is passing, folks. So I'm usually trying to stay right behind her because it's so tightly packed. I'm just like using the slipstream or whatever to try and – because she's so small. she's like weaving through folks and I'm just like I'm keeping her in view because I'm like I'm going to try and keep her pace she had indicated her hope at the time because she hadn't been training yeah that was the problem is she hadn't trained since cross country training but she's kind of like you know I'd like to try and do somewhere like 28 to 30 minutes and I'm like okay well if I can keep up with her for a while maybe I could do like 30 to 31 but I'm not sure because it's like Like, my best pacing at two miles, I think, was probably a nine-minute, 45-second average lap time. But I've never done it that well at a full 5K. Back when I was doing the full 5K, I was usually 10 minutes and 30 seconds to just under 12 minutes a mile, depending on how I felt. So I'm kind of thinking, oh, gosh, I would really, really like to try and – my goal was to be better than the 10.30, but I didn't know if I could do it anymore. Right. Because I hadn't been going that far. So anyway, we're going along. I think, I don't know if there were labels showing how far you were on the course. There was one. There was a two-mile marker, and that was it. I missed all of them. I missed all one of them. But I'm hearing other people are talking because they're used to this, so they can talk and do this at the same time. I'm feeling good, though. I'm feeling pretty good. It's cold, but it's not like how cold it is now. We were probably about in the mid-20s. Yeah, it was like 23, 24. Yeah, we lucked out because that day, unfortunately, was after the race. But that day got up to almost 40. Yeah. It has not been that warm since then. No, it has not. So it was – because I was concerned given it was in the middle of December. So we're going along. Probably – it felt like maybe about a mile in because I'm looking at my watch because I know when we started. And so I'm using that as a loose gauge based off of how fast I normally go to be like, okay, if I'm going about 10 minutes a mile, we're 10 minutes in. I must have gone a mile. Because I don't feel like I'm going too slow. Right. I feel like I'm about normal. But your daughter veered off, off to the side, so she could spit in the grass. So I thought, oh, she's not feeling great. Yeah. But now I don't have a pace. Because I tethered myself entirely to whatever her pace was to know what I was supposed to do. And she was throwing up. Oh, okay. Because she hadn't practiced. She full on was throwing up. Okay. I only saw her spit in it at first. Yeah. But she didn't catch back up to me. No, she was just a little ways behind you when I passed you guys. I say passed. I was going. We crossed paths. We crossed paths because the routes came together. Yeah. We kind of looped back on ourselves briefly where we could see one direction and the other direction. Right. Kind of shared different sides of the road. Right. Okay, so she was throwing up. Yeah. I knew afterwards she had mentioned that she got sick. Yeah. I was like, well, I figured when she veered off to start, I just only saw her spit. That was the start of it, yeah. And then when she got down, she got back into it. Because I thought, well, I probably shouldn't just stop because I don't know what's, but now I'm like, okay, well, I'm a bit at a loss at this point because I was using that as like my pace car, figuring eventually she would just start getting too fast for me and I'd get too tired. So I just kept going, looped back around. And I did see you when I'm about near where the paths were no longer going to be the same anymore. Right. And that would have been you just past the two-mile mark. Yeah. And so at that point, again, I'm kind of looking at the watch. I'm like, yeah, I think I'm about two miles, and I still feel good. But now, of course, that's where the training normally stops for me. So that last 1.1 miles was awful. I am now slowing. I can tell I'm slowing. None of this was hilly. None of this was particularly hilly. However, I am now lamenting every incline we experienced, and they are mild. We're talking like two-degree inclines, and I'm like, this incline shouldn't be here. This should be flat. Why isn't this downhill at this part? This is nonsense. I am annoyed. Like, I'm not listening to any music. All I'm thinking at this point is, but probably after like three or four more minutes, I'm like, less than a mile, less than a mile, less than a mile. That is all I'm thinking is less than a mile. There are all these people on the side and little bursts of people cheering on other. I don't have anyone cheering me on. There are these other people like, come on, George. Come on, Elaine. You can do it. Which the thing is, it was very motivating. Not that they were cheering, but what they kept telling them was, you're almost there. Now, the start and the finish are the same spots. And it's a giant inflatable Santa just sort of arcing over the whole thing. I mean, he's huge. So I hear these people saying, come on, Jane, you're almost there. And I turn a corner. There's no giant Santa. So now I'm pissed because they're liars. Because if it was almost there, I should see the Santa. And I don't see the Santa. It's not almost there. So I keep going because I think Santa is almost there, and he is not. I'm now – I had actually been passing people up through the second mile. And now some of the same people are passing me again. And there's no rhyme or reason to some of it. There was one little girl. She kind of wore this, like, rainbow-y jacket. It actually looks like a heavy winter coat. It's like a silver thing, but it gleamed. I called her Unicorn Girl in my head. I had to label her Unicorn Girl because of the rainbowy coat. Like, she would just be walking, like meandering, walking. Bored, looked like bored. She's young. She's under 10. I'm sure she's under 10. And then she's doing like pixie crack or something and will blow past me. She looks like hard sprint. be ahead, meandering, strolling, and then she's all like Willow from Buffy bored now and then bam, all of a sudden she just accelerates again. She passed me three different times and I don't know if she finished ahead of me or not. I don't know. I got tired of looking at her jacket and I'm just like, why won't you die? Why does she keep coming? She won't stop. Where does she get this energy from? These children are, I'm telling you, they're doing sugar or something. They're doing sugar. Bunch of crap. Now, near the end, this area, a woman who I think I had passed earlier comes up on me. She must have been able to tell that I was really struggling. I'm wheezing at this point. And I have a side stitch. I got a side stitch probably somewhere in the last half mile. But I'm still going. I'm still actually jogging. And she goes, you're doing really good, which I thought was a sign that I wasn't doing really good. And I gasped out, thanks, like, my first 5K. And she goes, you didn't pick the easiest one to start with. And I thought, even though I'm hurting, this seems pretty flat. And I think maybe she thought about that because then she goes, I just mean that it's really cold. Okay, thank you. Don't give me too much, Betty. I finally saw the Santa. I tried to speed up at the end. I maybe increased my pace by 0.25 seconds. There was basically nothing left. I saw the time on the gun clock, and I thought, wow, I am really hurting, and it still was like 31 minutes and something. I didn't realize, though, that I wasn't set to the gun clock. The bibs have that RF chip. Right. My actual crossing of the start point didn't because I wasn't in the front. I was towards the back end of the group so that I actually did it in under 30 minutes. And my my pace average was nine minutes and 31 seconds. I never did that well on any train. I would have a one mile period where I could go under nine, but I never averaged even at two miles that fast. So it so I was really pleased because I did better than not only better than I had hoped I would do. I did better than I thought I would. I didn't think I would be able to sustain nearly a nine-minute, 30-second pace. So anyway, so that was my experience. And then I took water, and I sat down, and I just got wheezed forever. And I had that. Unfortunately, I had the cough, the exercise-induced whatever cough from that. But it wasn't too painful. So that was that. That was my first 5K experience. And then your daughter crossed probably somewhere like four to five minutes later. About four minutes. Yeah. And then we just awaited you. Mm-hmm. So. It was great. I started out so strong. I mean, when I mean strong, I mean. Army strong. No, not that strong. No. Air Force strong. Sorry, Air Force. Don't hate on me. at eclecticfamerspodcast.gmail.com But, no, everything started out fine. I'm actually going to back up to the night before. Oh. So the night before we did all of this, we're hauling stuff, I'm hauling packages into the house that had been delivered. And my dog ran out the front door and took off down the street and vanished. Vanished? So I went running down the street after her. And I managed to find a hole and hurt my bad ankle. And I'm like, okay, this is great. It's my bad ankle. That's fine. Whatever. I'll be okay tomorrow. That's for when I put my brace on. So I found my dog. We got her back inside. Everything was fine. I was limping around. I pre-gamed some ibuprofen knowing that I was going to have issues next day. Ankle was a little sore. Not bad. Got my ankle brace on. Pre-gamed some more ibuprofen. I was ready for the race. We went to the race. We started the race. And I got through about three-quarters of a mile. I'm like, this is going real good. That ankle's not bothering me. I'm doing real good. And I went in through a curve, and I was turning, and I was doing this, like, kind of, I was bouncing between this, like, jog, walk, fast walk, slow jog type back and forth. And as I was going into a turn, we were turning off of one road onto another following the path, my ankle popped. It wasn the ankle I hurt The night before it was my other ankle Oh the good ankle It was my good ankle I like well this is bad So I slowed down to a walk and we just like okay let just shake this out and see what going on But no, every time I took a step, it shot fire straight up my leg. So I was like, okay, I keep going, and I see I pass you. Okay, so when we saw each other, you were already hurt. I was already hurt. And we were hiding it fairly well. And at that point, I had already dropped back. And when I mean dropped back, I mean I was the last guy in the race. And by I mean I was the last guy in the race. I mean the cop car that was following the final racer was, like, pushing on my butt because I was so far behind. And every time I take a step, there's a pain shoot up my one leg and then up the other. I was just in massive amounts of pain, like, to the point where I was seriously considering just veering off the track and saying, nope, I'm done. We're going to quit. But then I saw you, and you were still running. It looked good. I saw my daughter just a little bit behind you, and she was upset because she'd gotten sick and had fallen back, and she was off her pace, and she was having problems getting back on pace. So I was being, oh, just do the best you can, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, crap. I can't tell my daughter to do her best, and it's okay. It's no big deal. And then quit. As I'm walking up on the spot, because I was coming to – because that was as we were leading up to the spot, that if I was going to quit, it's where I would quit because it was closest to the parking lot. And I would just weave off and go to the parking lot there as opposed to going back through the whole rest of the course. So I'm like, okay, I have to go. So I'm just chugging along. My fat guys shuffle. Massive amounts of pain. The cop car sitting right behind me. Except for the parts where he zoomed around me to go talk to other cops that were sitting there writing. Like they do. Like they do. As I just keep chugging along, I come up to where the water is. and they're like packing stuff up, and they're like, oh, hey, there's another person. Okay, here's a water. It's like, okay. I take a big old drink of water, which managed to get enough of it on my mustache that my entire mustache froze solid while I'm walking. So now I'm in pain, and my mustache is just like icicles frozen from my big drink of water because I got it all over my mustache, and the wind was blowing and everything else. I'm like, okay, this is great. and I happened to look back because I'd gone around to see how far back. I was trying to take a selfie that had me with the cop car following me, but I