# Episode 1 – Upcoming Pins, Top 2015 Video Games, & Kickstarter

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2016-08-18  
**Duration:** 82m 35s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-1

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## Analysis

Tony and Dennis, co-hosts of the Eclectic Gamers Podcast, discuss the resurgence of pinball in the 2010s and analyze several upcoming pinball machines expected in 2016-2017, including Stern's Spider-Man Vault Edition, Highway Pinball's Aliens, and Jersey Jack Pinball's The Hobbit. They also discuss video games and touch on community growth in the Kansas City pinball market.

### Key Claims

- [MEDIUM] Pinball resurgence began around 2010, with prices rising starting in 2012 — _Dennis states 'pinball is in the midst of a resurgence. I don't know when the resurgence started. I'm going to say around 2010, from as near as I can tell, with prices starting to reflect that as of 2012'_
- [MEDIUM] Less than a decade before 2016, there was only one manufacturer making pinball machines — _Dennis: 'when you consider that it was about less than a decade ago that there was really only one player in the market still making pinball machines'_
- [HIGH] Spider-Man Vault Edition MSRP is $7,600; distributor price approximately $1,000 less — _Dennis: 'It was about $7,600 MSRP' and 'My understanding is it would be about $1,000 less. So we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,500 to $6,800'_
- [HIGH] Original Spider-Man was priced under $4,000 when originally released — _Dennis: 'the original Spider-Man, at least the, not the limited versions or the specialty versions... it was under $4,000 when it originally released'_
- [HIGH] Highway Pinball's Aliens is expected to cost about $6,000 before shipping — _Tony: 'Let's go ahead and note the price is expected for a standard is expected to be about $6,000, not including shipping'_
- [MEDIUM] Highway Pinball uses interchangeable playfields that can be swapped in approximately three minutes — _Tony: 'it's set up so that you can actually buy a game and then pull out the table, and I think it's like a three-minute process. You flash the new ROM on, and then you're able to drop in that new play field'_
- [MEDIUM] Kansas City area has 4-5 major pinball locations within 30-mile radius — _Dennis: 'I'd say four or five, especially if you widen our radius out maybe 30 miles so you hit Lawrence... and 30 miles the other direction'_
- [MEDIUM] Aliens licensing restricted voice actors from using original film actors — _Dennis: 'my understanding from what I've read and from what I've heard is that there were rules about using actors and actresses, that the licensor didn't include those elements'_

### Notable Quotes

> "pinball is in the midst of a resurgence. I don't know when the resurgence started. I'm going to say around 2010"
> — **Dennis**, ~4:30
> _Establishes timeline for modern pinball resurgence as starting point for discussion_

> "when you consider that it was about less than a decade ago that there was really only one player in the market still making pinball machines, that's really quite an accomplishment for the hobby"
> — **Dennis**, ~5:00
> _Highlights market expansion from monopoly to multiple manufacturers_

> "I play the play field I don't look at the play field when it does come to art"
> — **Dennis**, ~13:30
> _Establishes speaker's philosophy on evaluating pinball tables_

> "I would personally never buy a game at premium pricing like this when there is something. Stern is still making Star Trek"
> — **Dennis**, ~22:00
> _Economic critique of premium pricing strategy and market alternatives_

> "I love the LCD that they're putting into the play field, acting as a DMD directly on the play field type thing"
> — **Tony**, ~24:30
> _Positive reception to Highway Pinball's on-playfield display innovation_

> "when I look at the playfield, I don't see alien and aliens, I see outer space"
> — **Tony**, ~27:00
> _Critique of Aliens playfield art direction missing movie-specific theming_

> "the two big barriers to collecting pinball machines are price and space"
> — **Dennis**, ~32:00
> _Identifies core market challenges for home pinball collection_

> "I would have rather seen actor assets... I think on this, you want to have those movie assets because it's the movies that are timeless"
> — **Tony**, ~28:00
> _Argues for film authenticity in licensed pinball design vs. concept-only approach_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; tournament player since 2015; video game enthusiast |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; tournament player since 2015; pinball collector since 2012 |
| Stern Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; produces Spider-Man Vault Edition, Star Trek, Game of Thrones |
| Highway Pinball | company | European pinball manufacturer; released Full Throttle; upcoming Aliens table with modular playfield system |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer based in New Jersey; released Wizard of Oz; upcoming The Hobbit |
| Spider-Man (Vault Edition) | game | Stern re-release of classic Spider-Man with new Ultimate Spider-Man artwork, updated DMD animations, mode name changes; MSRP $7,600 |
| Spider-Man (Original) | game | Classic Steve Ritchie-designed Stern pinball; based on Tobey Maguire films; features Doc Ock and Sandman shots |
| Aliens | game | Highway Pinball game based on Alien and Aliens films; features LCD on playfield; wide body; expected price ~$6,000; modes from both films |
| Full Throttle | game | Highway Pinball's first released game; hot-swappable playfield design; basic theme |
| Star Trek (Stern) | game | Steve Ritchie-designed three-flipper layout similar to Spider-Man; Pro version ~$5,000; currently in production |
| Game of Thrones | game | Stern pinball game; different layout from Star Trek and Spider-Man |
| The Hobbit | game | Jersey Jack Pinball's next release after Wizard of Oz |
| Wizard of Oz | game | Jersey Jack Pinball's first machine; wide body; Dennis found it too difficult |
| Iron Man (Vault Edition) | game | First Stern Vault Edition; minimal modifications from original; MSRP just under $6,000; distributor price ~$5,000 |
| The Walking Dead | game | Stern pinball criticized for not featuring TV show actors, using voice actors instead |
| Kansas City pinball market | event | Geographic region with 4-5 major pinball locations, monthly tournaments on Kansas side, league play |
| Wichita pinball market | event | Pinball desert despite being largest Kansas city; quarterly tournaments only |
| Texas Pinball Festival | event | Planned 2016 event where hosts hope to play Highway Pinball games |
| Pizza West | organization | Location-based arcade venue in Kansas City area that previously hosted Spider-Man pinball |
| Steve Ritchie | person | Pinball designer; creator of Spider-Man and Star Trek layouts |
| Ridley Scott | person | Director of Alien (1979) |
| James Cameron | person | Director of Aliens (1986) |
| Tobey Maguire | person | Actor; played Spider-Man in original film trilogy that inspired original Spider-Man pinball art |
| J.K. Simmons | person | Actor who voiced editor-in-chief character in original Spider-Man pinball; character voice replaced in Vault Edition |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Pinball market resurgence and manufacturer expansion, Pricing and economics of new pinball machines, Upcoming 2016-2017 pinball releases, Licensed pinball themes and movie authenticity in design
- **Secondary:** Modular/interchangeable playfield technology, Regional pinball market variation, Video game releases and gaming trends
- **Mentioned:** Tournament play and competitive pinball

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Hosts are enthusiastic about pinball resurgence and upcoming games, though they express measured skepticism about pricing, design choices (wide bodies, Aliens playfield art), and licensing constraints. Overall tone is optimistic about market growth balanced with critical analysis.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Pinball market shows regional variation: Kansas City area has 4-5 major locations with monthly tournaments and league play, while Wichita (larger city) is pinball desert with only quarterly tournaments 2.5 hours away. (confidence: high) — Detailed discussion of Kansas City vs. Wichita market dynamics with specific tournament frequency comparisons
- **[sentiment_shift]** Hosts express familiarity with pinball tables through tournament play and location experience; positive reception to Highway Pinball's LCD innovation and modular system approach despite skepticism about wide body design. (confidence: medium) — Multiple references to playing specific tables at locations, tournament participation, and measured critical perspectives
- **[design_philosophy]** Aliens playfield art criticized for missing movie-specific theming; generic outer space aesthetic rather than film character/environment references. Contrast drawn with Spider-Man's shift to timeless comic art. (confidence: medium) — Tony: 'when I look at the playfield, I don't see alien and aliens, I see outer space' and 'I would have rather seen actor assets'
- **[design_philosophy]** Debate over Spider-Man Vault's shift from photorealistic movie art to timeless comic art. Stern prioritized eternal appeal over current IP promotion; contrast with Aliens approach using broad concepts. (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'I think Stern's perspective was, we want our table to be timeless. Let's put a comic version of Spider-Man on it'
- **[event_signal]** Texas Pinball Festival planned for 2016; hosts planning to attend and get hands-on experience with Highway Pinball's Full Throttle to inform judgment on Aliens. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'I'm hoping to get a chance to finally try it at the Texas Pinball Festival later this year'
- **[market_signal]** Pricing progression shows consistent increase across new machines: Spider-Man Vault $7,600 MSRP (~$6,500-6,800 distributor), Aliens $6,000, Iron Man Vault ~$6,000 MSRP (~$5,000 distributor), standard Pro tier ~$5,000. (confidence: high) — Multiple price points discussed throughout with comparative analysis
- **[market_signal]** Spider-Man Vault Edition MSRP of $7,600 represents significant price increase over original Spider-Man's sub-$4,000 launch price, despite not requiring full redesign. Dennis expresses surprise at pricing between Pro and Premium tier. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'I was surprised that the MSRP wasn't $1,000 less, because while they developed some new assets, they did not have to redesign this game'
- **[product_strategy]** Spider-Man Vault Edition includes significant updates: new Ultimate Spider-Man artwork replacing Tobey Maguire era, custom animated DMD replacing movie clips, mode renames, additional toys and features vs. Pro tier. (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'with the fact that the distributor price is likely going to be less' and discussion of new art, dots, and mode changes throughout section
- **[technology_signal]** Highway Pinball's modular playfield system allows swapping different game modules into same cabinet via three-minute ROM flash process, addressing space and cost barriers to home collection. (confidence: high) — Tony: 'it's set up so that you can actually buy a game and then pull out the table, and I think it's like a three-minute process. You flash the new ROM on'
- **[licensing_signal]** Aliens licensing apparently restricted use of original film actors/actresses in playfield design, forcing artist to rely on broader concepts rather than character-specific assets. (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'there were rules about using actors and actresses, that the licensor didn't include those elements, at least for the part while they were doing the play field'

