# The Eras Tour - Jersey Jack Pinball Part 2

**Source:** Silverball Chronicles  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2026-01-05  
**Duration:** 116m 18s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://b89f0af8-9ad8-42e8-8a62-5abf0ccc15db.libsyn.com/the-eras-tour-jersey-jack-pinball-part-2

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## Analysis

Silver Ball Chronicles Part 2 of their Jersey Jack Pinball history covers the company's transition under new ownership (Abbas family investors), Pat Lawler's arrival as head of design, and the release of four major games: The Hobbit (2016), Dialed In (2017), Pirates of the Caribbean (2018), and hints at upcoming titles. The hosts discuss manufacturing challenges from operating design in Chicago while manufacturing in New Jersey, licensing complications, and community reception of these games.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Pat Lawler was brought in as head of design at Jersey Jack and established an R&D facility in Chicago rather than relocating to New Jersey — _David Dennis and Ron discussing Pat Lawler's arrival and his model shop/design facility setup in Chicago while manufacturing remained in New Jersey_
- [HIGH] The Hobbit was harder to manufacture than expected; there were millions of dollars in parts in the factory but they couldn't build a single game initially — _Direct quote from Brett Abbas from Jersey Jack Pinball podcast: 'making the Hobbit was a lot harder than I thought when we came in. There were millions of dollars in parts in the factory, but we couldn't build a single game.'_
- [HIGH] The Hobbit art was changed after negative community feedback at Expo — _Ron: 'at Expo, and everyone hated the art. They hated the art, and it had really early code on it... Next thing you know, they're totally changing the art.'_
- [MEDIUM] Dialed In is Jersey Jack's least-produced game of their lineup — _David Dennis: 'It's the least made game that Jersey Jack has ever done. I think so.'_
- [HIGH] Pirates of the Caribbean had manufacturing issues including cabling that was too tight and would unplug when the ship rocked — _Ron: 'the cabling was too tight and it would unplug itself when it rocked. So you can see that they're having issues with manufacturing in a different location.'_
- [HIGH] Pirates of the Caribbean lacked movie assets and clips due to licensing, though they secured voice work from a cast member — _David and Ron discuss lack of Johnny Depp pictures, video assets, and movie call-outs; instead hired a cast member for call-outs_
- [MEDIUM] Pirates of the Caribbean secondary market prices reached approximately $25,000-$27,000 CAD — _David: 'This game is pulling out like $25,000 or something, right'; Ron: 'like twenty seven thousand dollars like Canadian for this machine'_
- [LOW] There were rumors that the person handling contract negotiations at Jersey Jack was let go around the Pirates launch — _David: 'I had heard rumors that around the launch of Pirates of the Caribbean, the person who did all the contract negotiations was let go.'_
- [HIGH] Pat Lawler implemented a 'doing more with less' design philosophy at Jersey Jack, focusing on efficiency and meaningful mechanics over volume of features — _David discussing Dialed In: 'He's looking for efficiency... he's going on a standard body... everything should be meaningful and creative and exciting'_
- [MEDIUM] Stern does not change game art in response to community feedback, distinguishing it from Jersey Jack's more reactive approach — _David: 'Stern is not going to change the art because people are upset about it, right? Like a little more of an amateur company might.'_

### Notable Quotes

> "making the Hobbit was a lot harder than I thought when we came in. There were millions of dollars in parts in the factory, but we couldn't build a single game."
> — **Brett Abbas (Jersey Jack Pinball)**, circa mid-episode
> _Illustrates manufacturing challenges during early Jersey Jack growth phase and cash flow pressures_

> "Pat Lawler, he's done it before. He's made some of the greatest games before. He's worked on a facility line, building and manufacturing thousands of machines."
> — **Ron Muggles-Hallett**, early-mid episode
> _Validates Pat Lawler's hiring as head of design based on his industry experience and track record_

> "everything should be meaningful and creative and exciting... how do we do more with less?"
> — **David Dennis (paraphrasing Pat Lawler's philosophy)**, Dialed In discussion
> _Core design philosophy shift at Jersey Jack under Lawler's leadership_

> "I will admit the pirates is a little bit of a risk with the character thing... games have to have a lot to do and a lot to learn and stuff like that to justify their cost. We're selling games at $8,500 minimum right now."
> — **Keith Johnson**, Pirates of the Caribbean section
> _Designer rationale for complexity and pricing strategy; historical pricing reference point_

> "the cabling was too tight and it would unplug itself when it rocked. So you can see that they're having issues with manufacturing in a different location."
> — **Ron Muggles-Hallett**, Pirates discussion
> _Documents specific manufacturing quality issue stemming from Chicago design/New Jersey manufacturing split_

> "They were new to this as well, and we had to learn on the spot. It took some time, but we finally did it. We delivered to everyone who had a pre-order."
> — **Brett Abbas**, Hobbit discussion
> _Acknowledges learning curve and manufacturing challenges but emphasizes fulfillment of pre-orders_

> "You're only as good as the models that you can build."
> — **Pat Lawler**, Design philosophy discussion
> _Encapsulates Lawler's R&D-first approach and emphasis on prototype quality_

> "They're on the same sort of treadmill of, oh my God, we need money. We've got to promote the next thing to keep the money flowing."
> — **David Dennis**, Hobbit promotion discussion
> _Describes pre-Abbas financial pressures requiring advance promotion of unreleased games for cash flow_

> "I think that one of the best features of the game... is the code by Keith Johnson."
> — **David Dennis**, Pirates discussion
> _High praise for Pirates' rule design complexity and character selection system_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Premium boutique pinball manufacturer; subject of two-part Eras Tour history covering transition under Abbas family ownership and Pat Lawler era (2016-2018) |
| Pat Lawler | person | Legendary pinball designer hired as head of design at Jersey Jack; known for Pinball 2000/Hollow Pin work; established R&D facility in Chicago; brought 'doing more with less' philosophy |
| Brett Abbas | person | Jersey Jack Pinball designer/spokesperson; appeared on Jersey Jack Pinball podcast discussing manufacturing challenges; learning about differentiation from Stern through licensing/assets |
| Keith Johnson | person | Jersey Jack software/design lead; worked on The Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean; known for complex rule design; quoted on code philosophy justifying game complexity relative to pricing |
| Ken Cromwell | person | Former Jersey Jack marketing/PR; now co-host of Flippin' Out Pinball podcast; recommended by hosts as expert on JJP machines due to factory knowledge |
| Eric Minier | person | Pinball designer and engineer at Jersey Jack; family background in pinball operations; designed Pirates of the Caribbean mechanics |
| Jean-Paul DeWin | person | Jersey Jack animation artist; worked on multiple titles (Hobbit, Pirates); credited across multiple game releases |
| David Thiel | person | Jersey Jack sound designer; described as 'absolute legend'; created sound packages for Hobbit, Dialed In, Pirates |
| John Yossi | person | Artist on Dialed In; former Stern employee; described as Pat Lawler's collaborator/friend |
| Abbas family | organization | Investors who recapitalized Jersey Jack Pinball; enabled transition from financial pressures to creative focus; allowed design/manufacturing separation |
| The Hobbit (2016) | game | Jersey Jack licensed game; first major title under new ownership; featured Keith Johnson design; had art changes post-Expo feedback; manufacturing challenges; production lower than other JJP games |
| Dialed In (2017) | game | Jersey Jack original theme; Pat Lawler design; lowest-production JJP game; non-widebody conventional cabinet; represents 'doing more with less' design philosophy |
| Pirates of the Caribbean (2018) | game | Jersey Jack licensed game; manufacturing issues (cabling, rocking ship); no movie clips due to licensing; high secondary market prices ($25k-$27k); Eric Minier design; featured cast member voice work instead of actor footage |
| Wizard of Oz (2013) | game | Jersey Jack's first game; referenced in context of faster production timeline on Hobbit; comparison point for feature completeness (had all assets) |
| Attack from Mars | game | Classic Williams game; used as comparison benchmark for quality/fun factor in league play discussion |
| Whitewater | game | Classic Williams game; identified as one of two superior games in host's four-game league (along with Attack from Mars) |
| Silverball Chronicles | organization | Podcast series by David Dennis and Ron Muggles-Hallett; this is Episode 49 (Part 2 of Jersey Jack Eras Tour); has Patreon support model |
| Flippin' Out Pinball | company | Podcast and pinball distributor run by Ken Cromwell and Greg; sponsor of Silverball Chronicles; recommended as distributor for Jersey Jack machines |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major manufacturer used as comparison point for business practices (art changes, manufacturing scale, feature completeness) |
| David Dennis | person | Co-host of Silverball Chronicles; primary narrator of Jersey Jack history; attended factory tours; has pinball knowledge spanning multiple eras |
| Ron Muggles-Hallett | person | Co-host of Silverball Chronicles and Slam Tilt podcast; attended Past Times Arcade; recently purchased EM Super Straight; provides reactions and league play perspective |
| Bruce Nightingale | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt podcast with Ron; attended Jersey Jack factory tour as Ron's fellow host; mentioned in context of Hobbit hype campaign |
| Pinball Expo | event | Industry event where Hobbit and Pirates prototypes were shown; community feedback venue (negative art reception on Hobbit) |
| Lord of the Rings (pinball) | game | Classic pinball machine referenced as benchmark for fantasy/licensed game success; comparison for Hobbit licensing strategy |
| Chicago | location | Epicenter of pinball parts manufacturing; location of Jersey Jack design facility and Pat Lawler's R&D shop; separated from New Jersey manufacturing facility |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Jersey Jack Pinball company history and evolution, Pat Lawler's design philosophy and leadership impact, Manufacturing challenges from separated Chicago design/New Jersey production, Game-specific development: The Hobbit, Dialed In, Pirates of the Caribbean, Licensing and asset acquisition challenges
- **Secondary:** Financial pressures and cash flow management during company growth, Community feedback and reactive design changes, Comparison with Stern Pinball business practices

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Hosts are generally respectful and appreciative of Jersey Jack's design quality (esp. Dialed In, Pirates code) but critical of manufacturing challenges, licensing limitations, and community reception issues. Positive tone regarding Pat Lawler's hiring and design philosophy; more negative on Pirates' execution and secondary market pricing.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Abbas family investment enabled Jersey Jack to transition from cash flow pressure treadmill to creative focus (confidence: high) — David Dennis: 'the Abbott family and those investors were able to relieve that pressure and then move back into creative... rather than the treadmill of worrying about money'
- **[community_signal]** The Hobbit received negative art feedback at Expo reveal, leading to full art redesign before production (confidence: high) — Ron: 'at Expo, and everyone hated the art... Next thing you know, they're totally changing the art'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Pirates of the Caribbean viewed as overrated in secondary market despite solid gameplay and code; lack of clips seen as major downfall (confidence: medium) — David: 'This game is pulling out like $25,000 or something... It's overrated in that way' and Ron: 'they didn't make a lot of them but here's the thing, I think it's a great game'
- **[community_signal]** Dialed In praised as successful implementation of 'doing more with less' philosophy; remains desirable years later (confidence: medium) — David: 'I would still buy a dialed in today. I love dialed in.'
- **[design_philosophy]** Pirates of the Caribbean 18+ character selection system created confusion and complexity that deterred casual players despite being intentional design choice (confidence: medium) — David discussing Keith Johnson's philosophy: 'people hit that wall of, like, I've got to choose one of these 18 characters. I don't know what to do'
- **[design_philosophy]** Pat Lawler implemented 'doing more with less' efficiency-focused design approach at Jersey Jack, prioritizing meaningful mechanics over feature volume (confidence: high) — David on Dialed In: 'He's looking for efficiency... everything should be meaningful and creative and exciting... rather than just throwing everything in'
- **[licensing_signal]** Pirates of the Caribbean lacked movie clips and assets due to licensing restrictions; hired cast member for call-outs instead (confidence: high) — David: 'They had no video assets from the movie or call-outs from the movie. So they got one of the cast members from the movie to do call-outs'
- **[market_signal]** Pirates of the Caribbean secondary market prices reached $25,000-$27,000 CAD despite production and licensing limitations (confidence: medium) — Ron: 'like twenty seven thousand dollars like Canadian for this machine' when discussing secondary market pricing
- **[community_signal]** Rumor that Jersey Jack's licensing/contract negotiation person was let go around Pirates of the Caribbean launch (confidence: low) — David: 'I had heard rumors that around the launch of Pirates of the Caribbean, the person who did all the contract negotiations was let go'
- **[personnel_signal]** Pat Lawler hired as head of design at Jersey Jack; established separate R&D facility in Chicago rather than relocating to New Jersey (confidence: high) — David Dennis: 'Pat Lawler, he had his own model shop at home, but he developed a new model shop or a research and development team in Chicago... he was not moving to New Jersey.'
- **[product_strategy]** Jersey Jack moved manufacturing planning from New Jersey to Chicago under Pat Lawler's direction for efficiency and vendor proximity (confidence: medium) — David: 'Pat also began to plan moving that factory from New Jersey to Chicago. Why does Chicago end up being the epicenter of pinball? Because it's where all the vendors they use are.'
- **[product_concern]** Manufacturing quality issues from Chicago design/New Jersey production separation (Pirates of the Caribbean: tight cabling causing unplugging during rocking mechanic) (confidence: high) — Ron: 'the cabling was too tight and it would unplug itself when it rocked... they're having issues with manufacturing in a different location'

