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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast September 2024 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 17m·analyzed·Oct 2, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

JJP Avatar reveal dominates September 2024 with UV tech, dual lower playfields, and Mark Seiden interview on design process.

Summary

September 2024 recap covering Jersey Jack Pinball's Avatar: The Battle for Pandora reveal and Stern's Uncanny X-Men launch. Hosts Jonathan Houston (Pinball Magazine) and Martin A. (Pinball News) discuss Avatar's innovative UV reactive ink system, dual lower playfield areas, premium topper design, and interview designer Mark Seiden about development process, licensing collaboration with Lightstorm Entertainment, and upcoming code updates targeting Expo.

Key Claims

  • Avatar was in development for approximately 2.5 years starting January 2022

    high confidence · Mark Seiden stated 'I was told I was going to be working on it in January of 22' and later confirmed 'Two and a half, I suppose, in total'

  • Jersey Jack pre-built games for 2 weeks before reveal to ensure machines would be on location shortly after launch

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston: 'they had been building the games for about two weeks in the factory up front to make sure that the games would be on location shortly after reveal, which is something that Stern was not able to do'

  • Avatar uses UV reactive security inks (same type used on currency and passports) that are highly regulated and expensive

    high confidence · Mark Seiden: 'They're actually security inks for like, they're only used on like currencies and passports and driver's licenses. They're highly regulated... they cost a lot'

  • Collector's Edition uses three-color UV ink (red, green, blue) while Limited Edition uses blue only

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston: 'the collector's edition, the top end one, that has UV ink which fluoresces in three different colours, red, green and blue, while the limited edition has the blue only'

  • Avatar features six flippers and six balls installed

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston: 'In total, there are six flippers on this game, six balls installed'

  • Code is approximately 90% complete with Pandora wizard mode targeting Expo release

    high confidence · Mark Seiden: 'I would say it's probably about 90% complete at this point' and 'Keith has said that he expects the final wizard mode to be in by Expo'

  • Lightstorm Entertainment was heavily involved in asset provision, audio approval, and actor licensing throughout development

    high confidence · Mark Seiden: 'They gave us things like 3D models from the movies... all the audio from the movies... they helped us get access to actors for licensing their life sequences'

  • Mark Seiden spent ~10 hours/week over 5 years on homebrew Metroid before joining Jersey Jack

Notable Quotes

  • “Avatar is just a beautiful movie, excellent CGI work, probably the best of any film out there. And I knew then I just needed, the game just needed to be gorgeous.”

    Mark Seiden @ ~mid-interview — Reveals designer's core philosophy for Avatar game—prioritizing visual beauty to match the source material

  • “They were working closely with us... they were involved during the entire process and extremely great partners. the game would not be as good as it is now if they didn't help us every step of the way.”

    Mark Seiden @ ~mid-interview — Indicates positive licensor relationship and collaborative development approach with Lightstorm Entertainment

  • “I wanted to be more traditional hand-drawn art versus borrowing images from a style guide... I really wanted like a really nice comic book cover style art for it.”

    Mark Seiden @ ~mid-interview — Explains artistic direction choice and artist selection process for Avatar's visual style

  • “I settled on red, green, and blue sort of as an homage to the fact that Jersey Jack had started the red, green, and blue lighting system in it.”

    Mark Seiden @ ~mid-interview — Shows intentional design homage to Jersey Jack Pinball's lighting innovation history

  • “We knew that bioluminescence is a big part of the world of Pandora. Yeah. So we knew we had to represent that somehow.”

    Mark Seiden @ ~early-interview — Explains thematic motivation for UV ink system as central to Pandora world-building

  • “As long as it was fun and it worked, they weren't going to cut it. So basically anything that they had any concerns about, we worked to make it fun.”

    Mark Seiden @ ~end-interview — Indicates Jersey Jack management's support for ambitious design despite bill of materials concerns

Entities

Mark SeidenpersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyAvatar: The Battle for PandoragameStern PinballcompanyUncanny X-MengameLightstorm EntertainmentcompanyLeah FoskeypersonKeith Johnson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack pre-manufactured games 2 weeks before official reveal to achieve rapid location placement, contrasting with Stern's revealed-but-unavailable approach

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'they had been building the games for about two weeks in the factory up front to make sure that the games would be on location shortly after reveal'

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo positioned as major showcase for Avatar playtest units and code completion milestone (Pandora wizard mode)

    medium · Mark Seiden references Expo as target for wizard mode completion; hosts reference attending Expo to play the game

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Publicity battle between Stern (Uncanny X-Men) and Jersey Jack (Avatar) in September 2024; JJP leveraged pre-built inventory and extended pre-launch teasing

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'it did seem that there was a kind of a battle going on between Stern and J.J.P. for who would be supreme in the publicity' and 'Jersey Jack had been planning this for quite a long time'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Mark Seiden prioritized visual beauty matching Avatar film quality; selected traditional hand-drawn comic book art style over licensed image arrangement

    high · Mark Seiden: 'the game just needed to be gorgeous' and 'I wanted to be more traditional hand-drawn art versus borrowing images from a style guide'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Lightstorm Entertainment provided comprehensive asset support including 3D movie models, audio, concept art previews, and actor licensing throughout multi-year development

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.412

0:00
JJP Not his avatar The battle for Pandora Interview with avatar designer Mark Seaton It's Pinball Expo Month Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine I'm joined by Hi, I'm Martin A. I'm the editor of Pinball News And Jonathan and I are here With our special look back at the month of September 2024 in our Pinball Industry News Pincast, which we bring you at the beginning of every month, looking back at everything that happened in the pinball world in the previous month. Right, and what a quite an exciting month it has been. Oh, it has been, yeah, we always say that. And this month is especially true. Yeah. Because... Well, it started off with the reveal of the Uncanny X-Men, which we already discussed in our previous episode. and it was followed by the reveal of Avatar, the battle for Pandora by Jersey Jack Pimble. Yeah, but long last they've been teasing it for quite a while and the official launch was on the 12th of September, but there was quite a lot of information released about the game in a couple of days before. It did seem that there was a kind of a battle going on between Stern and J.J.P. for who would be supreme in the publicity around about that time. Because, as you said, Stern had just launched the uncanny X-Men. Right. And were on a bit of a roll there. But they hadn't actually been able to show anything very much of it because my impression was it was a bit of a rushed release. Yeah. And they weren't really quite ready for it. Whereas I think Jersey Jack had been planning this for quite a long time. So, CERN were still pushing their new game in the run-up to the launch of Jersey Jack's new game.
2:02
But anyway, so Jersey Jack was sort of fighting back with a bunch of publicity, or pre-launch leaks, I suppose, not leaks, but publicity, about their game. And not only that, aside from teasing the game a week and a half, a week up front what nobody knew was that they had been building the games for about two weeks in the factory up front to make sure that the games would be on location shortly after reveal, which is something that Stern was not able to do that's right, they were building the, well let's talk about the game first of all as you said, Avatar The Battle for Pandora was the name of the game, and it combines the two existing Avatar movies, which is the original Avatar and The Way of Water, the second one, and it's part of the franchise of multiple Avatar films, which are slated for release over the next, oh, I don't know, about seven years, I think. they've got Fire and Ash which is the third movie which is scheduled for next year and there are a whole bunch more coming out over the subsequent years so it's a long running franchise but this game encompasses the first two so basic Avatar and Avatar the Way of Water as usual with Jersey Jack games, two versions the collected edition which is a limited run and the limited edition which is a slightly less limited run The collected edition is priced at the same price as the previous model, Elton John, at 15,000 US dollars, and it's limited to 1,000 units. The limited edition is restricted to 5,000 units at a price of 12,000 US dollars. Right. Okay? Got all the details? Good. Yeah. Now, interestingly, on this one, they've got some new people working on the cabinet artwork and on the music. Yeah, well, the people are around, but they're new in the world of pinball. The cabinet and playfield artwork is by Leah Feske, which is an unknown artist for the pinball community, I would say. we will have an interview with designer Mark Seiden later on in the show and we already recorded that in that interview he will tell that he actually found Leah himself as well as a couple of other people to work on the game so yeah it's a first for Leah to appear as an artist on a pinball machine but I think she did a wonderful job yeah I think it looks great Yeah, the software is run by or programmed by Keith Johnson, or is at least leading the software team, together with Taylor Snyder and Jason Allen.

high confidence · Mark Seiden: 'I spent like five years working on Metroid... maybe like 10 hours a week'

person
Jean-Paul DeWinperson
Todd Holmperson
Grant Stemmageperson
Jonathan Houstonperson
Martin A.person
Steve Ritchieperson
Ericperson
Olaf Gremiperson
Stephen Langperson
Metroid (homebrew)game
Elton Johngame
Pinball Expoevent

high · Mark Seiden: 'They gave us things like 3D models from the movies... all the audio from the movies... they helped us get access to actors for licensing'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: UV ink screen printing requires three perfectly-aligned color passes; Collector's Edition and Limited Edition use different playfield manufacturers due to timing/quality needs

    high · Mark Seiden: 'there's three different screen prints that have to be all aligned and be perfect' and on two manufacturers: 'we needed a bit more time to work on the collector's edition'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Mark Seiden, homebrew designer, hired as first-time JJP designer; mentored by Steve Ritchie on Elton John CAD work before leading Avatar solo design

    high · Mark Seiden: 'the first two months that I was there, I was helping Steve Ritchie on Elton John' and 'he taught me a lot of things that he knows about game design'

