# The Super Awesome Pinball Show - Ep 36 Queen & Pinball Brothers **Source:** The Super Awesome Pinball Show **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2022-09-08 **Duration:** 115m 31s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://superawesomepinballshow.libsyn.com/the-super-awesome-pinball-show-ep-36-queen-pinball-brothers --- ## Analysis Christopher Franchi, Christian Lyme, and Jeff Parsons discuss their recent pinball activities, including prepping for the Super Awesome Tailgate Party with custom art and swag bags. Franchi clarifies he is NOT working on Queen or any current Stern titles, but confirms he and George Gomez collaborated on an upcoming James Bond pinball machine (later officially teased by Stern during editing). The hosts also discuss Stern Insider Connected features, Vegas casino visits, game licensing potential, and their enjoyment of newly acquired Godzilla pinball. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Christopher Franchi worked with George Gomez on a James Bond pinball machine for Stern — _Franchi directly states 'me and Gomez did James Bond' and editors note confirms Stern teased James Bond during episode editing_ - [HIGH] Franchi is NOT currently working on artwork for any Stern pinball machines and doesn't expect future Stern work — _Franchi: 'I can promise you I'm not doing the artwork on anything coming out of Stern. And now we're in three years, unfortunately, but that's the case.'_ - [HIGH] The Queen pinball game artwork was done by Stefan Aitken, not Christopher Franchi — _Franchi clarifies: 'The art was done by Stefan Aitken' and notes Queen's sales materials list the artist_ - [HIGH] Franchi maintains good relationships with Stern staff including Gary, George, and John Borg despite not receiving current work — _Franchi: 'There's no burnt bridges. I'm good friends with everybody there. I've talked to Gary. I've talked to George.'_ - [HIGH] Godzilla pinball required minimal setup and came perfectly configured out of the box — _Jeff: 'I set it up. It was literally perfect right out of the gate. There were no tweaks that I had to do.'_ - [MEDIUM] Stern Insider Connected is becoming a dealbreaker feature driving game purchasing decisions — _Christian: 'I've heard people already say that they don't want to get a game without Stern Insider Connected because it opens up these worlds'_ ### Notable Quotes > "I hate to snuff out all the rumors, but, you know, I can't say that it's not James Bond and it's not Gomez. You know, I don't know what that is, but I can promise you I'm not doing the artwork on anything coming out of Stern." > — **Christopher Franchi**, ~19:45 > _Direct clarification on Stern work and James Bond collaboration rumors_ > "There's no burnt bridges. I'm good friends with everybody there. I've talked to Gary. I've talked to George. We've had George on. We're going to have Greg Ferraz on with the Elvira show because he did the artwork on all three Elvira games." > — **Christopher Franchi**, ~19:15 > _Addresses community speculation about Franchi-Stern relationship deterioration_ > "If you know what you're doing, it's fun. But even if you don't, it's like, oh, wow, I made the building collapse. You know, that's fun." > — **Christian Lyme**, ~46:30 > _Describes accessibility and appeal of Godzilla's game design philosophy_ > "The speaker hole is right on John Deacon's butthole... it's hard to miss because he's like you know it's kind of like drawn up from an angle where like the you know the the photographer was down low pointing up" > — **Christopher Franchi**, ~21:15 > _Humorous but notable observation about Queen backglass design oversight_ > "All you have to do is make it so good that people don't want anything else, right? So everyone, I've heard people already say that they don't want to get a game without Stern Insider Connected" > — **Christian Lyme**, ~43:00 > _Analysis of Stern Insider Connected as competitive differentiator and potential market driver_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Christopher Franchi | person | Artist and designer for pinball machines; recently transitioned from Stern to other manufacturers; currently working on multiple art projects including Elvira; preparing Super Awesome Tailgate Party | | Christian Lyme | person | Co-host of The Super Awesome Pinball Show; podcast guest on Fuel Your Fandom; recently acquired Godzilla pinball; operates Stern Insider Connected system | | Jeff Parsons | person | Co-host of The Super Awesome Pinball Show; competitive player; discusses game themes and licensing; skeptical of Stern Insider Connected features | | George Gomez | person | Stern Pinball designer; collaborated with Franchi on James Bond pinball; involved in Beatles game geometry fixes | | John Borg | person | Stern designer; driving with Franchi and Eric Minyard to Tailgate Party; relationship with Franchi appears positive | | Stefan Aitken | person | German artist who created artwork for Queen pinball game | | The Super Awesome Pinball Show | organization | Podcast hosted by Franchi, Lyme, and Parsons; episode 36 features interview with Pinball Brothers about Queen game | | Pinball Brothers | company | European pinball manufacturer; released Queen pinball game; featured as main interview guest on this episode | | Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; James Bond machine confirmed in development; Insider Connected platform being promoted; Franchi previously worked with them | | Queen | game | Pinball Brothers' pinball game themed after rock band Queen; artwork by Stefan Aitken; playable at Super Awesome Tailgate Party | | James Bond | game | Upcoming Stern pinball machine; artwork by Christopher Franchi and George Gomez; officially teased during episode editing | | Godzilla | game | Stern pinball machine recently acquired by Christian Lyme; praised for excellent out-of-box configuration and accessibility; hosts working on custom topper | | Stern Insider Connected | product | Stern's digital platform for pinball games; enables account linking, achievements, leaderboards; hosts discuss its appeal and potential for expanded features | | Fuel Your Fandom Podcast | organization | Podcast hosted by Jim Schweitzer; featured The Super Awesome Pinball Show hosts in episode 114; discusses fandoms of various interests | | Super Awesome Tailgate Party | event | Upcoming pinball event; features Queen machine playable; Franchi preparing custom art, swag bags with prizes, and signed merchandise | | Elvira | game|project | Top-secret art project Franchi is working on; not pinball-related; has had three previous pinball games; Franchi producing Freddie Mercury poster merchandise unrelated to Queen pinball | | Rudy's Nightmare | game | Funhouse variant played at Pinball Hall of Fame; mixed reception from hosts; newer voice actor; different gameplay from original | | Pinball Hall of Fame | location | Las Vegas pinball venue where hosts played various games including Rudy's Nightmare and Funhouse | | Cointaker | company | Podcast sponsor represented by Melissa and Chris Marquette; supporting Super Awesome Tailgate Party | | Better Than Ezra | band|project | Referenced in connection with Fuel Your Fandom podcast episode; hosts had interviewed fan of this band | ### Topics - **Primary:** Christopher Franchi's work and career transitions, Stern James Bond pinball announcement and confirmation, Queen pinball game and artwork attribution, Stern Insider Connected features and community adoption - **Secondary:** Godzilla pinball experience and setup quality, Pinball licensing themes and future game concepts, Game accessibility and design philosophy (Godzilla as example) - **Mentioned:** Super Awesome Tailgate Party planning and logistics ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Generally upbeat and celebratory tone with hosts discussing exciting new games, positive experiences, and community events. Some minor criticism of specific games (Rudy's Nightmare, Beatles outlanes) but delivered without hostility. Franchi expresses some frustration about lack of Stern work opportunities but frames it pragmatically and positively. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** The Super Awesome Pinball Show gaining reach beyond core pinball community; featured on non-pinball focused podcasts like Fuel Your Fandom (confidence: medium) — Jim Schweitzer reached out after hearing Better Than Ezra episode; told hosts their episode was among most fun of 114 episodes - **[design_philosophy]** Queen backglass design includes unfortunate speaker placement directly on band member's anatomy (John Deacon's buttocks) (confidence: high) — Franchi detailed observation about speaker hole positioning on backglass artwork; notes this could have been avoided with template review - **[licensing_signal]** Multiple major IP properties (Batman, Star Wars, Elvira) have received 3-4 pinball implementations; Queen now joins this elite group (confidence: high) — Hosts discuss which properties have multiple pinball games; note Batman (4), Star Wars (3), Elvira (3), and now Queen establishes trend - **[market_signal]** Stern Insider Connected platform becoming key differentiator in purchase decisions; hosts compare to iPhone's impact on smartphone market (confidence: high) — Christian: 'I've heard people already say that they don't want to get a game without Stern Insider Connected' and comparison to iPhone disruption model - **[community_signal]** Franchi working on secret Elvira art project unrelated to pinball; also producing Freddie Mercury poster merchandise separate from Queen pinball (confidence: high) — Franchi announces 'I now start a top-secret Elvira project' and clarifies recent Freddie Mercury poster 'has nothing to do with the pinball game' - **[personnel_signal]** Christopher Franchi transitioned away from Stern Pinball work; maintains cordial relationships but no current projects (confidence: high) — Franchi confirms no Stern work for 3 years despite good relationships with Gary, George, and others; says carrot is 'dangled' but nothing materializes - **[announcement]** Stern James Bond pinball officially teased by manufacturer during episode editing (confidence: high) — Editor's note: 'As I literally sit here and edit this show together, video came to my desk that Stern is teasing a James Bond pinball machine. So I guess we can confirm that.' - **[product_concern]** Sea Witch and Beatles both feature repetitive, punishing mode design that frustrates modern players despite Gomez geometry improvements (confidence: medium) — Franchi discusses drop target mode requiring multiple completions in time window; notes 'a game that is designed to eat your quarters is what you don't like' - **[product_concern]** Beatles pinball has significant outlane drain issues (95% drain rate) due to slingshot rubber height design problem (confidence: high) — Franchi detailed analysis: 'The Beatles' outlanes are tragic. They're 95% of the time it's going out because of the way the slingshot, the top of the rubber on the slingshot is so much higher than the metal rail' - **[product_concern]** Rudy's Nightmare recreation from Funhouse received mixed community reception; voice acting and animation style diverged from original in ways some find less appealing (confidence: medium) — Hosts discuss creepy voice, animation style compared to original; Jeff notes 'it just was, it was so different as far as the gameplay, the call-outs' - **[rumor_hype]** Community rumors incorrectly attributed Queen artwork to Franchi; Franchi clarifies artist is Stefan Aitken (confidence: high) — Franchi: 'I don't know why people have said that I was doing the artwork for Queen, because it says right in their sales list the name of the artist. He's some German guy.' --- ## Transcript Now I'm hurting, but the season is not over yet. I did not come this far to just break down and lose now. Everything's not always about winning. I'm a winner. I'm going to win. Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy? Ready. It's showtime. The following feature has been rated R. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. And now for our feature presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Christopher Franchi, Christian Lyme, and Jeff Parsons of the greatest pinball podcast in the entire world, The Super Awesome Pinball Show. Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode number 36 of The Super Awesome Pinball Show. This episode features our interview with the Pinball Brothers all the way from Europe to talk about their new game Queen and how you can play it at the Super Awesome Tailgate Party. And speaking of, we also have our sponsors, Melissa and Chris Marquette of Cointaker. And they're here to tell you all about what's going down at the Super Awesome Pinball Tailgate Party and why you don't want to miss it. So stick around or I'll make you play fourth in a foursome with Jack Danger, Colin MacAlpine, and Keith Elwin. You better bring a pillow and a blanket. Walk this way. Take me away. Please focus on the show. All right, hello, everybody. Can we get a doctor in the house? Call me a doctor. Dr. Penn, Dr. Penn. Hey, everybody. It's good to be back. And where's our world-famous radio man? Look in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Radio Man! for the tailgate thing, I cannot shut down to go to sleep. So I literally have to just like pass out, whether I'm sitting at my desk or after. Usually right after I eat, I'll lay on the couch with Barlow and pass out and wake up like four hours later and go, oh, shit. And then I'm up all night. So kind of sounds like classic sleep apnea symptoms, Christopher Franchi. I feel like that CPAP device is something you definitely need. It's from a doctor, by the way. From a doctor. Yeah. You know, the reason why you keep waking up is because your body's kind of forcing you awake because your oxygen levels probably drop. so you don't want to hit it too hard with sleeping pills because then you won't wake up. Would that be so bad? Some people would like that. Yes, it would be bad. Go get yourself a CPAP. Yeah, so I guess with that said, I'll roll into my past couple of weeks in pinball. Put together a Catwoman print for the tailgate. Ah, so sexy. Looks so good. Ordered, let's see, we got holographic stickers in. We got stickers of our comic book art, of our noggins. uh any day now i should be getting the glow-in-the-dark stickers in the hot school just just the logo but glow-in-the-dark so prepping the swag bags i'm gonna do something interesting too i haven't figured out what i'm gonna do yet but the swag bags are gonna have some sort of an indication on them and at some point during the day i'll say hey does your uh does your swag bag have this in it or does your signed batman flyer have this on it or something and whatever it is those people are going to win an extra prize. And some of the prizes I'm bringing are actually some framed canvases of my art and some art prints and some other stuff. So, yeah, we're going to have some fantastic prizes. That's awesome. So grab a swag bag for sure. If they're early, because there's actually only going to be 25 swag bags. Maybe 35. It depends. I think because I've got the stickers. Most of the stickers I ordered were just 50, but then I need some. You guys need some, you know, some for the paying kids. and all that. So maybe I'll put together like 35 bags. So there's not going to be one for everyone. You know, make sure you get there early and get yours. What else have I been doing? Trying to clean up around here, get my things in order, trying to finish the bathroom. Finished my second pinball artwork. The project has been closed on my end. So all the art is at the manufacturer, and everything's being put together. That's neat. One of the other art packages I'm doing for a different company is, stalled right now in negotiations for something a little extra, let's just say. So I might have to not necessarily go back to the drawing board. Actually, I already went back to the drawing board and made some changes, and they're either going to stick with those changes or revert back to the original, which might cause a little bit of extra work, but for the most part, I'm done with that one as well. So I now start a top-secret Elvira