couldn't get it to come out. Every time, I just couldn't get the shot right. It looked bad. And then when I glanced back and there were people behind me, I'm like, I'm not in last place. Yeah. I thought I was the last person. And then they blew past me. They'd apparently started the race like 30 minutes late. Oh, they had arrived late Oh, wow So, yeah, they started the race like 20 or 30 minutes late And we're just running through Yeah, they just blew past me and vanished ahead of me And it's like, okay Oh, I see what this is So I'm walking, I'm chugging along A little ways ahead of me Is this guy and his little daughter Like little, little, I'm talking like five or six Looking little And every time he goes to pick her up She screams at him because she's going to do it She's going to finish walking And he's like, okay. I told my wife I can't quit. This six-year-old is screaming at her dad that she's going to do it on her own. It's like, I just got to keep going. I'm just in so much pain. I'm walking. It's like, okay, I'll just keep doing it. I just got to keep going. I can't not do it at this point in time. I look back over my shoulder, and behind the cop car is a pickup truck with the guys walking beside the pickup truck, picking up the cones. I'm like, oh, this hurts. Oh, man. Now, what was your time? Just, I guess, to interject, because I think you mentioned it on a past episode, but you'd mentioned you'd done that other 5K a few months before. What was your time on that? My time on that was 54-ish. And honestly, I only lost about 10 minutes. I finished this race at 107. So I lost a little over 10 minutes. Which, given how early, for those that don't know, the turn that he mentioned where he twisted his ankle, that's not even a mile in. No, that was like three-quarters, half to three-quarters of a mile in. And, I mean, between that, I just, yeah, no. But you're giving your daughter the inspirational speech about. I gave her the inspirational speech as we moved past each other. That losers whine about their best. Exactly. I didn't finish it, but you know what it is. Yeah. So, no, I went around and I finished. I'm walking around and I come around the last quarter and there's a cop who was taking out the barriers that they used to block the parking lot and was shifting them to block the end of the road so they could take the finish line apart. He apparently didn't realize that there was still somebody coming. So I had to walk around the barriers he was putting in place. They were closing it, and the other cop was still following me. And then I got to the end, and there's like a couple people sitting there with the medals for me. And some guy sitting up there taking a picture, and I was like, you guys can go home now. If anybody's behind me, they're dead. There's no way. There's no way there's anybody left behind me. Oh. Well, I'm sad that you got injured. It's okay. It was funnier. It was. I literally, when I crossed the two-mile mark, I called my wife on the phone. And I was like, why don't you guys go sit in the car or go inside or do something? Because I just crossed the two-mile mark, and it's going to be a while. Yeah. Yeah. I was nearby when that call came in. because we were watching. We really started to pay attention after about 45 minutes on the clock because we recall, I think that was kind of your... That was my target. That was my target originally. Your target time was 45, which we knew it wouldn't be 45 on the clock because you didn't start at the front. Right. But that was my target. So, yeah. No, that was it. It was absolutely something special. I'm going to go with that. It was fun is not necessarily the word I would use. I think the previous one I'd done was much more fun. But that's probably because I wasn't in pain in that one. I was in so much pain that I was on the verge of crying, but I was not out of breath at all. Right. You weren't exhausted. It wasn't exhausting. Every step hurts. It hurts. And when I tried to speed up, it got much worse. So I ended up being just that slow. That's what it ended up taking me to get through. But you know what? I finished. That is the important part of the overall story. You got your completion medal? I might have to go through and do a lot of exercise and redeem myself next year maybe. I'll consider it. That's Danny's question is are we going to do another one? I don't know. Honestly, I have to get another ankle brace for sure. but I don't think I can until I get a lot more of the weight off it's just too painful because I'm fat I mean that's just honest truth I'm too heavy and it's too much strain on my joints I need to work on getting enough of the weight off that I'm not in pain doing it if I can get that done yeah I could see doing another one I know my daughter would be very happy if I did. Right. Yeah, my impression was she was really pleased that – Oh, no, she loves it that I do anything like that. It's just like in her summer practice, she loves when I come and walk, even though while she runs and does everything and I walk, she knows I can't keep up with her. But she loves that I'm doing something and trying to be part of it. Maybe what you need, though, isn't so much the other ankle brace, but more Patreon motivation. So when I look this morning, our Patreon count is at 42 right now. So maybe we could say if we get up to 60, we'll schedule another 5K. That's a pretty decent jump in Patreon members. What do you think? I can't tell you that it would be a year out. I don't know. I don't know. But it would be several months out, I'm sure. Unless these listeners are like, you know what, I'm going to dig up that dollar. I need to get. I'm going to dig up that dollar. I'm losing weight. Been digging the dollar. Based off of all the stuff they stuck in our bib packets, it doesn't look like there was anything. Oh, no, there's bib all the time. Yeah, there are, but it didn't seem like there were any in January. Maybe there was one in February. It seemed like a lot were as of March. Yeah. I think they take, like, more of the winter off was my impression. Yeah, no, there was, like, one in January. Oh, I didn't even see that one. Yeah, and that's just what they put in that bib packet. If you, like, go to the running sites, there's, like, two or three every weekend. I mean, my overall takeaway was, though, I'll have to push back on Danny's thought that now people, like, that I would want to do a 10K. The answer to that is absolutely not. I don't think I could see myself wanting to work in that much. I've read online that it doesn't, one's life doesn't have to become training, really, to get up to the 10K level. But, like, once you reach half marathons, it sort of takes over your life. So it becomes your thing if that's what you want to do. And I know that's how Danny is. He loves to run. I don't love to run. I do love the sense of accomplishment of finishing something like that. And the idea of trying to improve my times is attractive in a self-competitive sort of way. So I could see doing more 5Ks. But I think I never was big into distance running. I think 3.1 miles is probably sufficient. I don't disagree. I mean, I would never even consider a 10K. But trying to stay in enough shape and get better at 5Ks, yeah, no, I could see trying to do that. Plus, one of the things is now that I'm in better shape than I was, it's easier to do the runs, like, at least a couple miles that I've still continued to try and do. And historically in the winter, I haven't done anything. Like, I do not bike. I do not cycle in the winter. Right. And see, and that's part of my problem is that, like, over the summer, I was doing multiple days a week of distance, at least walking and light jogging and all sorts of prep. And for this one, I did some, but not a whole lot because most of it required, like, if I went to use the elliptical, just because of how life was, I had to wake up and get to the gym and use the elliptical before going to work. and there were a lot of days where I didn't have time for that. So all I had was walking around at work and then as it was getting colder and wetter and that was becoming less of a thing. No, I need to work on a better exercise plan if I'm going to do it again. Well, it's up to the Patreon members now. We've got to get the numbers up, guys. Come on. Do you want more stories like this? Do you want a story where Tony has to, like, fix his knee with a bandana and his other knee is, like, he tapes three water bottles to it in order to brace it on the fly? I mean, only the Patreons can tell us. See, what we're really going to do is we'll get a wheelchair, and I can sit in the wheelchair, and Dennis will push me through the 5K at his pace. There were a lot of stroller people. There were a lot of stroller people. They all passed me. I think the babies are sharing their crack. I mean, when I was doing the practice over the summer, there was a lady who we saw multiple times who had, like, two kids in a stroller and was, like, sprinting. Oh, there were some really – I mean, there were times I didn't know people could achieve times that they were getting on this stuff. Yeah. And I was like, holy cow. Holy cow. My lungs hurt thinking about it. To be fair, if I can run a 5K in 16 minutes, I can see where you might run 5Ks all the time. Because what's 16 minutes out of your day? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right. So that is our super ultra long intro. Thank you, Danny, for the suggestion. And the Patreon folks who gave all their encouragement and such. Tony shared a couple of photos he took on Instagram. I have those and the official race photos that I could find, at least some of them. with you and I in them. Oh, they were terrible. Also on the page. At least the ones of me were terrible. They actually got you on the, I couldn't find one of me in the course. They did have one of you on the course, and then, of course, the start and the finish. Right. Everyone gets photoed, basically, there, because they're photobombing. Yeah, because they're just sitting there. They got a guy up on a ladder just going click, click, click, click, click, click. So I've got all those up on Patreon for people that want to go and enjoy those. And I also have a surprise Babies First that I threw up the other day. Oh, Babies First 5K. No, no. This is the old one. I wasn't sure where it is. It was Baby's First Pinball Debate. That's what it's called. Baby's First Pinball Debate. So I went ahead and gave that as a Christmas present to the Patreon members. So Eclectic Gamers Patreon is patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers for those that care. Let's finally get into the meat of the show. This is our year-end review. I don't want to spend a lot of time on news because I want to spend a lot of time talking about the year in review. So here's the quick pinball news for you, Tony. You ready? I'm going to do it all in one breath. Gary Stern has stepped down as CEO of Stern, but he is still chairman of the board. Stern has released a limited, I think a 300-count Rush loot crate thing with maybe $150 worth of stuff in it, but it's $500 to get. And also per NAP Arcade, and I have a link to this in the show notes, Multimorphic has noted that it is still 10 to 12 weeks behind the original estimates for shipping P3 orders, and a new order will have an approximate one-year wait. Okay, that's the news. Beautiful. Thank you. That's lovely. So let's do the review. Are you ready? Let's start. All right. So we did have a request from Tony V, one of our patrons, wanted us to talk about what exactly we think wins Game of the Year at the Twippies. That was sort of his specific question. I paraphrased it. And you know what? Because I haven't really been talking Twippies itself, but I'm broadly thinking about any sort of award like the Pinball News Game of the Year, Pinball Award stuff. Pinball Award season, of course, is upon us. So it's a fair question. I think I think it's Rush. And I I don't know. There are some people who absolutely love love Rush, but I don't know how much of this is going to be a combination of people who love Rush. And also, like, everything else is kind of like a step below it. Yeah. Like, it's, I mean, we'll talk about it when we go through the games in the year in review. So that's my guess, is everything else that came out, in my opinion, either is too seldomly encountered in the wild or owned to have a chance of winning, or had too many flaws. I think that makes sense. I think the only thing that could possibly give it a run would be Toy Story. Right. And I don't think it's close. I think there's a very vast difference between those two games. And here's the thing. I don't really like either game. I know. But Rush is a substantially better game, in my opinion. I'm not saying Toy Story's bad. I think Toy Story