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is Tony. This is Episode 1, and we are a podcast that likes to talk about pinball, video games, tabletop, and anything else that touches our fancy. I'm here with my co-host, Dennis. Hi, I'm Dennis, and I'm the co-host. Well, Dennis, let's go ahead and start out with the general stuff, just what we've been doing lately. Okay. Well, in terms of video games, which is what I've been spending most of my time on recently, I've invested pretty much all of my time into Fallout 4. I've been really a fan, I should say, of Fallout ever since Fallout 2. I did play a little bit of Fallout 1, but it was Fallout 2 that I sunk most of my teeth in. I was very pleased with Fallout 3 When a lot of people At least a lot of fans from Fallout 2 That I knew of were very skeptical about that move Away from the sort of Turn-based strategy approach The XCOM style combat That was known in the first two games I thought the transition to first and third person shooter Went very well in Fallout 3 I thought Fallout New Vegas Was a better story But a bit of a buggy mess of a game And Fallout 4 is pretty much more of the same with Minecraft in terms of building up the towns, which is not an aspect I'm particularly interested in. I probably will not be spending as much time in the game as I have historically in Fallout 3 in New Vegas. Part of that is because I'm on trueachievements.com. I'm participating in a gamer score challenge, and so I have to earn achievements at a fairly regular pace, and RPGs like Fallout are not good sources of that. So it's still what I'm spending most of my time on, but I'm having to diversify out and try and score some quick points on some throwaway games like Pneuma. Breath of Life was another game I recently played. So that's pretty much it. Outside of video games, I rewatched Two Towers, my favorite Lord of the Rings movie. I saw The Revenant. It was okay. I saw The Hateful Eight. It was pretty good. And I've been working a little bit on pinball. Not too much since the last tournament you and I were both at, but a little bit more time on Star Trek Stern Edition and Skylab, which is an EM game from the 70s. How about you, Tony? I've been playing a lot of Fallout 4, too, and I'm going to agree with you on pretty much all the points. It's a solid game, but it's not quite there. I wish it had the story, the adaptability, and the conversation choices like we had in Vegas with the actual gunplay that you have, and before I enjoy the gunplay, I just think the story is a little bit of a hot mess compared to what I would like, especially the conversation choices. I've put a lot of hours into it since it came out. I've still been playing it some recently. I got sidetracked, though. I got sidetracked with Darkest Dungeon that just came out. What is it? I don't know Darkest Dungeon. What is it? Darkest Dungeon, it's a roguelike that you have taken over a barony type thing, a town that used to have somebody over it. And you've taken over for them. And they have been bringing in the evil. And there are dungeons and monsters. And your whole job is to clear the monsters out. So what you do is you actually hire mercenaries and they come in. and you run them through the dungeons to clear out the dungeons and try to make everything safe. It is an unforgiving roguelike. It's not a question of if you lose somebody. It's when you lose somebody and how bad you lose somebody. It's got a neat stress mechanic where as things happen while they're in the dungeons, the torchlight gets too low and somebody gets slaughtered. Their stress goes up. There's a bunch of different classes. I haven't seen even close to all the different possible classes that you can hire, and some of them won't work together, and every person has their own little foibles, their own little habits. Like there's one person who he's very pure. The only way to reduce his stress is he'll go to the church and pray, and there's another person who will only gamble, and there's another person who's not allowed to gamble because they're a known cheat and stuff like that. And, I mean, when you're going through the dungeons, you can pick up, You can get diseases. You can get your people, your guys can go crazy. You can get so stressed out you have a heart attack and die in the dungeon. It's a pretty rough roguelike, but I've been enjoying it quite a lot lately. That's what I've been spending a big chunk of my time in is that. All right. Well, I guess we've got our sort of intros out of the way, so I think we're ready to move on to the meat of our podcast. I agree with that. All right. what topic do we want to tackle first well let's just uh let's just jump straight to pinball that's the that's going to be the big one in the room since the start of the year and all the uh all the big tournaments are moving up and all the big game releases are being announced already that's right and uh i guess for those who don't know and who really would listening tony and i are both uh tournament players we both started in 2015 actually playing in the tournament scene. I started collecting pinballs in 2012, so I'm still, even on that side of things, pretty new to the hobby. But pinball is in the midst of a resurgence. I don't know when the resurgence started. I'm going to say around 2010, from as near as I can tell, with prices starting to reflect that as of 2012, conveniently for me. But with 2016 now upon us, there are a slew of pinball machines that are supposed to be coming out this year, or perhaps in 2017, from a mix of manufacturers. And when you consider that it was about less than a decade ago that there was really only one player in the market still making pinball machines, that's really quite an accomplishment for the hobby. Well, yeah, it is. And especially when you look at, I mean, just look at the locations. It used to be the only places you'd ever see a pinball machine is you might find one pinball machine sitting in a laundromat somewhere or sitting in some dusty corner of a bar somewhere, something that had been there for a long time. And with the big resurgence in barcades, or not really resurgence, but the big appearing of barcades, and as the popularity takes off, they've been making more and more and more. I mean, we've got, what, three, four big locations in the area that have a bunch of pinball? Right. I'd say we're in the Kansas City market, and I know on the Kansas City side of things, I guess it depends how we would define big. But yeah, I'd say four or five, especially if you widen our radius out maybe 30 miles so you hit Lawrence, which is the college town for the University of Kansas, and 30 miles the other direction across on the Missouri side of the border. But yeah, I know there are a lot of other towns that are pinball deserts, so to speak For example, despite being the largest city in Kansas Wichita does not have very much in the way of location pinball available to people There are some tournaments going on down there I think about quarterly, however Whereas when you look at the Kansas City area There are two locations hosting on the Kansas side that are having monthly tournaments And there's a league that happens in the Kansas City side And so, I mean, just even that distance, and we're talking about a two-and-a-half-hour drive distance between those two locales, there's just – you see that significant difference on where you see a resurgence and where the resurgence isn't hitting, at least in the marketplace for coin op side of things. yeah it seems to be i think it's something that's going to grow as the popularity moves up it's going we're going to see more it becoming more and more in other markets as they move forward but it's it's definitely a big resurgence and there's a lot of games already announced for this year plus several more hinted at but that i've not seen anything solid on right yeah the uh I guess the ghost in the room on that one is what I'm sure we'll talk about on a later episode. It will be what some call the worst kept secret in pinball, which is Stern's Ghostbusters table. I've not really read anything on it. I've been staying away from any threads that are discussing it. But we do have a Stern title that we can start our discussion on, which has already been announced formally by Stern. and I imagine will be shipping very soon if it hasn't actually already gone out at this point and that is the Vault Edition of Spider-Man. Yeah, the Vault Editions are a great thing that I've been enjoying. It's just a release of an older game, sometimes with new art, sometimes without, just put out and put back into circulation. The Spider-Man has all new art, which makes sense because the old one was based off of the Tobey Maguire movies. so the addition, they don't really have a long lifespan with all the photorealistic art. But with the new art, it's, I don't know, I like the look of it. They went with the ultimate Spider-Man, which kind of surprised me, but I don't think the table looks too horrible all in all. Yeah, art-wise, and I'm not a huge fan of judging pinball machines by artwork. It's really all we can judge off of until we get a chance to play machines. but my sort of philosophy is I play the play field I don't look at the play field when it does come to art I'm more focused on the back glass and the sides of the cabinet and on the ladder even that doesn't mean all that much in the home collection because if a collection is anything like mine you have to line up the pins side by side so other than the ones that are bookending the row I can't really enjoy anything but the back glass anyway but yeah, the Ultimate Spider-Man I was a bit surprised My guess, and it is just a guess, is that Marvel just gave them an asset dump from Ultimate for just maybe convenience reasons, because I think the Ultimate Spider-Man's done. I think they're done writing that. I think it wrapped up a few years ago, actually, so I don't really know why they would. In terms of Marvel caring to promote their current property, I would have thought they would have gone with a different Spider-Man, so I just don't think there was really any thought put into it. I think Stern's perspective was, we want our table to be timeless. Let's put a comic version of Spider-Man on it so then people will always look and go, oh, that's Spider-Man, not, oh, that's Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man. And then it will always remain fresh because Spider-Man is always an appealing character to own for a lot of people. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think the thing with the ultimate Spider-Man is the ultimate Spider-Man, Peter Parker, died. years and years ago. They killed the character off completely. I heard about that. Oh, spoilers, by the way. Yeah, spoilers from like five, six years ago. They replaced him with the new Ultimate Spider-Man was Miles Morales. I kind of wondered if they would go a Miles Morales route when they went with anything. I wondered that about the new movies coming out if they were going to go Miles Morales. They're not. They're going Peter Parker and they did the same thing here. It makes sense that by staying away from the the main primary uh marvel universe uh spider-man staying away and where miles morales has moved to now they're just keeping it away from the big stuff and going with something that it doesn't matter too much but it's still obviously spider-man so i wondered if they weren't able to get it for uh the assets a little easier than if they were going with one of the other ones it might have been i i also wondered if perhaps uh by sticking with peter parker it maybe to the programmers if it gave them an easier time in terms of the modes and such. I guess we should point out that with this Vault Edition, in addition to the art changes on the cabinet and play field, there was also, they're getting all new dots. The dot matrix display dots are going to be updated. They were basically movie rips from originally, so they're sort of like clips from the movie done up in DMD format. I personally thought they looked pretty ugly. I think most of the movie rips do look awfully terrible to go that low res. And so it's going to have custom animated dots instead. And some of the modes are getting renamed as well. So, for example, I think there was a mode relating to the movies where Peter Parker has to save Mary Jane. It was called Save Mary Jane. And now the mode, it still exists, but it's going to be called Tell Mary Jane. So maybe it's plot-wise supposed to be him making shots and that being Peter Parker going through whether to tell Mary Jane that he is in fact Spider-Man. It doesn't really matter in a lot of ways. The modes are the modes. But they have done a lot of changes, whereas this is the second Vault Edition that Stern has done. The first one was Iron Man, and really all it was was a re-release. Hardly anything was actually modified from the original Iron Man pinball machine. But the original Iron Man and Pinball Machine also had not been that long ago released, whereas there's been a much more significant span of time for this one. Well, it's not only a significant span of time, but, I mean, we're already on the second actor since Tobey Maguire to play Spider-Man. So it's that far out. It was that far out of date. Now, there are some things with the original. I mean, because we know how it plays. It's even with the name changes, this and that, it's going to play the same as the original Spider-Man. I loved the original Spider-Man. It was a very good table that I enjoyed quite a lot. The art changes, like I said, I don't really have a problem with them. I am going to miss J.K. Simmons. Yeah, I think for a homeowner in particular, J.K. Simmons was a standout character. He's a standout character actor, period. Obviously, he's very well appreciated ever since Whiplash came out anyway. But he's been a staple for character acting for a long time now. And he was one of the highlights of the Sam Raimi movies. His editor-in-chief, go get him, Parker, Parker, Parker sort of style. It was a lot of fun. And I have not listened to the new audio call-outs to know what the substitute sounds like. I've heard that overall the sound is very competently done. That it doesn't sound like phoned-in voice acting. So they put in some effort into it. It's just obviously when you had an actor call-out and now you're not doing anything associated with the movies, When you have a standout actor, you lose that standout aspect to the table, which is unfortunate. We've both played Spider-Man. It was one of our area locations. Pizza West had it for quite a while. They actually just recently rotated it out. Overall, I guess, since we've both played it and we know how it shoots, what were your thoughts on Spider-Man from a gameplay perspective? From a gameplay perspective, I enjoyed it. It wasn't as crazy hard. It wasn't one of those tables that just made me rage, but it wasn't so easy that it was something where you could just hit one shot over and over and over again. I mean, it had a lot of fun little things. I always liked the Doc Ock shots, and I always liked the Sandman shots. Always were a lot of fun. But all in all, I just thought it was a really solid table that I had no problems dropping quarters in time and time again to play. Yeah, I would agree. I didn't get a ton of time on Spider-Man. It wasn't one of my favorite tables. The one that was on location was modified to be harder than a standard default setup would be, so the ball times weren't quite as generous as it's renowned to be, which Spider-Man is known historically to have fairly generous ball times. Steve Ritchie layout, so very fan layout structured, for me I think the main thing is obviously I've played so much of Star Trek and the layout is so similar I prefer Star Trek to Spider-Man so I'm always comparing it they're both three flipper layouts with a left ramp shot that can only be made from an upper flipper they have that center shot, Sandman versus the Vengeance sort of thing, so overall structurally I'm very familiar with the concept behind Spider-Man. I personally prefer the execution on Star Trek, but I think this looks very nice. I mean, they kept the basic toy structure layout. This is very densely populated, as the tables back when Spider-Man originally came out were, compared to, say, what the pros, the pro lineup of machines look like now. It's a winner in terms of shots for people, so I'm sure they're going to meet their target expectations. I guess I would go ahead and ask you, Tony, what did you think about the price that was announced? It was about $7,600 MSRP. I should point out that Stern MSRP is not what the games are actually sold for in the retail market, I should say. If you contact distributors, the pricing is lower. My understanding is it would be about $1,000 less. So we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,500 to $6,800, I guess, to actually have one of these shipped to your door. So, I mean, I didn't know if you had any thoughts on a machine that, I should point out, the original Spider-Man, at least the, not the limited versions or the specialty versions, because I think there were three different modes or versions of Spider-Man that came out, but it was under $4,000 when it originally released. So, I guess, you know, have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, the increasing cost, all the The games are increasing in cost, and we'll see that as we talk about the other games aimed out this year. They're all pretty pricey. It just is the way new pinball machines are going. I was surprised for Vault Edition to be priced as high as it was when I heard the announcement. Even with the fact that the distributor price is likely going to be less, it's still surprisingly high. I was expecting, because this was one of those games that wasn't much of a secret. It was pretty rumored for a while. I was guessing, I think a lot of people were guessing $5,000 or $5,500 maybe. And for it to be over $7,500 was a real surprise. If I just had the money laying around, I could see myself getting it. I mean, it's not one of my top five games, but I'd put it probably in my top ten, at least of the games I've played which is admittedly not nearly as many as I would like but it's definitely a game I enjoyed yeah I am not surprised that it was more than the Iron Man Vault which sells for I lose track the MSRP would be just under $6,000 I believe and so your price from a distributor would be in the neighborhood of $5,000 which is what is sort of seen as standard Stern Pro pricing today I'm not surprised this is higher than Pro because it has more toys. It has more things. You have the new Sandman. You have the Doc Ock. You have the Green Goblin. There's just more generally that's put on the table than what comes with a Pro. The problem for me is that I would personally never buy a game at premium pricing like this when there is something. Stern is still making Star Trek. The Pro version is seen as a pretty full-featured game compared to the premium version. other than the light show. And like I noted earlier, they shoot very similarly. So you have an option where if you like the gameplay, if you like the flow of Spider-Man, I think you can turn to Stern Star Trek and say, well, I could just get this for about $5,000 and save myself $1,500. So I could see going forward if I was a big Spider-Man fan, but if I just want a really good Steve Ritchie layout, there's still one readily available that has a very similar structure to this very one. And of course he just had Game of Thrones come out which is laid out differently than this is very similar to Star Trek and Game of Thrones is not But just in terms of that I think you know I heard they selling them so they getting what they're asking for. Obviously, they can price it whatever the market will bear. I was surprised that the MSRP wasn't $1,000 less, because while they developed some new assets, they did not have to redesign this game, and so I thought they probably would have priced it between pro and premium. It's got more stuff in it than a standard pro, but it did not take as much work to put this out as a fresh off the board premium would have cost. So just, you know, my two cents on that, but it's not, it's not something I would contemplate buying, uh, at new price. I probably wouldn't even get it used, honestly, just because it's too similar to some other stuff I've already experienced, but it is a very good table. Um, you know, I do recommend people play Spiderman and see if they'll like it. I think it's a lot of fun. It's a fun shooter. Uh, most of Steve's designs are though so and there are a lot out there available yeah yeah i can agree with that completely then with that out of the way let's see let's step to let's look at aliens by highway pinball now i haven't played highway pinball's first table to come out yet a full throttle i've seen videos of it played i've seen several other uh items on it but i haven't actually played I like the looks of the game. I like a lot of what Highway is doing. I love the LCD that they're putting into the play field, acting as a DMD directly on the play field type thing. But we'll see. I've kind of got good high hopes for this one. I agree for the most part, I think. Let's go ahead and note the price is expected for a standard is expected to be about $6,000, not including shipping. So I feel that's a pretty competitive price compared to where games are selling for nowadays. I also have never played Full Throttle. I think this is a European company, Highway is, and so I don't know how many have actually shipped to the U.S. There are some, and I'm hoping to get a chance to finally try it at the Texas Pinball Festival later this year. It looks fun. I, like you, also like the LCD screen in the play field. I think it's a brilliant idea to allow people to be able to keep track of their scores. The back glass is a great spot for, you know, when you're competitively playing and letting other people kind of get in on what's going on in the fun of pinball. But I so rarely look up at the DMD when I'm playing unless I, you know, catch and trap the ball. And so it's really nice to actually be able to have that in the center there. I watched the Papa tutorial video on it. I thought it worked really well to be able to have that. Made