project. Elvira! Oh, that's cool. And that's not just the podcast we're talking about. No, no. And it's not pinball related, obviously. They just came out with one, so I think she's good. I was wondering, I know Batman has had three different games. Has anybody else had three or more? Any other licensed property? Because she's had three. I think it might be just her and Batman. I think there's four Batman games. Star Wars has had three. There's 89 Batman. there's Batman Begins or Dark Knight or whatever oh right there's four because it's Batman Forever yeah so Batman's the winner and then what does Star Wars have three Star Wars had the Dead Eats the Sega and then it had the Stern and then there's a fourth one that we didn't really see around here it was an Empire Strikes Back that was I think mostly in a foreign country don't forget the pin that's another one right yeah yeah if you're going to count those then Jurassic Park has three yeah there's a few licenses that have more than one So it's still some pretty elite company to be in. Yeah. And I'm licensed. There's plenty of trilogies out there. Yeah, like the roller coaster trilogies with Comet and all those. And then you've got Pinbot's got three different ones. There's plenty of them out there. Yeah. So that's been about it. I've been playing some Beatles, doing some work on the Captain Fantastic. So I kind of shut that down for now. And I've jumped over to the Beatles and have decided that I'd like to throw that one out the door too. No. I think it's just that era of games, man. And whether it's a new game or not, it's that layout and that kind of rules that gets you. Have you played Sea Witch? Yes. Okay, you have. Okay, so you're familiar with Sea Witch. Sea Witch is actually worse because for the Beatles, Gomez went in and fixed some of the geometry to make certain things more possible and better shooting. But it's another one of those things where I'm just like, oh, you're in the drop target mode. They're playing a certain song and you've got to hit all the drop targets down a certain amount of times. I think it's five times in a certain chunk of time. And I always come up just short. I'm always on the fourth one, and I've got to knock down three more targets just one more time, and I'm done, and I run out of it. And then I've got to do the big orbit shot. So I'm going, rear, rear, rear. I'm going around, and then I get to the fifth one, and the ball hits the spinner, and it shoots off in a different direction, and I've lost my rhythm. And then I can't get it back up. I'm struggling to try and get the ball back up on that flipper to try and get it and run out of time. And I'm just like, you know, I'm going to set this thing on fire. I'm going to set them all on fire. Fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fire. I'm getting out of here. He said he can't get it back up. So, yeah, it's that kind of game, Frenchy. A game that is designed to eat your quarters is what you don't like. I mean, a lot of the newer games, they still don't last super long, but they definitely have more staying power than Sea Witch. And the home market for that. Yeah. I had a blast on the other ones. Great time with Batman, Guardians, Monsters. I like Monsters. No complaints. No complaints. As far as that goes, as far as feeling like cheated, you know, about something. But the Beatles' outlanes are tragic. They're 95% of the time it's going out because of the way the slingshot, the top of the rubber on the slingshot is so much higher than the metal rail. So when it goes down in there, it's like there's nothing stopping it from just going right down the outlane. Get out of here! It sucks. Frenchy, how much time do you get on a game that's new? How much do you play a game that you've worked on before it actually gets revealed, if any time? Usually none. When I see it, it's usually put together, but it's not working, and it doesn't have anything on the play field. Not even inserts. It's just like a wooden play field, and there's parts laying around everywhere, and they don't have the ramp installed yet or whatever. And then, you know, if by chance, I haven't yet, I don't believe I have yet gone in, like, when something was ready to show and seen it before everyone else has seen it. I think my reveal of the final product has been everyone else's. Right. I mean, you played Valhalla, but you weren't involved in that. But you had to play that, you know, long before it was released. Yeah. Batman I didn't see until Expo when it was revealed. and then Guardians, same thing. Monsters, I got to play at a lower play field. Not really. Yeah, Borg had rigged it up so it was just the lower play field with all the stuff in it and he had these two wires with two little buttons on them and you just kind of held them and, you know, just... Yeah, it was like something that the doc on Back to the Future would have come up with or something. It was just a kooky little setup and that was it. And then Beatles, same thing. I didn't see it until reveal. monsters, same thing. So, yeah, usually don't get to that. I mean, I'll see pictures. You know, I've seen pictures of the game I'm doing for **** and the one for **** is a little behind schedule. So, but that's the moment where the artwork is all turned in and now everything's just put together. So, basically, I think when these games come out, and I can't say when, but I have a good idea of when, I'm going to be competing with myself. come out at the same time. Well, let's talk about that a little bit, because there have been some rumors that there's a new Stern title that's coming out soon that's going to have franchise artwork on it. Yeah. Is that at all? How about that? I thought that was a secret. I don't know how that got out, but yeah, me and Gomez did James Bond, and yeah, no, I am not working for Stern. All the people on Pinside are like, I thought he burned those bridges. There's no burnt bridges. I'm good friends with everybody there. I've talked to Gary. I've talked to George. We've had George on. We're going to have Greg Ferraz on with the Elvira show because he did the artwork on all three Elvira games. John Borg is going to be driving with me and Eric Minyard to the tailgate party. So, yeah, definitely goodwill across the board at Stern. There's just no work coming my way for whatever reason there is. I've been told several times, oh, we're waiting for the right project. And, you know, it's pretty much just a carrot at this point, you know. dangle the carrot, but nothing's ever going to happen. I don't expect to ever work for them again. I've done T-shirts for them and some other things, but if they call me up, I will be as shocked as anyone else. What about a Cameco project? Like if he ever does something with them, you think you would be linked to that? That I'll probably do because Joe will insist. So that I'll do. And that, you know, who knows, that might be the way in. You know, if I do that, you know, maybe games, you know, jobs will come after that. But, you know, in the meantime, I'm busy with other stuff. I'm not holding my breath, you know. I'm just going on with life and doing other things. You've got plenty of work, man. Yeah. Yeah. That's not the issue. Lots of opportunity out there and things I haven't even started yet, things I've signed on for, haven't started, things that are just in negotiations. So there's lots of stuff. I'm not worried about it. I've got plenty to do. So, yeah, I hate to snuff out all the rumors, but, you know, I can't say that it's not James Bond and it's not Gomez. You know, I don't know what that is, but I can promise you I'm not doing the artwork on anything coming out of Stern. And now we're in three years, unfortunately, but that's the case. And this just in on the editor's desk. As I literally sit here and edit this show together, video came to my desk that Stern is teasing a James Bond pinball machine. So I guess we can confirm that. Back to our regularly scheduled show. And also, I didn't do the art for Queen, even though I've recently released a pre-order for a Freddie Mercury poster. That has nothing to do with the pinball game. That's just, that is what it is. Franchise squash. There you go. Yep, rumor squashed. Yeah, and I don't know why people have said that I was doing the artwork for Queen, because it says right in their sales list the name of the artist. He's some German guy. Because everybody likes to think they have the inside speech, that's why. So sometimes they just make it up. The art was done by Stefan Aitken. We'll ask Daniel about that later when we talk to him. There you go. There you go. So, yeah, it wasn't me, but I'll tell you this. I think the artwork is nice for the game. I like it, but I would have maybe asked for a template for the back glass with the speaker positioning before I settled on what they had, because if you look at the one with the kind of orangey background, not the black one, but the orangey one, the hole, the center hole for the speaker is right on John Deacon's butthole. only friends you would notice something like that that's incredible you'll notice when you see it it's hard to miss because he's like you know it's kind of like drawn up from an angle where like the you know the the photographer was down low pointing up and because he's got his legs spread apart he's like yeah playing his bass and the speaker holes right on his butthole so that's kind of unfortunate it could have been a design decision man i mean who knows we'll have to get stefan on to uh to chat with him about that he'll just be like that Although the speaker wasn't on my template, so I had no idea. I'm sure that was probably the case. But anyway, so yeah, that's been my past few weeks in pinball. What have you fellows been up to? Mr. Doctor, sir? Me? Well, listen, I've had a lot of good stuff happening, but you guys were involved with a lot of it. So two nights ago, we were podcast guests on a podcast called Fuel Your Fandom. And a guy named Jim Schweitzer had reached out to me because he had heard our Better Than Ezra episode. He's a super fan of them. And he has a really cool podcast where he gets people on who are fans, like really big fans of something that may not be well known about. So, you know, when he heard our show through Tom Drummond, he was like, these guys are perfect. And he reached out to us. We went on with my wife, Mrs. Finn, and you guys were there. And we chatted with them for a few hours. And it was a blast. It was really cool. That's a lot of fun. Those guys are great. They are. And they don't really know much about pinball other than they like it, which is how most of us start out, right? and we just shot the shit with them and kind of opened their eyes about what pinball is these days and what's new and a little bit of the history of pinball. If we had the time, we could have gone on for like six hours with them. It was just so much fun. Yeah. So we were totally stoked when we got off the call with them. We were just saying how much fun that was. They've done like 114 episodes of their show and he texted me later and he said that that was one of the most fun shows he's ever done. And so, you know, you guys are definitely great to talk to because you've obviously been doing this for a long time. And they were, too. So it was just a cool meshing of worlds, nerd worlds, talking to them. So if you want to check that out, check out Fuel Your Fandom Podcast. And I heard you had a new child. Yeah, man. My Godzilla baby has arrived. Oh, never mind. Ah, yeah. Jeff's like, what? What is this? No, Jeff. I'm like always the last to know these things. there are no real babies coming into this household ever again, but we're happy with the two that we have. But yeah, Godzilla babies here. We're still waiting on our cactus, but we have some new pinball action in the basement. So Godzilla made it out to us, and man, we are freaking loving it. That game has always been great, but having the chance to actually put time in to learn the rules and not just be flailing around and actually know what you're shooting for, it's opened up the game even more. Yeah, but to know about that game, Even if you don't know what you're doing and you're flailing around and shooting for things, it's still fun. Yeah. If you know what you're doing, it's fun. But even if you don't, it's like, oh, wow, I made the building collapse. You know, that's fun. I can attest to that because I played it at the Ohio Beer Fest, Pin Beer Brew, whatever. Sorry, people who run that. I just can't remember the name. I'm trying to be insulting. But I played it there and had no idea what I was doing. And I had a blast. That's why Elwynn's games are so great because they're approachable. There's a million ways to do it. All of his games are so nonlinear when it comes to blowing it up and doing well. You just have to know one of the 20 ways to score points, and then you can go that route. But that's what keeps it interesting, too, because you keep learning new things. But loving it. We have the topper in progress already, so we'll give you guys updates on that as it progresses. And we talked to Tom last week about how turns are sort of bulletproof out of the box, and they're great for routing. And I had zero issues with this. I set it up. It was literally perfect right out of the gate. There were no tweaks that I had to do. So kudos to Stern for that because that's tough. It's tough to do. Yeah, it's tough to even get a game out the door these days. Yeah, man. Yeah, I set up the Insider Connected home team with Sarah. We figured that process out. It didn't take long at all. So now all you have to do is go up to the game and hold in the left flipper, and it shows our accounts on the screen. And you just select which account you want to use and where to put them into the order. So if you want to be first or second player. and then you just hit start on the game. It's so easy. It's so intuitive. They're really doing good stuff with Insider Connected. I mean, all you have to do is make it so good that people don't want anything else, right? So everyone, I've heard people already say that they don't want to get a game without Stern Insider Connected because it opens up these worlds that pinball has never really made accessible before. And now, you know, think about the iPhone. When the iPhone came out, that was a deal breaker for every other phone. People wanted the iPhone. They wanted all of that tech. So if they can continue to tweak this thing so that it becomes, you know, just second nature, you know, people are going to go up and say, where is Stern Insider connected? And then they're going to want just the Stern game, right? I mean, that is the goal, I'm sure. And they're doing a good job. Except none of mine have that in it. I'd have to buy all new aprons and stuff for it. And I don't really care to anyway. I'm just, I'm not that kind of a player where it's like, oh, I'm going to get this special award for this or playing other people and all that, you know. I just grab a game when my dog goes out to take a shit because I've got to wait for him to let him back in. And the arcade is the door to the outside, so I just sit in that room until I hear him pawing at the door. But if they continue to change Stern Insider Connected to make it attractive to you, Franchi, maybe there's something that you would really like that they can incorporate later on. Maybe the thing for you that will hook you is high scoreboards, or if you can somehow incorporate a camera so that you can link up your Stern Insider Connected account with someone else and you and I can both play monsters together. We can video chat while we're playing and trying to achieve the same goals, kind of like the heads-up challenge, that show that they put on. How cool would it be if you had something very similar to that, where they said, okay, here are two linked games. You both have this game at your house. They have a camera similar to what JJP has, where they can show your face on the screen. And then they say, okay, now you're going to see on Jurassic Park who can trap the first dinosaur. Go. and the timer starts on both of your games, and then you play through that challenge. Well, maybe that's not your thing, right? Oh, no, maybe I'm not saying it's