shoots fine and everything. It's just not what I would have hoped for. Well, let's get into that. So let's go ahead and do the year-end review. So we'll do it by company. I ran this list through some other individuals in the hopes of making sure that I've got everything. Apologies if I don't. Feel free to write in to EclecticGamersPodcast.gmail.com how I failed you and your obscure branded thing that I didn't mention, because I'm sure you will if I missed any. But I tried not to. So we'll start with Stern, and we'll start with Rush, because that was the first one that they did. They only had two releases this year of note. So, as I said, I sort of think Rush is going to be the de facto winner. Not for every award. Like, I don't think it's winning art, for example. But I do think it's going to be the de facto game of the year winner for probably everyone. Broadly speaking, the rule set is very, very popular. I understand the rule set better now than I used to. I still don't love the layout of Rush. That's my biggest problem with it. I don't hate it. It's just kind of like, eh, for me. I feel like it's a game where you're in the scoop an awful lot, and that's probably what fundamentally kind of irks me about it. Right. But overall, it's a solid game. Very well reviewed. Tournament people love it. They made a lot of them. Canada is going to vote in droves for this, in part because they're all Rush stans up there, and they were all nationally obligated to buy this game. So I think Rush is a very successful game for Stern. It was a very successful game for Stern. I mean, the only other game that I can think of that they put out this year was James Bond, which, oh my god, as the meme would say. It is. Yeah. What are your thoughts on Bond? Bond. I haven't played it yet, even though we do have it on location. So let me qualify that. I haven't played it either. I will say Bond is Stern's worst launch in a decade. I can't think of another one at a very minimum since 2015 I can't think of a worse launch and worse overall feedback I can't even think of a certain game where I've heard more complaints about the game that I have on Bond since at least 15 yes I know I think the nutshell summary about Bond is exactly what you've indicated. Terrible launch. If I was to use two words to summarize Bond, it's terrible launch. And unfortunately for Stern, I think the sales in the end on this game will never get to what they had hoped. I actually feel pretty bad for the designer of the game, George Gomez, because he is a huge Bond. I just saw an interview that Joel Engelberth did on the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel, actually, with George. And you can tell, and I've heard it in other interviews, like when George was on Super Awesome Pinball, He loves James Bond. He's all in on that theme, and it's so unfortunate that this game, it ain't ever getting to be what Rush is. It will never get there. And it might, with code updates and everything else, it might slip into being one of those, like, acceptable, like, oh, this wasn't a trash game, but nobody cares. Exactly. That's what it's going to be. Exactly. It's going to be a nobody cares game. It's the reason why when you go on Pennside and you look up The Walking Dead, it's still not all that highly rated of a game. Because when it came out, the code sucked. Yeah. And the game was just not seen as good. And in this case, it's not even like – it's that plus. It's just like everything went wrong. Obviously, the Queen's Death stuff complicated the launch. George has spoken about that. That was kind of out of their hands. that was the licensor had certain, you know, given what the property is to the UK and all of that. But when they finally revealed it for it to be so unbaked in terms of rules. And again, as we talked about on last week's or last episode's rumor corner, the rumor is that's not Stern's programmers being too slow. It's the licensor on approving all of these assets. They are just taking forever. But the bottom line is you launched when it wasn't ready. And so everyone sees an unfinished product. When it started to arrive on location and people are saying that the Dr. No mode isn't in the Dr. No version, it's laughable. The fact that Stern canceled a cornerstone this year, they took all of that energy, all of that time, all of that out of the year. And then when they dropped their next cornerstone, it was this turn. it's just the rumor at the time I didn't think Bond was going to be what the other one was this year I thought it was going to be Venom and everything that's happened since then makes me think it should have been Venom it feels like they did James Bond because October was going to be the 60th anniversary of James Bond but the game wasn't ready and even if Stern's End was ready since it didn't already have all the licensure approvals in place they jumped their own gun and it's unfortunate because a lot of people have noted like it's got an interesting layout Gomez did a very different layout than a lot of people kind of stereotyping that like he hasn't done a three flipper layout since his first game he's only done two two flipper ever since Corvette but this was a three flipper but I mean it's just it's like a series of weird events with the approvals and stuff are the biggest hurdle you know I don't think it helped matters where people notice like the dual-synced pop bumper on the premium LE. He actually addressed that with Joel. I felt he did come across a little defensive. I get it in the sense that, like, the argument was, why would we stick in, you know, an expensive bill-of-material node board for one more pop bumper? I feel I designed the pop bumper so that they actually work really well together while both dual-firing. But on the flip side, when you've raised the premium price $700 from your prior release, it's really, like, it gets a little hard to say, well, maybe you should have dropped the money. Yeah. Because it feels like you keep raising prices significantly. But they wouldn't have raised the prices because of it. Sure, sure. They would have just made the increase more. Again, people – pen heads aren't always logical. Oh, that's the truth. Arguing that, well, it was more important to do other things with the bill of materials, I think is a very sound argument. But when prices, be it inflation or anything else, are going up so significantly over the last few years, people are starting to get a little sensitive when they feel like you're cheaping out under the hood because you're just wanting to increase the profit margin for your new investors or whatever. Right. So all I'm saying is every little piece is undermining the ability for the success of this game. You and I are in a discussion, several messenger groups with people. One of them is involved with a distributor, and they've noted their sales fell off a cliff on Bond. Yeah. There was the initial hype, and those orders will be filled, but it's not like that they're turning those out anymore. Instead, people are going back to the back catalog and buying things like Rush. Because Rush is seen as a complete game. Right, which just makes complete sense. So that's it for Stern. So let's move to Jersey Jack Pinball. You noted you felt it was the most likely contender, I guess what you're thinking of as second place in the game of the year, right? With Toy Story 4. so what's your take on the review of like Toy Story 4 what's your thought of because clearly you don't think it's winning against Rush I don't think it is unless I mean it can win due to the fanboy contingent but even with me not liking Rush Rush is just so much better of a game than Toy Story but that said I heard a lot of people whose kids really like Toy Story and say it's a lot of fun but the problem is is the kids aren't the ones buying the games and keeping the games. Right. It is, I mean, we've played it. I've played it pretty extensively at this point. I don't hate it. I don't hate how it shoots, but it's not, I never sit down on it and feel like I'm having fun. Yeah, I could see that. It's not the game that I want to pump more quarters into. I mean, because I sit there and play it, and two games down is Jurassic Park. Actually, to be fair, two games down is Taxi. Camera, Taxi. Three games down is Jurassic Park, both of which I would much rather dump quarters into than Toy Story 4. Yeah, I mean, I agree in part. But in terms of geometry, I think I actually enjoy shooting Toy Story 4 a little bit better than I enjoy shooting Rush. Maybe because it's an easier shooter. So I don't feel like such a bad player with it. However, the straightforwardness of being able to get through the game, because it's easy, right? It's like baby's first wizard mode. So given their decision to do that, I think they ended up under – I think that's great for location. But we know Jersey Jack doesn't make its bread on location sales. They make it on home sales, and it's hard. There are a lot of people who own a game until they win it, and then they immediately let it go. That whole audience is alienated on wanting to buy a Toy Story 4, I feel, because, I mean, I still remember when, granted, he had had other games on it before, but when Zach took a, he loans games to Joel Engelblur to stream for Flip N Out Pinball. He took the game down, Toy Story 4, set it up. First game they played, Zack got to the wizard mode. On stream. That's wrong. You know what? I bet you he didn't make any sales off of that stream. In fact, it wouldn't shock me if he lost a few. Yeah, no, that would definitely be. Because people will see that and they'll be like, why would I buy this thing new when it's that easy? Right. But I think fundamentally the problem with Toy Story isn't the depth of code or the rule structure or the shots. That's going to appeal, as I've argued, it's going to appeal to certain people in a certain way and other people it won't appeal to, to want to buy it or whatnot. I have my theories and I've expressed them. I think what's wrong with Toy Story 4 is two things. One, the wrong version of the license. Obviously. We talked about Toy Story 4, absolute worst pick you could possibly do. Disney may have forced them to do it, but they could have still walked away. And I could see J.J.P.'s argument being, well, that's silly. We shouldn't give this up. And I'm like, maybe you should have. And part of that was they took so long coming out with – they were originally planning to do Toy Story. This rumor that they had the Toy Story license predates Toy Story 4. Disney wanting Toy Story 4 is because they took so long to put it out. Right, which is just an ongoing J.J.P. problem. Yeah, exactly. So ultimately, we can try and blame Disney. This is not Disney's fault. This is J.J.P.'s fault, in my opinion. So that's problem one. And then problem two, $15,000. Oh, excuse me. That's the high dollar model, $12,000. Oh, that's so much better. Exactly. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And so I think wrong license and priced way too high for the wrong license. Had this been Toy Story 1, you would have been able to squeeze more people at the 12s. At Toy Story 4, absolutely not. A game as easy as Toy Story 4 is. Yes. So $12,000 for a game that some people aren't even going to want to keep a month, and then they need to try and sell it, and then, of course, the market speaks as the market always does. And while this isn't like Halloween levels of price fall-off percentage-wise, is, again, I talk to multiple people who are involved with distributorships. These games, like, they're stuck on inventory. Like, they've got CE people who didn't want it anymore, sorts of stuff. I mean, it's a problem. That's bad. It's a problem. And with the rules that all these pinball, and this is not just the JJP problem, but with these rules that these pinball manufacturers like to play with their distributors where they say things like you're not allowed to sell below the MSRP and stuff or certain set prices, it's like, who wants to take your product if they're going to be stuck with it because no one's buying it at $12? Right. Sorry, that ship sailed. That ship sailed a while ago. So I'm very curious, based off of us reviewing 2022 here and what JJP did, whether or not they are going to – I don't think they changed the price on Toy Story 4. I don't think they could bring themselves to do it. The question is, do they go down on price for the next release? It's happened before. American Pinball did it with Hot Wheels. I don't think J.J.P. will do it. I think they should do it. The rumor is the next game is Godfather, and I just don't see that license moving units. I don't understand it. I mean, I just do not, for the life of me, understand Godfather as a theme. I mean, there are so many. If you want that kind of gangster-style movie or whatever, there's several to pick from that would actually move games. Godfather is not it. And don't get me wrong. I love Godfather. But that is not a theme for a pinball machine. I think we'll be giving plenty of commentary about that in 2023 when it drops. Yeah. So let's move on to Chicago Gaming Company. so they did not have a new reveal this year the only real thing they of note that i put down at least is they finally very very recently after extensive sanding lots of sanding all of the reportedly allegedly uh finally are shipping cactus canyon le a game that was revealed in October of 2021. And again, rumors are that their next game, Pulp Fiction, is ready, has been ready, but so presumptively it's that they haven't been able to get these LEs out that they've held off on doing the reveal. Why would they do that though? I mean, let's say we're worried that it would hurt the sales because people would go, well, you haven't made anybody right for your last game, why would we buy anything from you now? Maybe. Maybe. You know, I don't know. Assuming that it wasn't a labor issue and it was like a parts issue to finish the toppers out, which is always what they've sort of presented. Right. Yeah, I do think it's a little weird that they didn't go ahead and press on unless the topper happens to use some component that they also need for the new game. Which is possible. But also, in fairness, they may not like this fairness, but in fairness, CGC has always been slow. When it comes to pinball, like remember Monster Bash remake was like the, let's use the stupid stereotypical statement we always say with pinball, worst kept secret in pinball. But everyone knew Monster Bash remake was coming, and it just took forever and a day because of whatever approvals or changes they were doing. We don't know. They're kind of tight-lipped, which isn't unusual in pinball, but they are a slow company, and I think that it's unfortunate. But financially, I mean, they also are very diversified, so they don't just do pinball. So in that regard, they probably have been in a position where just focusing on Cactus was okay. Yeah. I mean, it did sell very well. A lot of people at the time when it was revealed in 2021 felt that all of the models were very well priced. So it was like there were some claims that the LEs were too cheap and things like that. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I think it may have broken in their favor really well because that was still kind of what we consider pandemic buying. And 2022 is a year where we are more people are traveling again so I don count it as obviously COVID is going to be with us for a very long time if not forever But we not in pandemic buying anymore People are out actually by and large doing what they used to do Right. Taking vacations is what I really mean. So, pinball, purchase. People aren't just buying a bunch of toys for their home anymore. People that used to spend that stuff on trips are doing that again. Because we've moved back into a point where you can do that. So, once again, experience is Trump thing. It depends on the individual. But, yes, for a lot of people, that is the case. So speaking of cases, Scooby-Doo likes to solve a lot of cases. So let's move into Spooky Pinball. Obviously, they mostly spent this year building Halloween and Ultraman. They did have the TNA 2.0 reveal, which that's already a proven game. They did not sell out. You can still go and try and order one. Scooby-Doo, same sort of thing. Last I checked earlier this week, I could have put this in the news section, but I'll mention it here. They have finally, through their site, opened it up so you do not need to be a Fang Club member to order a Scooby-Doo. Because it didn't sell out. Right. Now, this is also their largest run ever. 1,969 units is roughly 200 more units than Halloween and Ultraman combined available. And we had that discussion recently that we think that they've opened up their bill numbers too high. At least if the goal is for sellout immediately. Correct. Which, you know, it's up to you whether you think that's important or not. And, of course, up to them. But, obviously, I think there's still been a lot of license excitement for Scooby-Doo. I think it was. I mean, yeah. In fact, of all the licenses in this list that we're talking about, I think it's the best one. I agree. I think it's better than Rush. Yes. I think it's probably better than James Bond, even. That one I'm a little torn on because James Bond is so iconic and seems to lend itself to pinball, but so does Scooby. So, I don't know. Like, people know both. Right, but I think most people have been exposed to Scooby-Doo. I'm a little surprised, but there actually are a lot of people that have never seen a Bond movie. They've just never, like they've always avoided it. And then I think everything else is pretty much a tier below, though we could argue some of the Pinball Brothers stuff might be at that same level. We'll get to that here in the list in a little bit. But anyway, I think the issues with Scooby-Doo, which, again, we just talked about this on the last episode, so we don't really need to rehash this. I still think that the layout looks unimpressive. Better than Halloween. Halloween, I feel, was a very bad layout. However, again, someone else, I had made a joke about horseshoe shots. Someone else went in and actually counted them all. There are four. Four? Four shots. And for those that don't know, a horseshoe shot is where you shoot into one spot and then very close on the other side of the horseshoe, essentially. The ball spits right back out. Yeah, there are. I identified one in the upper play field and the one on the lower play field left one on the lower play field right the upper play field actually has two wow so that is a lot of horseshoe I mean that's like more horseshoes that come in a bowl of lucky charms that's bad that's rough but it looks like it's going to be a fairly easy player because of those shots I mean I'm assuming they put those in for speed reasons but they're also very predictable so anyway we'll see But that's just my opinion on the amateurish look of the design itself. I think the bigger issue, though, that people regarding Spooky have is the QC, quality control. Yeah, and until they get a full handle on that, there's always going to be concerns. And they've done nothing to allay the concerns. And they've shown no real improvements. Right. I mean, I had read reports that the TNA 2.0s are inferior build quality to the 1.0s, which is shocking, really, when you consider it's been years since they did the TNA 1.0 builds. and I heard an interview, it was on the Lusica Pinball podcast with Bug, with Spooky, who is one of the designers of the layout and the son of Charlie Emery who founded Spooky Pinball. And there was a part in the interview that I thought was sort of interesting where he got asked about, they asked him about the QC stuff. And one of the things he, this is a paraphrase obviously, but that Bug said was, Well, we're always learning from what we've experienced, what didn't work so well on prior games. And I think the phrase that stuck with me was, there are a hundred things we learned from Halloween that we're able to take advantage of and do different or make improvements or whatnot on Scooby. And it's clearly hyperbole. I'm not going to say because the literal side of me if I were doing the interview would have said oh okay 100 huh name 20 name 20 things you learned he named one and here's the thing again it's an interview people like to throw out numbers I'm not trying to throw them under the bus or anything what I'm saying though is it's real easy to talk about learning stuff I think what you and I both realize because we've played a lot of different spooky games is they are of the major manufacturers they are the worst at quality control and they've been the worst for years like when are you gonna when are you actually gonna finally like american pinball came on the scene and their build quality is better why they were brand new at it they've been at it less than you and they've been better from the get-go i don't get it like get it together figure it out And that's not talking about the design. It's not talking about the rules. It's not talking about anything other than your game shouldn't fall apart. Correct. They say it's going to be better, and it may be this time, but they've said it every time. And while they may have made incremental improvements, it definitely stands in Zac Stark contrast to the superior build quality of all of their major competitors. Right. And that's always going to be a sticking point. Yeah. until they can finally prove that. And the thing is, stuff like TNA 2.0 being worse doesn't give anyone any confidence. And people are, again, we're not in the pandemic buying period. People are not just buying everything anymore. Right. They're being choosy. And especially when you're bringing up run counts around 2,000 units, where people are easily going to find the games used, even if they're good. Right. It's just different now. So I remain hopeful because I think Spooky actually does get, and I think some people maybe think we're overly harsh on Spooky. I don't think we're any harder than we are on anyone else, but obviously we weren't fans of what they did with Halloween. Not at all. I owned a Spooky build. I have to say a Spooky build because they didn't design TNA, but TNA 1.0, I still own it technically. The thing is I think they have great art. I think they get great licenses. I think they have a lot of passion for pinball, but they could be a lot better, and they're actually pretty big in the hobby. So, I mean, there might be other companies that have inferior build quality. You might be able to argue like Pinball Brothers is doing worse than you definitely could have argued Highway was worse than them, in my opinion. You might be able to argue Alien from Pinball Brothers is a worse build than Spooky. But of the biggies, you know, CGC, JJP, Stern, AP, they're the fifth. Yeah. On quality, on build quality. Multimorphic. So, and I like this hard, I'm just thinking, it gets hard for me because there's so many, obviously they can, because so many games can come out because of the third-party stuff. Right. So, in terms of the third-party stuff, way back in January, I think it was revealed in December, but I think the game was available publicly in January, was Flipper Foxtrot Rhythm Explosion. I've completely forgotten about this. It was back at the beginning of the year, and I don't think we got a chance to play it. I haven't played it. because, again, when it's third-party, like when we go to TPF, generally, I don't want to say always, but generally I don't think the P3 multimorphic booth has the third-party stuff. At least I don't remember seeing it. And I don't know anybody with a P3. Right. So, anyway, that was software for the Can Lagoon module. Then Drained just came out. They just, Nicholas Baldridge, for amusement only, he's, like, incorporated to do the third-party. because he's building a module for that. We just recently talked about that. That obviously is just now going out beyond his testers. So that's not gotten a wide exposure to that. So we can't really say anything about player experiences because the only experiences we know are the people that did all the beta testing. Right. So the main one, of course, is the first party one with its own module, and that's Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity. You played it. Yeah. What were your thoughts? I mean, I enjoyed it. I thought it was fun. I'm a big Weird Al fan, so that helps. That means it's directly targeted at my interests. But as I said at the time, I'd never own one. What is it about it? I don't want to get involved in the P3 ecosystem. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm not interested in the P3 ecosystem myself. as a pinball collector. It's just not something that resonates with me. I did enjoy the game. I only got to play it a couple of times. I still don't have enough time on it and heist to say how I would rank the two. I'd still probably tell you I liked heist more. That might not be fair, though. I might need more time. It isn't fair. I'll say it isn't fair. I would need more time to know that. Allow me to flip-flop on that. It may not be true. But I thought they theme integrated really, really well. It definitely did. There was a lot of stuff about the rollout of Weird Al that I had a lot of problems with. Very much. In fact, you might have had even more problems because you did a couple of, like, Instagram videos on things that were just, like, the kind of amateur hour mistakes sort of stuff. Right. I think was a fair way to describe it. My biggest issue, and, again, it doesn't affect me because I'm not trying to buy it, but as an observer is they're almost a victim of their own success, right? It's, as we noted in the news thing, per their own statements, it's still a year to get a P3. And they're 10 to 12 weeks behind on the original estimates on shipping the pending P3 order. So they're still within the range of their, you know, they have that nuclear option where people can get out of their deposit. They fall, I think, six months beyond the original estimate. So they're still safely within that range. It's sort of a thing where, you know, not to go back to Spooky, but one of the issues I've had with Spooky's orders, I know they generally beat their 18-month estimate, but I don't believe in placing orders and waiting a year. Right. I mean, that's just one of those things that, I mean, if you're looking at it with a year wait, people who ordered when this game was announced were not even around to that group yet. Right, right. Yeah, we knew people that had ordered back in Expo of 2021 that had only gotten their games just before Expo of 2022. And, you know, I mean, to me, it's like there are two types of people with a Pico. There's some people that go, it's like all in. I'm all in. I have to add the whip. I think it's important. All right. And, you know, just sort of absorb everything. They love everything about it. And there are others that seem to order it because they're into Weird Al. or like how it played, or just like the theme. But again, now that we're not in that pandemic buying period, that's competing with a lot of other stuff. And to a lot of the people that were only interested in Weird Al, this is a very expensive system for that one game. It's around $13. A lot of money. Give or take. So if that's the only game you care about, those individuals are still thinking possibly about trading that system out. They don't want to use it as a system. They're using it as a single pinball machine. Right. So long term, I don't know. It's still, I think, been very, very successful. If Multimorphic can continue to do games like this, I think they're going to find a lot of success. But they've got to get the build speed up. Sitting here with a backlog of a year doesn't do them any favors because, as we know, pinheads have short-term memory issues and they are impatient. Oh, shaming. Yeah, exactly. Again, I'm not being judgmental. I'm the same way. I would not wait a year for a game. If anything, they have been saved by the fact that every other pinball announcement this year since Weird Al has been crap. If there had been a high-quality, like, big release since Weird Al, they'd be in a lot more trouble than they have been so far. I think you're right. I think you're right. They had a winner of a theme, winner of a layout, winner of rules. I think this was a very good reveal for them. They also were pretty early in the year, which helps as well. And some of the other manufacturers, not only are their games more flawed in some capacity versus what Weird Al is, I think we still have seen a number of production issues with a lot of – I mean, obviously Stern has a very large backlog, but they haven't struggled to get – Like, you can now order new Stearns. You can't order new Godzilla Premium and get them immediately. But a lot of the other stuff you can get readily easily. Not every company has been that same way. Like, you can get a Toy Story 4 pretty easily from JJP. But as we've noted, Cactus Canyon, trickle, trickle, trickle. Legends of Valhalla seems to have been a slow build out of American. I mean, it's just there is still a lot of delay. But the thing is, it seems like most of those companies are now finally closing those gaps. Right, which is going to hurt Multimorphic. It could. It could. I mean, if there had been a Godzilla-level release or another... GNR, maybe. Yeah, or a GNR release or something like that, later in this year, I could definitely have seen them losing a large amount of their pre-orders. Yeah, the lock-in rules probably help a little bit with that. But people are starting to push back on the – again, push back is just more like they articulate their annoyance. Right. Because we see that a lot with Spooky. Spooky does that lock-in pre-order model where you give them interest-free loans for a really long period of time. Yeah, no, and I would never do that. I would never make that purchase. No, and that's another thing. You know, I've talked about that ad nauseum, I feel, with Spooky, and I apply that to all companies. I don't do pre-orders. but so home pin home pin people might have forgotten about that but this is Spinal Tap pinball was revealed at an Australian show in the late summer early fall the pinball hall of fame in Vegas has confirmed they do have this is Spinal Tap so it's I mean it was I don't remember when it was revealed but it was released in 2022 we haven't played it we haven't been anywhere with one of them. We haven't gone to Vegas. No, we haven't. And I, you know, I don't gosh, I feel like, am I being too mean? I don't want to be too I don't want to seem mean. I don't understand why this company makes pinball machines. I don't know. I mean, it's like it's weirdly targeted and it's almost like, is it a tax write-off machine you know i the thing is it's i'm not judging i'm not talking about the gameplay i'm not talking about the rules i'm not talking about the quality i'm not talking about the license it seems that the owner of home pin does not like pinball that's what i mean like no no like he's almost like he can't be bothered to sell his own product it's like every interview or summary of an interview that I have seen with him regarding Spinal Tap has been either when someone complains about something, this game isn't for you, or that is the job of the distributors to promote the game. He won't promote his own game, and anytime you question anything about it, it's because the game wasn't for you. So as near as me piecing it all together, this game is for no one, and he doesn't want to sell it. So I don't know why he made it. That's what it feels like to me. Yeah, it's weird. When we start factoring in what the game is, I get extra concerned. Like, it's got a DMD and an LCD. And you're like, why would they? The little girl why not both thing, that doesn't work here. Like, why would you why not? It's not like a cool, kitschy thing like TNA had with the, what was it, the alphanumeric or the numeric display and then the LCD. It's not that. It's exactly what I think any layperson would have come up with if you had said, if they knew a little bit about pinball and you'd explained what the system was doing, they would have gone, oh, I guess they're just putting in the LCD because HomePin realized, oh, well, we have to show clips from the movie. So the LCD exists just to show clips from the movie, and the DMD does all the real work. So you've upped your bill of – I mean, we're talking about the pop bumper thing with Gomez and Bill of Materials, but here it's just like you threw in a whole – like, you could have used the LCD to do everything. You threw in a whole DMD and added a bill of material. And this game is not cheap. Thunderbirds, regardless of its quality, was very price competitive. Like, it was cheaper than a Stern Pro. Right. At least pre-shipping. This is not. This, I just, I do not, I do not get it. Well, and the thing is, is this Final Tap is such a niche license. And you've touched on that a few times during the year. Yeah, it's not the best license to have picked. But, I mean, maybe that's for the best because HomePin's production capabilities might not be particularly robust. Like, they might not be able to turn out a lot of games per week. So keeping the count low could be – I mean, Spooky started small, and it wasn't a strategy for them. I just – I think – I want to say that I think this is HomePin's last pinball machine. I think he wants to make parts. I don't see why he continues to do games that are – they just are not good. They're just not – like, they're not received well broadly by most people. There are a lot of people who are all in on Thunderbirds. They can't get behind this game at this price point that he launched at. I didn't write down the price list, so I'm not going to quote him again. They're in some past episode of People Care. I just don't get it. I don't know. Haggis, let's move on. Oh, yeah. So, Haggis, Fathom Revisited. I almost forgot about that. Oh, yeah, because it's really more of a 2021 release. Right. But there was delay after delay after delay. They did finally start getting them sent out. I'd say the reaction is mixed to Fathom Revisited. Generally, I can't think of anyone who has seen it in person who did not say the game is gorgeous, like the changes aesthetically that were made are excellent. However, at least on the early ones that got over to the U.S., I have heard about a litany of QC complaints. Like QC complaints that may be in excess of spooky. But Haggis is a lot smaller. Right. So I don't know. I think, I don't think that this remake, let me, so in terms of review, Fathom was an excellent game to remake. I think the plan, which Haggis has announced, was they have a deal with Planetary to do four more remakes, all of that sort of samey era. Here's my – I'm going to go ahead and do a prediction. Rather than year-end, I'm going to do my forecasting. My forecasting is they get the Fathom sent out. Centaur will be the next one they do, and that's the last of these remakes. I don't think the rest of them have the demand to warrant the prices that they're going to want to try and command. I don't know that Fathom and Centaur have the demand to warrant the prices that... And it's easy because there's a little bit of... It's not really slight of hand because it's not like Haggis did this per se, but Fathom 2.0, the LE version that comes with the additional software and stuff, it wouldn't have sold out if distributors hadn't stepped in at the very end and bought up the rest of them. So it wasn't positioned to actually sell out. And one of the problems that Haggis unfortunately has is so much of the pinball market is in the United States, and shipping from Australia to the United States is extremely expensive. They are not in the proper place to build pinball, unless they only wanted to target the Australian market, which they don't want to do. So that's kind of where I think their bigger issue is, is that they've put themselves behind the eight ball in a lot of ways that mean, I think they're going to very much struggle to be price competitive. And again, we're not in the pandemic anymore. or I just don't know how well you do on selling really expensive remakes with offering different code sets, but only for the elderly. They may make some changes. Maybe they'll say, all right, moving forward, we've got to offer the code set even for the classic edition and just have aesthetics for the higher end one. We can't just make a special code set for 200 people. It's not cost effective or 500 or whatever the limit was. Again, I don't know. I don't really care. It was limited. It's all that matters. You can tell me you ain't tired. because there are so many of these companies. Oh, my God. See, that's the thing. It feels like nothing came out this year. I don't even remember some of these companies. I don't even remember talking about some of these. All right, so Pinball Brothers, Alien. They're turning these out. The LV version, which is the limited version, that was the big kind of reveal this year on the Alien front. Again, I've been hearing repeatedly there are still a number of QC issues with Alien. It doesn't sound like it's as bad as Highway. Like, they engineered themselves around a lot of the bad stuff Highway did, but there are still a number of build quality issues with what's getting put together. So that's frustrated a lot of people. The big announcement with them, of course, was the reveal of Queen. Production is now starting on that game, but they did take it to a show, but beyond that, it's not really had public exposure. And the general reaction is, meh, layout, bleh, art, and I don't know if anyone has an opinion on the rules yet. Yeah, I've not really heard anything about it. So that's what they've been doing. Pedretti, Pedretti Gaming. They did the Funhaus 2.0 Rudy's Nightmare. They actually just revealed their topper, limited edition, non-moving sculpted light effect topper. It looks fairly cool because it's three-dimensional, but it's not like flat plastic. Yeah, it's Funhaus. It's a remake kit. I honestly don't care much about remake kits. I played Bride 2.0. It was okay, but I don't care. That wasn't out of Pedretti, but that was Dutch Pinball. But the only thing I note this is I wanted to mention it because I do think it's a bold move to put mayo on a hot dog, and they even did it on the topper. So that they've