it very convenient to be able to keep track of the scoring. Um, and the alien movies are, are some of my favorite. I actually like all four, even the third one with all its studio interference. I still think it actually is a pretty decent movie. It's just unfortunately not nearly as good as the other three that came out at the same time. And I don't count the abominations that involved the predator because those aren't real. But in terms of basing off the first two movies, which I think generally are agreed by pretty much all cinephiles as being the two best alien movies. I thought the theme was a knockout home run to mix two sports metaphors but when I look at it, the only thing I found so off-putting was, and again, not a big deal, because as I noted I play the playfield, I don't look at it, but when I look at the playfield, I don't see alien and aliens, I see outer space and I just thought, well that's kind of weird, because they're basing it off of two movies very specifically the back glass has got the alien with the logo design of the words it's it's all supposed to be reminiscent of both movies uh my understanding is that the game consists of modes from both so like you can play the alien side and it's got a wizard mode and then there's an alien side and it's got a wizard mode and then after you do the i guess there are many wizard modes and you do both and then it unlocks like the master wizard mode or that's the plan um but when I look at the play field, I don't see that. I see a lot of stars and a lot of black and a couple of aliens, but when I see that, I think about the xenomorph. I don't think about the films, and I would have rather seen actor assets. We just got done talking about Spider-Man, about how they wanted to make it timeless and move away from Tobey Maguire onto the comics. I think on this, you want to have those movie assets because it's the movies that are timeless. The xenomorph is a character, and that's fine. There are games and stuff that continue to live on doing that, but most people, the fond memories are of the two stellar movies from Ridley Scott and James Cameron, not just the concept of the xenomorph. I won't disagree with that. I do like the bottom of the playfield. I like the motion tracker with the alien and all that. I love the look of that. And as you flow up, it does turn more spacey. And my only big thoughts of that is I think most of that's going to be covered by ramps and other playfield objects and toys. Until I see one actually put together, I think I'm going to hold off on my general thoughts on how the playfield itself looks. It looks like it could be a pretty fun play field to play, but it's too early. I haven't really made any big decisions on it. I do love Aliens and Aliens, though. I mean, it is a great theme. It's a theme I'm kind of surprised it took this long for anything to appear with it. I'm just going to have to wait and see. I know a lot of people really like a lot of the stuff Highway did in Full Throttle, even though Full Throttle itself is a very basic theme that they didn't have, that there wasn't a whole lot of craziness. But I think that was also solid because that was their first game, and it was good to go with a basic theme that didn't require them to go all out and they weren't beholden completely to the studio or somebody else's IP when they were putting together their table. Right. And my understanding from what I've read and from what I've heard is that there were rules about using actors and actresses, that the licensor didn't include those elements, at least for the part while they were doing the play field. And so the artist didn't have much choice but to go with the more broad concepts. And that's fine. Again, on the play field, the play field looks fine. It looks fine for me. I wouldn't mind shooting on it. It's not ugly. It fits with the theme. It's just I would have rather it echoed the movie stronger than it does, but the only way to do that, in my view, would be actually involving the characters. I'll be more concerned if the characters' assets are not used in the display modes. Again, I mean, it's standard now in most things to try and actually do call-outs from the movies and stuff when you're doing a theme like that. and when you don't, like The Walking Dead which did not have any to my knowledge of the actors involved a lot of people were very critical when they used voice actors instead of actually getting people from the TV show or using actual call outs from the TV show and I think again if you're really trying to say this is the game that's about, that you're playing the movie then I need to see the movie and that's not just acid dripping through the floor I need to see Ripley kicking ass but again it's all about how it plays unfortunately this is a wide body and I generally don't like wide bodies um I'll have to give it I'll have to give it a try to see if it feels fast um generally that's my complaint with wide bodies is they kind of feel slow like I'm waiting forever for the ball to travel from one side to the other before it actually interacts with anything uh that's not true for all of them though it's just a mean stereotype that I'm perpetuating uh so but just by default I prefer standard bodies, and I'm always pretty skeptical when I see a wide body. So until I get a chance to try it, I'll have to withhold judgment. But full throttle does look good, and it looked pretty fast, so I'm hoping by trying that, since we know the tables we should know for highway are interchangeable, so it's set up so that you can actually buy a game and then pull out the table, and I think it's like a three-minute process. You flash the new ROM on, and then you're able to drop in that new play field and you can actually swap their games around like that. So you're not having to buy a $6,000 plus shipping cabinet with game every single time. You can actually just buy the play field and reuse the same cabinet, which I think is a very clever and good approach to trying to deal with the home market because the two big barriers to collecting pinball machines are price and space, and there's not really an easy way to solve the latter of those. I agree with you, I think it is a good thing to see we'll see how well it actually works out I've seen videos of them hot swapping the full throttle playfields between two different full throttle playfields and it was amazing to me how quickly they could change them out so we'll just see how well that works when it comes to changing between completely different to completely different games if it works as well it will be nice for the home market though It'll definitely let you, I'm kind of bored with Alien. Let's go ahead and play some Full Throttle. I'm bored with Full Throttle. We'll put some Alien back in. And this and that. It just lets you vary it up and keep everything going without eating up even more space. Yeah. Well, I think that's everything we need to say about Alien. Do we want to move on to Jersey Jack's next coming table? Hobbit? I am perfectly ready to move on to Jersey Jack's next coming out table. Okay. Well, Hobbit, we should say Jersey Jack Pinball, based in New Jersey. Their first machine was Wizard of Oz. I have played that. It is another widebody. I was personally not a fan. It's going to sound very whiny. It's hard. Oh, gosh. It was too hard for me. I really need to get a lot more time. And dropping in the money I was for such short ball times, and there were so many other games available. So I played it several times, but I didn't give it much of a shot. I will say that in a home environment, I think Wizard of Oz has a lot of potential, because there is a ton of stuff that you can do on that game. There are two mini playfields available, there's a lot of things to shoot for, and it's not easy, though. It doesn't give you very long ball times. And so it's a little, in a way I found it a little odd because it seemed surprisingly brutal for what was a very deep game. And my understanding of the code is that it's extremely deep, a very long game to actually get through to quote unquote win. So here we are with The Hobbit coming out, another wide body. And I guess I'll just start by saying, personally, I think it looks beautiful. I mean, the play field is stunning. The whole machine, I think, is visually very impressive. So, I mean, A-plus on that. No, I agree completely. It is definitely a very beautiful machine. I like how they integrated that enormous monitor into the back glass. That is just insane how big that monitor is. But my favorite part of the entire play field is just the very middle, right, the very middle of the play field with Schmaug looking up at you is just, I love it. I just love the reds. I love how everything plays together. I think it looks amazing. Yes. And so let's see. In terms of pricing expectations, it's $8,000, I believe, for the standard edition of the machine. And when are they shipping? Well, I don't know. I keep seeing pictures posted of them being assembled now. I read somewhere that the expectation currently is that they'll start going out to people who preordered in March of this year. actually um but that that's i mean that's really the story about about the hobbit this game has taken forever well forever as i suppose i'm rounding up a bit but yeah it feels like it's taken forever to come out yeah it was originally slated to come out in 2014 and uh it's 2016 and it's still not out yet now i did uh here just today there is uh the first test machines in the wild it's supposed to be in new york somewhere okay so so if the if they're dropping test machines into the wild they'll probably start having them come out here real quick like yeah i think i saw some information that uh had been saying that it was confirmed that there were i think seven test machines and they were being put together in december so it would make sense that that those we would start seeing uh some news about those actually being used yeah it's a until I get a chance to play one I haven't played anything from Jersey Jack Wizard of Oz was gone from the local shop before I ever got a chance to get there and play it but I don't know the table looks good the few videos I've seen look pretty solid looks fun the interactions with that large LCD in the back is going to be very interesting, and looks like there will be a Hobbit at Texas for us to play. Yes, yes, I think I've read that as well, and I'm good. I do really want to try it. I guess, I mean, overall, I imagine that Hobbit will be a success, at least a modest success. I don't know. I think in a lot of ways they missed the boat. It's sort of unfortunate. They've got a lot of people who have had their money tied up a long time. I think those people are going to stick it out pretty much no matter what at this point, especially if they haven't gotten out already. But I read that from announcement to yet to be released, this game has now taken longer than Wizard of Oz did. And Wizard of Oz was plagued with delays. And it's the second machine. And that's the thing. That's, for me, the confusing part. And I don't make pinball machines, so I don't get it. But from a consumer standpoint, I