  • ?

    announcement: Jersey Jack Pinball officially launches Avatar: The Battle for Pandora with two editions: Collector's Edition ($15k, 1,000 units) and Limited Edition ($12k, 5,000 units)

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'Avatar, the battle for Pandora by Jersey Jack Pimble... the official launch was on the 12th of September'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Avatar code approximately 90% complete at launch; Pandora wizard mode and additional synced audio features targeted for Expo update

    high · Mark Seiden: 'I would say it's probably about 90% complete at this point' and 'the final wizard mode to be in by Expo'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Avatar implements first large-scale UV reactive ink system in pinball with three-color gradient (CE) vs single-color (LE); requires redesigned LED rails supporting UV channels

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'they have UV lights under some of the inserts, which allow them to light up letters or symbols on inserts, which you can't normally see in normal lighting' and Mark Seiden on UV ink costs

    • 5:20
    There's various sculpts in the game, which are done by Todd Holm. Display graphics are by, of course, Jean-Paul DeWin, who is art director on the game. And he had help from Mark Molitor And Olaf Gremi And Olaf we still remember From Elton John as well And other JJP games I think Olaf started as an intern For Jean-Paul And I think he's Become a full time Staff member By now Right, ok, it all worked out well I mean I think the stuff that he did for Elton John was absolutely superb. So a great talent there, and good to see him working on Avatar as well. And, of course, all the stuff which Lear and the sculpts from Todd and all the graphics from JP and Antene there all had to be approved by Lightstorm Entertainment, who are the licences for the Avatar brand, I suppose, and licensed out all the assets for the Avatar movies. And I'm sure, well, I know that when we speak to Mark Seiden a little bit later, he'll tell us about his experience of working with them and everything that they were able to get from the licensing that they needed in order to make the game. So, anyway... So what makes this game so special? Well, first of all, it's got, I was going to say it's got two lower playfield areas. It's actually got three, strictly speaking, but it's got two playable lower playfield areas, the deep-sea crab suit battle and the Pandora Reef pop bumper, both of which have a ball in them which, with one of them you have some flippers that you can actually flip the ball around. the At the Deep Sea crab battle one, which is a little bit like, I'm sorry, like the monsters type thing, but I think that uses a full-size ball. I think it uses a miniature ball as well. And there's a Pandora Reef pop bumper, which also has some stand-up targets around it. It's a multi-stage thing, basically. You go from one, and if you complete that, then you move into the other one. In total, there are six flippers on this game, six balls installed. loads and loads of wire forms all over the place, under playfield ball lock, which also has a window in the playfield, so that's like the third under playfield area, and quite a complex subway system as well, connecting them all up and some of the scoops and up-kickers as well. But the big feature really is their use of UV reactive ink used across the playfield art, the plastics and the sculpted models, which is combined with extensive UV lighting across the playfield. We've seen UV lighting before in a couple of games. Strange things come to mind. Sorry, which one? Strange of things. Strange of things, yeah. I was thinking of, oh, Viper Knight driving. Right, yeah. With the glow balls. Yes, that's right. But they've gone way beyond that with Avatar and they have, you know, those lighting rails that run down the side of the playfield which provides RGB and white light, while they've been modified to be RGB and UV light. And they also have UV lighting along the back of the playfield and they have UV spotlights across the playfield as well, which really flood the playfield with ultraviolet light. and the play field and the artwork and the models all have UV reactive ink. Now, for the collector edition, the collector's edition, the top end one, that has UV ink which fluoresces in three different colours, red, green and blue, while the limited edition has the blue only. So the effect is much better on the collector's edition, but it's still quite stark on the limited edition as well. Right. And they use that really intelligently in various sections of the gameplay, including the eclipse mode where the UV sort of spreads across the play field as the eclipse takes place, and eventually the whole play field is in darkness except for the UV. And they use that to show areas of artwork which are not normally visible, including some inserts as well, because they have UV lights under some of the inserts, which allow them to light up letters or symbols on inserts, which you can't normally see in normal lighting. Right. So lots of possibilities there, and they've certainly made the playfield art really sort of come alive in a way which I don't think we've seen before.
    10:31
    Yeah. So that's probably the big feature, or big two features, all the underplay field and all the UV light, UV ink effects that they've put into the game. The other one, I suppose, is the collector edition has an amazing ultra-wide LCD topper, which kind of replicates the view from the cockpit of the shuttlecraft that's coming into land on Pandora. so I think that's they put all kinds of information on there it's a full width LCD which they reflect upwards onto a gauze in the sort of Pepper's Ghost type effect that you sometimes see on stage to make it look as if someone or a ghost is there whether in fact they're not but it's projected from below and it seems very very effective and looks like an expensive display and topper and they put lots and lots of information on there relating to the gameplay. It's kind of like a head-up display that you might find in a spaceship. Right. So, yeah, and that, of course, is included in the $15,000 price of the collector's edition. The $12,000 limited edition has a simpler sort of dual-layer acrylic bottom-lit topper as well. but you don't have to buy any extras that 15,000 includes everything that other manufacturers would sell you as an upgrade right, yeah job well done I have to say on both the game and the topper and there's really nothing disappointing I would say no, I think it looks absolutely amazing they've done a superb job on both the artwork and the lighting effects so I think The gameplay we haven't got to experience yet, but as Mark will tell you in an interview, he says the software is about 90% done already, and there's going to be another release coming out for it around about Expo time, which will add a whole bunch more modes and features to it, as well as more speech, and syncing it to some of the action on the display as well. Okay, so, well, we mentioned the interview with Mark Seaton, I'm not sure exactly how to pronounce his last name, a couple of times. Why don't we just listen to that first, and then continue with the game? Okay, I wish you luck. So, joining us live from the parking lot at Antarium in Tromberg, that is, if I'm not mistaken,
    13:18
    Mark Seaton, the designer of Avatar and the Battle for Pandora. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on. Good to speak to you. Thank you. And big congratulations on the launch of your first solo title. Thank you. I'm super excited about it. I bet you are, yeah. We're a little bit short on time, so we might as well just get on and ask you some questions about it. So let's start right at the beginning, I suppose.
    13:46
    When did you know you'd be working with the Avatar license, and did you get to choose that as a theme, Was that one from a list that you could have picked, or was it one which was always going to be the next title?
    14:01
    I was told I was going to be working on it in January of 22, I believe. Did not kick off till March.
    14:14
    And, yeah, it was one that they wanted me to work on, so they asked me to work on it. I didn't choose from a pool or anything.
    14:24
    So, yeah, it's been a while. So you've been working on it for, yeah, quite a while, almost, well, over two years, I guess. Two and a half, I suppose, in total. Yep. So once you knew that that was going to be the theme, what were your initial thoughts about what had to go into an Avatar-based game?
    14:42
    Well, I knew that, like, so Avatar is a huge franchise. like my first thoughts is well they're not giving me a starter license here it's uh we're getting a big one here um so um yeah my first thought was that and um uh like uh the second thought was well the second movie doesn't come out for nine months so what's going on or actually I went then in January it was like a year almost um because it was the end of the year um so um yeah I was super excited to work on it. It's just, Avatar is just a beautiful movie, excellent CGI work, probably the best of any film out there.
    15:30
    And I knew then I just needed, the game just needed to be gorgeous. And that was my first thought. Yeah, my second thought is, I wonder what the second movie's going to be like. So at that point you didn't know anything about it? Did you ever read the script? I did not get to read the script, but during the kickoff a few months later, the great people at Lightstorm, they walked the team through the movie using concept art. So we spent a little over an hour going through scene by scene what was going to happen in the movie. and we were able to ask questions and during the development process they answered all the questions we needed to know about the movie.
    16:24
    And then it was silent. Yeah. I was thinking it was me that lost the connection to it normally is. Nope. It looks like we lost Mark. Okay. In the middle of a great story. Yeah, we'll get him right back, I'm sure, any moment.
    16:44
    There he is again. Hey, sorry, we lost you for a moment, Mark. Yeah, apparently my phone cuts off when I get incoming spam calls, so... Okay, who was it?
    16:58
    I didn't answer. It wouldn't let me dismiss it. It kept, like, hiding it from the screen. So I don't remember where he got cut off. Right, we were just at the point where you were walking through the premise for the second movie and giving you sort of a pre-see of what it was about, but that was pretty much all you knew so far.
    17:21
    Okay. Yeah, I don't know. So they were walking you through the movie. Did you enter the air by these, like, oh, this is something I can use in the game or maybe that is something I can use in the game? Or did you have to wait until you saw the final, the finished movie, so to speak, to get your creativity fully flowing, so to speak?
    17:53
    Yeah, so most of the layout was actually designed by then. We had some ideas. We had been passing back and forth. I had known that I'd wanted to do at least one lower play field. So I worked with them on, like, what would you be battling underwater in this movie? And they offered up the crab suit, which became the crab suit lower play field. so there's some scenes where the kids are all swimming away from these robot underwater vehicles shaped like crabs so that was what we came we settled on together that would be passed down there and then I decided oh why not throw a second lower playfield in there too we all know the bill of materials is unlimited well usually it's not totally unlimited Well, it looks like it was. So I'm not saying that it was, but it looks like an incredible game. So seriously, congratulations.
    19:04
    Thank you. It's a huge leap or a giant step, I would say, coming from Metroid, which is a great game, by the way, as well.