dumb. I'm just saying I have no interest in anything that that device has to offer. I'm not that deep. I love pinball, but I just, like I said, I'm very casual. The less bullshit, the better. You know, I just go over there, turn it on, play a game. Usually I don't even get the whole game done, and he's pawing at the door, especially when it's 90 degrees out. What do you think, Parsons? Would that be cool for you? It'd be okay. I mean, there's really nothing. As it is right now, there's really nothing in Stern Connected that really makes me like, yeah, I've got to get into this. If I could pay on location, I'd definitely be using it on a regular. I'd love some sort of system. I think, what's his name from Better Than Ezra was talking about this, he's got a system where you can pay with your phone, which would be, because I don't pay for anything. I pay everything with my phone these days. It would be great to be able to do that. Right now, it's just an achievement system. It's like video games. Hey, you did this. Here's a medal. What's it worth? Nothing. It's basically another leaderboard. I have to see with all the things I've done. And to me, that doesn't really resonate with me. But there could be other things that they haven't come up with yet or haven't released yet. I'm not saying that it's a terrible thing. It's just nothing that really like, I've got to use my certain connective now. But I think in the future that things will come that I'll be very interested in. You're a competitive guy, right? So what about the competitive aspect? If you were able to link two machines and then you both try and get the high score or you could have any number of challenges that you're trying to do at the same time, it would be the closest thing to multiplayer you could get at the same time. It could be interesting. It's just in my situation, as somebody who doesn't own any pinball machines at all, and especially Stern pinball machines, if I'm not doing it at home, then it's going to be tough for me to do it in a location. And that's basically the only thing. The only thing I'm using right now, as far as I log in, and it will just keep my high score and achievements. And if I'm playing with somebody, it gets, you know, honestly, it's even easier to know which player is which, you know, in case you forget. Like a lot of times in a tournament, I forget which player I am, and I've stepped up and disqualified, you know? Yeah. So putting my name in there is like, oh, it's my turn, not player three. My player three? I don't know, you know? That's my name with the taco icon. That's definitely me. I'm going to be that guy. Taco Grande. The worst part is my initials are JJP. I had it first. See, I'm so concerned with just trying to do what the game asks me to do, but I don't care about anybody else and their high scores. I'm just trying to, like, get to a super jackpot or some, you know, mode or whatever. You know, I can't even get to that, so. Yeah, but I would love to watch you have a total freakout session as I'm playing. You know, if I could see a screen where I'm playing Captain Fantastic with you and I see you raging and, like, breaking shit around the house. Fuck! Let's just put up a camera. Anyway, Jack is. He can stream on his own. Everybody can watch his rage. Yeah, we'll just Facebook live, you know, some Saturday afternoon. All right, fire up, Captain. Put it on Twitch. Give Jack Danger a run for his money. Yeah. Here we go. Watch Fredgy destroy, literally, Captain Fenton. Just because I nod into it doesn't mean it's not a cool thing. So get the Stern Pinball.com and get your Insider Connected merchandise and gear now. Hey. Yeah. So I've got my Stern Insider Connected Challenge Coin, which they sent out to everyone who subscribes to the Insider Connected, which is really cool. I'll have to show you guys. And then it just got in my pin stadiums and my pin gulp and my shaker motor. So I'm going to pimp that thing out. So when you guys come over to play, it should be all set to go Godzilla-wise. Nice. Yeah. What do you got? you got going on uh well a couple things from my i talked last episode about my trip to vegas there are a couple things that i forgot that i wanted to talk about one of them is that i forgot to mention that i played at pinball hall of fame was i played uh funhouse rudy's nightmare and honestly this is no insult to the people that did it i'm sure people like it it just did zip for me nothing and maybe it's because i i love the original so much that i can't get past playing it like I would play the original. It just seemed like, and maybe because I just don't know the rules or what it is, but I just, I played like five times. Like, I got to like this thing. I mean, I love Funhaus, but it just was, it was so different as far as the gameplay, the call-outs. I mean, the guy that does Rudy is nothing like the guy that's not, you know, Ed Boon, who did it originally. There's this creepy, like, it's almost like, I get what they're going for, but it's just not for me. I tried so hard to like it. I know a guy recently that just got one nearby that I'm going to give it another shot next time I go to his place. But so far, I just like, ugh, that didn't. And maybe it's because I didn't really hear all the call-outs in such a loud place either. I really don't know. Was it creepy, Parsons? I mean, just the back glass alone, it was creepy. Kind of. The game itself wasn't all that creepy. His voice is creepy because it's like, okay, what happened to Rudy? And he sounds like he's fun. And, you know, in the original one, then he kind of gets a little weird at the end. But, I mean, not like creepy. What, you just all of a sudden evolve into this demon or something? I don't even know. Is this like Chucky or something? Yeah, it's like what? I don't know what their thinking was there. I am Chucky, the killer dog! But people seem to like it, so I'm not going to deny that for them, but to me it's just not. How was the animation? Like when they did the no-good gophers, the little gopher guys look like critters. They were so freaky. They were so whimsical and funny in the initial game, game and then in the update it was like these little tiny brown creepy monster things. Was the animation decent? Yeah, it was okay. It was very, it seemed like, I don't know what the term for it is, but it's I think a little similar to Avengers animation where it's like comic book characters swooping in and trailing. It was a little bit like that. It seemed like, and this isn't an insult, but it seemed like clip art just kind of moving in and doing things. I don't think that doesn't bother me. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But it's it seems well done. It's just not my game. I'd love to love it, but just not for me. I'm sure it's for plenty of people. But I'm glad I got to play it. Like I said, I'm still not going to give up on it. I love Funhaus so much. It's got to be something. It's got to get deeper in the game. The other thing when I was out in Vegas, as I was going through all the casinos, and I went through a lot of casinos, even if it was just trying to get from point A to point B, you'll go through a casino half the time. I took note of a bunch of games, and I made a list that have a theme for slot machines. and I want to run these by you and see, do you guys think any of these themes would work for pinball? You know, Jeff, every time I go to the casino, I do the same thing mentally. And it's funny to see a game that's already out there that has a slot machine equivalent. Like I saw in Oktoberfest, it was all done up in a very similar way to the game, and it was a slot machine. It came after the slot, but I can't wait to do this because there are a lot of themes in slots that would translate well. There are a ton of them. Some of these I know won't translate, but I just want to run by anyway, others, I think maybe this could be really good. In fact, I think the first one could be really good. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Yeah, they did a vacation game, right? That was loosely kind of similarly related to this because they knew it would be a fun theme for pinball. I think National Lampoon's, any of the movies would work, but I think Christmas Vacation one would be a holiday game that would actually work and you could come out with that game and play it year round and enjoy it because we quote that movie all the time. Oh, of course. in the summertime or otherwise. So, yeah, I think that would work. All right. You like a Franchi? Yes. Would you do art for it? I'm on board. Would I do art for it? Yeah. It's got to have a bash toy of the turkey that opens up and all the spider webs and stuff. I just really want to see that on a football machine. That would be fantastic. The cat in the tree, the jelly in the month club, you know, in the back. There's so many good things. Yeah. There's all kinds of stuff. Plants versus zombies. You know what that would work for? that would be a great license for Multimorphic. Oh, yes. You could have the zombies coming closer and closer to whatever your tower defense system is, and the ball would have to hit them to stop them from coming in. I think there'd be lots of cool ways to do that. I don't play video games, and also I think the window for that being cool was like four years ago or something. Yeah. But Angry Birds was once being made into a game, right? And that's got some longevity. I do think there are still some fans of Plants vs. Zombies. It initially was a 2D side-scroller type game, where you had a garden on one side and the zombies on the other, and you had to keep the zombies from getting to your garden And then that morphed all the way into now shooter shooter games where you play as just like a Call of Duty but you a zombie or you a plant and you running around villages you know And so any of those, you know, potential games could theoretically translate to a P3. So I think it would be fun. All right, Jumanji. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't see that movie. I think Christmas is like, whatever, I'm going to do, I'll take them all. Listen, I'm an optimist guy, and I like these themes. I think Jumanji has got so many potential ways you could go. The new movies are huge hits. I mean, I think they're on the third one of them, and they're making another one. So people really love the franchise. The Robin Williams movies were also great. And any part of that game could be any environment, because Jumanji is open to whatever you can imagine, whatever you roll on the dice. So, again, I think a multi-morphic game would make that work. These are all titles I don't see Stern going after, but a smaller pinball developer could do something good with that. I think Christian would buy a game with the theme of the Fruit of the Loom fruit guys. No, dude. Maybe the California Raisins, but not the fruit guys. All right. Next. Wheel of Fortune. Yeah, I should have crossed that out. Conan the Barbarian. All right. You found one I'm not super excited about. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, maybe if they updated it. I'm sure there's a new Conan movie in development somewhere. Maybe if they tied it in with that. But I don't know. A big dude with a sword has been done on pinball a million times. You know, whether it's Conan or not. Or Molly Hatchet album covers. Wizard of Oz. No, no. The Hobbit. No. Dude, are you scraping that out with like a freaking... Gender block? Yeah. It's really coming through. Very hard. Very hard tenure. I know that there's no way you can do a pinball machine with this, I don't think, but Crazy Rich Asians. Holy shit, that's racist. That sounds heartily racist. It does, but it's a movie. It's a movie. And they made a slot machine out of it. I've never heard of that movie. I think you would really have to have some stones to put a meeting like that in your house. I don't think anyone's going to touch that one. Anchorman. Yes. Maybe missed the window of opportunity, but I do love that movie. Yeah. It's like some movies like Christmas Vacation have more staying power. More longevity, yeah. And some are really good, but kind of like Napoleon Dynamite. I know some people hate that movie. I love that movie. But, you know, the time has passed. Yeah, it's not an evergreen thing. Like Nacho Libre, I also love. Jack the Hutt movie. Not, you know, past the window. And I would say that is also not an evergreen title. But I would like it. I just don't think, you know, generally speaking, the pinball population would eat it up. Probably right. Game of Thrones? Okay. Let's see. And the last one. Goonies. Of course. I knew you would say that. Because I played the slot machine and I was like, God, this is such a wasted opportunity. The slot machine was okay. It was okay. There was some cool... Uh-oh. He froze. There was some cool... There was some cool what? I'm back. Yeah, sorry about that. I was right in the middle of a really passionate discussion about Goonies Pinball, and I got cut off. Yeah. What would be really cool, and that's where it just died. I'm like, oh, I lost my train of thought, man. But honestly, everything, did you get the part where I was talking about the assets that I saw in the game, the hey, you guys, and all that stuff? No, no. All right, so when I played the game in the casino, there was, you know, the truffle shuffle was in there, the hey, you guys, sloth moment, the pinches of power, the, you know, all of the stuff that you'd want to see in a game was there. and it was a fun game to play, but it just made me want the pinball machine even more. I just don't know why it hasn't been done. I've never seen that movie. Can you believe that? What? Franchi, that's bad, dude. I don't like that movie. When I see movies with a bunch of kids, I'm always just like, I haven't seen Sandlot. What? I haven't seen... Yeah, there's a couple other ones. Sand Rhyme or something. I haven't seen that. That's all I've got for this list. And I guess the only other thing I've got going on is this coming weekend, I don't know when this will be airing, but I am off to go to Stomp. I'm going to go compete in Stomp at level zero. My hero's hero. At Ron and Alex's place. I was thinking, I'm like, wow, you're going to the show. That's cool, man. The show's been out for a while. This is the pinball tournament. First time I get to go see Ron Hallett's collection down in his level zero, which is basically his basement. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. You walk into this kind of unassuming house, and then you go down the stairs to his basement, and on the right side as you're going in are all of his trophies. It's like a Josh Sharpe-like trophy wall. It's impressive. And then his, I think it's a Guinness World Record for beating Karate Champ. He's like the high score in the Karate Champ. Yep. And then you turn left into this like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory of pinball machines from every era, And they're just beautiful. They're all working great. You know, here's a big George Takei right there as you walk in. It's George Takei. Takei. As he says, like it. That's quite gay. He has actually said that himself. So if you've never been to Ron's house, it's definitely one of the pinball wonders of the world. When you were there, did you get to meet Stu? No, Stu wasn't there. He had just stepped out, I think, for some cigarettes. But he went to get his roots bleached, didn't he? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Keeps it looking nice. Do. What's up, Hallett and Bruce? Love you guys. I love that show. Yeah. Check out their podcast, Slam Tilt. My favorite part about the Slam Tilt podcast is they start off every show with a clip from Beavis and Butthead. Yep. And Ron Hallett. Ron Hallett. Like, I'm talking about a different Ron. You've got to say the last name. Ron Hallett. The third. Promised me he has all of the Beavis and Buttheads, even the ones that have been, like, thrown away because of, you know, something or another, you know, being bad or whatever. He's got them all on a hard drive, and he said he would copy and pour me nothing. That was like two years ago. That's a lot of work, bro. You might as well just borrow the DVDs. A lot of work? Yeah, there's so many DVDs you'd have to copy and burn. No, no, no, no, no, no. He's got them on a hard drive. Oh, I got you. All he has to do is copy the hard drive. Gotcha, gotcha. You just hit copy, and you walk away. Okay. I guess I need to give him a portable hard drive. That would probably take the ticket. All right, well, that's going to do it for our weeks in pinball. And now we have a very special announcement from a brand-new sponsor. If you're a pinball celebrity, no matter how insignificant, you too can enjoy Christian and Sarah Lyne's Plunge and Nudge Pinball Bed and Breakfast, nestled away in a cozy part of Hershey, Pennsylvania. Each room is designed to pamper pinball's elite. Perhaps a tasty beverage or a midnight snack from the convenient bedside main fridge. Wake to the pitter-patter of the pin kids frolicking about and the warm aroma of coffee brewing. Have out of bed for a bit of specializing over a mug of happiness. Instead of a fine-tilled afternoon playing all the latest pinball games, and maybe even an evening of making drunken phone calls to unsuspecting pinball personalities, the Plunge and Nudge Pinball Bed and Breakfast is waiting to take you away. Well, that is fantastic. That is truly amazing. Chris, you need to do voiceover work, man. And if we ever did have a bed and breakfast, we'd be calling you because that was like pure moods or like some spa experience. Just listening to that. I was crying through that. That was so funny, man. We truly love having people over here. So if you're in the pinball and you're in the area, give us a call because we love doing it. But that was just next level. That was so great. We have to text something out of that commercial. Oh, and by the way, everything's free. Yeah, it is. In three days, I'm going to make a reservation at the bed and breakfast. I'm going to lie about that. You and Michelle need to come out here. She seems like she loves a good road trip. I mean, she's always traveling from my Facebook feed anyway. She just got done training for her. This is a little off topic, but she got done training for, she does a hike every year for Make-A-Wish Foundation, like a 21-mile hike. So she's been training for this, and she came home with a big blister yesterday. So she's just probably out asleep on the couch because she's just been working so hard for this thing. She's awesome. No, there's some people in the world who always just want to grab life and go out there and have fun and explore and do things. She seems like one of those people. And there's some people that want to grab the couch. She's one of those. She's taking that. If I said, hey, we're going to the pins, she'd be like, yeah, let's go. Hell yeah. Come on over, man. You have to do that. Do it. I don't know if you guys are into spooky stuff, but Hershey Park just announced that they're doing this huge Halloween thing where they're going to have 400 houses. and they're going to convert the entire place to like a Halloween-style theme park. So you're into that stuff. I'm out. I hate haunted houses, and I'll tell you why. Because when you're the big guy, all the people that work those things are like, let's get the big guy. So I go through with the group, and it never fails that they will let everyone pass until they get to me, and then they jump out and grab me. By the time I get out of that thing, my nerves are fried. I'm like, why did they fucking pick on me? For fuck's sake. Dude, I'm sorry. In New Orleans, when I went to college in New Orleans, they have, like, you would never think that New Orleans would be, like, a hub of amazing haunted houses. But they have a ton of awesome haunted houses. And one of them was made, I believe, by the band Pantera. They took this giant space and they converted it to one of the craziest haunted houses you'll ever be in. But I went there with this huge jacked football guy who, you know, we were all, like, doing the same thing. We kind of, like, wanted to hide behind that dude. He was the most scared of any of us and was basically crying by the time we got out. Yeah, when you're like 6'5 and you're going through that thing, I think it's funny to like, you know, like because I'm 6'5, like somehow I've got like nerves of steel. But we're going to get this guy, you know. So, yeah, like everyone else, the guy with the chainsaw comes after me, you know, the statue guy who's like actually alive. The people who bring the hands through the window come after me. Like I get everything. And everyone else is like, they're like jealous. They're like, well, you know, you had a better time than we did. No, no, I didn't. Like, you know. I'm terrified. I almost said that. Yeah, you're the guy with the chainsaw running after you. Like, that's what I want. Anyway, okay. Insert fancy news intro here. And this just in, more crazy pinball bullshit with the WPIN Action Pinball News Group. So one of the big news items that's happening is that total nuclear annihilation is finally going to get its 2.0 run. It actually is happening by this point. Very limited, $9,000 a piece. And a lot of people are saying, wait a minute, $9,000 from when it was, I think, what, $6,000 or $7,000 prior? Yeah. $6,000, $3,000. What are you getting for the $3,000? And I'm looking at this and I'm like, you're not getting much. I mean, the list, you get plastic protectors that are different, you get a knocker, a shaker, custom side rails, custom powder coat, speaker kit, and some lit drop targets. I mean, I get, it's tough to get parts. It's tough to, and things have gone up in price. But $3,000, people are kind of balking a little bit at that because of what it is. It's TNA. And as much as the game is great, it's not your modern ramps and deep rules and all this. So, I mean, opinions go both ways. I absolutely love the game. I wouldn't pay $9,000 for it. I mean, that's a Godzilla premium, right? So you put them next to each other, and this money obviously is partially due to inflation, partially due to where we are in pinball right now in terms of pinball pricing, and hopefully scarcity is getting a chunk of this. Yeah, scarcity is kind of debatable, right? Because this is a title, but they can remake it. It's not like they're not going to make this again later on. So if you're buying it to try and have a limited game, that might not be the case. Because in a year or two, if there's demand, they'll make more. The other thing I saw people complaining about in the forums and on social media is that it's only available to people in the fan club. Which I get, you may not seem like it's fair, but you pay like I think it's an extra $100 to get into that. But I don't understand why, if you're willing to pay that much money for a pinball machine in the first place, what's an extra $1,000? $100 rather to be in a fan club. So I don't think those arguments really hold much water. Yeah, I mean, if it's a game that is coming out, the fan club gets first crack at it. It doesn't mean that only the fan club people can buy it, but if there's more than 250 of them, then it could sell out before the general public gets access to it. So I think that happened with Rick and Morty, right? That was the big deal then, that the fan club members got first access to it, and a good chunk of them were sold to them. So, yeah, I mean, it's worth it. $100 if you're a big fan of the license that's coming out next. I mean, Scooby-Doo is supposedly right on the horizon. That's the rumor. So if you're a Scooby-Doo mega fan, then $100 shouldn't be a big deal to you. Yeah, I tried to go to their website and found no listing whatsoever. If you go to spookypinball.com, there's no mention of this game whatsoever. So I don't know if that's because it's the fan club thing. Either they sold out within the fan club, or they're still waiting for some certain period of time, and then it's going to transfer over to their website if they haven't sold out. Because I wanted to check and see if they sold out, so I don't know. I feel like if they did sell out, that would be all over Facebook. I saw a post that said something like 100 of the games had sold pretty shortly after the game went live. So I'm sure they'll sell out. It doesn't have to be on day one. There are enough people out there who love TNA that I think will be willing to spend $9,000. What do you guys think the magic number is these days for where your chance of selling the game just kind of plummets? There's got to be a curve. I feel like $10,000 to me is where I think people are just like, hell no, that's too much. I think it depends. It all depends on where you are, right? And how much expendable cash you've got. But we've seen games sell for $9,000 for a long time now, for years. So I don't think that that was the ceiling. But then Toy Story 4 came out and people were like, oh, hell no, that's too much. So what's the happy medium? Where's the curve? It's hard to say because I think it depends on the theme. I think it depends on the maker. It's true. Even things like the artwork or the game designer, I think all of that stuff has a play in what people are willing to spend. That's a good point. For someone like Spooky, and if you're going by what we're accustomed to getting from them, I think $9,000 is a little steep, personally. I certainly can't see any more than that. But I could for Jersey Jack or possibly Stern, spending more. people spending more. So, yeah, I think there's too many factors. I don't think you can put, I don't think you can just say, here's the limit and it goes across the board for everything. But, yeah, I was surprised to see it. When I looked at what the add-ons were and then the price difference, I was trying to justify that by saying the limited amount because it says only $250, but I forgot that it is open-ended, so they can always go back to the well. So, I don't know. I don't like to talk shit about anybody. I'm certainly not in that end of the business to know what you need to do to make money. I know that people, even labor, except you get people to work, you've got to toss out some coin to get people in there to work nowadays. Fast food, I can't go to a restaurant, even a fast food restaurant, and not spend $20 on food for me and Barlow. Everything has gone up insanely. It's hard to say, but I think 9K is a little steep for this. But, yeah, let's just hope that, you know, Denise is getting a payday out of this, you know. Absolutely. Hopefully he's not getting like $50 a game, but, you know, $500 or, you know, something decent. Because he's put a lot of effort into this, and it was his game to begin with, aside from the effort he's put in beyond that. And I did see that Spooky is doing what they normally do, which is super, super cool. And after the games are sold, they tend to throw a little extra into the box, and it sounds like they're putting a topper on this one as well for free. So that's cool. You know, that helps justify the cost a little bit more. Yeah, but, you know, it's always like, you know, you get what you pay for. It's like, you know, free prize inside the cereal. Well, no, it's not free. You pay for it, but they just tell you it's free. Yeah, well, you bought it before you knew that was in there. So it's just an extra added value bonus. Yeah, the topper they've got, which one are you talking about? Which game are you saying the topper's called? TNA. TNA. TNA. It's the one that was on, they basically reproduced the one that was on High Speed. Oh, cool. Because it's got the beacon on top, so they've got the hot pinball action. Oh, okay. And it says spooky pinball, and it's kind of in their font, and they're all signed by Scott Danesi. Nice. A little homage to High Speed. I didn't know that. That's cool. So is that it for the news? So, yeah, I mean, there's really not a ton of news coming. Or, sorry, there's not a ton of news right now. And Jason Knapp, by the way, is all over it. Like, if there's any little bit of news out there. Hey, miss. Hey. What's going on? You just dropped into our news segment. I don't know. I just got a notice for it. Oh, hit us. Hey, you guys. I don't know. You guys beat me in. Did we call you, miss? Yeah. Oh, shit. Christopher Franchi, was that you? Did you call the vice? That's a good camera angle. Yeah. That's actually cool. You guys are driving in that Ioniq, right? Ioniq 5? Yeah. So they have an electric car I took for a spin the other day. It is freaking sexy as hell. It's like the roof, the entire roof is basically glass. And then when you accelerate from like zero to 80, it takes like three seconds, and it's smooth the entire time. Yeah, gorgeous car. I can talk out now, but yeah, you guys called me. I think Jeff put me in. Oh, you know, I sent a link to the chat, and that must have been what, and you guys were still in it. That's what it was. That's my bad. All right, see you, miss. Bye-bye. Take care. That was fun. Way to go, Jeff. I know. Hey, how's it going? First he doesn't show up for podcast proper events, and now this. Let me get his phone number. Let me get his phone number right now. So let's go back to where we were. Yeah, there's not a ton of news right now. Shout out to Jason Knapp. He is an incredible dude and a good guy in general, but he also has been dominating with pinball news lately, like everything that comes out. He's got an article about it like the second it pops up. I'm usually pretty good about, you know, finding this stuff and just seeing it. But he knows about it the instant it happens. I don't know if he has like a network of spies out there, but he is plugged in. So all of the news pretty much. I don't think he ever unplugs, honestly. Right. You're right. He must have alerts on his phone and all that good stuff. But if you're looking for the latest and greatest, hit up naparcade.com. It's the source of news these days. And this week in Pimpball is ramping up their game as well. Well, they were kind of out of commission for a while, and now we're getting almost weekly updates on news from them. So it's good to see you. Nice to have you back, Jeff. Yep, yep, Jeff. And I know he's got some help on the page now as well, so that definitely is helping. And Will Auding, I think, is helping out with some of that stuff. But I don't know how much and to what extent at this point. Do you think Jason Knapp had a dream that he won a Twippy? And so he's just coming out with all guns blazing, like, I'm coming out of the shoot. Here's my new news website. And by the end of the year, I'm getting me a Twippy. Listen, man, Twippies are a huge motivator for some people. I don't know who you're talking about. I have no idea who you're talking about. Yeah, Jeff and I don't know what's going on here. So anyway, there will be some news coming out of Stern soon. And we're going to be seeing a James Bond-themed pinball by George Gomez. You know, we've talked to Gomez on the show, and he took over Steve Ritchie's game, and he kind of, you know, wiped off the chalkboard and started fresh. So we're going to have a completely George Gomez-designed James Bond title coming out in the next week. I'll drop a little nugget for you guys. I had a conversation with Mr. Cannon Co. the other day, and all I'm going to say is he has dropped a couple of things that I have worked towards in the past that have a high probability now of being able to get done. I already know what you're talking about, but this has come up multiple times. You go ahead and say it, and I'll beep it out. So the machine you're talking about is Harry Potter? No. No? Do I stutter? No. Because you guys have talked about that being a reality, and him pitching it again and having confidence that that was going to happen. I have not heard anything from him in a long time about that. He was very confident before. He's like, you know, I'm still working on it. you know it's going to take some time blah blah he hasn't mentioned it in in probably over a year how about um back to the future no have you seen me do any artwork for that no how about okay all right well now that's a great clue how about how about beetlejuice or wonder woman or wonder woman could happen yes he says he can get it done fuck dude that would be such a great pen yeah oh did you see uh todd tuck was showing off my jaws back last time on this show did you see that christian I did see that. No, I