thought you were supposed to get faster as you went along, not slower. And this table has missed the boat. I mean, the bottom line was The Hobbit was not a very good series of movies. And, you know, there have been lots of pinball machines that were great pinball machines that were based on bad movies, like The Shadow or Congo or Johnny Mnemonic. But the thing was is those machines came out in time for the movie. So at least there was a related tie-in. Now, when you look back, you're like, why is someone making a pinball machine for a movie that's third one finished two years ago and wasn't very good? It's sort of confusing. And so obviously, if you understand the design cycle, it's like, well, you know, they're married to the theme at this point. They have to do what they have to do. It's just on retrospect, this is not a theme that you would want to sell. There are so many better movies that would have, you know, when you think back, would have been better choices than this one. And again, we don't play theme, we play gameplay. But I haven't heard from those people that have played the prototype versions, I haven't seen a lot of praise being sung for how the game shoots. And that's why I want to try it. But I'm not hearing a lot of, wow, this is amazing sort of stuff. Instead, when I hear people talk about Jersey Jack and how well a machine shoots, it's how everyone's looking forward to their third game, which is not known what it's going to be yet, other than Pat Lawler of the Addams Family pinball. machine fame is designing. And so that's when you want to talk about a good design layout, that's what they're pointing to is what he's going to put out. But the bottom line is if they can't get machines out faster than they are, I struggle to see how they'll ever be successful long term. Because when they announced way back in the day, they positioned themselves not to be a boutique, but essentially to be a competitor to Stern at the high end range for collectors. and instead I'm not even seeing a company that can put out a machine every two years. And Stern has no problem putting out three new machines every year. So it's just not competitive for them, and I wish them the best, and I hope they can clean up their act and actually start producing machines faster than they've been showing us because it looks like amateur hour. Yeah, we'll see. I think machine three is going to be make or break for them. I think that's where the decisions are. I mean, if the third machine is as badly played as the first two are, I think they will, I'm not saying it will destroy them. They'll still be able to put out machines. I just don't think they're going to slide into this position that everybody saw them as, the big stern competitor. I mean, I'm not really sure who I'd put as the big stern competitor right now. Well, there is none. Yeah, there is none. That's the answer. but there but there are there there's people who have who there's companies who have hopes i mean i think if they do everything right and they and depend upon how alien hits highway could become a really big name they've got good ideas and everything sounds like they're going pretty solid i know like i said jersey jack that's where they were they were the people expected to be there they're just they're just they're having snags and delays that are slowing them down and we'll see I think Game 3 will be the big decider. If they can iron out this whole problem of pushing things back and pushing things back with Game 3, they may be able to do what everybody thinks they can do. Well, let's transition then from such a somewhat troubled story to perhaps an even more troubled story. Tony, what are your thoughts about The Big Lebowski coming out of Dutch Pinball, another European manufacturer? I love The Big Lebowski. not the pinball table i love the big lebowski the movie it i consider it one of the greatest movies ever made it is a movie i can sit down and watch time and time again it makes a wonderful theme for a pinball machine they've had some issues i'm not even going to talk about the pricing issues because the price makes me want to vomit every time i even see it but i just don't know i i don't know if this is going to happen i know they had some licensing problems where they didn't end up having the music and i mean the music is a core part of that movie for it to not be a part of the game is kind of shocking but we'll see i mean there's just i haven't seen enough of anything to know i know some people who say it's some people who've played the prototype say they put that it's fun but i just don't know i'm i'm it's a machine i'm worried about. Yeah, I should, and for those that don't know, I will go ahead and bring up the price, but I won't focus a lot of time on it. Price for the U.S. is currently expected to be $10,000, and I would, I mean, my own opinion is as great as this looks, I think the play field looks good, not Hobbit good, but good. It definitely looks like the movie, so kudos on that. It's got a lower play field, which is a bowling alley with some sort of game there. It's got a, in the center, There's sort of a shot where there's the rug, which is a famous sort of MacGuffin in the film, which I think is supposed to unroll and you can shoot on. And it's got an upper play field as well. I mean, it's got a lot going on and it screams, this is the big Lebowski. So in terms of that, you know, nailed it. They definitely nailed it visually in terms of the theme. I agree completely. I agree completely. It looks good. I just, I can't, I can't see it being a $10,000 machine. machine. Now, to be fair, all of these machines are priced beyond what I would pay for them. The closest one would be Spider-Man, or well, actually, no, the $6,000 machine, so Alien, and then we'll get to another one here in a moment, but those are kind of, I can conceive of doing that if the game resonated enough with me. I could see coming, I couldn't see putting together $10,000, and it makes even less sense to me now because the dollar, dollar, this is based in Denmark, it's a European company, they're using the Euro, the dollar has strengthened against the Euro since the game was first announced so with the exchange rate the price shouldn be higher it should be lower than it was But it went up That doesn make any sense to me So I mean maybe it some of the reverse of what we hear the complaints from the Europeans and Canadians when they buying pinball machines from us when they weekend and so it costs them more because of the exchange rate and this is a taste of that, but it's not a taste of it due to the market. It's a taste of it due to the decisions of Dutch Pinball, which makes me think that maybe they didn't estimate the costs very well, and so they just had to raise it over time. I don't know. You mentioned the issue with the music licensing. My understanding in a nutshell of what went on there is they early on made very clear that they had secured licensing assets to do the Big Lebowski, to be able to use the movie assets. This was a big deal because last year, just under a year ago, was when Predator pinball imploded because there was no actual license secured regarding the movie Predator, and people were very much on edge. And Dutch was out there reassuring people. They brought on Roger Sharp, a famous pinball shop that saved pinball fame. He does licensing work now. So he helps secure licenses the way he does for his job. And they brought him on board to help tie all these licenses together and have everything in a nice, neat bow. And so they have the right to use the movie. But what happened was at one of the major pinball conventions, they announced, almost matter-of-factly, but it shocked all the people who were pre-ordered, was while they had the right to use assets from the movie, they didn't have the right to use the songs, unless they were essentially playing the clip from the movie where the music appeared. Now, what I'm not clear on is, are they allowed to use the songs? They just can't use the songs by the original artists? Or can they not use the songs at all? I don't know. All I know is that they're having music done for it. And I imagine it's not going to just sound like me on my MIDI keyboard imitating John Carpenter sort of stuff. But obviously that set a lot of people off because part of the iconic nature of this film and its cult status is its soundtrack, which you've already pointed out. So, yeah, I mean, the other thing is this one has been, you know, it's I don't think it's as much attention as The Hobbit in terms of delays, but it's been taking a long time, given how often Dutch Pinball has shown up and given shooting models for people to kind of play around on for this. I think a lot of people are starting to get a little antsy about when is this finally going to come out? When are we going to see the final prototypes? I really don't know. I enjoyed The Big Lebowski. It's not a movie I've watched in a number of years. I think the table looks great but I actually don't really have any interest in it it's not one I would really consider owning unless there's some sort of great deal and this is pinball so there will never be a great deal so it's sort of one that I've given a pass on I definitely would like to try a final version if it ever shows up at a convention or something but unfortunately at this price point it's so beyond contemplation that I just don't contemplate it like I said earlier, I love the theme It's a theme that I could really get behind. It's a game that I would consider for my collection just due to theme, but with the price point and everything else, I just don't know. I think it's something that if I had it, if I found a good deal or something, I could see it, but it's not something I would ever actually plan on being a center point of a collection. well let's end our pinball segment on a happier note and that would be spooky pinballs upcoming table rob zombies spook show international six thousand dollar price point it's limited to 300 units a certain number of those are le's that are at a higher price point it doesn't really matter what the price is though it was sold out like within the day it was announced what are your thoughts on Rob Zombie? I would build a collection around this machine. The art on the sides of this machine is amazing. The art on the play field is nice. I love the theme. I've been a Rob Zombie guy for a long time. I'm a metal guy for the most part. I'm pretty eclectic with music, but I love metal and I love Rob Zombie. This is a machine that I would put into my collection without a problem. I agree with most of that. The art on the sides and the back glass I think looks great. I definitely would want this on the end of my pinball row if I had one. Because it's just that great. It's apocalyptic. It's busy without being overwhelming. So I enjoy that. I don't think much about the playfield art. I also don't generally care. It looks pretty barren to me. I guess that'd be my only issue with the playfield art. I think the toys on the playfield look great. a little robot, a bucket of chicken, all that. I mean, it just looks Rob Zombie. I'm not very knowledgeable about