    19:14
    Yeah, there's a lot more in this. I spent like five years working on Metroid. maybe like 10 hours a week, I put way more time into Avatar than Matt. Right. I mean, like, yeah. So I tried, and I had the team this time so we could work together and, like, make a much better game than Metroid was. I'm not saying Metroid is not a better game. No, no, I'm not saying it isn't, but, yeah, it's just, yeah. So I'm curious, okay, obviously you're a new designer coming into the company. Did you work on other titles before you got to work on Avatar or was it straight Avatar and nothing else?
    19:57
    So the first two months that I was there, I was helping Steve Ritchie on Elton John. Right. I did a bunch of CAD work for him, translating his 2D drawings into 3D models and helping him fly around the play field and say, oh, maybe we can set a shot in here. Maybe we can do this here and things like that. Okay. So, yeah. And he taught me a lot of things that he knows about game design and what I should and shouldn't do, things like that. Right. Okay. So when you started working on Avatar, did you have any help from the other designers, like Josie, Jack, Steve, or Eric?
    20:44
    Yep. Uh, all the designers, uh, Pat was still there. So, um, uh, he, uh, he gave me some advice, uh, but mostly with working with Eric and Steve, um, they would, uh, they would come in and, uh, take a look at what I was working on and say, Oh no, that won't work. You should, why don't you try this instead? Or like, yeah, that shot, I don't really like that shot. Um, maybe you should work on that a bit. There's like one shot, one ramp that I worked on. I had, uh, ten different versions of it before it felt really good, and now it feels really good. That was the loopback ramp that's in the back left corner. I used to get the free slippers. And it gave us a little bit of a hint about working with Lightstorm and 20th Century Disney in the development.
    21:33
    Yep. Is it normally the case that they sort of just give you a bunch of assets at the start, although obviously in this case you didn't have the second movie? available but they gave you all all the sort of key assets you could have at the time and basically let you get on with it until it's time for approval um towards the end of the process or is there sort of a constant conversation back and forth with them you wait if you don't want to try this you say well is this something which we can do and they'll say well maybe not quite like that but more like this or or is it sort of they just give it to you and then leave you to get on with and then cut back to them at the end?
    22:10
    No, they were working closely with us. So they have a package of assets that they give you right off the bat. But anything that wasn't in there, and there was a lot that we wanted that wasn't in there, and they gave us, I can't think of an instance where they really said, no, we won't get you that. They gave us things like 3D models from the movies, like huge, like details, like movie quality detail. They gave us, like, all the audio from the movies. They gave us, they helped us get access to actors for licensing their life sequences.
    22:52
    And according to Stephen Lang, they helped us set that up. Like, no, they pretty much, they were involved during the entire process and extremely great partners. the game would not be as good as it is now if they didn't help us every step of the way. It was an amazing experience working with them. And you were saying earlier that one of the first things you wanted to really do is to make the game look absolutely stunningly beautiful, which I think you can certainly say you've achieved that. The UV reactive ink is obviously a very big part of the game, not just in terms of the look of it, but in terms of the eclipse and the whole lighting effects that take place throughout the game. Yeah. When was that first considered, to use UV ink? And when did it definitely become part of what was going to be the final product? That was very early. That was like some of the first few meetings. We knew that bioluminescence is a big part of the world of Pandora. Yeah. So we knew we had to represent that somehow. So we began exploring different options, and UV ink seemed to be the best choice. But we wanted to sort of ramp it up a bit, so we started experimenting with three colors of UV ink instead of just one.
    24:21
    And I settled on red, green, and blue sort of as an homage to the fact that Jersey Jack had started the red, green, and blue lighting system in it. So, like, why don't we do red, green, and blue ink on the play field? And when you're looking at the bill of materials of the game, is the UV reactive ink, all three colors of it, is that an expensive part of the game to add? Because obviously you've got to also add all the UV LEDs, not just the standalone spotlights, but also you've got to redesign the hot rails as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all the lighting system was redesigned to accommodate the UV channel.
    25:09
    So for, like, the hot rails and the back panels, we asked our LED supplier, hey, can you replace the white channel and an RGBW LED with a UV? And they were like, yes, actually, we can. So that was great.
    25:25
    We came up with the idea of the under lighting for those inserts. and so there's a UV LED under each insert, and many of the inserts have images that only appear when that light is on, and we can control them individually. So, like, we can only feel the P in Pandora if we need to, things like that.
    25:51
    Sounds like a program of nightmare. Yeah. You have to talk to Keith about that. but the UD inks themselves, they're actually security inks for like, they're only used on like currencies and passports and driver's licenses. They're highly regulated. They watch what you do with it. They're also very expensive inks, like per gallon. They cost a lot. So, yeah, that's pretty expensive inks. Fortunately, they go a long way. But they do add an added expense to playfield manufacturing because especially on the CE, they're screen printed on. So there's three different screen prints that have to be all aligned and be perfect to make that work. So is that why you ended up with two different playfield manufacturers then for the collected edition and the limited edition? Yeah, we needed a bit more time to work on the collector's edition. Yeah, it was a process, and it was a bit easier to iterate with a local supplier. Right, I see. We're building up a couple of CEs for Expo. Excellent. I can't wait to see them in person and play the game. It looks like a very, very interesting game to play, and I may have to watch the Avatar moves as well on my flight over there.
    27:28
    So, yeah, no, but seriously, you did an amazing job. You as a designer, and this being your first big project at Jersey Jack, how much input did you have on the art package of both games? I was able to choose the artist for the game, and I had a certain idea of the style I wanted. I didn't really want, I wanted to be more traditional hand-drawn art versus borrowing images from a style guide and arranging them in a manner.
    28:06
    So I really wanted like a really nice comic book cover style art for it. And I was looking around on the internet trying to find somebody and I came across the site of Leah Foskey, and she has a beautiful art style.
    28:27
    She's drawing things like floating mountains and blue people on her portfolio page. And so, yeah, fortunately, she was, she agreed, like, oh, yeah, we're, I want to do this.
    28:45
    She wanted to do both art packages in the play field. and the results are phenomenal. She just did an amazing job. It's so beautiful.
    28:55
    And fortunately, Lightstorm also was like, this is awesome. We love what you're doing. We love this art style. This is perfect. Oh, that's great. Yeah, they were on board with it too. Were you also involved in the selection of the music composer for the game? Okay, so can you tell us about how you got to know Grant, or Stemmage, was it? you guys by the night out. So Grant actually worked with me on Metroid. Oh, right. He has a band called Metroid Metal, which is the music in the Metroid game. He had already written it when I used it, but he gave me permission to use it. He helped guide me with sound effect selections, like when you hit a target and things like that. And also his wife did all the call-outs for it. so this is the second mobile machine I've worked with them on audio okay wow and I guess our traditions were born Disney and 20th Century were happy yeah Lightstorm yeah this is they worked with us on the audio they reviewed everything they're like oh you know maybe need some more like tribal drums in this one or maybe some more like choral stuff and things like that. Yeah, and they let us do some guitar music for the multiballs, and they loved that too. So that was great that we could sort of put our own, like, pinball spin on some of the Avatar music. Yeah, really good to have a licensor who wants to work with you on the game and really help improve it. Mm-hmm, yeah.
    30:45
    So the most important question, of course, is, so what did your wife, Erin, think of the game? She liked it. She was able to be my beta tester for it. She was able to come. She has an NDA, so she gets to come in and play the new games and tell me what she likes and what she doesn't like about it.
    31:04
    So, yeah, it was, yeah, she's been a big help, helping me figure out, like, oh, what should we change, what's good, what's bad.
    31:15
    because we don't have too many outside people coming in to play it. We have a handful, but, yeah, it's nice to get an outside opinion and be like, oh, yeah, you should do this, you should do that. She was actually the one that suggested that I do an arrow for the shooter rod on the CE. Oh, right. Okay.
    31:32
    Good call. Yeah. Now, beautiful as the game is, one of the other amazing parts of it, I think, especially for the collector's edition, is the topper and the whole display up there and the sort of view out of the cockpit.
    31:52
    Were you involved in the development of that as well? Yep, that was my idea, my design. We were going over various ideas with Lightstorm. That topper wasn't the first idea. The first thing I suggested was having some of those wood sprites, those little dandelion-like speed things flying around and things like that.
    32:16
    But the LifeStorms really liked the idea of the fact that the topper is high up. So we had to have a topper that represents something that is high up. So things like, so on the LE one, you got the air battle up there. On the CE, I was like, well, what's higher up in space? So basically having like a shuttlecraft up in orbit, like looking down on the game was the idea that we went with.
    32:46
    Very good. I think it looks fantastic. Very, very imaginative. And technically clever as well. Yeah. Yeah, we wanted to represent like the screens that you see in the movie, and those are all like you see through them. So the best way to do that was with that Pepper's Ghost effect. and I wanted to make sure we used all the real estate. So we investigated those ultra-wide LCD monitors to achieve that effect. So it's the full back box width of the UI and the holographic display. Yeah, I think it's probably one of the best toppers I've seen on any game. And it's actually included in the collector's edition that Novak charged. is every reason to get one of those if you're going to buy an avatar.
    33:40
    Yeah, and everything on that screen is real-time information about what's happening in the game. So you can look up and see, like, well, I have three of these out of four or whatever. I've got this progress towards my song chord mode. I've got this progress towards multiball.