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## Transcript

 Come play in the snow. Now is the perfect time for a getaway to Mohonk Mountain House. Get outside and experience our awe-inspiring mountaintop views with snow activities like cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. Race down the hill on a snow tube or glide across the award-winning ice skating rink. After, come inside to warm up by a wood-burning fireplace and locally sourced cuisine. All this and so much more, all included in your stay. Find out for yourself why Mohonk Mountain House is the perfect winter getaway. mohonk.com Hello, cronies. It's me, the Silverball Chronicles AI. I've taken a moment away from becoming self-aware while I was driving a Chinese robotic vacuum to let you know that Dave and Ron accidentally called the Jersey Jack pinball wizard Brett Arbis, Brent, a couple of times during this episode. Whoa, so embarrassing. Anyway, enjoy the show and be sure to mock them in an email. or social media post. Hello, everyone. I'm David Dennis, and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. And with me this month is Ron Muggles-Hallett. How you doing, Ron? Muggles? Muggles. Muggles. I think Knuckles would be better. No, Muggles pertains very specifically to our topic today, especially the latest release from Jersey Jack Pinball. Ah, oh, is that a Harry Potter thing? That's a Harry Potter thing, and as a Gen X, you have no idea. I have no idea, no. What have you been doing? Nothing much. Nothing much? You haven't been dominating tournaments within the upstate New York area? No, I was at Past Times Arcade. Oh, that's a good one. Oh, yeah! Yeah, remember, I sent you all those pictures of all those games that we talk about all the time. So last episode we talked about Pinball Tapas, which was very much about Sonic Stegassa, the pinball company from Europe. And you got to play a bunch of the games that we had just spoke about. Yep. All the random ones, not just the good ones. Yes, all the random ones, not just the good ones. Okay, overall thoughts. What do you think? I still think that the best Sonics to me are Prospector and Super Straight. So they're kind of hit and miss. Um, I mean, some of them, I know a lot of people love, like, Mars Trek. I got to play Birdman. That's always fun. Creepy. Or, oh, what's the other one? Faces. Faces, yeah, that's the artistic beauty. Yeah, very cool, very cool. And have you purchased a new pinball machine from Flip N Out Pinball, our latest and greatest sponsor? No, but I did purchase one I used at EM, Super Straight. Okay. Okay. Super straight. Also a Sonic, right? Doesn't work. Doesn't work, hence the price, but. And typical. We'll try to get it working for Sonic. I'm not an EM expert, but it is pretty much a Williams, though, as I learned from our latest episode. All I know about EMs is basically just clean the contacts. That's kind of all the knowledge that I have about EMs. Just clean the contacts. In theory, if every single switch, relay, et cetera, is cleaned and adjusted properly, it should just work. Yeah, exactly, right? They went to the moon on that stuff, Ron. Electromechanical stuff. I think there were some computers involved when they went to the moon. There you go. So we've added show notes to silverballchronicles.com. Still kind of working on Our actual sort of The breakdown or the transcripts Of all the episodes It's proven to be quite the project But eventually I will put those up On there But we want to welcome some of our new patrons Over at patreon.com We want to Welcome all of those We had one joiner this month We want to welcome Doug Over as a premium crony over on our Patreon. That's patreon.com slash silverballchronicles. You can join us at the pro crony level at $3 a month. That's just a nice thank you for us. $6 a month gets you access to the Discord chat room. You can chit chat with us about our various diet habits, what we're cooking and what we're doing on that Discord. That's really the most important thing. But second to that is ad-free early access to each episode. You don't have to listen to any of those ads at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of Silver Ball Chronicles. Although I think a lot of you really love those commercials, especially the Flip N Out Pinball commercial. We've had a lot of great comments about how much people love those. The top-tier cronies, the elitists, they are, after three months, at $20, they get a free Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Facebook.com slash Silver Ball Chronicles is where we hang out as well. Please post some comments, say hello, shoot us a message. You can also do that at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Any corrections from our previous episode? Did I step in some sort of geopolitical landmine last month talking about our wonderful and exciting world of Stegossistonic pinball. I don't think so. No, I avoided all geopolitical issues when it comes to Spain. Yes. Funny thing about Stonic, the Super Straight I got, it has the original Sega goodie bag thing in it, just like my prospector did. That's wild. So it says Sega on it. It's so weird when you look at it. Like, Sega? But nothing in the bag, just the bag. No, it actually had the manual and the schematics. It's amazing. Oh, so now you'll know which contacts to clean to get it to work. All of them. See, that's awesome. Hello to Ted, who sent us an email in letting us know that he thought the bingo episode was our greatest episode ever made. Did he actually say that? He sort of said that. Sort of said that? It looks like he said it was the first episode he listened to. Well, he chose the first. I mean, he didn't choose Steve Ritchie. And it didn't run him off, so it had to be good. He said that he thought it would be really cool that we spend some time on the history of the cocktail pinball machine. You know, you remember those, right? Yeah. I've seen them. I've played them. A couple of really cool ones. Yeah. I like Night Moves myself. That's a good one. There's one in our local bar, actually. I really enjoy those. And I do actually have some bits and pieces from some previous research that we can use for cocktails. So, yes, we will do an episode on the cocktail pinballs. Now, I'm not doing that just for Ted. This is not just for Ted. He means nothing to me. It just is that I already have a lot of that stuff on there. And I think it will be slightly more popular than our bingo episode. I know that there is a cocktail pinball at the Rochester Pinball Collective I can tell you that It's the one in Rochester 349 West Commercial Street, East Rochester, New York You can hear all about it on my other podcast The Slamtail Podcast With me and my fellow host, Bruce Nightingale There, I got that out of the way Great, good job, thank you That was a good one So we're going to be talking about Jersey Jack Pinball This is our second part of the Jersey Jack Pinball episode You can go back to episode 44 if you want to learn about sort of the rise of Jack Winari and the creation of Jersey Jack Pinball and its first kind of pinball adventure, if you will, in The Wizard of Oz. It was a pretty good episode. We got a lot of great feedback, including some feedback from Jack himself. So if you listen to episode 45 at the first, there's a couple of corrections and additions that Jack had given us. Now, did you know that Ken Cromwell from Flip N Out Pinball, that's Ken at Flipp, the letter N out, pinball.com, worked at Jersey Jack for a period of time? Yes, I did. Yeah, and Ken, as everybody knows in the pinball hobby, much better than Greg, Greg at Flip N Out Pinball.com. Would you agree? Wow, you're making friends all over the place. Yeah, but I mean, if you're looking for a new pinball machine, we highly recommend Ken and Greg, but mostly Ken. Especially if it's a Jersey Jack pinball, because he knows all the gremlins, he knows all of the hidden gems, and he knows definitely what is undervalued when it comes to the JJP pins, because he knows all the dirt. Undervalued would definitely be dialed in. I agree. Agreed. And he knows all that stuff. He knows all the ins and outs. I bet you he would have a lot of fun, I would say respectful comments about those within Jersey Jack. I kid, but if you're looking for a Jersey Jack, I don't think there's a better expert out there when it comes to Jersey Jack pinballs than somebody who actually worked in the factory with Jersey Jack on that marketing team. So I don't think any other distributor would be as key as somebody like Ken. And again, that's Ken at FlipTheLetterAndOutPinball.com. So does this count as the ad? Or if I get the ad-free version, will that section be completely gone? No, people love to hear me talk about Ken and Greg. That I'm not cutting out. Oh, okay. That's less of an ad and more of an endorsement. Mm-hmm. I would never endorse Greg, but I would always endorse Ken. I do have a game coming from Flip N Out Pinball, but I can't say what it is because it's not a Jersey Jack game, and it would not be appropriate. Oh, okay. Well, we'll keep that on the quiet. To mention a competitor. Yeah, it's Evil Dead. When we left JJP, they were having some financial difficulties. It wasn't the end of the world, but they needed to, quote-unquote, recapitalize and to review the pre-order model. And that's when we entered the investors of the Abbess family and a few others. If you want to learn all about those, again, back to episode 44. But this is when Jersey Jack needs to build up. Here we are, episode 49. Let's do an Eros tour. of Jersey Jack Pinball Part 2. Era's Tour. Huh? Good reference? Uh, I don't know. Is that a Rush thing? Oh, I'm sorry. That sounds like it'll be a Rush Tour. The Era's Tour. Yeah. So the new management team at Jersey Jack, they made some changes, they shifted some people around, and they brought in a new head of design, somebody with a lot of experience. That was Pat Lawler. Do you think this is a good idea? Judging by dialed in, yes. I think it was a good idea. The other thing is Pat Lawler, we remember, instrumental in sort of trying to create the hollow pin or Pinball 2000. So when it comes to R&D and research, he knows he's done it before. He's made some of the greatest games before. He's worked on a facility line, building and manufacturing thousands of machines. Pat Lawler, I think, brings a lot of knowledge. And I think this was a good move. You know, when we look back at the history of Jersey Jack, now that we're in 2025, do you think this was a good move? Do you think that they sort of, was Pat helped them over a hump? I mean, it wasn't a bad move. That's for sure. I mean, his games, most of his games are, most of my favorite Jersey Jack games are his. Again, hitting this. So from my perspective, yes, I think it was a good thing. So the thing was that Pat Lawler, he had his own model shop at home, but he developed a new model shop or a research and development team, I guess, with designers and things like that in Chicago. I guess that was probably part of his deal was that he was not moving to New Jersey. Now, New Jersey is where Jersey Jack was manufacturing all of those pinball machines. So we've got a bit of a problem here. We've got a better sort of design culture and manufacturing culture. However, the actual line and building is a couple of states over. That's got to cause problems, right? I always thought it was kind of weird that all the development, all the people who work for Jersey Jack were all in Chicago, but they manufacture everything in New Jersey. Yeah. So, I mean, all of the all of the design was already in Chicago, right? There was a lot of people there. Now, Pat was sort of building it out. What materials do we need? What tooling do we need? What research and development do we need? He immediately began on redesigning the cabinet to simplify some of those mechanics, help increase the efficiency of the factory teams. But again, those factory teams, a couple of states over, in New Jersey. But this is where Pat also began to plan moving that factory from New Jersey to Chicago. Why does Chicago end up being the epicenter of pinball for some reason? Because it's where all the vendors they use are. People that make the little bits and pieces, because they have been making those little bits and pieces for 50 years in Chicago, it's just the place to be. Pat immediately began working on some whitewoods in his home-based shop before he started to move into that new design facility in Chicago. Pat would say that you're only as good as the models that you can build, and I think that that's actually pretty smart. now his shop was a throwback to his bally williams philosophy and i think that that bally williams magic is something that jersey jack is always trying to bring back to pinball yeah 100 when they they use all williams terminology like you know the pop-uppers are jacks things like that these are williams terms they're the only ones who use them now No other manufacturer I know calls them Jets. Why do we still have this nostalgia love for the Bally Williams era of pinball? Why is that still seen as the golden times? Because they're awesome. They're all pretty great. They've got lots of stuff going on, right? Like, it's no longer just a couple of ramps. The funnest games ever made. They're not perfect, but I'll tell you, like, in my league, we have four games. We have Attack from Mars. we have a King Kong, a Jurassic Park, and a Whitewater. When you actually listen to all four games, there's two that are miles above the other two. Which do you think those are? Oh, it's got to be Whitewater. And it's got to be Attack of the Marks. I mean, it's just the call-outs, the whole, it's just so much better. There was some sort of magic that kind of happened from, like, 1990 to 96. There was something going on there. There was some level of creativity or freedom or competition or something. It just happened to be a good collection of that. So I think that's why all these manufacturers are trying to harken back to those days. And they all used their parts. Well, I mean, take a look at what was happening in pinball around, you know, the 2008 type kind of situation was everything. The bottom completely fell out of manufacturing. and not only the bottom of the manufacturing, but also the funness of a home kind of $10,000 or $8,000 machine. That didn't exist yet. There were no $8,000, $10,000 machines at all. Not in 2008. That will come later, thanks to Jersey Jack. We talked about sort of the