embraced the nightmare fuel that putting mayo on a hot dog is deserves a call-out on this show. It's a hot dog and a sandwich. I guess so. Mayo on a sandwich. I guess so. All right. How about Quetzal Pinball, Tony? You know, you often have Quetzal with me. Oh, I mean, my absolute, this is the one I was specifically talking about, but I don't even remember them at all. Nope, nope. And there's a reason for that. So back early in the year, we're talking January, was when there was information that came out about Super Hoop, their basketball-themed game. This is a European company. There was a factory fire that happened, and I don't know if they've gotten any games out since the factory burned. It doesn't make it hard. It does. Now, games did go out before the factory burned, and what few reviews I've been able to see, which I think I found all of two of, is that it was terrible. Like, one person on Pinside posted in a thread, and they shipped it like they didn't wrap the legs, so the legs scratched the whole cabinet sides up. Oh, no. And it was just like a sloppy job. A sloppy job. Oh, man. And there were other issues with the game. So anyway, it was just one of those flash in the pan things. I don't know what's happening anymore with it. And then the last of the companies to review, which normally I would have placed a lot higher because they are one of what I consider the five major manufacturers, is American Pinball, who has done nothing. Nothing. They've been posting social media images lately of Oktoberfest and Legends of Valhalla, which I didn't even know anyone still won at Oktoberfest. In fact, I had one of my distributor contacts mention when bringing up the topic of these Oktoberfest being on the line that they had forgotten that they had orders back from the pandemic when people were trying to get anything they could, and they just happened to forget that they had pending orders for Oktoberfest. So some of them must be for that distro, but my impression I got was they don't have buyers for them anymore, so they'll just be sitting in inventory as fodder for people that don't want to wait for anything. I get this mental image of rolling them to the back. It's like that big old museum in Indiana Jones where they're just rolling it to the back and putting it in stores. Never be seen again. It's sad. I mean, obviously, we had talked about it on Rumor Corner, and I've seen it discussed in a variety of places now, especially because there's been some partial art reveals and stuff of Galactic Tank Force. Still not out. in fact since David Fix has come in to fix funny joke, I know what the funnies are to turn American Pinball around and make them more successful the only game they've revealed is Legends of Valhalla which kind of like TNA with Spooky wasn't developed by American Pinball that is a third party game that they just are building so I really I actually looked at the American Pinball thread this week and there was a number of people that we're talking about how optimistic they feel about American Pinball. I do not feel optimistic. I think American Pinball is going to go out of business. They need to do something. They need a reveal, and they need something that actually fails. They are so staff-heavy. I cannot understand how they can survive trickling out Legends of Valhalla games and games that were built three years ago. I do not get it. They're not a major manufacturer of the output to warrant the size of the staff that they have. In fact, I think Spooky turns out more games a year than American. I really do. And I don't get it. Whatever's going on there, it needs to happen faster. My assumption is Ametron is carrying this subsidiary, and they're going to lose patience. And if I were them, I would have lost patience this year. I'd been like, you know what, I'm giving – not to be mean, too, because the more pinball companies, the better from a hobbyist perspective. But, like, from a business perspective, I would be like, why am I floating this? I don't understand. I'm ready to ride off this. Why are we not training out? And it doesn't help when you have staff go out on interviews talking about how they're going to put out three games a year. You know, like Stern, the only one that does that. Like, you're able to do that. And then you can't even do one. I'll never understand people Oh yeah, we're going to do three games this year Do two Prove that you can do Do one well Put out one game Every single year well And then bring up a second We're already over a year past Legends of Valhalla's reveal Which was, we got to play it At Expo 2021 Here we are And that's still just the deluxe Or what used to be called the deluxe The one that was limited to 500. And they're still building those. That's insane. It's sad. And there are a lot of people I really like and respect who work for American Pinball. I have, you know, from an outside, and again, this is all just our speculation. But as an outsider looking in, I do not agree with a lot of those posters and that pin side thread. I am deeply concerned about the survivability of American Pinball. The numbers are not working for me. If they don't put out another game, like if they do not announce and drop a game next year, I don't see how they can unless it is purely, purely a tax write-off. And I am very worried, even if it is a great game, Galactic Tank Force not having a license to get initial interest in it is going to really come down to being exposed to the game, I think, to sell it. Right. I don't think just saying Dennis Nordman designed it is going to – that will move some units, but I just – people are going to want to try it when it's not got any sort of touchstone to their childhood to make them want it. You know, it's not like a Godzilla or a Weird Al or even a Toy Story 4. There's no touchstone with it. And I think that can work as long as you get a lot of exposure to the game, but we've seen so many original themes. I mean, again, TNA is one of the most successful ones. It went to a whole bunch of shows, and they still initially only sold 550 of them. Right. I mean, original themes just don't do it. Everyone says they want them, but they don't sell. They don't buy them. They just do not sell. So I don't know. I don't want to speculate on what sort of game, like in terms of quality or enjoyment or rules, obviously, with Galactic Tango. I just don't know. But I see nothing out of American that makes me optimistic. I would be deeply worried. I would be deeply worried if I was like an investor. I'm not. So I'm merely as an observer saying the tea leaves do not look – I don't see anything optimistic when I look at everything that we've seen publicly about them. I'm like, this doesn't work for me. I just – I can't make the math work. Yeah. So, all right. We're almost done with pinball. This is going to be a long episode, folks. So we did have a request from Andrew D., one of our Patreon members, saying he wanted to know if we could talk a little about this topic. And here's what the message said. I am also surprised nobody has discussed professional flippers. I've heard stories of guys with storage lockers with 30 new in-box pins. I have to think these guys are giving kickbacks to distributors to get inventory. I know I used to be able to get LEs without much fuss, but that changed two to three years ago. What's it going to take to put these guys out of business? They provide no value or negative value and just shut people out from the hobby. So thank you, Andrew, for the question. I don't know when the last time we ever – maybe we've never really addressed flipper. I mean, I think it's probably come up. We talk about flippers, but not just like people who pick up their spots in line with the intention of just going, oh, I want the next stern spot in line. and then when they don't like the theme, they sell their spot, or I want the next JJP spot in line. But, like, these people who just buy games, keep games, keep them boxed up, keep them set off to the side, hidden, all that, I mean, they're – I'm trying to think of a nice way. There is no nice way to see it. They do nothing. You're exactly right. They do nothing for the hobby. but you're never going to be able to make them go away because they pay for their machines and then they're their machines. They can do whatever they want with their machines. I've never been a fan of this whole pinball speculation, pinball as an investment, pinball as your retirement. that's not my I disagree with going out of that way but it a hobby and people can go at hobbies however they want But no these people that buy just slots and positions and machines and just to resell them I agree completely. They are not good for the hobby. I just can't see a way to stop them because, I mean, if that's what somebody wants to do with the machine that they paid for and they can do whatever they want, the distributors can't stop. This is one of those things where it's not yet to the point like what we see with Ticketmaster and all the ticket resellers anymore that have gotten so bad. This is more akin to the scalpers who buy the tickets when they can get them fast and cheap and then resell higher, which are also useless. But I'm not a fan, but I don't know how to stop them because I don't know that they're doing anything illegal. They're just being a**holes. No. No, they're not. Nothing on legality I can think of. I think the main thing, and I agree with what Tony said in summary. Let me get the meat of the topic out first. And that is about that there's no real way to get rid of them. Not outright. Not completely. I do think there are a few things, steps that are happening or steps that could happen that could help a little bit. So I think the one that we're seeing, of course, it's frustrating for a lot of people, but it is. It does seem like a lot of the manufacturers have started to really raise the price on the LE models to try and take that ceiling away from. It's the theory that the scalper is able to or the flipper, the flipper is able to make money on an LE purchase because it's a scarcity of supply. And the actual amount people are willing to pay is higher than what the manufacturers are charging. So if the manufacturer charges that higher amount from the get-go, there's no gap in the ceiling. Flipper can't make any money because it's like, oh, yeah, I buy $12,000 games and I sell them for $15,000. Well, if Toy Story 4 is now $15,000, that doesn't make the new Flipper ceiling be $18,000. If people don't go over $15,000, they go over $15,000. That's why I think we've seen very significant LE price increases out of JJP and Stern in particular. I think that's what they are trying to do. So that could work. In theory, it should. It should take some of the wind out of that because, again, if you can't make any money on it – we see this in all sorts of hobbies. We see this in tennis shoes and in wristwatches, all sorts of things where people – anything collectible. So there's that. Another thing that might help that isn't really anyone doing anything is, again, a lot of this flipper activity – And again, because one of my other hobbies is wristwatches. We saw this big time in the watch hobby is this became a huge thing in the pandemic when people were just buying a lot of stuff. I think that buying demand, at least that pandemic rush for a bunch of people wanting everything. I think that's going away now. Pinball might actually still be in a stronger sales place than it was pre-pandemic because more people got into it. But I don't think it's going to be like, here's Bob. Bob buys every game right now because he can't leave the house. so he buys every new release. And Bob is rich and wants LEs because he's an elitist. Elitist. I didn't come up with that. That's lingo used in some other shows. So that could help as well. Now, some stuff they could consider doing that gets tricky is if the manufacturers feel like what Andrew has suggested, like there's deals going on between distros and flippers, they could try and do stuff where they spot check sales like they monitor the le sales on the secondhand market and if they know which number they sell to a distributor and there's someone saying i'm selling like here's photos i'm selling le number 347 and they're like yo uh dip and doubt pinball yeah i have to make up a name dip it out pinball always sells this guy the game and he's always selling it new and like, right. They know they can know who they, which distros have, which LE numbers. So they could start putting in provision saying your distributorship is on the line. If you start flipping to flippers, like we don't care. We don't care if you're making a backend deal or you just happen to sell to someone that just flips like that person is blacklisted. Watch companies do this. Rolex does this. They actually, in their