didn't. That's cool, man. Yeah. I sent him one because a friend of his ordered one from me, and it got lost. So I sent him another one, and then Todd wanted one. I sent him some other goodies, too. But he put it in a machine. I'd never seen it before. Totally trolled people. Totally trolled everybody. He put it in a machine, and he put a little, like, over the tag where it said, what was the actual game? Mandalorian. A little plaque that said, you know, premium edition. He made a little Jaws thing and stuck it over that, and he put paper over the play field so you couldn't see it. You know, the guy comes up with the camera, and he goes, and now the big reveal, and he pulls the paper off, and it's just a Mandalorian game, which I was expecting him to have, like, a plastic shark just laying in the play field there. Like, I thought he'd pull something like that, but it was pretty funny. Yeah, so, yeah, it's another thing. If you're coming out to the tailgate party, I will have my last few Jaws translates. If you want to pick one up, come and see me. That wraps up the news. We're going to get into our interview right after our commercial break, which takes place right about now. The Super Awesome Pinball Show. Now featuring bite-sized Barlow Shake marshmallow bits. Brought to you by Coin Taker in lovely Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Saturday, Saturday, Saturday. The Super Awesome Pinball Show tailgate party. Saturday, September 24th at 10 a.m. Free admission. Free play all day. Food and drinks. and special guests watch the special new pinball sneak preview from American Pinball. On the coin, take us around at 1437 State Route 61 Stumber in Pennsylvania for the super awesome pinball show Tailgate Party. Saturday, September 24th at 10am. Don't miss it. So that's your first chance in America to play Pinball Brothers Clean Pinball Machine. Free distribution and free parking. Must have reservations to get in. Now, back to our program. Oh, yeah! Please enjoy this bonus super awesome pinball tailgate party featurette before our main interview. The biggest news in pinball maybe ever is that the super awesome tailgate party is coming up on September 24th And we are bringing in the man and woman of the hour to talk about this with you guys Tell you a little bit more about what to expect if you go, which you should Who's going to be there, what kind of food there's going to be, what games are going to be out on display And just how good of a freaking time you're going to have Welcome to the show, Chris and Melissa Marquez And now a word from our sponsors Thank you, Mr. Line, for that great introduction. You're welcome. Wow. If you don't know them, they are awesome people, and they run coin-taker amusements out of Sunbury, Pennsylvania. They sell every game you can imagine from a pinball standpoint. They sell arcade games, and they are the biggest distributors of pinball machines in the world. Is that correct? I think so. Could be. Yeah, possibly. And now you can rent their hall and have live events there? It's all kinds of stuff. Wait till you guys see the new sign. Woo! Yeah. We got a new logo up there. The LED sign. Yeah. Franchi's been working to incorporate some new Franchi art into their logo, which looks great. And you guys have, so it's not only just that, you know, it's not only a distributorship, but you also hold, Franchi kind of mentioned that you have events there. So you set up this whole huge space for anything that people want, corporate events, you know, engagement parties, all of that stuff, weddings. So how many events have you had there? Because this is a fairly new thing for you. Quite a few so far. We haven't even really advertised yet, and by word of mouth, we're getting booked more and more. So just kind of letting it take its own toll right now. We're not putting out there. We're still kind of working on setting things up a little bit more. And so, you know, once we're completely ready, then we'll start advertising it more. We want to put some games in there and figure out how we want to do kids' parties and put some packages together and, you know, kind of make it that it's easy transition over to wedding or 50th anniversary to get games out, put games in. So trying to figure everything out yet before we start fully advertising it. You put that Toy Story 4 down there and you're going to have a bunch of kids. Oh, yeah. You've got some sweet disco lights in there too, I can say that. Oh, yeah. Christmas the lighting king. And you guys, you know, like you said, you could really have any event in there because you have a full bar, but then you also have pizza ovens. Pizza, pizza. And you have tons and tons of seating in there for corporate events. Or you could take those tables out and have like a dance party. It's like you can pretty much do whatever you want in that space. And it looks so good. To see it evolve over the last few years has been really impressive. Yeah, our ovens actually can do more than pizza too as well. They're pretty cool ovens. And we actually can hold up to 299 people in that location, just that area itself. So it's a nice size spot. Well, let's talk about how many pinball machines we can hold in there. That was my next question. Yeah, yeah. We have to apply this new layout and these new features to what's going to happen with the tailgate party. So if anybody is not familiar who didn't go last year, it's sort of an indoor-outdoor event because there's a big room that's opened up to the outside, and that's where you're actually going to have some stuff out there for sale and stuff, and there's going to be games to play in there. Then there's another game room. But then you can go outside, and there's sort of an overhang with picnic tables. you can sit outside. The year before, you had, what game was out there, Guns N' Roses? You had out by the street. Yeah, yeah. I had a little canopy set up right by the sign, and cars were whizzing by, and everybody's out there in line playing the Guns N' Roses. That was awesome. So, yeah, it's sort of an indoor-outdoor event, and you had some lovely paving done in the parking lot now, so that's... Oh, yeah. What kind of improvements, yeah, yeah. For those of you who haven't been, you know, you're going to see, or you've been to the last one and you're coming to this one you're going to see a completely different area now it just looks entirely different and it looks so much better than it even did then so we want to talk to you guys about who's coming to this thing so let's run through a quick list because you've got some who's who of you know the pinball world and representatives from almost every pinball company are going to be there this is going to be like a one day mini pinball show so to speak so you've got the pinball brothers obviously they're on this show and we're going to interview them about queen but I think it's Roger and Kato are coming all the way from Finland to be there. Norway. That's right. And what are they bringing with them? Themselves All right Their knowledge of pinball Well they shipping something There something special that they bringing Yeah The Queen pinball game. Yeah. Yeah. First time anyone's ever going to get to play that in the U.S. is going to be at your show. Correct. Bragging rights. We regret to inform attendees, but as of the time that we were editing this show, we received an email from the Pinball Brothers stating that there were some approval problems, which severely delayed the shipping of the game, and they most likely will not be on hand to play at the event. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. And the Alien will have set up also. A lot of people haven't seen that or got a chance to play it. Are you going to have an LV set up, Chris? Yes, yes. Oh, so the fancy version of Alien is going to be there. And these guys know how to party. They came out to my place when the Marquettes took them to the Hershey Bears game, and we had a beer too, but apparently they had some fun later that night, and there were some whiskey bottles that were very rapidly depleted. So it's going to be a good time. That was the night before. Oh, well, it actually looked really good. They were faking it. They found the whiskey at our building, and at 2 a.m. in the morning they were sending us videos, them finding the whiskey and singing songs to us. So if you want to see that live, come on out to the party. I have it. That sounds like Christian and Sarah's bed and breakfast. That's right. Drunk in phone calls at 2 in the morning. You guys have a list of other guests, Franchi and Parsons, so why don't you guys go through some of the others. Well, I can tell you, so John Borg, designer extraordinaire from Stern Pinball, and Eric Minyard, designer extraordinaire from JJP, are both coming, and they're going to be in my car. So they're driving from Chicago to my house in Michigan, and then the three of us are driving from here to Pennsylvania. so we might get a bonus episode out of that. It might be interesting to have a conversation with the two of them in the car and just throw out a bonus super awesome special edition. Oh, totally. That would be great, man. You have to do that. So they're going to be there. Bring your back glasses, your trans lights, your aprons, whatever, to get signed. And Eric is the best. Obviously, he made the game so if you ever want to see Guns N' Roses played on that next level, go up to him and ask him to play a game with you because I own the game. I've played it a million times. I feel like I know the strategy, and he absolutely destroyed me when we played together. So if you like that game, grab him and play with him. And I know Borg is going to be there. You have some Borg games, I believe. You had Turtles. We'll have a classic Galaga Premium there. Okay. We're going to have Guardians of the Galaxy Premium. Don't see those too often. Nice. And then Rush, right? Rush, definitely. Pro and Premium we'll have there. I see a Guardians of the Galaxy Premium plenty often. in my game room. That's an LE, isn't it? No, I just have the premium. The only LE I have is Monsters. And that's only because I had to get that color play. No, you didn't. Boy, puppies are growing nuts. Imagine that. And you know that, of course, American Pinball is going to be bringing the world-exclusive first look at one of American Pinball's upcoming really imaginative and fun new games. So you get a little sneak peek of that there, too. I can add to that. The commercial showed like a silhouette of a game. What you're going to see, I can't exactly say exactly what it is, but it will give you the flavor of the artwork. It will show you the theme and the logo for the theme. It's just a little taste. A teaser. It's a cool teaser. It is not a full game. It's not the back glass. I'm not going to say too much, but don't walk up thinking that you're going to see this whole game sitting there and then bring out the torches and pitchforks. The reason why is because it's probably not going to come out for another three months. David said that he doesn't want to, as they say, spill your candy in the lobby and show too much and have people sitting on this for three months before the game comes out because by then they'll just be burnt out on it. Yeah, I mean, manage your expectations, but it is something cool, and it is the first time that you'll see Franchi artwork in a while, right? Yep. And there is an Easter egg on the thing that you will see, which I can't spoil, but it's something everybody loves. We are also happy to announce that there will be some special guests there that we're not going to talk about, but you'll just have to find out who those people are and save some surprises for the actual day of. Yeah. And we have 25 Catwoman prints that have the Tailgate logo on it. It's a special thing that we're doing just for this. There's only going to be 25 available. And as we talked about earlier, the swag bags that we have, we're going to do something special where I haven't decided exactly how yet, but there will be an indication where I ask you to check your bag for a certain something. And I'm going to have signed art canvases and art prints and things to give away. So there's going to be some fantastic prizes. And I believe there's going to be some pretty cool shirts available there, too. Chris, you want to talk about that? Nope, I want to surprise them. Well, let's find this out. Are these going to be shirts that are for sale, or are they going to be shirts that you can win, or both? Yes, both. If you don't win one, you can buy one. We'll have different contests, giveaways, and it's going to be a lot of fun. These are very cool because I designed both of them. Seeing that we're part of this thing, obviously, Franchi and myself will be there for sure. Unfortunately, Jeff can't make it. We'll miss you then. We interrupt this program with a big news flash. Jet Parsons is now coming to the event via big old Jet Air Lino. Back to the program. And we will be joined by another co-host of the show from back in the day when we just kicked the show off, Mr. Ed Van Der Veen, our original co-host and host of the Texas Pinball Festival. He's going to be making the drive up to hang out with us for the party, so it's going to be awesome to hang out with him again. You know what's going to happen, Christian? What? Parsons is going to be the Bruce Kulik. We're going to be like Kiss. We're going to get back together with the original members and the new guys get to get bumped. No way, man. Wait, there's room for four. If Ed wants to come back, he can jump in and join us. So we covered the guests. It's going to be an amazing day. It's at least twice as big as the original tailgate party that we had there in terms of pinball and guests and the people who have signed up. How many RSVPs do we have at this point, guys? We're pretty full. I don't have an exact count, but there's a pretty good turnout. There will be plenty of people there. Yeah, we're at 300. Chris, you need to tell the people about your friend and what he has to offer when he pulls his truck up. Yes. We're going to be having some booze there. Some drinks. Zach, the meat man. Don't tell me that you need food. Tell us about Zach, the meat man. First of all, for Friday night, we're having a VIP night for people that are coming in, all the manufacturers that are coming in, Forgy and Franchi and you guys. We're having a special night, having some live music there for you guys and some really special food. But for Saturday, Zach the Meat Man, we're going to, of course, have pulled pork, barbecue chicken. We're actually going to be making some of our pizzas. We're going to have, oh, my God, I can't remember what all we did say we're going to be having. Well, let me ask you this. Are you going to make Ed Robertson famous Big Mac pizza? Yes. We will be making some Big Mac pizza. Big Mac pizza? Yes. Ooh, give it, give it, give it. I'm going to love this. It's amazing. And those who don't know, we didn't really advertise this, but now that we're all full, we can say, so all the food is free. Holy giveaways. Yeah, Zach's amazing. We'll be having some steak sandwiches, of course, mac and cheese. I can't even remember. Trust me, I know there's going to be plenty of food, of course, hot dogs, hamburgers, probably some sausages. Look at Christian over here. I'm so hungry. I'm in a state of nirvana right now I mean the last party Zach surprised us I mean I think he even smoked a turkey on the smoker that we didn't even know he was going to do and he just surprised us with a whole mess of different things who knows what he's going to plan for us I ended up not eating last time I don't know why but Kirsten you had something and you said it had been sitting around for like two hours and it was awesome he took a steak he made all the steak and he wrapped it in tinfoil so it was so good you know It wasn't like it was unsafe to eat, but holy crap, it was the best steak I've ever had. I mean, the seasoning he put on this thing was amazing, and I actually liked it so much that I had to send him a Facebook message, and I ended up getting some of that. So now my steaks at home are a little bit better, but nowhere near as good as his. I mean, whatever he did to make that