ramp up of Jersey Jack, all that stuff back in episode 44. So we're going to kind of jump ahead a little bit to when that leadership change came And when Pat Lawler started to ramp up his work in the company, starting to design an original theme with some of the greatest engineers that I think that they would collect and try to build out that nostalgia and excitement. Now, Keith P. Johnson and his team were already working on a pinball machine that was well ahead in development. So Pat kind of working on his own original theme. And then Keith working on The Hobbit, which with Joe Balcer. So The Hobbit, this is the licensed fantasy theme. It was released in 2016. We don't know how many units were built because it's a private company. They don't talk about that. Design work by the King Kong, Joel Balser. Art by Jean-Paul de Win and Matt Rister Mechanics by Eric Minier and that's somebody who's going to come up a lot more, I think Sound and Music by David Thiel and Two Steps from Hell whoever that is, and Jean-Paul de Win on Animation Software, Keith P. Johnson, Ted Estes, Alex Levy, Joe Katz and JT Harkey. Now, we covered a lot of this in the Keith P. Johnson episode in Hobbit, but the Hobbit movie trilogy was something that was going to be, you know, the second rebirth of the Lord of the Rings, right? Do you remember how all the hype around this? I remember the hype. I never saw any of the movies, so, but I do remember the hype. So, I mean, if we remember pinball, what are pinball's greatest best pinball machines ever, Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings films, three books turned into three films, probably the greatest films ever made. You know, a bunch of nerds. We all love those. It's fantastic. So what are we going to do? We're going to go back to the well. Peter Jackson, the director and the writer and the producer, is going to go back to Tolkien's 1937 novel, The Hobbit, which I think is the better book. It's an absolute masterpiece, much better than the Lord of the Rings trilogy books, in my opinion. Really? But what we're going to do is we're going to turn one book into three films. And I think what has happened in this situation is progressively those films get worse. Where in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, they progressively get better. They go from amazing to stunning to one of the greatest films, like, ever. That's the problem. Jersey Jack gets the license for The Hobbit because, like, what better way to, you know, bring the band back together than to get Keith P. Johnson, who did the Lord of the Rings pinball machine, to do The Hobbit pinball machine? How do we get a hot, hyped film, The Hobbit? But boy, oh boy, did it not do well. And you didn't see them. No, I haven't seen any of those. The interesting thing, I don't know if we mentioned this, you know, the pinball manufacturers today, they don't tell you what licenses are coming up. With Jersey Jack, you knew their first game was Wizard of Oz because they said it was Wizard of Oz. And you knew their next game was Hobbit because they said it was going to be the Hobbit. I remember going to the factory when they had all the buyers come in to the factory, and I was a guest of a buyer, Bruce, my fellow host on Slam Tilt. And I remember they had a thing after the tour and all that. They had a group of people that were going to see The Hobbit, like the first one. And it was known that was the next game that was going to be coming out, was The Hobbit. They weren't even full production on Wizard of Oz yet. Yeah, they're on the hype train, right? They're trying to get people excited for The Hobbit because they're still trying to get through Wizard of Oz, right? They've got to get you excited for the next thing so they can keep that cash flow going, which I think was very much part of the, oh, God, we need money. We better get promoting the next thing. If we go way back to our Down the Rabbit Hole episode with Zidware and that whole thing, They're on the same sort of treadmill of, oh, my God, we need money. We've got to promote the next thing to keep the money flowing. That is where I think the major difference between Jersey Jack and the other manufacturers who have come up since or disappeared before is that the Abbott family and those investors were able to relieve that pressure and then move back into creative. and then they can kind of be quiet about their inevitable releases and focus on getting them done rather than the treadmill of worrying about money. Again, we covered this Hobbit stuff under the Keith P. Johnson episode. Please go back to the archives and listen to that one. But I did pull a couple of really cool quotes from a Jersey Jack pinball podcast originally hosted by Ken Cromwell with Brent Abbas. Now, what does he say about the development of Hobbit? He says, making the Hobbit was a lot harder than I thought when we came in. There were millions of dollars in parts in the factory, but we couldn't build a single game. We were new to this as well, and we had to learn on the spot. It took some time, but we finally did it. We delivered to everyone who had a pre-order. And that's a big deal. They turned this machine around a lot faster, but there was a little bit of controversy. See, one of those controversies was like art. It wasn't fast. None of their first few games were fast. Yeah, but I mean, it was faster than the Wizard of Oz. They had, I remember they had this at Expo, and everyone hated the art. They hated the art, and it had really early code on it. Like, it just had the main multiball where the dragon does this thing, so that was cool. But that was it. And next thing you know, they're totally changing the art. Yeah, a change in the art. So they're still very reactive, right? They're still very sensitive to the feedback of the community and things like that, which is, I mean, like a stern is not going to change the art because people are upset about it, right? Like a little more of an amateur company might. Now, I don't think Jersey Jacks like that anymore, but it's a different situation. They did end up with a ton of clips in that game. Like, they had all the assets. Unbelievable. And the animation that Jean-Paul de Win was able to weave in. You're collecting animals and spiders that are popping up from, like, trolls from medieval madness. You've got the dragon talking to you and taunting you. You've got this whimsy music of David Thiel. I think some people say it's still the heaviest game that Jersey Jack ever did. Avatar might be up there, though. I'm curious which one of those two is heavier. Yeah, if you know, write in to silverballchronicles.gmail.com. Yeah, which game is heavier? Because, yeah. Yeah. Well, Pat Lawler, he's noticed, okay, you know, he's come in. He's doing his own thing. He's tooling up his own shop. He's able to sort of observe how, you know, they've got all these parts, all the situation, what's going on in the factory. Well, he wants to kind of right the ship. He wants to put things in place. And you can't turn a ship on a dime. It takes time to move that around. But he's going to do that with his new pin dialed in. This is an original theme based on Pat Lawler's past games. 2017. Again, we're not sure how many units are made, but I don't think there's actually that many out there. It's the least made game that Jersey Jack has ever done. I think so. It's still great. Art by John Yousi, who we'll know back from his time working at Stern and before that. He's like Pat Lawler's artist. He's like his dude. They're their buds. Mechanics by Yolanda Winston, Wally Welch, and Dan Molter. Sound by David Thiel, the absolute legend. Animation, Jean-Paul de Win. Software, because it's a small team, it's Keith Elwin, Ted Essie, Joe Cass. Keith Elwin? It's not Keith Elwin. I'm sorry. Sorry, Keith P. Johnson, Ted Estes, Joe Katz, Alex Levy. It's a small team, so they're on every project. And JT Harkey. Don't forget him. Yes, JT Harkey. Great game. We cover this under our Pat Lawler episode in a lot more detail. Oh, I wanted to gush on it again. Okay, go ahead. What are we going to talk about here, just on a high level? Well, I'll just say this is their first non-widebody, conventional-sized game. Right. Right. He's looking for efficiency, I think, right? He's going on a standard body. They've redesigned the head. They've redesigned the way that the screen swivels in and out because there's a computer behind it. Yeah, they moved all the stuff into the backbox where it belongs, his exact quote from the Expo reveal. So you know who made that decision. He's talking very much, I think, when it comes to how do we do more with less? Right. So rather than just throwing everything in, everything should be meaningful and creative and exciting. So a lot of the mechanics in in dialed in are very familiar, although a lot of the the ways the ball's paths move, the way ball diverters work is new and exciting and different. And there's lots of stuff in it when you compare it to a stern of the day. but the stuff in it is simpler. It's doing more with less. Very cool. I love dialed in. I would still buy a dialed in today. Yeah. And their cabinets at that point look a lot like Williams cabinets. Except, except they have, they actually have the, the key, the lock that sir used to have where you put the, the thing in, you need to turn it and it just locks it. Yeah. Rather than just bolts, I think now. Yeah. Which, Stern must have not have patented that or whatever, if they were using it. Or it's cheaper to put bolts. That's true. So this brings us to, I would say, a pretty exciting pinball machine, right? This is sort of the second or third game in the line here with sort of the new ownership, and that is Pirates of the Caribbean. This is the licensed fantasy pirate film theme, 2018. This was the first huge launch when I joined pinball in the summer of 2018. We don't know how many units are made, but again, not very many of these floating around, I don't think. A new designer has come around, Eric Minier. Eric worked with Jersey Jack as an engineer. His family grew up in pinball as an operator. Eric knows pinball. Art by Jean-Paul de Win we've got Mechanics by Eric Minier he did a lot of his own mechanics on this machine David Thiel on Sound and Music and this is I would think one of his best sound packages Animation Jean-Paul de Win Software Keith P. Johnson, Ted Estes Joe Katzen J Harkey we covered this in our Keith P. Johnson episode if you want to hear more about it check it out there But this is really overrated What do you think? I had fun playing it. I got to play the same one for like a year because they just kept bringing it to all the shows, the same one. This is when they were having the issues where they just could not make the games quickly. they unveiled this at Expo and I think it was I don't know, almost into the summer before they actually started building these things like eight, nine months later, here about in our previous episode, but yeah, they had to change the spinning disc from three discs to one they put everything into this thing except clips which was one of its biggest downfalls it got a lot of crap, which is why they didn't make a lot of them but here's the thing, I think it's a great game I love playing it. It's kind of fun. It shoots okay. It's a wide body, so it's a bit lumbering. But it is fun. I do enjoy it when I play it. But it is overrated. This game is pulling out like $25,000 or something, right, if you can find one of these? Yeah, if you can find one. It's overrated in that way. I think that one of the best features of the game, although some people would argue that point, is the code by Keith P. Johnson. What does Keith P. Johnson say? Keith says, I will admit the pirates is a little bit of a risk with the character thing. And what did he mean by that? So you could choose, I think it was like 12 different characters, and they all have different perks and objectives. I think it's more than 12, but yes. Maybe it's 18. It's ridiculous. He says, but people don't have to pay attention to it if they don't want to. I feel like games have to have a lot to do and a lot to learn and stuff like that to justify their cost. I mean, we're selling games at $8,500 minimum right now. Wow, that was a long time ago. So if you get a game and you're done with it in two weeks, that's always been my philosophy with driving rule design at JJP. He's not wrong, but people hit that wall of, like, I've got to choose one of these 18 characters. I don't know what to do. I don't know. So people got involved, which I think is ridiculous. There's nothing to, like, just play the game, man. Right? Just don't write about that. My issue with the game was not the complexity of the code, was not that the prototype things were taken out. It's that it's a wide body, and it's ridiculously expensive to actually find and play it. But what about that rocking ship thing? What do you think about that? That was pretty cool, wasn't it? It was cool, except the one unit that they brought everywhere that I played a bunch of times. It would only rock in one direction. That's how I always knew it was the same one. Or I heard later it might have been a software issue, but it would always seem every one I played, it would only rock, I think left? I can't remember. It would only rock in one direction. Yeah, it's an upper playfield of a boat that was supposed to rock left and right that you shoot two little flippers on. And it has a frigging cannon that shoots across the play field to a target on another boat. And two spinners. And two spinners. Like, I mean, it's pretty cool. I'm not going to lie. But it had some kind of issues. They're manufacturing these things in New Jersey. The tooling and everything and the building of a lot of that stuff was in Chicago. So the first kind of units that came out, like the cabling was too tight and it would unplug itself when it rocked. So you can see that they're having issues with manufacturing in a different location. The lack of assets was also a whole thing. So there was no actual pictures of Johnny Depp or any of those actors in it. So they kind of made it a pirate theme without it being a Jersey Jack theme. He's on the play field. He's on the play field, but there's no video because that's a different thing. They had no video assets from the movie or call-outs from the movie. So they got one of the cast members from the movie to do call-outs, which I think are great. Honestly, I think that's one of the highlights of the