Rob Zombie. His music, I'm more familiar with the movies he's done. This is sort of a blend of all of that. I think the price point is great for what all is in this. It's just, in a way, not in a way, I'd say, it's unfortunate that Spooky chose to do such a limited number because I think they could have sold more than 300 units at this price point if there wasn't the cap. I agree completely. I think Spooky is the number one boutique right now, and I also think Spooky honestly has the best chance to move from being a boutique to being a major seller. They could have easily sold more Rob Zombies, easily. It is a beautiful table, and I know they've got some deals going for a Domino's machine and some other stuff. We'll see how that turns out, which will be good. I mean, it's more money, but I'm interested to see what their next machine is. I haven't had a chance to play their first machine. There hasn't been one locally in a location I can play. And everything I've heard is, I mean, you either love it or hate it from all the people I've talked to. Right, yeah. Spooky's first machine, for those that aren't familiar, is America's Most Haunted. And I think their experiences on that may be why this machine is capped where it is. They only made 150 of the America's Haunted, and my understanding is it took them three years to sell out of them. My guess would be that it was probably a mix, that they were a new pinball manufacturer, and the fact that it was an original theme, it wasn't a license. Obviously, when you – and this comes up a lot on pinball forums and such, this discussion about original themes versus doing licensed themes, a criticism of people that really want original themes, which used to be done fairly readily, like in the 90s, 80s, well, really all the way through the past of pinball, is that a company like Stern only does licenses. They never do an original theme anymore unless they're contracted to do it. And so people miss that, and they really kind of want that to happen. But I think we see with how quickly Rob Zombie sells out of twice the number of units compared to America's Most Haunted or jumping back to Highway and how well I'm sure Alien will do compared to Full Throttle, which I think had a motocross theme or something. I mean, it's based on something, but it's not a license. It speaks for itself. I mean, licenses have power. And so I think part of that was their experience, Spooky's experience, trying to sell America's Most Haunted and how long it took so they kept the run limited. It also can help them, I feel, kind of in a short-term marketing situation. I'm not a business expert, but my sense was they essentially artificially constrain the supply by saying we will not do more than 300. It makes it easier for people to get on board because they'll have, at least in their mind, they'll have a higher likelihood of being able to recoup their money if they don't like the machine and they want to sell it in the used market. I mean, America's Most Haunted were sold for $6,000 as well as this Rob Zombie's has been, and the cheapest I have ever seen anyone ask for it is $7,000. And in fact, I just saw one on Pinside, which is one of the major pinball forums, listed last week for $10,000. Now, it doesn't mean he's going to get it, but the point is that people think that it commands more than it commanded new. That is not typical for most pinball machines that are presently kind of been recently in production. There are obviously exceptions all over the place. But so I think that kind of helps them in the regard of trying to make sure they were going to be able to sell that certain number of units. Longer term, it would be better, I believe, for the company to not do limits like that because it's more, you know, they sell more. It's more direct money in their pocket. Once they can operate securely, knowing that they're able to sell enough units that they don't need to kind of artificially constrain the market to guarantee sales, I think they'll be able to flourish a lot more. And yeah, I agree with you. I think they are the number one boutique at this point. They can produce machines. Their time estimates are realistic. And they're also excellent at communication, which is something that Jersey Jack and Dutch Pinball have been criticized for. Highway, not so much. They do a decent job with communication. but Spooky is out there they're active in the pinball forums and so they're always telling what's going on and a lot of it can be sort of a take it or leave it approach but the bottom line is they're talking and when you're talking you feel like you know what's going on and that makes a big difference yeah it does it gives people the belief the people the belief in you and they know you'll tell them if there's a problem and if there's not you'll tell them what's going good I know they just recently have been building a new factory floor. They're going to be hiring some new people. So, yeah, I think they're definitely supposed to make a really big move. We'll see what their next game looks like. This looks good. I know there's going to be one at Texas. If I remember right from the game lineup, there's one at Texas. I'm looking forward to it because it's definitely something I'd like to give a shot. I just want to look at it. I love that side art. That side art is just, it's got the best side art of any of these tables. Actually, I think it's probably got the best art, period, other than the play field of any of these tables. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. Well, I think that's it for our pinball segment. Very long, but there were a lot of upcoming machines. And since it is episode one, I thought it'd probably be good for us to try and cover all of those. So, thankfully, we'll thin out after this point. It'll probably mostly be Stern releases and updates, which is much easier to manage. But, you know, pinball resurgence, very good. We're seeing new stuff, not just the same old things that have been out in the wild for years. Yeah, I agree completely. Well, that's what it'll be. And, you know, and talking about how the tournaments have gone. And, of course, in March we've got Texas coming up, which is going to be a lot of fun. So we're going to see what all we're going to get. That's right. That's right. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to our next segment, which is video games. All right, video games. We already talked a little bit about what we've been playing, as we've both been primarily playing video games for the most part lately. Video games, unlike pinball, video games have a lot of, there's tons of new stuff coming out constantly, so there's only a few things I'm really looking forward to. I know XCOM 2 is due out in like a week. It's due out in early February. I love the original XCOM back in the 90s. I loved the new XCOM that came out a couple years ago. It's a lot of fun, and I've got high hopes for 2. I'm hoping to get it pretty soon after the release. Yeah, in terms of my play on, obviously, Fallout 4 has been my big one, and what I'm looking forward to, well, there's one, and I'm trying to, well, there are a couple. XCOM I've had sort of on my list. I didn't play the new one as much as I thought I would, and I don't know why. It was very well done. I think I just got busy, and obviously, as you know, a game of XCOM can take a very long time to play. For not being an RPG, it's almost surprising exactly how deep that can go. Yeah, they can easily go for a long time, especially if you get in a good groove and can stretch the games out. And I know you play primarily on console, and I'm primarily a PC gamer. So XCOM 2 is not even coming to console. It's a PC exclusive. Yeah, yeah, that also does. I mean, because my system is pretty dated. You know, still been able to run everything I've tried to get to run, but, you know, tweaking the settings and all that is always an issue. And that was a thing with the console version of XCOM Enemy Unknown is, at least for me, very glitchy. Well, yeah, glitchy, I guess. Not like weird bugs encountered, but the game would lock up a lot. It had a lot of freezing issues on the 360, which is what I played it on. So that got very frustrating because there would be segments where I wasn't even necessarily trying to win the level. I was just trying to figure out a way to get through the level so it would complete without locking up, which is not something I typically have to face on console, but it was a problem with that game. the one I'm actually looking forward to is a third person shooter that was announced a couple years ago it seems like, I think it was called Quantum Break it is an Xbox One game, it's coming out by Remedy Entertainment and so they're also I think doing some sort of tie-in live action series, but what's interesting about it is it's a time manipulation game, so you'll have some sort of powers that allow you to manipulate time to help fight enemies I've played things like Time Shift and stuff in the past like that. I don't play games a lot like this, but there also aren't all that many that tend to come out. But a lot of them are fairly competent. Time Shift was not. But, you know, going all the way back to that hit Braid, which was a very simple sort of platformer concept, but, you know, it was added layers of complexity because of the time manipulation. Quantum Break, I think it's visually stunning, and that can be said about a lot of modern games now. but I think the way it looks like the time mechanic will work could be a lot of fun. However, they've been talking about this game for quite a while. I don't think it's vaporware, but it just feels like, well, is it ever really going to come out? I'm sure eventually it will. But in terms of upcoming games that I'm looking forward to, that was probably the highest on the list. I actually have so many games on my backlog that I own that I haven't even started yet that I haven't been thinking too much ahead because I'm just thinking about which one's next in the pile I want to play once I get done with Fallout. Yeah, I know Quantum Break actually has a release date now. It's April 5th, so we'll see if that actually comes to pass because release dates get pushed all the time on video games. It's an interesting-looking game, The Time Mechanic. That is kind of interesting. I haven't really paid that much attention. I'm not much of a, because it's an Xbox One exclusive. It's not something I've really looked at, but it does look like a really, really cool game. It has potential, as many concepts I suppose do. But it's one I've just sort of had on the radar in a while. In terms of my pile backlog of what I want to play next, well, again, I mentioned I was in an achievement scoring competition, so I'm probably going to have to pick something fairly low-hanging, like the newest Tomb Raider game as my next thing to actually go into. But I have been really looking forward to starting The Witcher 3. I've heard about a lot of people thought The Witcher 3 was the best game of 2015, and they were people who liked Fallout 4 as well. And so if they're saying that Witcher is a better RPG than Fallout, I'm definitely interested. I