instance, because it's such an in-store location, they actually send in secret shoppers to ADs to try and get them to sell to break rules to sell to them. And if they do, they get written up, and they'll pull distro ships. Wow. That's punishment. Because losing your Rolex distributor ship is devastating. Oh, no. I'm not consulting right now with some distros here, but a lot of distributors deal for multiple companies. if you don't have Stern for example I don't think you're making a living like Stern is so much of the market they could fix their problem pretty easily if they wanted to start doing this sort of enforcement and basically now again it has to flow both ways if Stern wants people blacklisted they have to share that with all the distributors and say this person cannot buy games anymore and that's what it would take and some companies are doing that Spooky announced that for Scooby Doo for example They noted, like, if they see anyone selling a CE, boxed CE, that they'll blacklist them. And Spooky doesn't use a lot of distros, so they might be able to. Again, that's probably not an issue with Scooby because Scooby didn't instantly sell out. But it was one of those things, like they don't, like selling the spot for more or whatever. Like they made some verbal statements, at least indicating that they do see it as a problem, which I thought was a positive. So, Andrew, again, like what Tony said, I don't think you can drive people out of business easily. There's always going to be a market to get something that's no longer available through official channels. And once people own a game, they do have the right to do with it as they will. But I do think there are some steps that companies are taking to try and take the air out of that market. And there are more things they could do to get rid of the, quote, unquote, professional ones that are doing it a lot. But it takes will to do it. And a lot of these companies, I mean, really aside from Spooky, I don't know if anyone's expressed any sort of willingness to even make verbal, even if it's paper tiger stuff, make verbal statements. Tiger. Tiger uppercut. Wow. Okay. Well, Tony, we are way deep into the episode, but we still have one more pinball thing, and that is Rumor Corner. Rumor Corner. Rumor Corner Rumor Corner Rumor Corner Rumor Corner Rumor Corner Today's creature's got the news before Napa came Is that right, Tony? Yeah Today's Rumor Corner Stern! Back to the future There's a rumor going around Yes, Tony rolled his eyes so people can see it but I have described it very accurately. So the rumor is 2025, back to the future, Stern-Capow collaboration, Elwynn on design. Okay, I actually don't have any problems with any of that, really. I mean, I don't care. 2025, that's a ways out. It makes more sense as a Stern-Capow than it does being part of the primary Stern lineup. and anything that they want to do anything with realistically at this point has to have Elwin involved, it feels like. Well, yeah, it's – so given the closeness of Joe Kamikow with people with Back to the Future, I can't imagine Back to the Future happening without Kapow. So if Back to the Future is happening, I definitely agree. It's happening at Stern, and it's happening as a Kapow. It's the only way. more people would probably be interested in getting the game if Elwynn's attached to it than just Back to the Future fans because there are a lot of the in Elwynn we trust buyers at this point who just want everything that he does I will say that aspect this rumor is true and that aspect in particular of the rumor is true because we have no idea if it is or isn't this was rumor corner not truth corner I am and I expressed this in a chat online chat during a video live stream where people were talking about stuff. I'm getting a little, just selfishly, I'm getting a little concerned that CERN, at this point, recognizes that Elwynn is their golden goose, and I'm worried that they're going to lime in him, where he doesn't work on cornerstones anymore and do pros. It's going to be expensive stuff only, boutique stuff only. I mean, we had no Elwynn game this year, unless here in the last few days of the year they finally reveal the James Bond 60th because they've confirmed he's on that, but they still haven't revealed it. Right. So that, though, is a limited run, ultra expensive model. And then back to the future, if it's Kapow, that means they're doing it the boutique style. So that's going to be premium LE, super LE most likely or like Beatles, gold, you know, all that where it's all above the usual corner. Right. Because Kapow is involved. and remember when when Lyman was programming with Stern the last game he did a cornerstone of was Walking Dead in what 2014 and after that he was stuck on all the expensive stuff you could never get into his code set at a pro price and I figured at the time the reason they had done that was because his name sold games because his rules were the arguably the most respected rules in the industry. Right. And Elwynn is, I would say, arguably the most respected designer in the industry at this point. He's not had a single flop. And again, from a business perspective, I totally understand Stern being like, you know what, we're paywalling Elwynn. He's going to be only for ultra-expensive stuff. And there are people that are going to end up springing more than they want to because they want to get their hands on an Elwynn game. But selfishly, I hate the idea. I do, too. I really do. And this wouldn't mean that's what happened. This is me speculating as part of the rumor corner in the hopes that that rumor tames you. I don't know if it did. I mean, I almost want it to happen just because I'm tired of hearing about a Back to the Future remake. That theme does nothing for me. It never has. I'm a huge Back to the Future fan, and the theme does nothing for me. People love it. But you know what else people love, Tony? They love video games. Finally. This year in review, I'm just going to touch on a couple of the biggest things. Big main thing this year has been the Microsoft Blizzard merger. Still ongoing. Still being looked at by multiple countries. The FTC is still looking at it with their suit that they looked at filing, as we spoke about last time. Microsoft has made response to the FTC lawsuit, including claims that the lawsuit is unconstitutional. That's interesting. And violates the company's Fifth Amendment right to due process. Their claim on that is because it's not being handled before a judge. It's being handled before the FTC's internal group and their internal judgment group, which could be argued because there's actually cases moving to the Supreme Court dealing specifically with that issue with the FTC. I don't know if the Supreme Court has taken them up yet, but I know it's been talked about that there is an investigation ongoing because of the FTC basically holding stuff within their own internal courts, which somehow always finds in their favor. and using it to leverage concessions and such out of companies. Okay, interesting. And because they don't have enough lawsuit, a group of gamers, a group of 10 gamers has filed suit against the merger as well, claiming that the proposed acquisition would give Microsoft an unrivaled position in the gaming industry, leaving it with the greatest number of must-have games in iconic franchises. Okay. It seems like a money grab. It's a, hey, how much trouble can we make that Microsoft will buy us out? We'll settle out of court type thing. Is the thoughts I've seen on it listed in a number of law-related messages. I've been talking about it. In addition, Phil Spencer has been talking about Sony's opposition to the merger in a variety of interviews lately. Including some of the very fun Quotes of Sony's trying to protect its dominance on the console The way they grow is by making Xbox smaller That's not a bad burn And also Sony has a very different view of the industry Than we do They don't ship their games day and date on PC They do not put their games into their subscription service When they launch their games And a variety of other arguments Basically Arguing that Sony is Against gamers where Microsoft is pro-gamer. It's an interesting flip from the last console generation where at the launch, Sony was, because the Xbox had the online only and all that, and Sony was like, here's how you share games on Sony PlayStation. They just hand one game to the other. Very effective. Yes. It burned. And now they and their precious walled garden. Yeah. I long to see it burn. We'll see how it goes. For them, there's still nothing has had dates set for judgments. Everybody's still looking at the middle of 23, having this finalized. We'll just have to see where things end up with the FTC. My guess is they'll end up with concessions. There'll be concessions made, probably concessions that Microsoft has already publicly said that they would do. they just will be. Like Call of Duty guaranteed for 10 years on PlayStation. Right, it'll just be put in. I know I didn't include the quote in there, but at one of the points they were talking about Call of Duty being this giant game that is walled, or they're being afraid of it being walled into Xbox and how much that will hurt PlayStation. And it came out, it's like, well, nobody but PlayStation is allowed to have a Final Fantasy game and that hurts everybody else. Mm-hmm. Which is true. Final Fantasy XVI is going to be exclusive to PlayStation. So the Final Fantasy VII remakes are exclusive to PlayStation. Granted, XIV's not, and that's where most of Final Fantasy's money is anymore. Everything else big that happened this year On the legal front of stuff Is still just kind of sitting where it is All of the more Game quality control testers Have successfully unionized And others have failed The Activision Blizzard Lawsuit for their Sexual harassment is ongoing With no real resolution at this time Other than we've spoken about it in the past where they've filed countersuits against the state of California about stuff. But with the way things move in the courts, we probably won't know more about that stuff until later next year as well. Okay. Well, I didn't know how you wanted to handle video game year-end reviews, so what I did is I put out a call to our Patreon members. There are rewards for being Patreon members. Not just long 5K explanations and photos, but also involvement in helping craft the show. So I asked them to share things that they wanted to have covered on the show. So we have a mix of things. Actually, I'll go ahead and open with an email that we received at collectedgamerspodcast.gmail.com. This is from Brett. So Brett wrote in. He actually noted a couple things. One was he had just noted that he had listened, I think it was to our last episode. It was one of our recent episodes where we were talking about Spooky. And right when he was wrapping up the episode, he went onto a location and there was a broken down Spooky pin. And I just heard about the QC stuff, and then there it is, not working. But he also noted something specifically for you. And he said in the email, Tony, Steam Deck is great. I ordered one after my brother let me try his out. I travel a lot and only play Fallout, XCOM, and a ton of old system ROMs. It's great for that. And that's one of the big things or the reasons I've been looking at or considering getting a Steam Deck because a lot of the games I play would work very well on it. like he says, Xbox, or Xbox, wow, XCOM, XCOM-like games, which are the big majority of the games I play. I've got a lot of games I play like that. Snow Tires, all that kind of stuff would work very well in that format. So that's why it's on my list of things I've considered. I've just not gone so far as to pull the trigger on one yet. Maybe, maybe in the new year. Okay. We'll see. So, in regards to your interview stuff, Patreon member Tony V asked, or I should say noted, for games. The Callisto Protocol. Haven't heard much about it and thought the game would have been a hit since Glenn Schofield was involved, who brought us Dead Space and a few Call of Duty titles. You know, I saw a lot of mixed reactions to it online, like on Reddit. Right. I never got into the Dead Space games. I've only played the first, which I did enjoy. I've never been a huge horror game type person. I guess I'm thinking about it. I mean, Alan Wake is probably the last horror game that I played and really enjoyed. But I'm not a huge horror game person. With the Callisto Protocol, I remembered hearing about it coming out when I'd read some stuff when it first came out, but I never paid attention to it because it's just not my type of game that I would typically play. I thought about putting it, like, on a wish list. And then when I saw the reviews were mixed, I was like, and I did not dive in