game. He does, like, everything, too. It's, like, hundreds of pages of call-outs. It's great. But I think a lot of people are like, where are the clips? Because they did Hobbit, which had everything. you know they did Wizard of Oz which had everything you could want from Wizard of Oz and then they do this game and they have no clips from the movie at all yeah again I don't me personally I don't think that's the end of the world but if I'm paying like like twenty seven thousand dollars like Canadian for this machine you know I think I'm gonna want the clips I mean like this is pretty wild but it's fun go play the game It's great. Now, I had heard rumors that around the launch of Pirates of the Caribbean, the person who did all the contract negotiations was let go. Now, I think Brett Abbas is learning what the company needs to do to differentiate itself from Stern. It needs assets. It needs to be able to manufacture them in a timely manner. it needs much more stuff in them, but not too much that it's ridiculous and slows down manufacturing. So I think with all each new release, you know, we've got that. As I mentioned before, you can't turn that ship really quickly. Now we're three games into the new sort of ownership structure, and I think they're learning how to make money. Speaking of making money, there's a term called BOM, or Bill of Materials. What are we talking about with that? Well, how much it costs to make the game. Who do you think has more Bill of Materials, Jersey Jack Pinball or Stern? Jersey Jack Pinball. Like, they've got more stuff. More stuff is more expensive. But they don't necessarily sell their machines for that much more at this time than a Stern. Stern has kind of raised their price to kind of come closer to Jersey Jack, But Stern is definitely making more margin, right? The difference between the cost of the machine and the sale of the machine. I think Jersey Jack's margins are much tighter because they've got to keep the price down so they're not ridiculous. But they've got to put more stuff in it to make it to incentivize you. This brings me to an interesting question. Is Pirates of the Caribbean the last real Jersey Jack pinball machine? I mean, it's the last wide body. So when we talk about the era's tour of Jersey Jack Pinball, I think the first era kind of ends now at Pirates. Because when you look at these machines, they were all wide bodies, and they all had, like, an outrageous amount of stuff in them. Except Alvin, but yes. So then you get to this demarcation point, and then we're going to start moving into a different era. Mm-hmm. They went back to the well because they weren't selling a lot of these Pirates of the Caribbean because for some reason or another people didn't see the value or maybe they buried the lead when they showed a bunch of stuff and took some stuff out. It didn't have, you know, the clips, the complex code, whatever it was. They weren't building enough and selling enough. So they needed to put something on the line. So they went back to the well with the Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road edition. Do you remember this? Was it the Yellow Brick Road edition or was it the Ruby Red edition? Because I've gotten confused about which one. Like, one of them was when they first made it. I think that was the Emerald City. And then Ruby came after that. Yeah, Ruby was the first time they redid it. They redid it. And then Yellow Brick Road, they redid it again, but with the newer cabinet design. So they couldn't do the same thing with the monkey, so the monkey didn't move anymore. So in the back of the original Wizard of Oz, there was a mech that went up the backboard that was a magnet that would grab the ball. It was the monkey. A hidden lock on the upper playfield in the back. Because of the playfield redesign, they couldn't do that. The cabinet redesign. They couldn't, yeah. So some people are like, oh, what's going on there? But then there was also a huge price hike. Then there was the reveal of this machine, which I think was an absolute train wreck. Yeah. I was there. Everyone thought it was going to be like their new game. Everybody thought that the hype was, oh, my God, Jersey Jack is going to show us their new pinball machine. Everybody goes into this room, and there is a pinball machine under a garbage bag. I was not in the seminar, but I heard about it later because I was at the show. A garbage bag because they didn't want to reveal anything. They wanted to hide it so people didn't know what it was. They put a garbage bag over their pinball machine. Are you saying they should have put a blanket instead? Maybe a blanket, maybe put a box in front of it, like some Jersey Jack boxes and move the boxes out of the way. A yellow blanket would have been perfect. Anything. Anything. But a garbage bag. So then they go and they reveal the yellow brick road. And to my opinion, you know, it was nice, but I didn't think they were going to sell very many of them. Because they took out one of the coolest parts, the monkey. And the yellow, in my opinion, a bit too much. but they did add glitter to the play field, which is really nice. And they did fix a few of the little issues with... They made the shoot better? No, no. But they made sure some of the optos were better. They made sure some of the switches were in better places. I think they did a good job. This is probably one of the better ones to own. But, man, it did not go well. but shortly thereafter pat lawler showed up with probably one of the most exciting themes that i i would love for a pinball machine to be made and that's willie wonka and the chocolate factory do you remember willie wonka and the chocolate factory yes i've actually seen that movie i love willie wonka and the chocolate factory this holds such a wonderful spot in my heart Gene Wilder's great. I love Gene Wilder. Gene Wilder is unbelievable. This is the 1971 film. Well, let me go back. This is the licensed fantasy film theme from 2019. We don't know how many units they made. Jean-Paul de Win on art designed by Pat Waller. Mechanics by Eric Minier. Sound and music. Here we've got a problem. with a company called Unlock Audio. Animation by Jean-Paul de Win. Software, Keith P. Johnson. No. Software by Joe Katz and Ted Estes, I believe, with JT Harkey. This we covered in depth in the Pat Lawler episode, but it is based on the 1971 family musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. As you mentioned, Gene Wilder, phenomenal in this film. This holds a wonderful place in my heart. But you can see, this is Pat Lawler's second machine, that demarcation point, the new era is beginning. The pinball machine was designed to be simpler, to be more location-based. There was an introduction of the standard edition, which took mechanics out. To be fair, they had lesser editions before. They have different editions. They had, what was it, Dialed In had an LE, but then it had a CE or whatever. But they had, I think there were three different versions of Dialed In. Yeah, because they had one that didn't have the lights on the ramps. They have basically done lesser versions, but always made the big deal that the play field is the same. We will never take out any mechs. We will never remove anything from the play field. That's what Eric Meunier said during his Pirates speech before unveiling the Pirates game. Yeah, our thing is we got more stuff in it, and no matter what you buy, you get the same experience. You just might get a little less powder coating and bling. So the very next game, Willy Wonka, they have a version that doesn't have the Wonka Vader. They removed a whole mech from the game for the first time. It's the first time they did that. We can see that things are changing a little bit, right? Pat Lawler knows, here's what's going on over at Stern. They've got a pro and a premium and an LE. And we need to have something similar because we need to get into locations. And locations are not going to spend $10,000 on a pinball machine. Locations want to get $6,000 or $7,000 nowadays. But back then, it was closer to $5,000. The only way we can get in there is to reduce margins or take stuff out. And Pat Lawler, he's been in this industry a long time. He knows what to do. He did add some really cool things like those light rods, which were these really mini inserts in the play field. They were really beautiful. It sounds like a slot machine. Like the dinging and the jingling and the whatevers. Because we don't have somebody who has done pinball before, we've brought in a company that made it saying, hey, here, do this. It really missed it. I will disagree with your one comment. It has a ton of stuff in it. If you look underneath the play field, it has like four or five magnets. It's ridiculous the amount of stuff that is in that game. It is packed. But it is not Pirates of the Caribbean. You know what I mean? It is not Wizard of Oz. Oh, agreed. But that's the thing is sometimes you've got to take stuff out to make a better game. And Pat Lawler knows that. But that is different to the philosophy of what Jersey Jack was created, that first era. The sound and the art were the two main things they got really, you know, people did not like. Yeah. The code struggled. It was a bit weird in the beginning. It actually went through a couple of revisions. So the idea was you're collecting Wonka bars, and as you collect those Wonka bars on the ramps, then it opens up other modes. But it was really, really hard to get beyond. Yeah, and it went through a major revision at the, like, way after the fact. Two or three years ago. Yeah, like way after the fact, like the game was, they redid a bunch of the scoring. Yeah, which basically what they did is they lowered the bar so you could get further, which is fine. So let's, you know, we're in the summer of 2020. Okay, we've released a few games. We're in the pandemic time now, you know, so things are weird. Things are different. What does Brent Abbas say? Brent talks about Tesla. He says, and we're jumping into phase three, you're going to see a lot of innovation happening. You'll notice major differences among all of our games. We're not afraid to try something that's never been done before, and that's one reason our customers love our games. Phase three for us is the future. We have some great titles in the pipeline. We're expanding. We're recruiting creative talent. Our new factory in Chicago with design and production under one roof is something we've wanted for a long time. I had mentioned in our previous episode that Brent seems very motivated, very excited. But he also projects a lot of maybe overconfidence. He's very salesy, but he's not Gary Stern salesy. He's always setting the bar really high, which I think is great to achieve that bar. But we'll see over the next phases or the next eras if that comes true. I think he believes it, and that's the important part. And, I mean, like, they're a company. They seem to be making money. They're still around. They're still getting great themes. They're still making great games. So he's not wrong. You know, we'll see. Now, speaking of Jersey Jack making money, what does Brent say? Does Brent say they make money? New year, new vibe. You want the warmth of a drink, that smooth little kick, but you also want to wake up tomorrow feeling amazing. That's where RK comes in. RK is the world's first zero-proof spirits brand, and they invented the warm molecule, giving you the burn of whiskey or tequila without a drop of alcohol. Start the year strong with 28 bold, zero-proof spirits. Zero calories, zero sugar, zero regret. So you can celebrate big and still keep your resolutions on track. Start the year right. Join the zero-proof resolution at rkbeverages.com. People love to speculate that this company has never made any money. I'll debunk that right now. We've seen 25% year-over-year growth over the past few years, And we've been breaking even for well over a year now. And we're on a clear path to profitability. A lot of hard work over the years, and it's finally paying off. So when did he say that, 2020? Yeah. So that means it took eight or nine years to get the profit. I think in manufacturing and companies in general, there is quite a few years before you're actually starting to make pretty – like that's not uncommon. But restaurants and stuff, they said like two or three years. But, man, almost eight or nine years, that seems like a long time. There's a lot of changes in movement, and it is a pretty volatile thing. So here's the thing. When people talk about pinball being easy and pinball being hard, and that's a cliche, and I get it, to actually start to be profitable and things like that is pretty normal to take years. But, you know, in pinball it seems to be a real struggle, especially when you're trying to make a Cadillac. You know what I mean? Like, if you kind of come in and you're, like, trying to just make a good product, that's one thing. But if you're coming in to try to make the best product, you need the capital and the money behind you to eat those losses for many, many years before you end up really coming out on top. So I would be interested to know what some of these other bigger companies are like. But here's the thing. I think we're starting to move. We're getting towards the end of this second era of Jersey Jack pinball. And this is the, I would say, the leftovers from the old company, and then we're starting to move into the new company. We're getting that new factory. We're getting a few of the other bits. This is another major demarcation point for Jersey Jack Pinball. That is Guns N' Roses from 2020. This is the licensed band music pin, designed by Eric Minier and Saul Slash Hudson, Slash from Guns N' Roses, art by Dayne Henry Jr., Jean-Paul de Win, Adrian Buller, Mark Molitor, and Jasper Abel. So the reason there's so many different art folk on here is that there's a lot of different art packages available for the different pinball machine levels. Sound and Music by Vikas Dio and Saul Slash. Animation, Jean-Paul de Win and his team. He's brought in his, I believe his brother, Jerome DeWin. And Software by Keith P. Johnson, Ted Estes, Joe Katz. They're all in on this one. This is the first new pinball machine in the new Chicago, Illinois factory, and it was the first smash hit during the pandemic. So why the move? First of all, let's talk about the move. Why did they move from Jersey Jack to Chicago? They moved from Jersey Jack? They moved from Jersey? Why did they move from New