did not play the first Witcher. I did play Witcher 2. I had a lot of fun with it. There were certain elements of the combat that I didn't care for too much, but the story and such I thought were pretty good, and I did have a lot of fun with it. So it's a European action RPG, and I've heard that Witcher 3 went much broader in terms of the sandbox to play in. They went kind of the open world route. Witcher 2 wasn't strictly linear, but you kind of worked in a zone, and then you got done, and then you went on to a next zone, and you couldn't go back sort of thing. So it is one that's been on my list. I got it for Christmas. I've installed it, and I haven't even loaded the title screen. Yeah, it's on my wish list It's definitely a game I've heard a lot of amazing things about A lot of people who I trust through things Have rated it either as their game of the year Or if not as their game of the year They've put it in their top five So I've got a lot of interest in it I haven't played it yet But I'm planning to Most of the people I know who didn't rate it As the top game of the year had it, for them, surprisingly knocked out by Undertale, which I do own, but I have not had a chance to start yet, which is apparently a really fun kind of meta game. So, Tony, what did you think of the games you've played that were 2015 releases? What was the best? hmm the best i didn't actually play a lot of 2015 games that uh neither did i last year i most i i lived primarily on older games and uh older titles from my thing but a fallout 4 was good i don't know if i'd put it as best i'll tell you the game i thought was most surprising to me It was Rebel Galaxy. I got Rebel Galaxy just because I like space opera-y type stuff. And it was very much, it reminded me of the old Sid Meier's Pirates. It was kind of like Sid Meier's Pirates in space. You've got turrets that auto-fire. You've got broadsides you control. It was a lot of fun. It's got a very, the soundtrack is very almost Firefly-esque, the way they went with the soundtrack. I was really surprised by Rebel Galaxy. It was a lot of fun. I don't know. I don't really know if I have a favorite. I hate to give it to Fallout 4 because it has what I feel a lot of problems, but at the same time, it's the one I dumped 120 hours to in a month and a half. So, I mean, it's almost just going to be given it based upon the few games I've played out of necessity. I did play Grey Goo. Grey Goo is an RTS and not like the more modern, super twitchy RTSs. it reminded me a lot of the old Total Nuclear Annihilation and Red Alert style RTSs. Oh, okay. And it was a bit slower and this and that. I'm not horribly far into it, but I've really enjoyed everything I've seen in that. And also in the RTS is Planetary Annihilation Titans. I backed, I kick-started the original Planetary Annihilation, and it was okay. It wasn't terrible. I wasn't disappointed with my kickstarting of it but it wasn't as great as I'd hoped because I had a love for Total Nuclear Annihilation that was probably more than that game actually deserved but Titans fixed pretty much every problem for Planetary Annihilation and they gave it to all the kickstarters who backed the original they gave it for free to all the kickstarter backers and it's solid But it's a pretty fun RTS. I've been playing a lot of it lately, too. Yeah. Well, as much as I kind of don't want to as well, I do have to agree with you. I probably at this point give Fallout 4 the heading as best I mean they added a lot of new concepts The game looks great Not everything they did with it is what I like or would want to have done with it but I'm still enjoying myself in the game. I don't know how many hours. I know I have at least two actual days in, so I'm over 50 hours into the game for sure. And so I've been playing a lot more kind of straightforward than I have with Fallout 3, where I think I was around 130 hours when I finally put that one away. I had voted on an Xbox-related site in a game of the year, and what I chose there, I had not yet played Fallout 4, but I'm going to mention this one because I really did enjoy it, was Batman Arkham Knight. It follows very much in the format of Batman Arkham City, I feel. I did not play Arkham Origins, which I believe took a lot of criticism from people. Arkham Knight is a glitchy mess, or it was a glitchy mess on the PC release. However, the console releases were stable, or relatively stable. Mine played fine. I didn't have any issues with it. And it succeeds in the way that Arkham City succeeds, in that when I play the game, I felt like I was actually Batman. So, granted, some of that is I'm sitting there, I'm going, I'm Batman, while I'm playing it every 20 minutes, because that's what I do. But beyond all that, you know, you're going around, you're doing the detective work, It's got the free-flow combat style, which, you know, it's actually challenging. You know, you meet enemies that can punish you if you make mistakes, so it doesn't just hold your hand in that regard. It's got tons of collectibles if you're into the tons of collectibles. The big change with Arkham Knight was they added the Batmobile, and it wasn't just tacked on. There was a ton of Batmobile content. In fact, it was almost frustrating because I prefer being out and about as Batman rather than having to do things in the Batmobile, and there were a lot of quests that mandated use of the Batmobile. But it wasn't a totally cumbersome thing. I got used to it pretty quickly. The story was good. I assume it's a relatively original concept in parts, but it also borrows heavily. there's a scene that's straight out of The Killing Joke that's shown to you visually and all of that sort of stuff is going on from the comic side of things so I sort of give a fallout for the main nod but an honorable mention at this point to Batman Arkham Knight and as a interesting to note but for anyone that does happen to have an Xbox One I would recommend picking up Rare Replay which is an assortment of I think it's 30 total games by the developer Rare. It's their classic stuff. So it's nothing new for 2015 specifically, but this did come out in 2015. It goes all the way back to the early 80s. Obviously, because it's not done on Nintendo, they do not have all of the Rare hits. So you don't have GoldenEye, for example. You don't have the Nintendo character games that they did. But Perfect Dark is there. The Banjo games are there. Conker's Bad Fur Day is there. And they also released it at half the standard retail price. So it was released new at $30. So it's got a lot of content. Rare was once seen by many people as one of the top developers, especially of the 90s. And this kind of highlights a lot of their greatest hits, so to speak, and some of their not so great hits. But it's a lot of content for the dollar, and so I do recommend it as someone, especially if you have any experience with Rare and you want to relive some of the nostalgia. I can see that Rare had some good games back in the day I've heard a lot of good things about the Rare replay the only other thing I can think of in video games right now is I know there's been this big kick in kickstarting video games lately I know a bunch of them have had some problems I have gotten lucky knock on wood I haven't been burned as of yet I did kickstart a single video game last year, and that is the Battletech game from Hairbrain Schemes. I'm not familiar with that. It is. Hairbrain Schemes have a very good reputation with kickstarting games. They're the ones who did the Shadowrun, the new Shadowrun games that were really well liked. the Shadowrun Returns and all of the other ones based on it Dragonfall and Hong Kong is the new one that's just coming out and they got the license to do a Battletech game a la the old Commander games so it's a a you command a lance instead of being in the cockpit it's more of a command and strategy game using them and I'm looking forward to that. I love the old Commander games. I am an old school Battletech fanboy. I played the Battletech RPG in the 90s. I played the tabletop game in the 90s. I've played the tabletop game as recently as a year or so ago. I used to own every single Battletech book and now I still own the most important of the Battletech books. It's just a thing I love theme-wise and universe-wise. So when I saw they were going with it and they were trusting if I went ahead and backed them. So we're going to see how that turns out. I've got high hopes because I know the other games that Harebrained has done have turned out pretty well. But there's also been a lot of people burned over the years recently on Kickstarter. So I don't really Kickstarter too much anymore, but that was one of them. I did it just because of the theme, but I'm just hopeful the game's as good as it looks to be. All right. Well, I think that pretty much covers our video game segment. And stepping on to the tabletop side of things, I normally attend a game night once a month that's thrown by a local group. I haven't actually had a chance to go in the last couple months because I've been going to pinball tournaments instead, or I've been working. but I haven't played as much mini tabletop or board games as I normally do I have several games that I've been looking forward to one of them is kind of a surprise and it's back to the Kickstarter talk it's something I did not Kickstarter but I wish I did, Secret Hitler I've watched, there's been a group streaming it on Twitch and Secret Hitler is a spot the traitor game kind of like werewolf or resistance or battle star galactica where at the beginning of the game you're late everybody's laid out and there is one person who's lizard hitler there are several fascists and everybody else are liberals and what you're doing is you're trying to pass policies and as you pass policies the fascists know who hitler is hitler doesn't know who anybody is and the liberals don't know anything and their entire purpose is to the fascist want to get fascist laws passed once you get so many fascist laws passed uh if hitler becomes the chancellor fascist win or if you pass all the possible or or if you fill up the the game board uh with all the possible fascist laws fascist win and there's a liberal side now if all the liberal sides get filled up, the liberals went. And the whole purpose of the game is to just try and figure out who Hitler is and kill Hitler. That's the entire purpose. It looks like a great group game. The gameplay seems to, with a group that knows everything that's going on, seems to run 20 to 40 minutes, basically. It's pretty quick. It looks like a lot of fun. And if it plays as well as what I've seen from the Twitch and stuff, it'll probably replace Resistance or even Werewolf as a group game for that type of thing. I don't think it'll replace Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar Galactica has too many other things going on in it that makes it an awesome game. But we'll see. It is a print-and-play game. You can print it as is now and play it. and one of the big driving things that brought it up is Secret Hitler was designed by one of the gentlemen who designed Cards Against Humanity, which has been a rather popular