to figure out why the reviews were mixed. Right. So I probably should have taken the jump on it anyway because I do like horror games, but I just haven't. I haven't put it down as a game that I'm interested in. But I may change that in 2024 or 2023. Maybe 2024, actually. I already got a couple of games that I need to start in 2023. I will say. Yes. What would you say? Alan Wake was a great game. I really liked Alan Wake a lot. I thought that the flashlight mechanic would piss me off, but I actually really enjoyed it. Yeah, it was great. The story was a lot of fun. I highly recommend Alan Wake if you get a chance. so another Patreon member Procco, he asked what games from this year went into your backlog, so which ones are there that you couldn't play this year but you still want to play in the future and what excites you about these games, so thank you Procco for the question. Yes, thank you I actually added a handful of older games specifically games that I had on my Playstation and started but never finished. And I just, I'm not a huge console person, but I picked them up again super cheap on Steam, and I've been considering. And I've got them, I actually have them loaded up, and they're in my two-play run because I never finished Horizon Zero Dawn, but I was enjoying the game while I was playing it, and I never finished the Jedi Fallen Order, both of which I enjoyed. So I either need to pull out my PlayStation and hook it all back up and finish those games, or I need to play them on Steam because I got them on Steam like super cheap in the sale. Yeah. I do not normally buy games and backlog them, in part because I do not buy many Steam games, and that's always where I've been the most susceptible to doing it, because it's so easy just to throw them in the library. I have so many games. Whereas, like with Xbox, I still often get a lot of games on disc, and I'll pile them up around the TV, and I'll see them staring at me if I don't at least start them. There are plenty that I end up just deciding I don't really like and not finishing anymore. But the main one would be the Vampire Survivor or what's it called? Yeah, that was gifted to me. I still haven't started it. The way it works with it, like being this one-handed almost style mass shooting sort of thing, interests me. I do like, normally I like twin-stick shooters, so single-stick shooter sounds like an interesting idea that would be up my alley. It's really cool. They just released a DLC, and I bought the DLC the day they released it, and I've already played the DLC. It's great. Okay. So that is a game that was I never considered Until it was given to me And then I'm like okay I'll play it And I've done that with several games And some of them Because sometimes you get a game It's like oh you gotta try this game I play it and it's like it's alright And then there's other games where you play it And it's like oh man this is just This is just the chef's kiss This is perfect This is such a great game But no when it comes to me My big thing, backlog-wise, is I'd really like to get into and finish those two games, especially with the Jedi Survivor coming out in March. Yes, I saw that at the Game Awards. All right. Another Patreon member, Mike H., noted, I personally feel like the game Goat Simulator 3 has not received enough attention. Seriously, this game is the third sequel. As far as pinball goes, we all know that this is Spinal Tap will clean house this year, so I don't know what else there is to discuss. Well, maybe Kickstarter pinball manufacturer since pinball is so easy. Okay, I'm done. Well, that's a lie, but I'll stop typing anyway. Keep up the great podcast, you two, and I need to hear more Mr. Hankey and Smog on that new equipment, which we dealt with already. So that's where that comment came from. So thank you for writing in, Mike. I've only played the first Goat Simulator. I got it as a Games with Gold on Xbox One, and so I got it free, basically. That's it. And I played it, like, two days, and I did almost everything in it, and it was fine, but it's not a game I could put a lot of time in. I think it's one of those meme games that becomes super popular, like the Goose Game or Summer Car. I looked it up on Steam. I was looking it up I remember hearing about this game At the original Go Simulator Apparently at some point in time On Steam I put it all on my ignore list Because it's all on ignored So I had an idea I don't know I'm guessing it was popping up Randomly in my Game list or something And I just ignored it so it just vanished from Steam For me unless I directly looked for it So that's what I can say I've never played any of it I did not know there were sequels I don't think I knew there were any but as noted I have played the first it was okay but only for I couldn't put a lot of time into it it's too repetitive in my opinion but okay another Patreon member Chris he had said I'll be the first to admit I was totally consumed by the Diablo Immortal IAP Doom ultimately it turned out to be a non-event sure some whales spent tens of thousands to get bling, but the game was 100% playable and enjoyable without spending a dime. Note, I only do PvE, so I can't comment on the PvP landscape with respect to IAP. And I will also say, he separately noted that he wanted to take a moment to once again pimp the Entropy Center, a must-play for any Portal fan. Entropy Center is on my wish list, and I know the winter sale just started. I haven't looked to see if it's tagged into it. I haven't had a chance to get to it or add it to my list. But the Diablo Immortal stuff, that was a very humorous thing when it first came out. I remember us talking about it and talking about it originally when it was first announced, don't you all have phones, is like a running joke for us and a lot of, well, as it deserves to be. But, yeah, I've not really kept up on it after the first big round about the cost and when it went on. I am, I have a mobile game of choice. I've added other mobile games, and none of them have lasted over my primary mobile gotcha game. Azur Lane is the game that I've been playing since 2020. It might have been – actually, I think it was 2019. It was late 2019 that I started playing Azur Lane. and while I have taken a break from it at one point for several months, that's the mobile game that I spend the vast majority of my time playing. I've tried literally hundreds of other mobile games, and I always end up deleting all of them, but I always keep going back to that one. That's my bread and butter game. I've not even touched the Diablo game. Kind of, I mean, I've had that conversation. I've not really touched anything Blizzard or Activision-related recently at all. Yeah, I don't know. I might try this, given Chris's comment. I actually currently play no mobile games. I have none. The last one I did was World Flipper, and it became way too repetitive and grindy, and so I uninstalled it, and I have nothing. Now, don't you play Gems of War anymore? I never played it on mobile. Oh, that's right. You played it on the Xbox. And I still have it installed. I pop into Jim's Award about once a quarter, look at the new stuff, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot how grindy this was. I love the gameplay mechanic, but it went way too deep. I miss the puzzle quest style where I just go and I can play a campaign and finish it. Oh, there are plenty of games like that. And so, yeah, no. I mean, my longest mobile game was Pokemon Go. I did for a really long time. But, of course, it became very, very samey. So I uninstalled it. And then I did do a, like, gotcha style, I guess. I did the Star Ocean Animesis game, but they took that away from the U.S. market. So I uninstalled that. And then I had World Flipper, which is, like, the pinball iteration one. But you very quickly learned that it's easiest to go ahead and, like, put the pinball part on full auto. And then it's like, well, why am I playing this game? Is this for the story? And I uninstalled it. So I have no I play no games That's one thing That's what I know I run Except for the very hardest content I run most of Azure Lave In full auto While I view Other things Well it would let me In World Flipper Once you've done the thing before And you're regrinding it You can put it on a faster speed Up to 3x So it's like It plays faster than I can play Right So I'm like Why would I not Just automate this And then You know Worry about min-maxing the characters Or I'll stay I'll keep control over the ultimates, but I'll let them do all the flipping. And then sometimes it flips like crap, and I'm like, this thing doesn't know how to play pinball. But it still plays it poorly faster than I could play it properly, so it will still finish the fight faster. Anyway, this is one of those things. It's less efficient, but it's still faster because it's three times speed. I can see that. I've tried World Flipper. It's okay. It didn't grab me. there are lots of characters it's got I mean it's like a gazillion gallons of depth and much like pinball it's like sometimes I think there's such a thing as too much depth you put in so much nuance like I mean there are whole guides on reddit because I followed the subreddit while I played it and they were like here's like the characters you need to stack together and here's the equipment you need to give those characters and here are the most priority things you need to unlock in their tier trees so that they best benefit each other and that's the fight, this one fight and then there's a whole other build and I get it, it's all designed to make you grind or buy your way to quickly upgrade the characters there were so many that I mentally couldn't wrap my brain around if there was like 8 characters like in a Final Fantasy game I could handle it but there were so many and that was what they were constantly doing it seemed like every 2 months they put out another character that's pretty normal for a gotcha game it's just too much There's too many choices. I don't want this many choices. Because I literally just today finished getting everything on the current big special banner in Azur Lane, all my builds, and drawing for them. I'd gone for this whole week since it launched without drawing any of them. And then I got one yesterday, and then I got the rest of the banner in a pull. in a single tentpole today. But I think the big thing with those kind of games is they need to be, they need to have a combination of playability, replayability, art, story, and a lot of times just a hook, something that will get you interested. Like I played Fallout Survivor for a long time because I like Fallout. out. I played Star Trek Timelines for a long time because I like Star Trek. I mean, to the point where I had Excel sheets of who I was going after and the combinations I needed and what I needed to do to blend everything together and make it all work. But those were all games that I eventually ended up leaving behind after a year or so. So the same thing with Jim's Award. I played Jim's Award for about a year or so before I just got to the point where it's like, eh. Yeah, I did Fallout Shelter twice, actually, but I never got very, I don't know. I just kind of like, oh, what am I supposed to build next? I've got, they're making too many babies now, and I don't have enough water, and I just got tired of it. Yeah. So, I don't know. I think it's just interesting to see, like, a couple of the guys at work have been playing the Final Fantasy Bravery or whatever it was that I think is, like, on its way to shut down since launch. I've talked to a couple of people who play games and they love them, but then they round down to shut down. And they're like, okay, it's over and it's what it is. So, I don't know. We'll see. Any other year-end stuff you wanted on video games? No, I don't think so. I like this going over things with the patrons and just a light touch on stuff. And this has been quite an episode. It's a very long episode. So thank you, those of you who stuck with us. Thank you to all the Patreon people who suggested topics for us to cover. We appreciate that. And if you want to reach out to us, you can email us, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. We're also available at Facebook.com slash Eclectic underscore Gamers and Patreon.com slash Eclectic underscore Gamers. On Twitter and Instagram is Eclectic underscore Gamers. And we will be back in the new year talking about new things or old things. I don't know if there will be a lot of news yet. I doubt there will be any real news yet. But we'll be back in 2023 to talk about something. So until the new year, we wish you all happy holidays. My name is Dennis. I'm Tony. And we will say goodbye for now. See you next year

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7fe928ec-9ed1-4f65-9ef2-0d54d4ad5d02*