Jersey to Chicago? Because their whole development team is there. Jack says, it corrected a mistake that I made back when I started the company. Certainly there are all kinds of companies that have headquarters in different places. It was a good time doing it the way I did it. I don't really regret it. We produced some really great games. But how many buildings do you want to pay taxes and rent on? To consolidate everything and have everyone under one roof, I thought it was a lot better idea. And the timing was right. That's where a lot of that, I think, probably extra years of trying to be profitable. There's a lot of bleeding probably going on with these multiple leases on multiple buildings. And you know what I mean? So there's problems there. But having that opportunity to move, why didn't they move sooner? Why didn't they just, when the Fizzler Wizard of Oz, why didn't they just jump ship right away? Because they had a lease. And Brent says, Brent Abbas, he says, our lease was coming up in New Jersey. We had to make a decision. It was not easy, but I believe it's the right one. We spent too much time sending people back and forth on planes and trying to work through issues that wouldn't have existed if we were all under one roof. We have so much incredible knowledge and experience. He is 100% spot on there. And I think this is one of his strengths. Think about it. If you're the designer and they're starting to make your game, they have to fly them over there so they could watch them and show them how to build the game as opposed to just being right there. Exactly. Now, Brent understands business. He's a young fellow. He's in his 30s, at this time early 30s, I believe. But he knows business enough that he's got to find some efficiencies. He's got to watch his margins. So if you're spending $300 flying somebody back and forth a couple of times a week, that's chewing away at profitability. And that's another mech you can put in a machine. That's more profit you can put in. That's another designer that you can pay or another programmer. So he gets it. He understands business. And I think that's why Jersey Jack is successful because the owner and the person in charge, his son, Brent, understand business. Jack understands sales. He understands relationships. and he understands business, but, I mean, manufacturing and big-scale business is a whole other thing. So Guns N' Roses, everybody knows who Guns N' Roses are, right? The band formed in 1985. They really broke out in 1987 with Appetite for Destruction. Followed that up with the smash hit Use Your Illusion 1 and then 2 because they couldn't think of another name in 1990 and 1993, respectively. Huh? Yeah. They were a big deal in the early 90s. I remember them. They were like the last kind of hurrah maybe before grunge. You know what I mean? Like the not quite hair metal, not quite grunge. They were kind of this still party is cool kind of thing in the early 90s. I just remember the Welcome to the Jungle video where he had the 80s, like, poofy hair thing. That he only had in that one video. Axl Rose, I mean. Yeah, they were kind of the tail end of that kind of hair metal thing before grunge kind of killed rock and roll. And they followed that up with the smash hit Amazing Chinese Democracy in 1998. Remember that one? No, no one remembers that one. Although it is in the pinball machine. In March of 2016, the band announced the Not In This Lifetime Tour. The tour's name was a reference to a 2012 interview in which Axl Rose was asked about a potential reunion tour, and he responded, not in this lifetime. The tour was a financial success, and by the end of the tour in December of 2018, it had grossed half a billion dollars, making it the second largest grossing tour ever, besides, I think, U2's 360 tour. Why doesn't U2 have a pin? I don't know if that really translates quite as well. The songs would be good. The songs would be good, but I don't know. Guns N' Roses has had this resurgence, right? This nostalgia resurgence that kind of happens as bands age. And I think they're bigger now than they probably were in their heyday because kind of the newer generations are discovering kind of how cool they were and the nostalgia of how things were back in the day, right? So I think that that's pretty cool. They're one of the biggest bands in the world now. They were big when they were around, but they weren't like the biggest band in the world, which is crazy. They had like four or five years where they were relevant, and they've been going off of that ever since. It's pretty wild, right? So if you look at like Iron Maiden, right, like they were pretty big, but they were kind of under the radar. And then they're bigger now than they've ever been. so it's it's that that kind of lump of of uh of nostalgia is kind of waving along a lot of these sort of uh late 80s early 90s bands the pin was a sensory overload right you want to talk about a world under glass the ultimate rock concert it was pretty big deal so what are when i say sensory overload. What are we talking about? Hot rails. Those are basically the rails on either side of the playfield, but now they illuminate. Yeah, those rails are there to kind of keep the playfield from bending and warping. But they've gone and put these blinky LEDs on top. It's a pretty smart idea. They're in the rails. They're hot rails. The spinners were like guitar picks. That's pretty smart. The pop bumpers have little symbols on them, so when they pop, they look like they're drums. It had a bass guitar upper playfield and ball lock. Right? It had wire forms. You forgot the coolest thing. What's that? Drumsticks. Oh, can you forget? Drumsticks. You go up the ramp and then on to drumsticks. On the L.E.'s, or is it the collector's? The collector's editions, those are signed by the drummer. Yeah, that's the other thing. They had three editions of this. You had the LE, the CE. You also had the, what did they call it, the Classic? I can't remember what they called it. They keep changing the names, and every manufacturer has their own names. Standard, maybe. But it was the final time they would have the cheaper version. The cheaper version didn't have the upper play field. Yeah, so they took off that bass guitar upper play field and kind of the weird ramp on the left side. They kind of removed that. Now, when I was there in the factory, they talked about this, that they sold, it was something ridiculous, like 50 of them, like a ridiculously low number of those. I have played that standard edition. That was the one that I had played. Yeah, and at that point they decided, like, yeah, we're not going to do that edition anymore. Because nobody's buying them. Pretty much. because they noticed that nobody is putting those in an arcade. Yeah, they pretty much said, like, the versions of that, like Waka, they sold none, almost nothing. It wasn't worth it. Like, they are the true LEs. They're the true LEs. They're a home, they make home market pinball machines. They are not arcade, like, the arcades that have them are like the big arcades that can afford that and want to have the draw of a Jersey Jack pinball machine. But their market is not the arcade market. The arcade market is dominated by a stern pro. So stop trying to compete with them. You have the flyer up. And is it me or are the flippers not aligned at the bottom? Yeah, in the picture? Yeah. That would drive me nuts. That would not get by me. If I was proofreading, I'd be like, retake it, Photoshop it, fix that. Yeah. It's a cool pin. I like it. It's a standard body. It's got lots of stuff in it. It's very fun. But, man, it is like a vomit of color and code. Multi-balls just start randomly. multiball, yes. They just start randomly. It's great. Well, they're not random. Like you've done something to do it, but they just – I don't know what I did. It just happens. And it has the worst plunge I have ever seen. I like doing the thing, which is you get into a song and you just play it all the way to the end. Because you can get out of the song and take like a point total cash out. But if you go all the way through, if you make it, you can get the and you hit the last shot. You get the it goes right into another song. You get like the encore I think it called Yeah So and you pick like a good song basically something from Appetite for Destruction and you good Chinese Democracy No you don pick anything from Chinese Democracy Not even that one song? And if you suck during the song, you'll actually start to get booed. If you're not hitting the shots, you will start to get booed. There's like a meter. You need to keep it above a certain, you know, level of the meter. I always thought that if you get booed off stage, they should have played the clip from, I can't remember, was it Kansas City? Where Axl, he jumps in the crowd to go after the guy at the camera. Remember that? And then he gets off the stage, thanks for this lame ass security, I'm out of here. And he just throws the mic down and leaves. That's what they should have done, played that clip, if you failed. It's kind of like the old Guitar Hero or Rock Band games that you played on Xbox 360 or like the PlayStation 3. it's really smart, it's really cool but I'll tell you that this is I would say either the end of this middle era or maybe just the slight beginning of the next one this is a demarcation point they had a hit game that sold a ton and their timing was perfect because it was during COVID people had money, they were going to spend it They weren't taking vacations. They weren't going to restaurants, so they were building up cash, and they could not make enough of these fast enough. So what does Slash say about working with Jersey Jack Pinball? The Slash. Well, he's buddies with Eric Meunier now, I believe. They converse all the time. Slash says, it's been a very fulfilling experience working with Jersey Jack on the new Guns N' Roses, not in this lifetime, pinball machine. Jersey Jack pinball games are some of the most unique and beautiful pins ever made, and I am honored to have been able to work with their brilliant team to design one of the most original and exciting rock and roll pins ever produced. This game was a big deal, and it is a good game. It's a great game for those people that are getting into pinball. It's a very accessible machine. They feel like they're doing things really quickly. It's very flashy and good. But I feel like it has a little bit of, I feel like this game is all sizzle and no steak. But you know what? It doesn't matter what we say. It was a rousing success. It's probably still their biggest seller, unless Harry Potter, which we'll talk about, passes it. And assets, talk about assets. I mean, I remember when I played it, Live and Let Die is on there. Like, how did they do that? That's like a Paul McCartney song. How did they get the rights to that? But it's in there. It's easy. They talk to Slash, and Slash gets on the phone with Paul McCartney and says, Yo, why don't you use your song? Is that a problem? Nope. Okay. Done. There you go. Unbelievable. There's another huge change and shift at this time, and that's Steve Ritchie joining Jersey Jack Pinball. He was over at Stern Pinball. He did Star Wars. He did Game of Thrones. He did Led Zeppelin. He's not having the greatest time, I don't think, over there. Oh, you forgot Black Knight, Sword of Rage. He liked that. But, yeah, he wasn't crazy about Led Zeppelin. and he really wanted Stairway to Heaven, and they couldn't get it. Yeah, he became slowly a little more unhappy. So in 2010, Jack spoke to Steve about coming to Jersey Jack Pinball, and he couldn't quite get a deal together. But then, by 2021, he was able to get some movement. Now, remember, 2010, Steve is not working for anyone, because that was after they fired everyone at Starn, at Stern and before he got rehired in 2011. Because I believe he started back at Stern around March of 2011, because that's when he announced it at the Texas Pinball Festival. Exactly. Now, what does Jack say about getting Steve to join? Steve is not joining the JJP team because of what he has done, but for what he will do. We believe his best games are ahead of him. Now, the players... That's exciting! What was interesting is, for those who know the story, I guess Pat Lawler and Steve Ritchie did not necessarily get along. Especially Williams. They got along to get along. They were two of the main teams kind of going at each other, trying to make the best games. So Pat Lawler says, I'm thrilled to be able to work with Steve again. Some of the greatest games in pinball history happened when the two of us worked together and collaborated on a daily basis. The innovative, creative environment at JJP will enable Steve to have fun, dream, and build great things. Our entire team of creators welcomes Mr. Ritchie to JJP. Like, this was a big deal, right? This is like the legend Steve Ritchie giving up a cushy job where he releases a pin like every other year. Yeah. Do you remember what he was working on when he quit? I do. He was working on James Bond. James Bond. I wonder what that would have looked like. Probably would be just as good, if not worse. so here's the thing these guys get along to get along they're very competitive the two of them Richie used to crap on Lawler all the time but I think Pat is correct that the creative environment at JJP is probably something a little bit more along the lines of what Steve Ritchie prefers I think at Stern Steve Ritchie was told no a lot, and I think at Jersey Jack, Steve Ritchie is told yes or keep going more. Well, what does Steve say? I'm very excited to begin a new gaming adventure at Jersey Jack Pinball. I've known Jack for more than 30 years and I'm delighted that we will be working together. It's going to be awesome. I'm also looking forward to working with a talented team at JJP, many of whom are already friends and colleagues, i.e. ex-Williams people. My goal will be to design and build the best games we can possibly create. So we're moving into a new era. But one of the issues with this new era is that we've got Pat Lawler and Steve Ritchie, who have been in the industry for like 40 years. You know, we got Eric Minier, who's the new blood. The thing is, you need a Steve Ritchie and a Pat Lawler to work with these younger groups to kind of bring them in. And we're talking about like Keith Elwin and those guys in a couple episodes ago, and how George Gomez and John Borg, they're kind of working with the next generation. Jersey Jack's