game over the course of the last several years. It's kind of sort of popular. Just a little bit. So we'll see. Once everything gets out and it hits for sale, I'm planning on picking up a copy of it. I think our friend Eric, he backed it, so we should be able to have one to play here once they start dropping the Kickstarter rewards. I do want to try that one. It really does. I had heard about it before, and it does sound very interesting. I like the idea. I like the deception idea to it. Obviously, that's kind of, in a way, it's like a deeper version of one of the aspects of Cards Against Humanity, which is so fun, which is picking that thing and then finding out who came up with such an appalling concept. And in this case, you're actually trying to do manipulation. So it's got those political machinations that are not so fun in real life, but are quite fun in a game. Are there any other tabletop games that you're looking forward to? The only other one I'm looking forward to is yet another Kickstarter game, because Kickstarter has become the go-to place for board games. I've started to notice that. board games and tabletop games are really, really big on the Kickstarter, and a lot of them have come out, have actually turned out really well. Again, knock on wood, I've never been burned on a Kickstarter. Most of my Kickstarter backings have been either comics or board games, a couple video games here and there. This other one I did back, it is a pen and paper RPG set in the Schlock Mercenary Universe from the Schlock Mercenary comics. It's a webcomic that is a very tongue-in-cheek space opera over-the-top webcomic. The game is supposed to be slightly more serious because the comic is supposed to basically be like a comic in-universe, and then this is supposed to be the actual universe. But it's still going to be kind of quirky and fun. And as I've found over the years, I'm liking my pen-and-paper RPG games to be more narrative-based and less about the crunchy and less about the combat. It's more about the actual just role-playing aspects. And this game is designed to be big into narrative with quick combat and easy system to pick up. So I back this one. They are running behind, as most Kickstarters do. The original time was they were talking about a late spring release, and now they're running a couple months behind, so I probably won't get a copy of it until summer or fall. but I'm already planning on seeing about finding a few more people I've already got a couple interested in putting together an actual game, it's been a while since I've GM'd anything so this will be interesting oh yeah, I haven't played anything like that in a long time back to the old D&D days for me though well Tony is our resident tabletop expert, I am much weaker on the genre I don't play it nearly as much and almost everything I play you expose me to so But there is one thing that did catch my eye that I thought I would bring up. It's Kickstarter actually ended today, today being the 31st of January. And it's called XenoShift Dreadmire. And it was also, as noted, a Kickstarter project. It is a cooperative deck-building-based defense game. So the idea behind it is you partner up with however many friends you have over, and it does a wave after wave alien attack thing going on and you use your deck resources to try and build up the defenses. So in a way, I kind of think of it as a cross between tower defense and that, you know, to me, infamous tabletop game Pandemic, except I'm assuming this one can be won. And so, anyway, the Kickstarter is... I've won games of Pandemic. Not with you. I have won games of Pandemic. The science says it can be done. It is completely popular. Only by cheating. It's completely possible. It's popular in that it's impossibility. I assume everyone who wins cheats, and the only way disease always wins. It's just how it is. It's science. It's science. But the science says that we can be aliens. And so XenoShift Dreadmire Kickstarter ended, I think, a few hours ago. I think its goal was $10,000. It raised $383,000. So it's a go. I don't think it's the first Xeno shift they've done. I'm not really very familiar with it. It's just I was reading news on tabletop games, and this actually caught my eye. Tower Defense in the video game world is a genre that, well, it's not one I play all of the time. It's one I've always really appreciated a lot. And so the idea of doing base defense I like. The other thing that I really do like on tabletop games is I like the ones that actually are cooperative. I have no problem doing the head-to-head ones as well, but maybe it gets back to the whole preferring to play two-headed giant Magic the Gathering versus just the standard one-on-one. I just like that cooperative aspect because it requires a lot more strategy in my mind because you're actually having to try and do some level of coordination and different people think about problems differently. And in these sort of games where you're playing usually, well, you either have, in this case, different cards, or in some other versions of games you play different classes of characters and how they interact and interrelate make a difference in terms of how you can possibly win the game if it's not pandemic and thus actually possible to win. Of course. Yeah, I hadn't even heard about this. I hadn't really looked into it that much. I see it's being done by CoolMini or not. They do good work. They're pretty well respected on stuff. So it's a deck-building game. I like me some deck-building games. They're my favorite generalized board game style. The deck is the deck-building games. I play Star Realms all the time, especially since they came out with a mobile version that you can play on your phone multiplayer with a lot of people I play Star Realms I've got seven matches going on right now as we speak I play it every day it's probably the thing I play the most of any game honestly not time wise but just the fact that I play it every day three or four times a day I'll go in and do my things because it's an asynchronous play it's definitely the the type of game, it's definitely in my type of game I play. The deck builders, like DC Deck Builder. DC Deck Builder was a lot of fun. We've played that a lot of times together. Yeah, I really like that one a lot. And what I like about these style of games versus something like Magic is there's not the collectible card aspect that has to overwhelm me in terms of trying to keep up. I mean, Magic has its own model and I always will appreciate it in terms of its structure, but I really do this sort of style where you can just bring in the cards and we can have a game with a bunch of people who don't all have to invest in it. I agree with you completely. I like magic. I still like magic. I don't have the time or the money or the effort to pour into magic. Anything I could have poured into magic, I've been pouring into other stuff. My big things lately have been video games and I still play board games, but Magic's just... Now, living card games, the ones where they don't release randomized collectible packs, where they just release new packs that have new cards and you get every single card when you buy the pack, I could probably do something like that. I haven't picked any of them up, but I could. My main plays have been, as I said, deck builders. I love deck builders. I'll play them all day. And another thing, something to look forward to in the board gaming thing is tabletop day tabletop day is coming up international tabletop day is going to be april 30th 2016 this year uh the group that i normally go that i've been go to and play with on a monthly basis from time to time uh they've got a very large tabletop day uh thing they do every year i know last year i was only there for four or five hours and they had i know they had probably better than 100 people there over the course of the day, and they start very early in the morning, and they'll run until after midnight. They normally start like 9 or 10 in the morning, and they run until after midnight on tabletop day. Just people going in and out and playing games and having contests. And they took a surro, and they made a life-size surro for last year, where instead of using the tiny little surro pieces where you move them along the pathways, as you fill in the map tiles. They created giant map tiles, and you were your surrogate piece as you moved along. It was pretty interesting. It was a lot of fun. It sounds like they really go all in when it comes to Tabletop Day. Oh, yeah, they go insane when it comes to Tabletop Day. I mean, there are tons of people, this and that. A lot of room. It's a lot of fun. Even some of their Friday night once a month meets, I've seen them having upwards of 30 people there just for that, and that's just for four or five hours. Well, that's impressive. Pinball would kill to get 30 people to an event in our area. We've come close, but I've never been to one where we've broken 30. We got real close to Pizza West in December. Yeah, 27. Yeah, 27. But, yeah, no, that would be – and it's just a – it's pretty good. It's something I need to get back to going to more often. I just, like I said, normally at falls, I'm either at work or on call or end up going and doing something else that weekend. So I stay home on that Friday night because I'm going to go play some pinball or something. Life, it just gets in the way. I know. I mean, all this darn stuff, why couldn't I have won that billion dollars and not had to worry about it anymore? Yeah, life would have been grand. Well, or a few hundred million at least. Yeah. Well, all right, that covered our three main categories, so I guess it's time to close out the podcast. For those who want to communicate with us or follow along with us, we do have a Facebook page, so you can go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. If you don't know how to spell eclectic, look it up in a dictionary. We'll also be pushing our SS feeds on our WordPress, and we will be we don't actually have one set up yet we'll get some other stuff set up with Twitters and general contact general contact information areas the more common places while staying away from the deep dark underbellies yeah no reddit pages no reddit pages no tumblers no ask me anything you can message us on facebook if you need to ask us and then I can just ignore the message because I don't like it In terms of our release schedule, I think we're planning to try and shoot for somewhere between every two to four weeks. So it's not going to be a weekly thing. We just – we don't have enough time. Yeah, and weekly would be like, yeah, I played a game of pinball and then I played a video game. I got A-level in Fallout 4. I got – yeah, I lost a game of Pandemic again. Yeah, that sort of stuff. Not particularly interesting. I know we've got another pinball tournament coming up in a week next week next Saturday 403 Club, one of the two monthly hosts here in the Kansas City area 403 Club in Kansas City, Kansas will be hosting their start of the month tournament well it's been a pleasure, as always, thank you for listening take care, goodbye

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