steak was magic. So I look forward to some really good food. He plans to be making those steaks again. Nice. Excellent. Chris, do you want to talk a little bit more about the raffle and giveaways, or are you going to save that for the day of? We have our customer appreciation raffle. Everybody's personally games entered, and we'll be giving away a pinball machine. So it's going to be an exciting, fun thing. Jared's coming up from Texas also, and he'll probably be doing some videos and recording some events and broadcasting, maybe doing some live footage and stuff like that. So this is Jared. I don't know how to say his last name. Gines? Is that right? Yeah. He's like a superstar of social media. I know he works on your social media, but, I mean, this guy's all over the place with Jared's epic Nerf battle and, you know, all the things he does for Stern Pinball. So that's a big name that's going to be there to actually help promote. That's awesome. Dylan and Sarah, I believe they're both coming along also. Yeah, so this should be fun. Jessica. Jessica, I'm sorry. Yeah, my bad. Cool. That's really awesome. Well, it's only a few weeks away, guys. We can't be more pumped for it. Thank you, Chris and Melissa and Coin Taker crew for throwing this party, letting us be part of it, you know, celebrating pinball and all the awesome stuff in it. And, you know, you guys are champions for that. So thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Bring your truck with your tailgate. We'll have special parking for tailgates, so you can pull around and park up front with your tailgate. So even if you have your SUV, you can open your hatch there, Franchi. Ooh, sweet. Franchi's hatch is open. Look out. Look out. Just pull his vehicle in with his hatch open. Yeah, I can dip all the trash out. Pull it up to a garbage can. Well, thanks for joining us, guys. I'd also like to add that we're going on what, like year? Is this our third year? Third year. and you guys have been our sponsors since day one and I can honestly say best sponsors in the world so thanks for supporting the show and being awesome people well thank you we appreciate it it's been great to be with you guys thanks for letting us eat up some of your weekend guys anytime take care thank you very much for taking us out love you I think we'll go with a little bohemian rhapsody gentlemen good call Easy come, easy go, will you let me go? If you are done, will you let me go? Let me go, let me go, will you let me go? Let me go, let me go, let me go Oh, mama mia, mama mia, let me go Be out of the house, let the devil put a sign For me, for me, for me The Pinball Brothers have come a long way since forming in 2017. Starting out as investors in a pinball company, they eventually took over a number of licenses from Highway Pinball and set off to create their own pinball company and do things their way. The risk paid off, and they fine-tuned an amazing first game in Alien Pinball based on the Alien franchise. Along with Pedretti Gaming in Italy, they also proved that they could produce what Highway could not, a well-made and mass-produced pinball machine. Now they're on the verge of producing another machine with an incredible license, one of the biggest bands ever with over 300 million albums sold and 15 studio albums. Queen live in concert. Today we're joined by two of the Pinball Brothers, Daniel Janson and Alexander Alexander Spohr, to talk all things Queen Pinball and get an update on the company at large. Welcome to the show, guys. Thank you. Thank you for having us. So the last time we had a chance to speak with the Pinball Brothers here on the show, we had Roger and Alexander on to talk about Alien Pinball, and we never had a chance to speak with you guys, though. So can you introduce yourself to the audience and let everybody know a little bit about you guys? Sure. Starting with Daniel. Yes. Because you're the one that was not there before. Thanks. Yeah, I'm Daniel. I'm obviously one of the founders of the company back in 2017, along with Alexandra and Roger Kato. And at the beginning of this year, I was appointed CEO for the company. And my background is in software development. I've been working for different software houses in the 90s. And then I started my own business and run that for 20 years. And in parallel to that, I've been a big pinball enthusiast and collector for my entire life, I would say. So I started playing pinball as a teenager back in the 80s, games like Black Knight and Gorgar, to name a few great ones. And this interest eventually led to me starting a pinball spare parts shop called Freeplay in Sweden back in 2012. And that had me getting in contact with a lot of people in the industry. So I got to know people like Rick from Pinball and Melissa from Coin Taker and Terry at Pinball Life and many, many others. So I've actually been in pinball for a long, long time. Just not been in manufacturing. Okay. And yeah, hi, I'm Alexander Alexander Spohr. You might have heard me before on the Alien podcast last year. What I'm trying to do at Pinball Brothers is find some rules for the new games. and we try to get the team to work together. So if something does take longer, it's usually my fault. Yeah, and that's it, I guess. Okay. So Daniel, it's our understanding that the company Pinball Brothers has four active members, yourself, Alexander, Roger, and Kato. And while none of you came into the company with pinball manufacturing experience, you all had skill sets that you pulled from to get the company started. Alexander and Roger mentioned that you were more on the business and financial end. What can you tell us about your day-to-day role in the company? Your description was correct about two years ago. The company has really evolved a bit since then, to be honest. We were a startup company at the time. And since then, with the manufacturing starting in Peretti, a lot of other resources have come into the company and have been needed for the company. So today, we are actually about 40 people involved. So to answer your question, my role as CEO, obviously, the main goal is to sort of transform the company from this startup business into a real company, if you like, a sort of mature and grown-up business, because that's what you need. I mean, when you're a research and development company, you can be a few people who work sort of day and night and try to achieve something. But as soon as manufacturing comes into play, everything gets a lot bigger. And then you need a whole organization to make it work, basically. So that is my main purpose right now, is to continue to transform the company into a bigger business. Let's follow up a little bit with that. So you said you have 40 employees now, or 40 people in the company. Are those manufacturing jobs? Are those administrative jobs? Tell us more about the makeup. Obviously, those 40 involves the manufacturing at Pedretti at this point. And I can come back to that a bit later and elaborate. But not all are obviously employees. Some people are contractual workers as well. But there are about 40 people who, on a more or less daily basis, makes the company go forward. Okay. And there are, yeah, to answer your question a bit more, that apart from the biggest part is obviously the manufacturing. But then you have a lot of development teams, you have administration, and you have a lot of people involved in purchasing and sourcing parts. So there are many, many different technical support areas to cover. So you've been heavily involved, obviously, with alien manufacturing, and that's been a big push for you guys in terms of getting that game out. Can you give us a little update in terms of how far along you are with alien production and where you are in the grand scheme? Yeah, I think we are approaching 600 games shipped by now, of both models, I would say. Okay. That's quite a landmark, honestly. And, I mean, things are going well, but as we all know, there is a pandemic still ongoing somewhat, and there's a war in Europe, and there's a lot of things, so there's a lot of challenges. So it would be a lie to say that everything looks great. I mean, some days you are really tearing your hair out because it's a lot of problems, of course. But it's usually two steps forward and one back, and then two steps forward again. So we are on the sort of right trajectory, if that's the word. So Alien is still coming along, but what was it that made you decide that this is the right time to make a shift into another game? That's a very good question. I think it's not very easy to answer that quickly, because there's a lot of things involved, obviously. I mean, we make a business plan and this is sort of the best plan we could come up with. So we think it's a good time to do it this way. But as I said before, there are so many challenges that it's really, really hard to make any plans. And I think most other manufacturers have changed their plans as well. So, I mean, sometimes when you put the plan in motion, there are some decisions you can't really change. So you have to live with that. But we are still happy with the plan and we think we are making progress. So, yeah. Very good. Well, guys, we recently saw Alien LV, and it's absolutely gorgeous. Is your plan to finish the runs of Alien before starting production on Queen, or are you going to have more than one line at Pedretti Gaming? We will definitely make the games in parallel. So, yes, we will have a separate line for Queen. Obviously, with the war and with everything else, production is, you know, I'm sure there are ebbs and flows. But what would you guys estimate, if you can, how long it will be before you finish up the Alien run and can focus entirely on Queen? Or is that hard to say? Yeah, it's really hard to say. I must say that. Yeah, that's fair. Well, there's a million questions we could ask about the Pinball Brothers, but we want to dive into Queen Pinball because that's what people want to know more about. So let's start by going way back to the beginning of this machine. Now, Queen was one of the titles that was developed by Highway Pinball before it shut down in 2018. And at that point, the game was designed by Dave Sanders and Barry Hassler as a wide-body machine. So how far along was the game when the Pinball Brothers took control of it? The thing we had were the 2D CAD drawings. And I think that's all that was there. So no 3D, no real drawn parts or anything that you could give into production. But that was a wide body, and that was with the screen in the play field. and so we decided that's not the way we kept alien away buddy because everything was already there and it was more like tweaking an existing machine but with Queen we had to just to reorder everything so the layout is completely different I just before this interview I just looked at the old drawings and I I thought the guitar is the same, but no, it isn't. So even that changed. At first, I thought it's the same, but it's not. The game must have looked a lot different back then. We see that Alexander, you're listed as the game designer now. What changes were made to this design? And was anyone on the original team involved with that? No, the original team was gone. And what was changed, I'd say everything. I mean, there was the idea to have the Wembley Stadium on the game, but I think it was smaller and it was different. Because now we have the front half and in the original design it was a whole donut and other stuff like that. What you see now is completely new. It has nothing to do with what Highway would have brought. That's cool. So, I mean, this is your first game, Alexander. I know you guys made some tweaks to Alien, but if it's drastically different than the original design was, this is kind of your first foray into game design. How did that go for you? That wasn't my game alone. I mean, we were a team, and we arranged it or rearranged it as a team. So the thing that I had to do was to find an artist who was able to put some color on the game in a way that Queen would accept. That was not that easy. The Brian Allen artwork that's out there, that was really the first try by Highway, and that made it very difficult for us to sell them a comic-style artwork because we were pretty sure we don't want to have a photographic mix like some of the ACDCs have and just put photos on the playfield. We wanted to have something that is more like pinball always was, at least in my eyes, artist's rendition and stuff like that. And so the first hurdle was to make them give their okay that we can use some comic style. And after we presented them some drawings, we had some back and forth with Queen members themselves. Because, I mean, if you are on a play field, you want to look as good as possible. And even the back glass. I mean, I saw a lot of the comments for the back glass. The problem was that most people just saw some disordered photographs. And I had another artist, everybody knows, look over those graphics we have there to see if he could improve it a bit. Because, I mean, already accepted it, so we couldn't change it a lot. And he said immediately, okay, what's there? Looks very good. he didn't think he had to change a lot. Unfortunately, we didn't get Frasci to do that. The nerve displayed. Oh, yeah. I guess now's the best time to bring this up. We discussed this earlier in the show. Do you guys realize that on the version that has the colorful background, the sort of blue and orange shaded background, that the speaker, the center of the speaker on the left side, the center lines right up with John Deacon's butthole. Yeah. Only Christopher Franchi is ever going to notice that, so you guys can be very comfortable about this. Oh, but I think the others don't have it. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. See, you guys, you think I'm some kind of creep. I'm like, I'm just talking about what I'm seeing. Maybe. You could argue that the speaker probably makes it wrong. Well, there were a number of games being worked on by Highway. Was the strategy always to have Queen be your second game for Pinball Brothers? At the time, we were 100% focused on succeeding with the remake of Aliens. So I wouldn't say that there was any sort of long-term strategy, really. Can you give us some idea of how many total licenses you've taken in from them when you took over the company? We really don't want to talk about licenses because it is kind of internal and it also involves other parties, obviously. Sure. So, from respect there, nothing. Yeah, well, let's talk about some of the licenses that we can talk about, like Queen in particular. So, with Alien, we understand that you had to renegotiate the entire deal when you took over. Did you have to do the same thing with Queen? And if you did, did you negotiate for any additional assets or did you just keep things as they were? You need to help me, Alexander, but there's nothing added, right? No, the songs were there, and we didn't try to get anything else. Again, what I often hear from the outside is, you don't have Under Pressure, stuff like that, but that's with Bowie, so we can't have it. Makes sense. And getting the live version, everybody who says, I want to have the disc version or the studio version, must not be a fan, because if you listen to Queen live, They are so good. They are perfect to the tone. And what they do has so much energy. And the songs are pretty near to the studio version. It's not like somebody else who then starts to do strange stuff while playing the song or can't really sing or whatever. you don't have that with Queen. They just do the perfect, they just deliver the perfect thing there. And I say just try it, listen to it, and you won't be disappointed, I'm so sure. One thing that might be worth noting when it comes to licensing is that there are, for a license like this, there are a lot of sub-licenses involved as well with the record companies and such. So it's quite a complex thing to achieve if you want to change anything or anything, it involves a lot of different parties. Right. Yeah, I know that makes sense. And we've talked to a lot of people about licensing, and it's always amazing to me how difficult it is to get something you would consider to be relatively easy to get. So how did the band feel about Pinball