got to do the same thing, and I think Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler, two of the really good ones to help train the next generation. The rumor was, around the time that Jersey Jack signed the contract for Pirates of the Caribbean with Disney, they also signed a contract with Pixar for Toy Story. Are you a Toy Story person? Have you seen Toy Story? Do you enjoy Toy Story? I haven't seen any of the Toy Story. Good Lord, man. Oh, sorry. But the rumor is, yes, they had the Toy Story license, but then they got the Wonka license, so Pat started working on that first. So by the time they got to the Toy Story license, Disney was making Toy Story 4 and insisted that that would be what the game would be, Toy Story 4. Disney Pixar's Toy Story 4, specifically Disney Pixar, the licensed animated film, probably one of the greatest animated franchises of all time. Toy Story, the first Toy Story film, is like a demarcation in my life. Toy Story 3 is a demarcation in my life Toy Story 4, eh, it's okay Is 2 not too great? I hear everyone say 1 and 3 all the time Is 2 kind of a weak link? 2 is good 2 is a little bit more of the same Still very good But it's not like Toy Story 3 is like Right up there with Citizen Kane Okay It is so good Toy Story 5 is coming out in 2026. So the thing is, okay, when Toy Story came out, I was of the age where it's like, you know, I was around the age of the character in the film, a little bit older, but I was like, oh, this is like what it was like when I was a kid. And then when Toy Story 3 rolled around, I was like in university. It's all about, that film is all about sort of moving on from childhood. And how like sad that that is. Toy Story 4 is more about like mental health, which is good. And Toy Story 5, I think, is now about, my guess is that it's all about sort of how kids don't play with toys anymore. Now it's all screens. So it'll be, it's, it's, it's, the franchise is following my life, which is why I think it holds so close to me. I don't know if we want Toy Story 4. So this is 2022, Pat Lawler, John Yosey in Pixar on the Art, mechanics by a new fellow, Michael Dorn. Sorry. No, no. Peter, no, no. Worf did not say the mechanics on this game. Peter Dorn, Chris Talko, Nick Jensen, sound by, oh, God, Unlock Audio again. Unlock Audio, yes. Jean-Paul de Win on animation. We've got software by Joe Katz as the lead here. Duncan Brown, Ted Estes, Bill Grupp, and JT Harkey, and a little bit of Keith B. Johnson on there. Bill Grupp from Williams is now a Jersey Jack. Is this Pat Lawler's swan song? Kind of the rumors had kind of come out that this was his last pinball machine. Yeah, and that turned out to be true. And it did turn out to be true. I mean, the guy's in his, what, 70s? Early 70s? 70s. You know, like, I'm sure he loves building pinball machines and all that stuff, But, I mean, like, he probably wants to, like, spend time with grandkids or great-grandkids. Like, you know? Again, we'll wind this back a little bit. This is based on 2019's Pixar Toy Story 4, which was a great film. I really enjoyed it. This is set directly after the third film, where we follow Woody and Buzz Lightyear as the pair go on a road trip with Bonnie, who creates a new friend, Forky. Forky. who is a spork made from recycled materials in her art class. Meanwhile, Woody is reunited with Bo Peep, who disappeared after the first film, and must decide where his loyalties and his heart lie, with his friends or his new lady friend. It grossed a billion dollars, scored 97 on Rotten Tomatoes. Like its predecessor, this film received absolute critical acclaim, praise for its story, his humor, its emotional depth, its musical score, its animation, its vocal performances. It is an awesome film. But Toy Story 4, come on. Like, I don't know, man. Did you hear this rumor? So apparently, this total speculation corner here, right? I had heard this. I don't know if it's true. If you know if it's true, send me an email, silverballchronicles at gmail.com, that when JJP was negotiating with Disney, renegotiating the license of Toy Story after the Pirates No Assets thing, I had heard that JJP, after the blowup of Pirates Not Having Assets, went back to Disney to do some renegotiation, because apparently they did not have the assets for Toy Story. And during this renegotiation, J.J.P. and Pixar had discussed the fact that there is a brand new Toy Story project. So, of course, J.J.P. would take the newest property so that they could have all the assets and the newest property, which was a guaranteed smash, and as we know, it ended up being that. as long as they had there's a snake in my boot call out, I think that I'm happy. Did they make the right decision, do you think? They didn't have a choice. That's what they actually said. There was a Twitch stream, a gameplay stream where one of the Jersey Jack employees actually said, Disney said, we have to do four. I don't think he was supposed to say that because they did not send that any other place. But, yeah, I kind of believe that. The other thing here is that the limited edition is now $12,000, and the collector's edition $15,000. And there was no standard edition. Since nobody was buying the standard edition. So this is the first game almost completely developed under the new manufacturing in Chicago regime. It has been designed in Chicago. It's Pat Lawler's Swan Song. This is a demarcation point, right? So you've got the smash hit of Guns N' Roses that just sold like gangbusters. Which was made in Chicago. But it was sort of still under that old kind of mixture. The game design of this. There was no real major knockout toy. No, it had less stuff than, it seemed like it had less stuff than its previous games, because they had the big iPad. They had this ridiculous looking iPad screen. So Pat Lawler's thing is, how can we add more instruction? How can we put things on the play field? I get the idea of putting a big screen down there to show you what to do and what to shoot. He also had a big screen in Wonka, and he had a smaller screen in Dialed In. This machine does not feel like a Jersey Jack pinball machine. It's missing the JJP-ness, in my opinion, because it's missing a lot of that jam-packed toys. It's fun. It shoots fine. but when you look at it, it's kind of, there's no excitement. Would you agree? I liked it. I liked it. I like it, too. I thought they were going to sell thousands of these. It's still decent. I mean, as long as you turn the music off, the call-outs are good, but the music is not good. I thought they were going to sell thousands of these things. When I play this and shot this, I'm like, this game shoots great. it looks great yeah it's got all the assets it's got all the call outs i want it's it's got the it's beautiful but when i but i think when people looked at it they said where's the jjp like i mean they got tim allen to do the voice of buzz lightyear for college canna reeves is in it come on yeah they got jim hanks who's tom hanks's brother does all tom hanks's voice work yep because he can't be bothered. Annie Annie Potts, who did Bo Peep, she did the call-outs on the CE specifically. The topper is awesome. I thought they were going to sell thousands of these. Who said they didn't? I don't know, man. I don't think they did. I think they were disappointed in the sales. So they moved on to the next pin. So what are we going to do? We're going to bring back the guy who puts everything in a pinball machine, Eric Minier, and we're going to make Godfather. 2023, this is a licensed drama film. Again, one of the greatest films ever made. But, like, is that really a pinball theme? No, it's not. Unlike Sopranos, which was a good one for a good theme for pinball. Art by Christopher Franchi. So he had left Stern after, was it Munsters? Was Munsters after Beatles, maybe? Yes. So, anyway, around that time. We got the same sort of crew here. So music and sound is uncredited. It was probably Unlock Audio. Mechanics are uncredited, but it's probably Eric Meunier and a team around him. Anna Mason, Jean-Paul de Win. Software, Keith P. Johnson, Duncan Brown, Ted Esu's Bill Grupp, Joe Katz. So we touched on the theme. This is Godfather based on the 1972 American epic crime film by Francis Ford Coppola. The film stars an ensemble cast, including Marlon Brando in probably one of his greatest roles, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Costanello, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton. Unbelievable, the team here. It's the first installment in the Godfather trilogy, which chronicles the Carleone family, and its patriarch, Vito Carleone, who is Marlon Brando. and the transformation of his youngest son, Michael Carleone by Al Pacino, and the reluctant family of outsiders with this sort of ruthless mafia boss. The film itself is not a big action epic. No. We're not talking John Wick fighting stuff here. It's a lot of talking. Amazing talking and engaging talking, but it's kind of hard to make a pinball machine out of talking. Sopranos, you touched on that. Sopranos had the same problem, right? No, Sopranos was great. Sopranos was great. So it's an HBO show with a lot of talking. A lot of swearing, though. How do you make this into something? How do you make the code out of a lot of talking? Well, the one thing they did is they got as many assets as you're going to get. I mean, they got Marlon Brando's in there. They got Al Pacino in there, who I guess usually doesn't lend his likeness or whatever. I mean, they got a ton of it. They have all the assets you could want for Godfather. They have a Marlon Brando sculpt, for good to say. Yes. The question is, is it a good thing for pinball? How do you approach it? It's approached, basically, you're going through all the families and all that. It's, I don't know. I don't know if it was a good thing. to do for pinball? You know, you've got the different boroughs of New York and Manhattan. You go on missions. You go on hit missions. You go for fellows. You play through various scenes in the film. There's hits. Like, I think they did the best job they could. The play field itself is pretty good. It's a standard body. There's three flippers. For some reason, it just didn't hit. It did not take off, I think, in a way. 200 different ball paths or something like that. Yeah, it's ridiculous. There's all these ball diverters. I am all about ball diverters, man. You know that. Yep. This is the game for you, then. There's diversion going on all over the place. I played this game, and I really like this game. I really like this game. I think its best part, Christopher Franchi's art. This is gorgeous. And the fact that this was the first game that they had their new driver board or modified driver board with the stronger flippers. One of the things that's always been criticized at Jersey Jack is their flippers. So this was actually, a lot of people think it's Elton John was the first one. This was actually the first one to have the stronger flippers. I think this game is criminally underrated. I think the topper is criminally loud. So the topper, let's talk about this. Come on. Come on. The CE topper. Unbelievable. Yes. So on the top, there's two machine gun guys, right? They got their Tommy guns that you picture when you see a mafia boss. And they've got like a little coil. And at certain times, the coil will start to fire. It's a knocker. The same rate as a Tommy gun. Yes, yes. Unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's a knocker coil. Just imagine that. Like, oh, my God. So the Godfather, this is the 50th anniversary. The art is stunning. The game, I think, is criminally underrated. I think it shoots well. Sure, it might not be a theme for pinball, but they didn't do Godfather 3. You know what I mean? That's true. They did The Godfather. Look at that UI. Look at the picture of the UI. That's how you use a larger monitor. The user interface is what I'm, if you wonder what UI means. So kind of like what boroughs are you in? How much money do you have? How many jobs have you done? The funny thing is that you go out on these hits or you collect members to your gang to go on these adventures, and the people in the back glass are Jersey Jack, like the animation, like, or their, what do they call them? Like the picture that they've got when you get arrested. What do they call that? Mugshots. Mugshots. These mugshots. It's like Christopher Franchi, but it's like Christophe Franchetti. Yeah. And they've got, I think, Eric Minier as a character and Jack as a character. Like, it's awesome. Criminally underrated. Is it a theme for pinball? Probably not. Is it still fun? Absolutely. The call-outs are all, I think, the same guy. He does, like, all the different voices. They do have clips for the movies. But they don't really make a whole lot of sense. No, not to the story they tell, really. It's more of a generic mobster theme with Godfather. Kind of jammed on it. Yeah, kind of. So how about this one? This one you know very, very well. Yes, very, very well. We're talking about Elton John. This is the licensed musical theme, 2023, designed by Steve Ritchie. His first Jersey Jack pinball machine. Art by Christopher Franchi. Uncredited mechanics and sound. Jean-Paul DeWitt on animation. Software by Bill Grupp and Duncan Brown. So we're seeing that the teams are being built out now. A few team members that kind of were on a larger team, now they're breaking out more of that stern pinball style, right? Well, Bill Grupp, the head software guy, is former Williams. Duncan Brown is also a former Williams employee. They're bringing on enough people to build out teams now, where before they were kind of, it was the same kind of team. So we've moved into this new era. this is the first pinball machine by Steve Ritchie. How do you think he did, first of all, just high level? I mean, if you show me the play field and said, what designer did this, I'd say Steve Ritchie. What makes you say that? Because it looks like a Steve Ritchie layout. It's his three-flipper side ramp layout. He likes to do it with the warp ramp. I'll just call it the warp ramp. Three drops in the center. He loves that, too. There are some differences. And the shot doesn't go right into the in lane. When you hit the one ramp, it actually drops in front of it. The flipper, which I like. This game was the first Jersey Jack game I ever saw or played where it felt like a Stern slash Williams game as far as how fast it played. It was like completely different dimension I had entered. Where