    33:59
    And it's very useful, too. And it's great for people who are watching you play as well. they can sort of tell you added information yep and in a trapped mode what we did is there's on the official Avatar site they have they call it the Pandorapedia which is like information about like all the creatures all the ships all the things that are on pandora so we got access to all that information all that text all those images so in attract mode it shows you like on the planet in the background like where these things happen like it'll point them out on the on the globe that's behind it outside the cockpit window.
    34:38
    So you're learning more information about the world of Avatar. Right, well there's obviously an awful lot of software going into this game as well. If people play the game now, how complete is the game in code that they will get to play if they're playing the latest version? And are there any sort of extra special features which are yet to come that people should be particularly excited about? Yeah, so all the modes are in the game. both multiballs are in the game start to finish we're doing a bunch of balancing of the rules now the prototypes didn't play it a bit more mean than the production games so we sort of helped the player out a bit more than apparently we needed to so we're currently scaling back some things like there's definitely too many extra balls being handed out during multiball yeah during multiball there's too many add-a-balls being handed out so we're trying to tweak those numbers and when it happens and things like that we are working on getting the Pandora wizard mode in there I believe it's going to be in the next update and we are also working on getting more synced audio into the game to the video, synced to the video.
    36:06
    We got the audio a bit late in the development cycle, so we didn't have a chance to do as much as we wanted to for release.
    36:13
    So that's actually a bigger project than we realized, so that will start trickling in on different updates. I know for sure the next update we're going to have at least one of the multiballs is going to have synced audio, probably two, depending on when we want to release it.
    36:32
    Um, so, uh, the next update is going to be a pretty big one in my opinion. Um, it's going to have a lot of changes and stuff and that whole new wizard mode. Um, and Keith has, uh, said that he expects the, uh, the final wizard mode to be in by Expo. Uh, not that I think anybody's going to be able to get to it. That's, that's a hard one to get to. Um, there's, that's the more, definitely the more challenging one. we made Pandora a bit more achievable. Like, it's sort of like the Melt the Witch Wizard Mode versus the Somewhere Over the Rainbow Wizard Mode. Yeah, yeah.
    37:14
    So, but other than that, modes, it's pretty complete. Like, I would say it's probably about 90% complete at this point. Wow, that's very impressive. Yeah. So, did you have to fight for any specific mechs or things that you wanted to happen on the game? Because this is, we mentioned the bill of materials before, but this looks like a packed game with six slippers. And flipper units aren't that expensive. You have expensive UV ink. You have an incredible expensive topper. So, I can imagine that at some point somebody with a calculator comes by and says like, Hey, maybe you can take me down a little bit.
    37:59
    Yeah. So as long as it was fun and it worked, they weren't going to cut it. So basically anything that they had any concerns about, we worked to make it fun. And they were like, okay, you can stay in. I don't think anything was removed from the game that I didn't want to remove from the game so I'm very happy with the way it came out and yeah, it's expensive but you know what, I think it's worth it Well, I was going to say you put so much in a game that this is definitely some if people have a choice between games then Avatar stands out as in what you get for your money, so to speak. So that's a good thing, I think.
    39:00
    The other question, obviously you're very creative, you're designing this game. At what point do you know, like, okay, play to the layout, this is it, we don't have to add anything? or do you keep adding stuff or changing stuff and it's like, no, there's a deadline, you got it, this is it, we have to keep it like this and too bad about the other ideas that you still have. Yeah, well, I ran out of space to put things, so if I wanted to add anything else, it would be difficult. But as far as like changes,
    39:38
    that was ongoing right up to basically production. We were constantly making improvements I mean, obviously some parts you have to have a certain lead time on, so that has to be cut off at some point. But, yeah, so, no, anything that came up, even if it was a week before, we put it in boxes. We were working on fixing that problem and improving it and making it the way it should be. but layout wise it was there was a few tweaks but it's been done for a little while now so it was mostly like getting the mechs to be reliable, working the way we want them and things like that right, so now the game is in production other than going to shows and going on to podcasts like this to help promote it. What does your day job now consist of? And is there a point at which your work on Avatar is or was done and you move on to the next project? Or will you just keep promoting it, going to shows, doing other media until it's no longer the current JTP game? Because I can imagine you'll be like at the Texas show, doing a seminar about the making of Avatar and that's going to be in March. so it's going to be a while I imagine I've been promoting the game a lot talking to podcasts or being on streams things like that I am working with production any manufacturing issues that come up in the field to resolve those so later customers don't have the same issue and sending out fixes if necessary to existing customers we found some extra ball hangs the first show was the Colorado show and we found some ball hangs we weren't aware of so we had some extra ball hang prevention pieces to put in the rest of the production games and send those out to people who already got them so it's just making sure the games are high quality when they go out the door and working with the software team to finalize and get everything feeling great and getting the final components in the game and making improvements.
    42:19
    But, yeah, it's starting to be just getting ready for Expo. And I expect to start working on the next project sometime shortly after Expo. All right, I was going to ask you, have you started on it yet? But not long now. No, we've been talking about themes, but yeah, no official kickoff yet. But that'll be soon. It's coming up fast. It is, yes. We're looking forward to it and looking forward to seeing you in person as well. Yeah.
    42:55
    We will both be in the seminar room. I'm sure you will be there for the JJP seminar on Friday night, I believe. Friday night at 9.30, I believe, they pushed it back to. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. And the whole team will be there.
    43:12
    Leah should be there. Grant should be there. The programmers will be there. JP will be there. The mechanical engineer will be there.
    43:21
    Rachel's the lead mechanical engineer on that. Everybody on the team should be present in that room, theoretically. Okay. Right. We're going to need more microphones.
    43:33
    Mm-hmm. Right. So, no, we do very much for and to that. Thank you for coming on our podcast on so short notice. No problem. Basically, we kept you from doing some maintenance work at Antarium, we understand, although it wasn't that much, but still. No, it wasn't. Clean up the games and just making sure everything's working great. And there wasn't really much to do on it. So it's holding up pretty well. On the plays on it too.
    44:08
    The manager here told me there's been a line on it every time he looks at it. So it's been doing pretty good. Excellent. Okay. Well, congratulations again on what, well, we haven't played it yet, but we assume it's a fantastic game.
    44:27
    And wish you all the best, of course. good luck fine-tuning the final bits and pieces if necessary and we look forward to seeing you at Pimble Expo. Yeah, it's been great talking to you. Thanks for having me on. Well, Mark, thank you very much for your time. Yeah, it was good. Absolutely, very interesting info.
    44:48
    I think well, of course you talked to other media outlets as well, but I think we got some very interesting answers from him. Yeah, certainly answered many of the questions which I had. And we're a little bit pressed for time. We could probably have talked for another hour or so about various aspects of it. But hopefully it's nicely compact and condensed and all the key facts are there. So we look forward to getting to play the game later this month, in a couple of weeks' time, I'd say. Yeah, it will be at Pinball Expo. and there will also be a tour of the Jersey Jack Pinball facility in Elk Grove Village on the Thursday of Expo. And there's an evening with Jersey Jack Pinball also scheduled for Friday evening at the... 9.30pm, I believe, in the main Nirvana A&B seminar room. Yes, which is at the Renaissance Conference Centre in Tromberg, at least. Yes, if you can't make it, then we certainly intend to have a recording of the whole event available for you to watch online very shortly afterwards. We'll have more details about that later when we get to our section about Pinball Expo. Yeah, so, now we mentioned other media outlets also reporting on the game. In fact, quite a few pinball reporters, I'm not sure whether we should call them reporters, but content creators is the modern word, I suppose. It's cool. Yeah. Were invited or paid for to visit the Jersey Jack Pinball factory the day after the game was revealed. It was a Friday.
    46:52
    So they got a flight and a hotel and hopefully they were... To the factory. Yeah, to the factory. To the team. Play the game. Play the game, exactly. and hopefully that would result in a positive article or video or podcast or whatever. Review. Yeah. So, and surprisingly, we were not one of those.
    47:20
    No, no, not so easy for us to get there. I don't think, I don't know if there are any international or non-North American people invited. so probably too expensive to keep us actually that's probably a misthought because probably plane tickets aren't that much more expensive to fly as over well I don't know but certainly when I was looking for plane tickets around Expo to fly over there they weren't cheap but maybe internal flights aren't either at the moment however it certainly seems to have worked I haven't seen any well I've hardly seen any less than positive comments about the game so everyone seems to be very impressed with it and rightly so as far as I can see but we haven't played it yet but we will get a chance to shortly yeah so one last final note we mentioned the factory tour of the Jersey Jack pinball factory on the Thursday of pinball expo if you've been on that factory tour last year and you go this year again, you might notice a big difference. The factory used to have two production lines where they could either choose to manufacture two different games, one on each, or two different models of a game.
    48:49
    The production line has been completely redesigned for much more efficient production. So it's not just one production line, but they can change it in a matter of hours for a different model or even a different game. So currently they're building Avatar, but if there's need for, for example, Elton John, they can build them or start building them, provided that they have all the parts in-house, within a matter of hours. start building them of course and then crank them out as well as they go so that's a big change yeah it would be interesting to see exactly how that's worked yes and I believe a big role in this redesign of the production line has to do with, and now I forgot his name.