Brothers taking on the game license, and when did you first become directly involved with them? The thing is, we didn't talk personally to the band, but I think the channel isn't that far. So if we put something in to Bravado, it doesn't go many steps to reach them because the back and forth was pretty fast. One part of the question, how they felt about it, is quite difficult for us to know really. We can only say what from our side it's not been any problems on that part. It's just the problems we, the challenges we have is around the licensing and that is in my view that is because there are so many different record companies and parties involved. That's what makes it difficult, not talking to the band or Bravado. I mean, we did ask them if they want to do the call-outs, and Brian May immediately said yes, and Roger Taylor didn't take long to follow. So the game has their call-outs. I guess they don't think it's too bad if they go into the studio and record some call-outs for such a game, right? That's great. Well, let's talk a little bit more about the call-outs before we go. We're going to dive into the game a little bit and really talk about it in depth, but since we're kind of talking about it, tell us what that was like. Did you guys write scripts for them and then have them go in and just record the lines, or were you there coaching them through what they were saying as they did it? We made a list of what we need, so we gave them a list of lines, and then they just went to the studio and did it how they wanted. Okay. So there wasn't a big contact or something. Any back and forth? and then they sent us some the recordings back so if you've got a recording that said like jackpot you know were you did you then use it or did you write them back and say hey you got to use a little more energy with this this is important we have two different guys doing that and each did it in his own way and um you will hear them both i'm imagining super jackpot super jackpot How many members of the band did call-outs? Both. I mean, we have one dead, one on a business, and then we have May and Taylor there. Okay. Both are in the boat. This game came out of nowhere in September of 2021 when you had a non-playable prototype machine in the Queen pop-up store in London. Why that kind of subtle reveal versus a more traditional media blast, and what did you guys think of the reception? Well, to answer the first part first, why we did a subtle reveal in that way is, I mean, why always do everything in the same way, traditional way, as everybody does? So we thought it would be kind of a different and cool thing, actually. And we did it in collaboration with Bravado, who wanted to have the game there. So we understood that it would probably cause some reactions. And reactions are always good, I think. And to talk about the reactions some of them have been really good and some have been upset about the way we did it and but now it done so we we don regret it I would say Or should you Great way to do it there was no heads up right that's what really I think shocked most people is that it just it was just there and it was a brand new pinball machine and usually there's hype leading up to that moment and so in that way it was very cool because it was it was a new take and it was definitely a different approach. In the prototype game there were a few mechs missing and there was just enough software to play audio and video it was close to a full year before you formally revealed the game what changes to the game if any were you working on over that time we had to make it work that a big change i mean the thing was the layout layout was pretty clear and the art was there um but we had to test the mechanics and and stuff like that for example um we had the wembley lock on the exit of wembley in the way of the ramp. Did you understand that? I don't know. And after trying that out, it was pretty clear that it's a stop and go at that point. And we wanted to have a fast game. So we gave the lock its own lane, which isn't on the pictures from London. So what we did was test that thing and see if all the Macs work as we want them to and stuff like that. Let's just jump into the game itself and cover some of the game features because a lot of us don't know much about the game outside of what we've just seen on pinball news and that sort of thing when they took good pictures of the game. It looks like a lot of fun. We see three flippers. There's a red special guitar mini play field, three pop bumpers. There's a mix of targets and stand-up targets, a spinner, center ramp that can divert different directions. You've got the radio and the Wembley Arena sculpts, and it looks like balls can be locked in a number of places, like the red special guitar in Wembley Stadium. So what else were we missing that we didn't cover there and you guys can tell us about? Yeah, the center ramp has E-exits. So it's the left inner, right inner, and we also have a magnet in Wembley, so the Wembley Stadium can catch the ball. Oh, cool. And one thing is how to get the ball on the guitar. It's in the right orbit. There is a trap door. If that goes up, the ball is then transported onto the guitar. You said you can lock in the guitar You lock under the guitar So if you hit the upper exit of the guitar And you have the lock slit The bolt can be locked under it So we have two physical locks on there You said there's a magnet in Wembley Stadium So does the ball get pulled off of the left diversion? You play the ramps Both ramps go into Wembley There is a second ramp which you don't see very good Because it's under the guitar And that goes into Wembley from the right side And then in the back panel, there's the magnet which just catches the ball and then lets it down into the pop pump. Cool. What can you tell us about the overall objectives of the game and how you progress through it? Collect this and collect that, and then try to get the biggest jackpots. Okay. So you're collecting autographs, I read, and instruments and band members. There's lots of things to collect. Are they all different shots in the play field? They work differently to collect, yes. So if you collect an autograph, you don't get the fitting instrument. But it was easy to find out what to collect, right? Because the inserts are just there. Right. Yeah, that's definitely how we started out here. And then do you collect them just by making, you know, repeated shots? Or is there more nuance to it? Repeat shots or, yeah, but I don't have all the rules currently in my head because we're changing them as we go. because when we see something... I'm a guy who likes to do difficult games, and usually I go too far with that. Joe Schober is always telling me, no, that's too hard, let's make that easier and change how it works. Well, he would know. He has some history with writing few rules. He's on board to do it. Yeah, so when you look at this game, if you wrote the rules yourself, you would make the game a lot more challenging. In what way? Would you say you just have to make more shots to get something, or what was your initial take on it? Yeah, I guess it's, I wanted too many shots, and then I also, you need to play some combinations to collect some things. Okay. And then the thing is, on top of all that are the modes. Collecting is not playing a mode. A mode is something else. A mode is a song. Okay. The one goal in the game was that you are always playing a song. You should never be in a state where there is no song playing. I mean, they have one of the best bands in the world, so you have to listen to them. There's a ton of music pins out there. How did you guys start a song in this pin? And is every song different objectives, different lengths? Do you play through the entire song or just a piece of it? Can you tell us more about all that? You select a song before you plunge the ball. Or, I mean, you plunge it and then you play just the first song. And then you have different objectives for each song. And if you complete them, you can shoot into the left saucer and then you can select another song. Or you just play on and make some victory laps. Cool. Obviously, if you're buying this game, you're probably a fan of the band. And you've picked a lot of Queen music to pack into this pinball machine. You've got high-fidelity sound system, 8-inch bass speaker to highlight the 14 songs from Queen's Wembley live shows from 86 that are included in the game. Tell us about the video assets you have, and are the songs from the concert linked up to the video footage at all? Yeah, of course. I mean, we do have the video footage of two concerts in high-res, and the video and the songs are synchronized. Everything should fit together. You're listening to the live show, so why shouldn't you see the live show? Well, you act like that's standard, but it's not in some games. But that's a good attitude to have because then you reach for the gold. Music and pinball go hand-in-hand, and every pinball company has to have a music pin. So congratulations on officially joining the ranks now. You've been working on this game for a long time. And during that period, GNR by JJP was released, which many people consider to be the greatest band pin of all time at that point. Did that game inspire you to add, modify, or change anything in Queen? No, not at all. I mean, the game was ready before we saw GNR on the market, and we didn't change anything. And I think it completely works different. They made a completely different working game. I understand that right. And you will see that. And that's a fun thing, because we were discussing the user interface on the screen. And from the beginning, it was clear that we want a very clean layout and we want to show the concert mostly and not too many effects or hide the concert videos. So that is completely different. It's totally from another world. Really, really, really great looking game. Yeah. So I must say that. I'm sorry, Alexander. Which one? Queen, you mean? Yeah. Both. Both, yeah. Well, we talked a little bit about how you're going to really focus on the concert and get the concert experience like you're there at Wembley, and every song is a mode. So are you using the lights incorporated in the game in a way that you're syncing that to the music, or are they more gameplay-focused lighting systems? Yeah, we try to sync the light with the music, and in some parts of the rules said we have to. We want to give the player some hints on when to do what. And it's very important that the light show really sings to the beat or to the instruments. How challenging was that? I mean, your team is working on all of that stuff, the programming and everything, and the light shows. How many people does that include? Is it just the four of you guys? Is it more than that? I mean, I know Joe Schober was there as well, working on some of it. But who's working on the lights? Joe. Okay. Then we have Kenny, graphics and animation, and Ryan is doing the base software to make all its stuff work. And then we have a sound guy, Michael, and he is waiting to see if he can get this better. Okay. Let's talk model differences with the game. Similar to Alien, you're making two different models, a Champion Edition, which is the base model, and a Rhapsody Limited Edition that you're only making 1,000 of. On the first glance, the biggest difference between the two models is the art. So let's cover that first. You have, I hope I'm pronouncing the name right, Stefan Aiken from Germany on art. Tell us more about him and the two art packages for the game. Before I started in the pinball business, I had some software development companies, and the last one is a game company. And Stefan was working for that company back in the days, And when it was clear that we needed someone who was able to do some comic-style drawings, I just called him up and asked if he wanted to do that. And the thing is that he didn't see at first how large that project would be, but he just jumped in with both feet. Most artists don't when they get pulled in. I know the guy who did the artwork for Halloween for Spooky is not a pinball artist, and he swore he would never do another pinball machine again because he had no idea what was involved. We've talked to Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti), and he said he has people reaching out to him who've done pinball projects saying, like, I never realized how much work this was, and it is just brutal. So that's a lot. Did he enjoy it, or did he curse you out once he realized how much work he was involved with here? I think he had more of this fun all the time. Oh, good. That's great. So, I mean, outside of the art, the Rhapsody Edition looks like it will have primarily cosmetic improvements, like you did with the Alien LV model. Is your goal going to be consistently to try and keep gameplay between different models of your game similar? That is currently our sort of business decision to do that. It gets quite complicated when you start making different versions on the play field. But we also think that the games should play the same. So for now, that is how we think about it. I like that. Yeah, me too. For everyone eager to get their hands on one of these games, let's talk about the timelines for production. We've heard the production of the Champion Edition will start this month with the Rhapsody Edition coming in the first quarter of 2023. Is that correct? It's actually the other way around. Rhapsody is coming first. And Champion is planned to start in the first quarter of next year. So, yeah. It's the limited one, the golden one. Exactly. That's great. You're starting with the limited version this time. So with Alien, you did the standard first, and then you moved to the LE. So you're swapping that strategy this time. Is that to reward people who are going in on the better version early? Or why change the strategy there? I guess we kind of learned from the first try that people always want the limited. So that's the way we want to do it this time. I think that's called pinball privilege. To pay more, you want to be first. That's life too, right? I mean, so are you already starting to make these games? Are they on the line at Pedretti, or will they just be going in soon? They are going in soon. We hope to start in September, but it will be pushed a little bit. So we're looking at October now, I think. But it's very, very soon. Okay. So what's your estimate on the production capabilities of Pedretti at this point? Do you have a rough idea of how many games can be made in a week or a month, or what's your timetable with them? Yeah, we have pretty good knowledge. We are working very closely with Pedretti. I mean, the relationship is really, really great, and it will be strengthened onwards. So currently, their capacity is about somewhere in the area of 80 to 100 games a month. But their capacity isn't what really limits us, I think. It's the sourcing of parts, the shortage of components and other things. So, yeah, we don't see any huge problems to increase the production capacity, especially for next year. Probably everybody's facing in the business, yeah. Every business, practically. Yeah, it is. It's a nightmare, to be honest. Yeah, I can imagine. Not fun at all. For years now, Adam Lambert has been headlining Queen concerts and doing a really good job at it, and I've never seen them live, but I did watch a really cool Netflix documentary on how they found him and how really good he is at doing Freddie Mercury justice. Did you ever consider adding him into the machine in any way, even as like an Easter egg? Nope. probably a licensing thing but it's a good idea of course it would be a licensing and then the other thing is this is about the band Queen and not about Queen and Adam Lambert which is something different because they're just two Queen members and Adam Lambert and that's I think it's an own project and this here was clearly Queen in the 80s on live in concert and it has It's absolutely just nothing to do with Lemberg. What's really unique about the Pinball Brothers as a company is that you're all fairly far apart geographically. Alexander's in Germany, Roger in Kato or Norway, and you're based in Sweden, Daniel. How do you guys make that work? And is it challenging running your