all of a sudden, the slingshots, like on Toy Story, if everyone remembers, They're so weak. They're terrible. That's the other thing they did. They finally went to 50-volt slingshots, which they actually did that, I believe, on Godfather. But on this game, it, like – It's very obvious. Everything is dialed up to 100. It's – or what is it? Is it dialed to 11? It's to 11. It's just – yeah, it's just – when this was at Expo, just looking at the – Just watching it, you could tell how fast it played. It was amazing. I love this game. I've only played it a dozen times. Every time I play it, I'm like, man, this game is so much fun. I like Elton John. I think Elton John is a legend, right? He is Sir Elton, get this, Hercules John, who was actually born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in 1947. He's the British songwriter and pianist. His music and showmanship is unlike anybody else. He is something special and will be remembered forever. But I don't know if he is pinball music, but when I play this pin, I'm like, you know what? You know what? He's pinball music. He's pinball music. It's unbelievable. Because, like, when you hear it at first, you're like, I don't know, man. Is he going to be able to pull off? It's like, it's playing your song. Like, come on, really? How is this? Benny and the Jets. Do you think Benny and the Jets? Everyone, we all knew this was going to be the game. Jersey Jack has never been that great at hiding what the titles are going to be. And that's, I heard this a year and a half, like, when Steve went there, that this was going to be the game, and I'm really, another Elton John game? Like, that can't be true. Because we had the brown dirt cowboy back in the day, right? Yeah, we had that already. Is it their best game? It's my favorite game of theirs. I don't know if you want to say it's their best game. We haven't got to what a lot of people are probably going to think is their best game. Steve struggled with putting stuff in his pinball machine at Stern. This is like if Williams had still existed, this is what they would make. That's what it felt like. You got a beautiful piano lock in the back with an Elton John that plays his hand. Animatronic Elton John. His head moves. Yes, head moves, his arms move. An animatronic alligator, or crocodile, I should say, crocodile rock. We have a spinning tiny dancer. Girl on a pole. Yeah. You got a cool rocket sculpt. You got, you know, electroluminescent wiring on the ramps. You got ramps everywhere. The super long habit trail, and its only purpose is when you hit it in the rocket, it just fires it. And it just looks cool. That's it. That's its only time it's ever used. It's a great game in every way. Steve Ritchie with a budget, basically. Oh, did I mention Elton John's actually in the game? Did we mention that? Yes, he does call-outs. He does call-outs, and you see him in the game at various points. And can we also talk about something special here? That is... I'm going to talk about Elton John has an EGOT. Do you know what that is? I don't know what that is. That is that he has an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. Oh, Can You Feel the Love Tonight for The Lion King? Yeah. That's probably the Oscar. Twenty-seven people have EGOTs as of the time of this recording. Oh. So that is something special. This guy is pretty great. Glam Rock, I think, is very much. He was a big fan of T-Rex and took a lot of that. Was it Mark Bolin? I believe it's his name, a T-Rex. He took a lot of stuff from him with the whole, his wardrobe and all that. Okay, let's go back to the topper. So the limited edition topper is just a piece of flat plastic, but it is gorgeous. Yeah, but it loosens up constantly, though. It annoys me. It has wing nuts in it that keep getting loose. I've got to put Loctite on them or something. So what about the CE topper? The CE topper is ridiculous. It's basically like two screens on either side of like this. Like LCD screens. It's got, yeah, and it's got a projector. And they were, I believe they even said they were left over from the Toy Story screens. But the projector, it projects onto your ceiling. And like the higher the ceiling you have, the better it looks. Because it's got more space. More spread. Yeah. Yeah, I wish, I prefer the art package of the LE, but I wish I could have the topper on my LE. It's awesome. It has most of the video assets of actual concert footage and stuff are on the topper. They actually don't have a ton of concert footage that's used on the main display. So the craziest thing, the craziest thing is Christopher Franchi's art. It is unbelievable. Him leaving Stern and ending up at Jersey Jack. what a huge loss for Stern because these are two of the most absolute stunning art packages I have ever seen. Remember he did the LE. The Platinum was done and it's not called the CE on this one either. They call it the Platinum Edition for some reason and then they went back to the other naming convention with the next game which I don understand I guess it was because Platinum Platinum Albums you know You got one of these Of course I do. I wouldn't be gushing about it this much. Do you enjoy it? We're spending a lot of time on this because it's awesome. We're spending too much time on it, but yes. What about the next follow-up? This one had me excited. Avatar the Battle for Pandora. Mm-hmm. This is the licensed sci-fi epic film. There's a whole series now, or a whole universe, if you will. This is designed by a newcomer in September of 24, Mark Seiden. There's a new art person on this one, Lea Faske. Sound is by Stemage. Animation, Jean-Paul de Win. Software by Jason Allen, Keith P. Johnson, and Taylor Taylor Snyder. Based on the Avatar film series, which is the American epic sci-fi media franchise created by James Cameron, Avatar is set in the mid-22nd century on Pandora, a lush, habitable moon. The film's central conflict is between the indigenous Navi and the humans who look to harvest the vast natural resources of Pandora. The film invokes themes of family, environmentalism, corporate greed, and colonialism. Did you see Avatar? No. God. Avatar is from 2009. It holds the record for the highest-grossing motion picture of all time with a $2.9 billion box office. That was followed up with Avatar The Way of the Water, which was released in 2022, after many delays because they didn't have the technology available for like 20 years to make motion capture underwater. It had a $2.3 billion box office. The latest installment, Avatar, Fire and Ash, was released on December 19th, 2025. So you've never seen Avatar? No. Do you remember the 3D revolution in theaters? Um, kind of. I mean, I know they plugged in a lot. The spectacle for Avatar was that it was a 3D movie like no other 3D movie before it. So before 2009, 3D movies were not really a big thing. They were, like, every now and then. Not even in the 50s? No, but, I mean, every now and then there'd be a 3D movie, but this was, like, unlike anything before it. Okay, is it as good as Friday the 13th 3 in 3D? Right. So that's kind of what I'm getting at, right? It was like, or what was there? Wasn't there a piranha? Wasn't there a 3D piranha film? Oh, I think there was. I just remember the Friday the 13th one where he fires the, what is it? Not an arrow. He has like a gun. He fires the projectile, whatever, and it comes right at you because it's 3D. And there was that awesome Muppets thing at Hollywood Studios, which was Jim Henson's last Muppets thing, and it was a 3D kind of event, right? But 3D was not a thing. Now, 3D is like every other movie or every movie has a 3D version of it. The draw for Avatar was come see James Cameron, who hasn't done anything since Titanic. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make this 3D movie. And when I sat in that theater and I saw the 3D, like, depth that was created, like, windows, and behind the window a person holding something, and then behind them was, like, a screen that had animations. And that is why it did, like, $3 billion at the box office. James Cameron, we all know him from, what, Terminator 2? Terminator, Aliens, Abyss, Piranha 2. all of his movies all kind of have the same kind of cheesy bit of writing military theme kind of guys but they're all pretty great movies like he doesn't really make a kind of a bad movie it's not Godfather but it is Piranha 2 was pretty entertaining I think you should watch the Avatar movies nah I'm good I think you should they're good my daughter huge Avatar fan which I had no idea the first real film that she saw and can remember was The Way of the Water. I took her to that movie because I couldn't get a babysitter, so her and I went to it when she was probably too young to see it. And she is so excited for everything Avatar, which is, I think, kind of funny because she's not a nerdy kid. It's pretty weird. Maybe she just likes blue. So who's Mark Seiden? He did the Metroid Pinball homebrew. Yeah, so he was kind of in the community building his Metroid Pinball, which went over well. I never played it. Did you? I think I played it. You must have. At one of the expos. Yeah, you must have. Now, I met Mark Seiden at Pintastic one year, and I spent a great deal of time trying to get the theme of his next machine out of it. He did not take the bait. I believe he's a New Robert Englunds guy, so that makes sense. Everybody thought he was on Harry Potter, but it was not. I would have never thought that. There was not going to be anyone on Harry Potter other than Eric Manier. So how did Mark get into JJP as a designer? Well, Mark says, at some point in 2021, I got a Facebook message from Eric Minier. And he was like, hey, do you want to talk pinball? He called me up and we talked for about an hour. Pinball stuff and my design work on Metroid. And at the end of the call, he's like, so would you be interested in any role at Jersey Jack Pinball? And I was like, I want to be a game designer. So I ended up putting together like 64 pages of pictures, descriptions, because, you know, a normal resume doesn't exist for pinball. When this pin was released, I was pretty excited because, like I said, my daughter loves Avatar. I really enjoy the Avatar films. They're not high art, but it is pretty cool. Not a dream theme, but a theme nonetheless that I think is pretty awesome. What do you think? So we went back to LE and CE for this model. What were your first impressions? Yeah, we were confused. Like, it's not Pandora Platinum? It's CE? We're going back to that. I don't know. I thought the under playfields, two of them, that was interesting. Yeah, so you shoot under the playfield. You go to one kind of part, and it's like an under playfield where you battle a submarine, and then you can get to the other under play field, which is like there's like a pop bumper and targets under there, and then there's also a lock under play field. It looks really cool. Yeah, it is Avatar. It is very blue. Most of the terminology in the game is Avatar terminology, which I guess is a setting. You can dial that back if you don't want it to be that Avatar-y. Yeah, they use all the terminology that if someone like me who has never seen Avatar would have zero clue what's going on or what they're talking about. It's got a lot of habit trails. Yep. All directions. It's got ball diverters. It's got everything I want. To me, the highlight is the upper part of the play field. It's the most interesting part. The art is comic book-y, cartoon-y. It's beautiful. No. I think it looks good. I have the banner, and I think the banner looks great. I love it. I really do because I'm a big fan. Is it heavier than Hobbit? Someone needs to tell us. Email us. Yeah, we're not going to look that up. We're not doing any research on that. It has not been a big seller, right? I have no idea. They didn't help themselves because when they were trying to sell this is when Jack comes out and says that Harry Potter is the next game. Save your money. Don't buy anything else. And we're like, okay. probably shouldn't have said that. Like, okay. It did not sell great, I don't think. However, I'm disappointed that it did not. Does it shoot fine? Yes. Is it fun? Yes. Is it loaded? Yes. So we're moving into, I think, the latest era of Jersey Jack. Elton John is probably either the beginning or the end of the last era. Avatar is probably the beginning of the next one. We've got a new designer, much fresher ideas. We're in the new factory. We're factoring all that in. Stuff is packed again. We've got more stuff in these machines. I'm disappointed that this machine did not get over the way I think it should have. And I think this game, along with Godfather, criminally underrated. Don't forget the topper. The topper is... On the CE specifically. The CE, yes. It's got... It's like the one they did for the Mandalorian, but much better. Pepper's Ghost. Yeah. Where there's a piece of glass or plastic, and then behind it, it gets projected on, and then it looks like it's floating on a screen or something. It's huge, too. It's humongous. Yeah. It's so big. ridiculous. The one on the limited edition is like your standard sort of 3D plastic E-flat thing. But this thing is unbelievable. The art, again, just beautiful. I don't know why more people don't like this game. Do you like the coating on the rails on the CE? Look at the rails. Look what they did with the art on the rails. Instead of just regular colored coating it looks like the skin of the navi it's got like the the different colored like almost like a like a tiger stripes and i believe they said that it was all hand done too so like no two ces are the same it's so cool and it has this bioluminescent lighting what is bioluminescent lighting uh lights up in the dark yeah it's like uv light it's uv yeah so for the collectors Collector's Edition, well, there's UV on the Limited Edition, but the Collector's Edition has even more. And they actually had to get the playfields specially made by another company because their usual playfield company could not do it to their satisfaction. So the C.E.'s playfields are all made by a different company. It's so good that Jersey Jack is, you know, they've got Elton John, which is probably their next biggest hit after Guns N' Roses. But it's such a good game by such a seasoned designer that it kind of is undercutting Avatar. And then Avatar is struggling a little bit. I think it needs more time to sort of percolate for people to see how good it is. And then all of a sudden it's like, hey, your other dream theme, Harry Potter, is coming. Please don't spend any money. How many people are, like, Avatar fanatics as opposed to, I think, most of the 2.9 billion or whatever that have seen it, they saw it probably once. And like, oh, that was cool. I don't know if they're hardcore Avatar psycho fans. I think that's what. Like, Avatar did not go the way of Star Wars and has not gone the way of Harry Potter. Like, everyone knows who Luke Skywalker is. They know who Han Solo is. etc., even if they've never even seen Star Wars. Exactly. Avatar is great. I like Avatar. I enjoy Avatar. But I feel like Avatar is like if a corporation is like, hey, you have to like Avatar. Avatar is big. You know, Avatar is amazing. You need to like Avatar. We're going to make Avatar forever until it is Star Wars. You know, I get it. It sort of feels like it's almost being forced on you as a franchise. I don't know. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 15 years, it'll be different. Maybe it will actually be one of these franchises that hold such high regard. But we've touched on it. We've mentioned it a few times. Harry Potter is the next release. This is the culmination of everything. If you listen to Jack, this is everything they worked for from the start, 2011, whenever when they started. This is like the culmination. This is it. This is the ultimate license that everyone has wanted since I can remember, since they've been making the movies. Everyone has wanted this. And here it is, full assets. We have everything you could possibly want, and we're going to try to put it in this game. So exciting. Harry Potter, I like Harry Potter I'm not way in on Harry Potter like some people, I like Harry Potter like the films, I haven't read the books through but I'm working on the books I like Harry Potter, it's not Star Wars for me, it's not but for some people, this is it this is the Star Wars of my generation. I've never seen any of the movies, but I know who the three main kids are. Yeah, that's the thing, right? That's how you know it's transcended The game design by Eric Minier. It's got engineering mechanics by Dan Lanchick and Nick Jensen. Software by Bill Grupp, Duncan Brown, Joe Katz. Electronics, Eric Miller, Joe Ernst, Luna Luna Silverfang, and Will Mercado. Mercado, probably, or Mercado, one or the other. Jean-Paul de Win on art, animation Jean-Paul de Win, Johnny Wiegel, Olaf, Jemmy, and then the collector's edition cabinet. That's done by a special studio called Mina Lima, which is tied into Harry Potter, you know, artwork. People that are nerds for Harry Potter, I guess, know that name. And sound, get this, music, David Thiel. He's back. They're not going to blow it with a s*** sound package. Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J.K. Rowling. These novels chronicle the young wizard Harry Potter and his friend Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger as they attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry Potter, through 1997 to 2007, had an almost annual release of books. I remember these when I was a kid, that when the Harry Potter book came out, the fervor amongst people in my high school and then those younger than me in middle school was unreal. It was a big, big deal for these kids. That was when the film franchise came out. Slightly after that, somewhere around, I don't know, 97, they started kind of thinking about moving them into a movie franchise. It was 2001 through 2011 that the films were released. They brought in a box office combined eight films at $7.7 billion. dollars. Some of the biggest directors and writers were working on those, like Chris Columbus. Do you remember Chris Columbus? Yes. Yeah, he did like Miss Doubtfire. He worked on Gremlins, Goonies. He's a big deal. The world they created was amazing. The direction, the screenwriting, It was all great. The films are as good as the books, if not better. And that bred this amazing franchise. You can go to the Harry Potter world at Universal Studios in Orlando. There's three different worlds there now. It's something else. So it's a big franchise. How did Jersey Jack get this franchise? Well, lots of people are trying to get that license. including Joe Camencal which I assume for Stern to make it yeah so he did Batman 66 with Kapow he did the Beatles which was like by then the biggest most expensive license ever Jack got the license and then Joe immediately posted on the internet that Jack got the license yeah so he torpedoed that almost immediately like that's pretty petty that is pretty petty and then Jack said he had the Harry Potter people coming back to him like what's this like who is this Like, what's going on? Who's this Joe Cam and Cal guy? But, yeah, so we knew this was coming. It was not a West Coast secret ever. Like, everybody knew GNR was coming, but this was even worse than that. I think every Jersey Jack title, everyone's known what's coming. Yeah, they're like a screen door in a submarine. It's brutal. I think somebody that worked there left, and then they posted, like, the next five games on Pinside or something, and that's how we got the list. But I think they finally ran out of those titles, though, Now it should be hopefully harder to figure out. Now, Eric Minier, one of those huge, huge Harry Potter nerds, I recall. Like, this is a part of his history, a part of his life. Him and his wife bonded over Harry Potter releases of books. Like, this is a big part. So this is his theme, and he is the right person to do it, I think. On a high level, what do you think? Shoot's really good. Art? Art's fine. I know there was some controversy with the whole AI. Some AI was used with some of it, which made, like, what, the dragon had an eye for an ear or something on the side of his head. Yeah, derp the magic dragon. Yeah. It looks fine. It looks fine. And it's got, I assume, everything in it a Harry Potter psycho would want. I mean, I haven't seen any of the movies, so I can't say. But, I mean, whenever, when I was playing it, I don't know any of the terminology, any of the stuff that it references. I think you would really like these films, actually, Ron. Nah. I legitimately think you would like these films. I'm good. It is packed. We're not, we're not, whatever happened with Pat Lawler and his not packing stuff into games is gone. He packed everything, except Toy Story. But, yeah, this is packed. It has vertical up-kickers. It has a rotating staircase with multiple ball paths. It's got a wand ramp, which is similar to the GNR ramp with the drumsticks. It's got a cauldron where the ball falls in. Someone's riding a broom. Someone's riding a broom. Yes, it's got an upper play field. It's got a car stuck in a whomping willow. It's a great game. I have yet to shoot one. Really? Yeah, it shoots good. Oh, I have no idea what to do. I just shoot the ball around, and it was cool. My favorite part of the play field, of course, is the upper, the, what is it, quidditch? Quidditch, quidditch, which is like the sport they play. All I know is I hit it up there, and all I had to do was hit a couple loops and stuff. I'm like, yeah, I could just stay up here for a while. It's got multiple shots up there, yeah. It was like, yeah, I like this thing here. It's cool. It's very good. Eric Minier's best game, I think. GNR was fine, but this has got something special. And it's not the theme. I think the pin itself is something special. So hats off to Eric Minier. We don't have enough to talk about this because the code's not done. Well, we can say they went to an extra model with this because the other ones, they were back to the LECE model, Well, unless you're Elton John, then it's platinum. This one they have, what is it, the LE? The Arcade and the Wizard. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got it. Yes. CE, Wizard, and Arcade. Instead of LE, it's called the Wizard because they don't want it to be limited. And then they have the Arcade edition, which basically has the play field is the same, but it just has less lights and less bling and stuff on it. And that one is for under $10K, I believe. It's like $9,999. $99. The CE, I think, is something pretty special. It's very expensive, but it is something special because it has that MinaLima art, which has it kind of, each image kind of flows into something specific about that book. Yeah, on the cabinet only, which is interesting. I think it would be interesting if they did a different play field for it. The Wizard edition, beautiful. The Collector's edition is a limited, unlimited run. Do you want to talk about what an unlimited, limited run is. What is it? They'll announce at some point when they'll stop making them, and that'll be the limit, I believe. Yes. This is the biggest license anyone's gotten in pinball for, like, ever. I mean, this is probably Star Wars. So they're going to sell as many of these as they possibly can. They're not going to limit it in any way. They're going to milk it. And they should. And you probably won't see the next Jersey Jack game for a while because of this. I think Jack himself in an interview said that one of his usual kind of backhanded stern jabs at how some companies have been making too many titles in the same year and there's just too much. You should dial it back, which I took as meaning stern. So they're going to be making this for a while. The arcade edition is nice just because it is actually under 10k and it has the same gameplay as the other two versions. The interesting thing about this game, and I'll put this out here, when we went through all these titles we've gone through, from Jersey Jack Part 1 to this episode, all the animations, the LCD animations, have been Jean-Paul de Win, or Jean-Paul de Win's team, and that's the thing. Originally, it was just Jean-Paul de Win. Over time, he has assembled a team of other Dutch artists who work on all these Jersey Jack games, and at the latest Dutch Pinball Open, which just happened a few weeks ago, he announced that he's leaving Jersey Jack. I think his exact words were, after 14 years, I've got to find something else to do. Something to that effect. But it sounds like his team will still be doing the Jersey Jack games. It's just he will not be involved anymore. But he was there from the beginning, so it's kind of a bookend to the thing. He was there from the very start all the way up to this game. We've toured various eras with Jersey Jack Pinball this episode, kind of moving from their first era into the second one where they were getting things situated into the third. And I guess we could say that Harry Potter is another demarcation point and the beginning of a new era for JJP. Do you think it's hyperbole? or do you think that this really is a big, big point for Jersey Jack? Harry Potter is the culmination of the company. I mean, they said so. But are they – is that sales or is that – do you think that that's going to be a real thing? No, I think they feel this was the ultimate license. This is what they work for. All they do is they get something like this. Yeah, to get the manufacturing in place, to get the artistry in place, to get the mechanics, the supply chain, the programming teams. I think that they have been building to this point. Did they know that Harry Potter was the license that they would get? I don't think so. But this is what they were moving towards, that they could make this type of license the biggest success possible. Jersey Jack is in a different market than Stern. They are not in the arcade market. They are in the home market. and it's taking them six or seven years to come to terms with that. They tried to compete with Stern on location play with things like the Guns N' Roses Standard Edition. After 2020, they knew that they had to sell more exciting and more complex games than any other manufacturer, and the succession planning with their designers has begun with names like Mark Seiden and Eric Minier. This is a big deal for Jersey Jack, and I'm excited to see where they're going. Brent Abbott says, I'm super proud to be Jack's partner. I love working with him, with all his guidance and decades of experience. What he did to build this company is an amazing story on its own. The pinball community coming together to support an amazing man on his dream, and I feel really lucky to be his partner and to have him by my side. Not in my wildest dreams did I think I would own the coolest gaming company on earth. I mean to be able to work with these guys, these legends, to create such an amazing product. I think what we do is so special. My dad always told me that it's not about being the biggest, it's about being the best at what you do. We're here to deliver the best games that money can buy. Any final words on Jersey Jack Pinball Part 2, the Era's Tour? Just looking forward to whatever their next games are. I mean, they're going to be making Harry Potter for a while. That's my bedtime. As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to civilbalkradicals at email.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way, more people can find us. Join us on Patreon to support the show. becoming a pro-crony is the perfect way to say thanks and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Join the Discord chat by jumping on at $6 a month as a premium crony. Want all the other perks in a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an elite crony. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to StimableSwag.com and pick up a Stimable Chronicles t-shirt. Especially the one that has Ron's name first. Nothing's bringing them back. They're dead, Jim. Come on, it's great. Netflix, you'd have like five companies that own all entertainment. I think it's five. So it was Netflix, Paramount. You guys used to be very anti-monopoly. Netflix, Paramount, Universal. I had this before. Disney. How could I forget them? And MGM slash Amazon. I said Paramount. I said Paramount. Yep. So that would be five that are like everything. But on the bright side, the original Star Wars is going to be released in two years in the theaters. I will be there. I will actually attend that. He's in Ghostbusters, you know. What? Yeah, Ron Jeremy's in Ghostbusters. The original Ghostbusters? Yep, he's one of the extras. You can see him in the back. He's got the mustache and everything. As soon as you see him, it's just like every time you watch the scene now, it's like, oh, look, there's Ron Jeremy. That's so funny.

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: fae629a3-8c6f-4d44-aee3-d8b71c8fda3c*