    49:59
    Oh, yes. No, no, no. They hired a former engineer from Stern Pimble who's now working for Joseph Jack and he was involved in a lot of the redesign of the production and production processes. Yes. let me see if I can come up with the name at the tip of my tongue but oh well so anyway yeah it's interesting because last time we were there they had the two lines but they closed one of them down for the factory tour so they could carry on working on the other one while demonstrating on the non-working one how the processes work so they didn't actually interrupt their manufacturing while they were doing the tour. However, this time, rather than having a big group of people, they've decided to split the tours into hourly groups, smaller hourly groups, which they can take around. So I think if you want to go to the Jersey Jack Pitbull Factory tour this year, you have to nominate which hour you want to go and then go and take the bus that takes you there for that particular hour tour. So smaller groups, more manageable, and I guess if they've only got one production line, it means they don't have to shut down production, which obviously helps them.
    51:28
    Right, okay. Well, I think in the absence of the name of that mystery person, we can move on from Jersey Jack, who's been dominating... I have found his name. Sorry, oh, September. Oh, go on then. Tom Capera. Oh, Tom, yes. Yes, Tom Capera, up to a year ago, worked at Sperm Pinball, and then he started working at Jersey Jack Pinball, and he is... He was working on toppers, wasn't he, at Sperm? Yeah, yeah. And...
    52:02
    A co-designer of Cactus Canyon, of course. Right, so he jumped ship, and he was largely involved in the redesign of the now far more efficient pinball production line at JJP. I can understand, because they probably don't make two different models simultaneously very often, so that probably didn't really work out. There may have been a plan originally to do that, to be able to run, you know, like Elton John machines alongside Avatar machines, but they could pretty much switch over from one to the other. don't they? So, yeah, being able to have one more efficient production line than two less efficient ones certainly makes sense. Yes. Okay, right. Well, as I say, that probably wraps it up for our Jersey Jack pinball coverage for the month of September, but moving on now to stone pinball. And as you said, we did cover the launch of their latest title, the uncanny X-Men, the Jack Danger designed game in our previous pin cast.
    53:10
    But that was, as we said before, it seemed a little bit of a rushed launch, designed to get in before Jersey Jack. Right. But they did then, well, one of the things that was obviously missing at the time was any real gameplay video of the machine, but Stern did do a live premiere of the uncanny X-Men gameplay just like two days before Jersey Jack launched their new game. Right. Okay, so you can kind of get the gist of how the two of them are battling for attention around that time. Well, sometimes that backfires.
    53:49
    Yes. It probably did a little bit this time as well. Yeah. because I don't think the Stern live gameplay was very well received. They didn't have much in the way of code in the game or assets and seemed to have a sort of fairly low energy presentation, which is unusual for a Jack Danger hosted event. But everyone seemed to be very, I don't know, distracted, shall we say, even though they were dressed in silly costumes. But after that there were a lot of people going, well I was very excited by Uncanny X-Men and now I'm a little less excited by it. Yeah, okay. Well, the first stream resulted in the decision to change some of the music in the game, based on the feedback from the first livestream. live stream. There has been a second live stream in the meantime. And I played the game as well in the meantime. I was very impressed with it. I've seen that ball move in ways I've never seen a pinball move before.
    55:03
    Moves in mysterious ways. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, no, absolutely congratulations to Jack Danger on a killer design. There was also the 1000th episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast in which he interviewed George Gomez from the Stern factory. He was actually a guest at the Stern factory where he recorded the podcast. And I believe George Gomez mentioned in there that the design cycle for Jack's game had been reduced from 16 months to 12.
    55:42
    So either that means that Jack was actually scheduled to go out with his game in January, which is usually the next Cornerstone game, and they probably switched that around for another title, giving Jack less time. So you have to wonder why the time was shortened. Was it due to earlier titles not selling so well? That would be my guess. Yeah, but they would have had a new Cornerstone game anyway by now, so it was either Jack or something else in development.
    56:21
    Yeah, but something else might have had other delays as well. They might have been waiting on parts to arrive that were back-ordered, and so they couldn't produce the game, so they had to rush.
    56:34
    No, not the Uncanny X-Men. No, obviously not, no. Anyway, so, yeah, I was very impressed with the game, even though X-Men as a theme does nothing for me.
    56:51
    So I highly recommend playing it yourself. I was able to play the game at the IAPI Europe trade show. Yes, now Stern had been over in Amsterdam and in the Netherlands generally. Yeah.
    57:08
    In quite large numbers as well. Yeah. for, as you mentioned, the IAFA trade show. Yes. Which was held at the Rye Conference Center in Amsterdam. Yes. From the 24th to 26th of September. Yes. Theron had a sizable booth, I would say, a rectangular, long-shaped one with the 10 pinball machines. And, of course, you're wondering, oh, which games were they? Well, they had Deadpool, Venom, Jaws, John Wick in a pro and premium, the Uncanny X-Men in a pro and premium, Godzilla and Stranger Things. Ten games in total.
    57:52
    Okay. Was it Black and White Godzilla or the regular? No, not the regular one. Okay. And the management team of Stern was quite big. we had DocScore who is not surprised there because he's director of export sales John Buscalia EVP and chief revenue officer Pat Powers was there director of tech support Lloyd Durtand is marketing in Europe and of course CEO no I'm saying that president Seth Davis and Gary Stern as well, the founder of the company, and I believe Gary is the CEO, and Stern is the president, or the other way around.
    58:44
    I think Gary's chairman, isn't he? Oh, whatever. Anyway, Gary Stern, we know who he is. Hard to track. The guy with the white hair.
    58:54
    So, anyway, yeah, they were, well, it's a large delegation, I would say, because usually at the EAG show I don't think Stern is there in that big of numbers, they send maybe four people over but this is a much bigger delegation and much bigger display of machines as well, they have about four at EAG, but that wasn't all they were doing though, was it? No, no, no, they went sightseeing to the Van Gogh Museum and the Wright Museum and well of course Red Light they said you know I go, no, no I can't no Gerard van de Sanden of the Dutch Pinball Museum and his team seized the opportunity knowing that Gary and Stern Management were coming over and they hosted an evening with Gary Stern in the Dutch Pinball Museum Monday, September 23rd one day ahead of the IAPA show and I was there as well in Rotterdam yes, Dutch Pinball Museum in Rotterdam which is a must see I think both I followed Gary and Seth taking the tour of the museum guided by a museum founder and owner Gerard van der Sanden which is all available in video on the Pinball Magazine website which is pinball- magazine.com it's currently one of the top articles so you can't miss it and well the idea was an evening with Gary Stern so Gary would do a talk there was a Q&A session led by LJ Green who also used to work in pinball in the 90s and we've seen her at pinball as well she will be moderating a couple of seminars this year as well And, well, of course, there was the... I was going to say, this was a paid event. Yes. With a limited number of tickets available. Yes. Only 100 tickets were available for this event, and they cost 30 euros each, or $35, something like that. Mm-hmm.
    61:20
    Yes. So you went to that, and I was also invited to it, but unfortunately couldn't make it, because it was crashed with an existing holiday that I had booked a long time ago. Right. But I would like to have gone, but it's a long way for one evening.
    61:40
    But not so far for you. No, no, I was relatively close by, of course, And last month I took Jersey Jack Guarneri to the same museum, although at that time it was not open, it was a surprise visit.
    62:00
    And during hours that the museum was closed and in this occasion it was actually open. and quite a significant number of people showed up. I'm not sure whether all 100 tickets were sold, but the room was pretty packed. All seats were taken and a lot of people had to be standing the two-hour session that Gary gave his talk. I wrote a report on the events which you can find on the Finbo magazine website, there's also the entire video that the Dutch Finbo museum produced of Gary's talk but in my report you also get Gary taking the tour there's an interesting well I thought it was interesting Seth Davis let me put it differently the The event was held in the attic of the museum, all the way at the top. And Gerard had put up four pinball machines over there. It was a James Bond 60th anniversary limited edition. An Elvira House of Horrors. And on the other end of the room were a Nugent Stern Electronics and the Orbiter One.
    63:31
    Apparently Seth Davis had never seen Orbiter One. Wow. So he played that, and I was able to capture that on video. So you can see Seth responding to the random ball movement of Orbiter One. I think I want to see that. Yeah. And while Seth was playing, Gary dished up a couple of interesting stories regarding the design of Orbiter One and Nugent as well. So apparently, I'm going to spoil it now, but apparently Nugent had reached out to Belly because he wanted to have a pinball machine or his label reached out to Tom Neumann at Belly and basically Tom Neumann at that time said, well, we don't have really room or not another, why don't you go to Stern? They might do it.
    64:33
    Which they ended up doing. So that's how Gary got Ted Nugent as a license and to work with Epic Records at that time. So, and apparently Ted Nugent has some radical ideas
    64:52
    that not everybody appreciates. That's a reasonable way of putting it, yes. So Gary also told a story about how they, at one point, put up an image of that game on the Stern website and he was immediately told to take it down.
    65:12
    Oh well. See the videos for yourself on the Pimble magazine website. It's not difficult to find. Anyway, so then back to Gary's talk. If you've seen Gary Stern talk about his career in pinball, I don't think there was anything new. A lot of, well, his history, how his father became an operator and a distributor, and then he became a manufacturer, all that, a little bit of Harry Williams stuff in there of course, and well then Dana East mentioned a couple of games.
    66:02
    Nothing, the talk itself was, I'd say there's more interesting side stories from Gary in the videos that I recorded during the tour. He even discussed briefly the total recall prototype
    66:20