company this way? I mean, we all speak English, and I'm not sure if we're farther away than you three guys interviewing us. I have no idea where you're sitting. Our countries are a bit smaller than yours. There can be challenges as well. But I think the question is kind of justified. But what we are doing now is that we are trying to, we are focusing more on the things to Italy, actually, because some things are more efficient to have in one location. So we are doing some things to make it easier for ourselves. It's obviously not been easy with the pandemic because then we couldn't travel. Again, it's the same thing for everybody. But we are doing things to make our lives easier, for sure. But as Alexander says, in general, it is no problem being apart, because these days video calls are normality, I think. For a technology like pinball, where it's so hands-on, do you all have prototypes that you're playing on, or do you travel to Italy, to Pedretti, to kind of get your hands on the game? There are prototypes in several locations. Let's talk about the elephant in the room, because just today we actually realized that there are some licensing snafus and some things you guys are waiting to get a pass approval-wise. And so we may not be seeing this game at the tailgate party this year in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah, that's obviously extremely unfortunate. But it has to do with licensing, as we talked about before, and approvals for promotion of the game, basically. So not the game itself, but how it's promoted. And as I mentioned before, there are so many different parties involved, and everybody needs to prove, and everybody is very afraid to step on somebody's toes or do something wrong. And we are obviously also careful. And so, yeah, it's very unfortunate, and we are most frustrated of all, I think. But I understand that people will be very disappointed. But it's not much we can do about it, to be honest. Yeah, this is your business. So, you know, this is something you need to take very seriously and protect your license relationships and that sort of thing, especially as a new company where people are going to be, you know, talking, I'm sure. And they want to make sure that you are going to treat their properties with respect and do the right thing. So we appreciate that. We wouldn't want to put you guys in a bad situation. But nevertheless, you know, the game looks really fun and we can't wait to get our hands on it. You had mentioned that you may end up going to Pinball Expo this year. Is your goal obviously to bring Queen with you or? Yeah, sure. We definitely aim to be at Expo, and we will do everything we can to bring the games there, of course. Just so you guys know, Chris and Melissa told us that because of the sliding convenience of not having the game at the party that you guys are giving Christian, Jeff, and I all free games, so we want to thank you for that. Oh, if only that was true. That would be so nice. Daniel, it's been great getting to finally talk to the final pinball brother we haven't actually had a chance to speak with and get to know you a little. You guys have done a great job at rebuilding from a bad situation, and we can't wait to get our hands on this game. Thanks for giving us your time, working in the schedule, which is a completely different time zone from where we are. And, Alexander, thank you for coming on and joining us again for a second time. We didn't scare you off the first time, so we appreciate that. Might have this time, though. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys at Expo in October. And, Alexander, please take care of yourself and continued health. And every day above ground is a good day, sir. Thank you for having us. You're very welcome, guys. Appreciate you being on, guys. Thanks, guys. Nice to meet you. Thanks. Bye. Super awesome pinball show. Big thanks to Pinball Brothers for coming on and talking to us again and letting us know everything they've got going on, including Queen Pinball Machine, which unfortunately will not be at the super awesome tailgate party at Cointaker. Sorry. But we might have a little something to make up for that, right, Christian? Yeah, you know, if you can't have Queen, then you have to bring in the King, right? So we are going to get one of the most requested guests at any pinball show, the King of Flow himself, Steve Ritchie, will be there to shake your hand, perhaps have a fireball shot like Jeff and I have done with him in the past. And we'll do again. He will do again. He's a great guy. I can't wait to hang out with him personally. So it'll be good to have him there. So, you know, we take it the way we give it. We're going to have some great things at this show. Can't wait to be there with you guys. I'm excited to see him because I want to find out where he gets his skinny jeans. I think I need a few pairs of those. You see Steve Ritchie shopping at Hot Topic. Oh, man. I just want to know who does his hair. That's what I want to know. It's amazing. And it seems to get taller every time I see him. Every time. Every time. Bit head style. Anyway, hey, we got a new segment. We actually got something in our mail pouch. We don't usually get a ton of mail. And so when we do, it's always nice. And we've talked about doing a mailbag segment in the past, and we just never have gotten around to it. So, you know, honestly, though, a lot of the mail we get is not really something you bring up on the air and talk about. It's like it's not that it's like dirty or like, you know, I killed somebody. It's just stuff that doesn't make for a good segment on a podcast, you know. But apparently we got something. I don't know. I can't read it. It's like so fucking tiny on the script. I have no idea what it says. So I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say. So one of them was from our Quinn. He said, super awesome, dudes. enjoyed the recent episode and the return of the podcast. Just wanted to comment on Franchi's experience as a kid in a department store with Mom. I also played in the racks of clothes like they were forts, as well as picking up these plastic clips off the floor to shoot at targets with any rubber band or elastic strings from tags I found. And he sent a picture, which you guys probably can't really make out very well, these little, like, plastic hooks. I was wondering what that was, but now, yeah, because I remember those. Franchi, you're not the only guy who used to have to hang out in those stores. And I will confess something, too. Maybe he wasn't brave enough to do so. Or maybe I'm just far creepier than the average, like, whatever, 9-, 10-year-old kid. But it was always most fun to be under the racks in the lingerie section because the tags had pictures on them. Oh, my gosh. So I think I got in trouble once or twice for pulling the tags off and having a little collection of tags in my hand. Woo! It's pre-Internet, so you've got to take what you can get, right, Frankie? Right. All right. The next email before we get too creepy here from Chris Doherty, he says, greetings, you three. First off, great podcast. Been listening to the show for a while now and absolutely love the interviews. Also, it's probably the only podcast that makes me incredibly jealous while listening to it as I don't have access to a pinball machine and I'm only stuck with using games such as pinball effects, Zachariah and pinball arcade. They're good, but just not the same as the real thing. And he said, you touched on a little bit on your last episode, but would you be able to recommend to the listeners your personal picks on the best pinball documentaries to watch? I personally have only seen Special When Lit. All the best and look forward to your future episodes. So I thought this was a cool topic because, you know, there are so many pinball documentaries out there. And I'm certainly not an expert, but I know that you guys have probably seen a few. And if there are any that you would recommend. Yeah. What's the other one that I have besides Special When Lit? Oh, Tilt, the battle to save pinball, which is all about the pinball 2000, basically the end of what, and I remember living it, the time that we thought pinball was gone. You know, there was only going to be one manufacturer who wasn't putting out very great games at the time. Williams and Williams Valley was the king of pinball and decided to say, probably everybody knows the story at this point, But it's nice to see they interview everybody that was involved with the company at the time about, you know, how all of a sudden they just realized we're out of a job. You know, we tried and we couldn't. And it's actually kind of emotional because we know these guys now, like George Gomez. And to see him back then shortly after that all happened, putting this thing together was it's really interesting. And it's a great bit of history about pinball that some may not know all the details of. No, absolutely. it's so cool to see these people that you know that, you know, way back in the day, right, when they had these crazy haircuts and they just looked entirely different. But to see them, you know, back before I was really into pinball, and these are all stories I've heard now, but you actually get to see footage of those times in that era, and that was really cool. Yeah, this came out mid-2000s, so it's been around for a while. The one that I would recommend is the Things That Go Bump in the Night, the Spooky Pinball Story, because it does a really great job of kind of capturing the early days of Spooky, and they have a lot of good footage. They had a few documentary, a few people on that documentary who went around and took footage of their early manufacturing setup and had a lot of great interviews with Charlie and Bug and, you know, the whole clan over there. So it's cool if you know Spooky, if you're into their games, it's a piece of history that is not too far back. Like a lot of pinball history is, you know, way back in the day. This is fairly recent. So, you know, the quality of the movie is good. And then there's a movie about Robert Gagno called Wizard Mode that is also another good movie. I would recommend that. It's just, you know, Robert's a really special dude, and he's incredibly good at pinball, and his family is so supportive of his passion for the hobby. And this kind of takes you through his life, you know, going to tournaments, playing games at home, and, you know, the challenges he faces and how he overcomes them. It's a really, really good movie, so check that out. I think both of those are on Amazon or Netflix. Yeah, they're all on streaming services somewhere. And if not, you can get them cheap. You can buy them digitally cheap. One more I want to throw in there that's not really pinball related, but I think a lot of people that like pinball are into it, is The King of Kong, A Fistful of Quarters. Yes, I love that movie. Which is the documentary of, who's the guy's name that is there? Steve Weavey. Steve Weavey and Billy Mitchell. Yeah. Competing for the top Donkey Kong score to get the world record. And it happened at Fun Spot Arcade, which is literally like an hour drive from where I am now. We go there once every year. And it's the largest arcade in the world. They do have pinball machines. They're not always well-maintained, but they've got them. But you'll also, if you watch carefully, you may see people, because there are a lot of pinball people there as well, that you may recognize. Ron Hallett makes an appearance somewhere in this. Nice, Ron. I believe. But there are other people that I know that I've seen. Hey, I know these guys. But it's a great story. And I think a lot of people that play pinball, you know, a lot of them are into arcade games, too, so they enjoy it. True. Well, I've not seen too many documentaries. I've seen a special one, Lit, which I thought was trying to make pinball people look like weirdos. Yeah, it wasn't that. It had the wrong take on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's nice to see what pinball, you know, because this was mostly filmed at Papa. So if you've never been to that, you can see what that sort of thing was. Yeah, I think every documentary offers something cool where you can see things like that, you know. But honestly, I think my favorite is the Towering Inferno Part 2, Wolves I Set My Captain Fantastic on Fire. Oh, my God. Coming soon. That's a great documentary. It's like surely you've seen the Christmas Yule Log Fireplace video. This is just literally sitting there watching Captain Fantastic burn to the ground. But it's great for holidays. No, I smell a produced commercial coming for this. In the future. in a world where several million pinball machines were better than this one. One man couldn't take it anymore. I'm going to offer something a little bit different. Search YouTube for seminars from, like, back in the 80s. There's a great one with George Gomez right at the time when Bally Williams folded, and he gets real emotional, and he doesn't really hold it together towards the end because, you know, his career was over, you know, they just shut the door, you know, and said, see you, good luck, find something else. You can find a lot of little time capsules of the pinball hobby just by shopping through YouTube. You type in something like, you know, Chicago Expo. So this year's Chicago Expo is 37. If you type in Chicago Expo 30, you'll get seminars from seven years ago, you know, so I would shop around and do that. You can find some interesting things. I found a lot of neat things on there. As far as documentaries go, let's just hope in the future people do some better ones that are worth watching. I don't know if this is the one you're talking about, but there's a 1999 video of George Gomez and Pat Lawler at Pinball Expo. It's three hours. Oh. Set aside some time. One I watched was long, but I don't know if it was that one. I don't know if Pat Lawler was involved, but yeah, do some searches and you can find some really interesting stuff on YouTube. One more email and then we will close out the show. This one's from Matthew Kaiser, I believe is how you say his last name. And it's a correction, which is something that I knew after the show I had messed it up. He says, hey, guys, just listen to the show where you talked about Zoltron doing some pinball. He worked with Zombie Yeti on Primus Pinball and is credited on the play field. So Tom Drummond had brought up the fact that he had all these concert posters done by Voltron. And I was like, man, I know he somehow linked to pinball. And I brought up that Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) knew him. But no, that's the guy who did Primus with Jeremy. So they worked on that art package together. So thank you, Matt. Thanks for that correction. Yeah, and that's it. So, gentlemen, we're done with the mail package. We've done it again. Look at that. Just like she said, another one in the can. Oh, man. Needs to meet. You know, I've just got to make sure that this podcast doesn't shine too much. Got to keep it a little gritty. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, everybody. Stick around very shortly, actually, probably within the next couple of days. We are going to have a special little mini episode with Rob Burke and David Fix of the Chicago Pinball Expo. And they're going to go over all the changes in the venue and in the show itself, the improvements, exciting, cool things you can look forward to seeing. And I probably want to convince you to make the trek out to Chicago, and it sounds like it'll be worth it. So stick around for that. And other than that, see you next time. See you, guys. Thanks for listening. Say bye, Jeff. Bye, Jeff. If you'd like to send an email to the Super Awesome Pinball Show, you can do so by sending it to superawesomepinball at gmail.com. The original contents of this show is copyright 2022 Asshat Radio Productions. If you'd like to rock a Super Awesome Pinball t-shirt, you can find our no-profit shop on silverballswag.com. Just search for our logo and click on it, and there you go. Thanks for tuning in, everybody, and we'll see you next time. Now get out of here! _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: b04ccf47-2ba1-40a2-b514-bf96503bbbe8*