    that they made at one point. One of the reasons was that they didn't do it because the boxes to ship the gaming were pie-shaped and if you want to ship them efficiently, Gary had an event around trucks.
    66:38
    That's the way you put it. There are numerous reasons why they should have gone ahead with that total recall game. Right. That's one of them. But that wasn't the only event at which Gary had been talking, was it? Because he also appeared at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Show. Yeah, indeed. Although not in person, I don't think. I wouldn't actually know in the sense that there was a seminar which was recorded I'm not sure whether Gary was actually present there I see what you mean yes he was there yeah so a recording of the seminar with Gary Cern present at the show is available on YouTube.
    67:32
    And it was in that seminar that he mentioned that some of the music in the Uncanny X-Men will actually be changed due to feedback from the first live stream. He also indicated that the Uncanny X-Men accessories are scheduled for launch in January of 2025. there was a question I believe whether there will be another Simpsons pinball machine to which Jerry basically said no, the second one is basically the best they can do the definitive version of the game although these days of course they could do a lot more with the video, but they probably wouldn't be able to spend that amount of money on the bill of materials for a Simpsons game. Yeah so I wouldn keep the hopes up for a vault edition of that game either But anyway there is a 2 Insider Connected app in the works as well as our home leaderboards, which have been... A lot of people have been asking for that. Yeah, exactly. And also quite interesting, Stern Pinball bought the company that is or that used to be doing the clear coating of their play fields and they're moving them inside the Stern Pinball facility and I'm not sure whether that's actually the main facility or the facility where they are doing all the woodworking stuff yes, because they have wood locations, yes so, oh well so those are some of the highlights from the seminar of Gary Stern at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown yes held in Denver of course in Colorado a great show and I thoroughly recommend it I've been for a couple of years but every time I have been it's been very well organised so a good shout out to the team there ok and I suppose no talk of Stern Pinball will be complete without the mandatory code updates. Oh, God. Which there have been four. Yes, but Jonathan will be pleased to know that there's not an awful lot to say about most of them because the updates for Star Wars and for Rush have basically just been to add support for the expression lighting system for the speakers that we spoke about last month, which they were calling the speaker lighting system, but now they seem to have decided to call it the expression speaker lighting system.
    70:30
    So code for Star Wars, 1.26 and Rush 1.16 adds that and fixes a few bugs. James Bond was a bit more in-depth. Rush 1.04 added five challenge modes. So those are the ones that you get when you hold the flipper button at the start and you can select your gameplay modes. Well, there are five of those being added, which are kind of mini versions of existing modes within the game.
    70:58
    But you can launch straight into them from the start. And, of course, bug fixes and a few extra adjustments have been added as well. Finally, Jaws. That added the new The Shark is Broken challenge mode, another one of those start button, well, flip a button and start modes. but that's only available if you've got the topper fitted to the game. So topper exclusive for that one. Lots of rule changes as well in the latest update, 0.96,
    71:33
    with some more adjustments and a whole bunch of bug fixes as well. So definitely worthwhile getting that one. So that rounds up our code update for Stone Pinball games. And Stone Pinball in general. Indeed. Okay, so let's move on to our next company. Right. Which would be... Well, American Pinball. Okay. Well, we spoke about them quite a bit in our last Pincast, because that was when we covered David Fix's appearance in the UK Pinfest show,
    72:06
    as well as what's been going on at the company there. But David and the American Pinball Team will be having a seminar at Pinball Expo as well. They're there on Thursday, currently scheduled at 10pm. Yeah, but that might still change. Yes, as far as I currently schedule, but could change.
    72:28
    Now, apparently the signature edition of the Galactic Tank Force, which is the top-end model, is currently set up at Enterium in Schaumburg. which is where Mark was attending to the Doja Jack pinball games just now when we were talking to him. Yeah, so a popular place to go, and it has all the latest games set up there, and it is something of a playtest area, I think, for several companies. But the top signature edition of Collective Tank Force is there, hopefully still be there by the time we get over to Expo in a couple of weeks' time, and we will be going to Interium, of course. because that's where the Bumper Blast party is and so that will be on Wednesday night I think it's still on Wednesday night I was assuming it would have moved to Tuesday night because no it hasn't it's movie night Tuesday night and I think there's aren't we going to Logan on Tuesday night something like that note that on Wednesday as well during the day it's Galloping Ghost and Chicago Gaming on Tuesday there's so much going on at Pinball for this year but we'll get back to that later anyway American Pinball got the signature edition of the Grand Saint Force there, they have been rebuilding Hot Wheels machines so building a new run of Hot Wheels and also building a very small run of quite a small run, of Houdini games as well.
    74:12
    According to Facebook, their Facebook post, Hot Wheels is their number one selling game. Which is no surprise because it's a license, so that might mean it's easier to sell. Yeah, and a good game too.
    74:28
    There was a mod for that which we still haven't seen yet, have we? Yeah, I was wondering about that as well. I mean, we've... Oh, well, we'll talk about it. Yeah, but if I mention it, I get... He will say that I breached his NDA. Oh, because you're an NDA? Okay, well, I don't think I signed an NDA, but perhaps I did this long time ago. Anyway, a mod which we can't talk any more about but hasn't come out yet, but hopefully it will at some point because it will enhance the game. Yeah. Now, there was a suggestion that American Pinball might be releasing or announcing their next game, which is Brian McQuaid's game. Yes. Rumor to be Cuphead, which is a video game title with very attractive artwork, I have to say.
    75:31
    But it might still be something else. We don't know. That's just a rumor going around. But the current rumour is that they might not reveal the game before or at Pinball Expo. Which doesn't surprise me that much, because David, when we interviewed him, said that they would give it the time it needs. They wouldn't be rushed into releasing it. We've spoken about what can happen when you rush a release. and also if they did release it either at or just before Expo, they'd be up against the Jersey Jack pinball and the Stern pinball recent releases so maybe it makes sense to have a little bit of breathing space between those two games coming out and American announcing theirs Right That's how it would seem to me and of course if that fits in better with their production schedule as well, fine Right, so And of course, if you're going to Pinball Expo You will have a chance to tour the American Pinball facility You certainly will On Wednesday Wednesday, yes Yep I'm trying to remember when it is But I think it's kind of like an all day thing I think they busses leave at like 9.45 in the morning And don't come back until 5 o'clock No sleep So you're out all day Yeah, that's right But then when you come back, it'll be time to go to Interium. Right. To play more games. Yeah.
    77:03
    It's a packed schedule. We talked about that. One of the few companies that is not having a factory tour during Pinball Expo is actually Multimorphic because they are based in Round Rock in Texas. Yes. Not exactly next door. Quite a significant bus ride to get over there. Yeah. so but if Moses isn't coming to the mountain then the mountain will come to Moses so in this case Multimorphic is coming to Pinball Expo where Josh Kugler will be talking about the creation of the Prince's Bride which is currently scheduled for Thursday also at 10pm but since that's also at times thought that American is having a talk that might still change because there's no point in having two manufacturers of pinball machines having talks about pinball at the same time in different rooms I think we'd like to hear both of them so we'd rather have them to choose and I'm sure most people would so hopefully those can be suffering around there so we can hear them and record both of them for you Right, yes. And, well, currently Multimorphic is building The Princess Bride and shipping them as well. Yeah, basically both the modules and the full games. Yes. And there is news from Ian Harrow Games,
    78:39
    who developed the game Birdwatcher, which is an add-on game for the P3, which now also plays on the Princess Bride playfield, and all other P3 playfields as well, of course.
    78:54
    But to make it work on the Prince of Bright playfield, an update is required, which existing Birdwatcher owners can download immediately from the Multimorphic website.
    79:12
    That's all the news for Multimorphic right now. Okay, well, let's head back up north in the U.S. and to Wisconsin and Benton and Spooky Pinball, who had quite a busy month news-wise, including their big announcement, which is that they have signed artist Chris Franchi with an exclusivity agreement to create art only for Spooky Pinball, as far as pinball goes. Yes, and you may remember Chris has done art packages for Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, and several other companies.
    79:57
    But that's all over once he finishes the current projects that he's still working on, because he will be working exclusively for Spooky Pinball, where he apparently already has at least three or four titles to be working on. yeah in their announcement Spooky said he's exclusive to them forever but I don't know whether forever means forever but certainly for the foreseeable future so if you want to be getting a game with Chris Franky artwork on it once his current projects are out there then it will be Spooky for you right and we mentioned about their new building that they've acquired, and they've now completed their move into the new building and improved the production line process. The old building, they're keeping the old building and using that for game development and other office functions, but the new one is mainly for their new improved production line. Yeah, also 3D printing and that kind of stuff, prototyping.
    81:13
    Cool. Yeah, so that's all in the old building, and the new one is production. And what is in production at the moment? I was going to say, speaking of production, currently in production at Spooky are Looney Tunes and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with occasionally Scooby-Doo, which are available for immediate purchase if you're interested in one. Right, so if order comes in, they'll throw it on the line and build it. Exactly, yeah. So they did send out the Spooky Pinball newsletter with an update for the third quarter of the year. and one of the things in there is that they will be releasing four code updates in October, each on a Friday, and these will be for Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Ultraman and of course, Halloween Wow, how many Fridays are there in October? That's a lot Yeah, probably Yeah So, and they could, obviously Ultraman and Halloween could be on one day, because it's the same Playfield layout, and the same goes for Looney Tunes and Texas, but maybe not. Or maybe the... I can imagine them keeping the Halloween one for Halloween. Well, I was going to say, Halloween is actually not on a Friday this year. It's actually on a... on Thursday. Ah. So... Oh, well. Well, anyway, give your chance to enjoy Halloween and then get your code update the next day. It's even a Friday. now if you're listening to this and you haven't signed up for your Spooky Fang Club goodies then I'm afraid you've just missed this year's opportunity the Fang Club used to be a subscription based thing that you needed to be a member of in order to purchase games directly from Spooky when they were first launched and they're entirely connected all access subscription package. But that's all changed this year. It's no longer an ongoing subscription. You just purchase each year's Spooky branded goods, if you like them. If you don't like them, you don't have to buy them. And you don't need to pay to get a purchase of games directly from Spooky anymore. So it looks like they've kind of done away with the whole fan club aspect of it and just basically put together an order for a bunch of spooky branded merchandise that you can buy into.
    84:01
    The period this year, unfortunately, started on the 1st of August, I should say, and ended on the 30th of September. So we just missed it. And right about now, those goodies will be shipping. So you'll have to wait a whole year, pretty much, to get the 2025 deal. but put it in your diary now and don't forget to buy it. I believe you. I mean, you missed out on a scented candle or something. Oh, a couple of scented candles, I believe. Yep.
    84:31
    Yep. So maybe that's not your thing, but there are other items as well. I don't recall what scent it was, but...
    84:41
    Best not to think about it. It's spooky, so it's probably not lavender or something. Yeah. we won't come up with suggestions of what it might be but in case you're having a meal while you're listening to this but I think that wraps up our news for Spooky Pinball for the month of September 2024 and time to move on to our next company which is going to be Barrels of Fun what news from them? well they're currently preparing their factory tour as part of the Houston Arcade Expo show which is usually around the time of IAFA, if I'm not mistaken, which is in November.
    85:24
    Let me have a little quick look. No, it's not. It's actually one week before Pinball Expo. Ah, my bad. Sorry about that. Yeah, you're right. It used to be in November, but now it's the 11th to the 13th of October. Oh, if I had only known... they would have gone yes I know anyway so they're preparing for that factory tour which is nice if you're of course in the Houston area attending the Houston Arcade Expo show because you don't have to go to Pinball Expo to experience a factory tour you can actually basically stay in Houston so we can go to Expo as well and get even fuller specifiers of in-wall factories. Right.
    86:20
    And also quite worthy of mentioning is that Berzoffen have manufactured and shipped the 500th labyrinth game in their factory. Which is quite remarkable if you consider that they started building the game about a year ago, I believe. Yeah. So that's 500 games in one year, and, well, give them a couple of months and they will have finished the entire production for Labyrinth, or maybe not, but the entire production is limited to 1,100 games, and they haven't sold all of them yet. So you might still be able to get one, although you'll be at the back of the line, of course.
    87:14
    But it definitely will give them room to review a possible follow-up game to that around, let's say, Texas Pimple Festival. Yeah, if not sooner. Yeah. Yeah, so. And David Tenet, one of the founders of the company, and involved in the design of Labyrinth will be a special guest at the Dutch Pinball Open Expo, which will be held the first weekend of November in the Netherlands, of course. Yes, the first, the third of November, indeed. Yes, second and third, that is.
    87:58
    I've been discussing this with David myself. I'm sort of involved in inviting the special guests so I was able to talk to David earlier this month and he booked his ticket so I feel it's rather safe to announce that he will be there although he did book a refundable ticket so if anything comes up then as with the Pinball Expo schedule things are subject to change.
    88:37
    Right. Yeah, well, so is this. Yeah, exactly. But I look forward to welcoming David to the Netherlands. Yes, I look forward to seeing you there as well. Yeah. He has Dutch roots, and he's also planning to visit some family of his while he's over there. Good. Well, our final information about Barrels of Fun for September is just a new code update to Labyrinth that we were just talking about. This is our only game, so that's what the code's going to be for. That was actually quite interesting, and it adds another one of these gameplay modes.
    89:20
    Goblin City Multi-Ball or Battle Jareth from the start menu. Battle Jail also has some new music added, which is a nice feature. There's a new cooperative play mode where you score orbs collected and your general progress is shared between all the players in the game rather than being individual. So that's a nice feature to add. You can also save and load up to five personalized configurations of the game in the settings menu. So if you like to play a game in one particular way and somebody else likes to play it differently, whether it be easy or hard or rules and timers and things like that, then you can save those and recall them at will, which is a nice idea. And, of course, the usual bug fixes as well. So that's in Labyrinth version 2024.09.25.
    90:15
    And that's the full code update from Barrels of Fun for September. Right, okay. Now, if we move on to Pimble Brothers in Sweden, we start immediately with the code update, because that's all the news there is. Yes, that's right. Yes, they actually contacted both of us, didn't they, that Daniel did, with details of their about-to-be-announced code update to ABBA, which is version 1.30, which came out the 24th of September, which added the new Voyage Mini Wizard mode, which is a multiple and features the song on and on and on. It goes on and on and on. It must be in a loop.
    91:04
    You can apparently play all five song modes to unlock this new Mini Wizard mode. They've also changed some of the flipper settings. There are a whole bunch of new animations, which is nice. on completing certain objectives. There's tournament play settings as well, along with sound enhancements for improved sound effects, some more score and timing balancing, more and better light shows and general illumination effects, and some more high score lists have been added. So quite a big update for ABBA. I haven't seen many of them around yet, But hopefully this will help get them into more and more homes and locations. Right, yeah. And in order to get them into more homes and locations, I have been talking to Daniel Jensen of Pinball Brothers to see whether he can come over to the Dutch Pinball Open Expo the first weekend of November. And?
    92:08
    They are looking into it. obviously they would want their games to be there as well. So they're talking to distributors and they're also talking to Pedrecci Gaming, who I've also invited to come over, and they're trying to figure out a way that it might work for everybody to be present and represented by the right distributors, which is quite a task because in Europe certain distributors have only the right to sell games in certain territories,
    92:48
    or countries, if you will. So what do you do if your distributor is at a show in the Netherlands, but he's not a distributor for the Netherlands? Should he bring the game, or is it not allowed? And what if there's no other or competing distributor for the Netherlands? Oh, well, that's all stuff that they're trying to figure out. Not to step on anybody's toes, and you know how it goes. Yes, a political game.
    93:17
    Okay, well, good luck with that. And I think we'll move on from Bimble Brothers then and the potential distribution nightmare and look at a much simpler setup when we're talking about HomePin. who are from manufacturing in Taiwan, but they were appearing at an Australian pinball show, the Newcastle Pinfest show, where they had their new The Blues Brothers prototype game there. One prototype machine, and this was the first chance people got to play it, and it seemed to get broadly positive reviews, which I hope in game is a refreshing change. Yeah, and some people even called it the best game they produced so far. Wow. Oh, okay. I'm not sure whether the bar was very high, but... It's high now.
    94:15
    So, it's also not that strange in the sense that most... Well, the design is basically a combination of two Stern Electronics games from the early 80s, stars, and I forgot the other one. Well, I didn't know. It was a combination. I knew about stars, but... Yeah. Oh, well, anyway. So, yeah, if you take something that already worked in the past, it might still work today. So, yeah. Well, anyway, I'm happy to see that there is a positive feedback. Even David Henkin of Hank and Pinball, which I think is the son of the original founder of the company.
    95:05
    But he played it and bought one for his operation or operator business. So he's putting it on location, I believe. Yeah, that's right. And we mentioned before about there being a special show price for a limited number of models. They weren't actually available at the show, but they were available for pre-ordering. And the special show price there was only 5,950 Australian dollars, which translates to 4,100 US dollars, 3,700 euros. I see I've done all the hard work for you to say you're going to work it out for yourself. and 3,080 UK pounds. And 10 machines were available at that price and they all sold out very quickly, I believe.
    95:59
    It's quite a steal. It is, but given the fact that it uses an open source basis for its software, hopefully it's got into the hands of people who will be able to do things with it and develop that software and add in some additional songs, shall we say, not breaking any copyright, of course, and maybe modify the rules as well to come up with a more in-depth rule set for the game. Given it's got what seems to be a nicely playing play field, it seems to be a game that would certainly be worthy of some software development and some additional music to go in it. As I said, there are three licensed tracks in the game already, one of which is the Peter Gunn theme. Yeah. That in, I don't know what the other two were, but... Yeah, I know of one, but... Yeah. But the option is there to add a lot more for your own personal use. Shake your tail feather. Tail feather is in there. Right, okay.
    97:08
    So... I wonder whether you're going to sing it for us. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, good. I think that's about everything we have from Home Pin for this month good luck to them with the Bruce Brothers, hope it turns out to be a big success hopefully it does so then Turner Pinball back in the US also in Texas they've been showing pictures of more parts for their Ninja Eclipse game including lock bars, glass frames flipper coils cabinet plywood and custom-branded coil return buttons. Coil. Yeah, coil return buttons. Yeah, or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah, there's a little plastic insert down the coil. Yeah. So, yeah.
    98:00
    Apparently, the first edition of Ninja X-Dips games, which is limited to 100 units, priced at 6,994 US dollars are not sold out yet.
    98:15
    So, if you're interested, because it's a very nice looking game and it plays pretty good, I would say. Yeah. It's a fun playing game.
    98:28
    Well, hopefully you get the chance to play it at Pinball Expo. I'm sure you will. but after those first hundred first edition games are sold out the next ones will be at a higher price so if you wanted to get arcade editions with lower spec as well so if you wanted to get one now's the time to do it right so and then well that's all the news for Turner Pimble so quickly round that up and we'll move on to Chicago Gaming who are currently manufacturing pulp fiction, as we all know.
    99:09
    There's no news on the suggested medieval madness remakes, which are supposed to be due at the end of 2024 and early 2025.
    99:18
    There might also be a slightly conflicting with the rumor that the Pulp Fiction limited editions, the Bad Mother Flipper limited editions, that is, Well done.
    99:31
    Are scheduled to be on the line in November and December, which I wonder leaves any room for medieval battles to go on the line at the end of that period. Well, I believe they have two lines, but I haven't seen both lines, and perhaps you get a chance to see it during a factory tour. Yeah. I don't know, Pinball Expo maybe. Yeah, on the Tuesday, I believe. Oh, that's going to be good. It's going to be a good one to go to. You can actually probably make that one as well. Yeah, so. And then there is some, I suppose, interesting news, but given that it's Chicago Gaming, it might take a while. In a sense, as you know, the current Pulp Fiction game is actually designed by Play Mechanics. Mark Ritchie, former pinball designer, or currently still pinball designer, but he hasn't designed that many pinball machines for a long period of time, and now he's back with Pulp Faction.
    100:40
    But the company is apparently planning to stay in pinball, as Mark Ritchie, the same one, apparently already completed two more pinball designs for the company, which will have to go into production at a later stage. Given that it's Chicago Gaming, that could take years. Well, maybe they wouldn't be the Chicago Gaming. Maybe they'd look for somebody else to make them. That could also be an option.
    101:11
    I wouldn't be able to comment on that because I have no information whatsoever. So anyway, one of the themes for the two pinball machines that Mark Ritchie apparently already completed is supposed to be Halo. Halo is a popular video game I believe. Yes indeed. And I really wouldn't know what it's about because, well, it's a video game. Well it's a shooter isn't it? It could be. First person shooter games. My first initial response to Halo is Beyonce, but that's completely different.
    101:53
    It is, yes. And way over my head, I suspect. Anyway, so that's just rumour. And with that rumour, which we don't do rumours of, we'll wrap up our Chicago gaming news and move on to facts that are from Pedretti Gaming or for Jussie Pinball or Pinball Remakes or whatever we're calling them this month, because they have been building and shipping lots more of their Funhaus remake games to customers all around the globe. So lots of containers of those leaving their Italian manufacturing Euro Pinball facility. But also they have been shipping what they are saying is the final ever batch of Funhaus Rudy's Nightmare game kits. That's the Funhaus 2.0 kit, which you can fit to an existing Funhaus game. They are saying that no more of those will be made once this final batch has been shipped out So if you were waiting to get one and haven got one yet you'd better do some hunting around to try to find out where they've gone, because they won't be making any more. Yeah, so. Which is actually rather limited, so. Yeah, it could be a little bit. Oh, they're collectible now, yeah. Could well be. However, talking about Funhaus and remakes and Rudy's Nightmare and things like that, there's code for all those games, or both those games, I should say. Funhaus Remake is now on version 1.1.3 as of the 27th of September.
    103:39
    Fairly minor adjustment. Adds Shaker Motor implementation to all versions of the game. if you remember the Final Fantasy remake comes with the original code it comes with an enhanced original code and it comes with the Ruby's Nightmare new code 2.0 well Shaker Motors has been added to all those all three of those different versions of the game and also in the version 2.0 they have added volume adjustment for individual volume adjustments for music level sound effects and voice level, so you can balance the sound to your liking. And Funhouse Rudy's Nightmare, the kit we were just talking about, which is no longer to be produced, also had an update to version 1.1.
    104:33
    It didn't, in this instance, give us any release notes for the new code, but apparently it contains a new feature, which we don't know what it is, A few bug fixes, adds more movement to Rudy's eyes, which is something which is a bit lacking previously, and adds a whole bunch of operator adjustments for match percentage and pricing, ball search logic, bug fixes, all that kind of stuff, and some scoring rebalancing. So both first, if you had either the kit or the remake game, new software for you in September from Patrici. Right, and if you are still on the fence or need some convincing, whether this is a game for you, the Funhouse remake that is, there will be a seminar at Pimble Expo on this Thursday at 7pm entitled Rudy is Back. with Nick Parks, and Ellen will be there. Surprisingly, the name of Andrea Pedretti is not there, but who knows?
    105:42
    Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting to hear the story of that. In fact, they've got an hour to tell it. So if you can't make it, then watch out for the recordings that can be coming up online soon afterwards. Right. Now, speaking of those recordings, Martin, I know you're recording in the Nirvana A slash B room, which is the bigger seminar room. But there's also a C room, which has seminars on Thursday and Saturday simultaneously with seminars in the AB room.
    106:24
    You're only recording in AB, right? the seminars in C will not be recorded by you. Is that correct? That is correct. We have one set of recording equipment, multiple cameras as usual, and as well as doing all the sound mixing, which you will be helping me to provide full coverage throughout all three days of packed seminars in the A and B room. which is a single room, but it's made up from two separate rooms with a dividing wall between them removed, so it's a bigger room.
    107:06
    There is, as you said, there's a second room, which is the room next door, Nirvana C, which is half the size of the A&B room, but that would be used for other seminars.
    107:17
    Now, the original intention was for it to be video game seminars in the C room and pinball seminars in the A&B, but the sheer number of seminars that have taken place this year means that quite a few pinball ones have also gone into the smaller room C.
    107:35
    But as you quite rightly say, we don't have facilities for recording those. So we will only be able to bring all the ones from A and B, but I think we've got all the... We haven't got them yet. We're working on getting all the ones that we think you'll be most interested in recorded. Or need to be archived, basically. Yeah, that's right. The historically significant ones, or presenting historically significant information, such as how a game was developed, or the history of a particular aspect of the game that hasn't been well documented up until now. But, yes, so the intention is that these will all be recorded every day in A and B, and we'll be uploading them to the Pinball News videos channel on YouTube overnight each night. So they won't be streamed live, but there will only be a matter of a few hours between them taking place and you being able to watch them. And that's thanks to Rob Burke at Pinball Expo and also with great help from Ron Coon Jr. who's helping us with getting all the audio equipment set up and purchased, actually, this year because we're having a whole new sound system implemented in the seminar area. And it's going to be interesting because it's all the equipment that we've never used before. So we're going to put in quite a steep learning curve to work out how it all works. But especially with seminars running from, you know, I can only cook in the morning until 11 o'clock at night, virtually every day. But bear with us, and I'm sure we'll be able to get you some marvelous seminars if you aren't able to attend Pinball Expo in person, which, of course, we thoroughly recommend you do. Right. So, and if you happen to be in the possibility to choose, like, oh, I want to see this one or I want to see that one, I recommend see the one in Nirvana C because those are the ones that you will not be able to watch at a later time. Yes. And the ones in AB you will be. So I would recommend if there is something in Nirvana C that you would like to see, make sure that you see it because else it's gone.
    110:05
    Yes. Okay. so with that we'll carry on talking about other things that will be at Pinball Expo and companies that will be there one of which will be Dutch Pinball and DPX right yes Dutch Pinball exclusive that is exclusive to Dutch Pinball yeah let's see collaboration with Barry Dreesen with Melvin and Raoul Williams yeah And, well, hot off the press, from what I understand, Dutch Pinball will be shipping Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Pinball Expo.
    110:53
    But don't get your hopes up yet, because you never know how customs or transport issues actually prevent a game from arriving in time. so if all goes well the game should be there possibly maybe even multiple leagues will be there and we'll just have to wait and see but then again there's more news to report on that game following the Art of Pinball already being announced as a partner on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Modmaker Stumbler Pimble is also working on the game and they will provide an interface to support integrated custom mods so that they can properly connect to the game and work with the game code rather than try and interpret what is happening in the game and react accordingly. Yes, the first time that I think anyone's given mod makers a proper access into the game itself, in order to plug their mods in. Right, in this case, there's also a PCB being plugged in, allowing those mods to be corresponding with gameplay mods and so on, and integrated in the game code. That's right, yeah. So obviously from Stumbler, who's a major mod maker themselves, they provided this interface for mods that come either from them or from third-party mod makers. So plenty of possibilities of adding extra features to the game, if that's the kind of thing you like to do with your new Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. Is that an extra rabbit hole or something? Well, yes, or improve the topper, for instance, or add extra cabinet lighting, or, well, anyway. We haven't seen what's included in the game yet, so it's hard to predict what we're going to want to add to it. There's a few people that have seen the game. There is. Yeah. And then we get back to the Dutch Pinball Museum, which is not related to Dutch Pinball, as some people actually think it is, but that's not the case. Although, in this case, Dutch Pinball Exclusive visited the Dutch Pinball Museum with a prototype of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and they used the Dutch Pinball Museum as a location for their photo and video shoot for the game. So the photos that you will likely be seeing on a flyer, if any, will be taken at the Dutch Pinball Museum. and promotional videos as well, which have been recorded and will be edited now, and hopefully flyers and such will be available at Pinball Expo and so on. I understood from a post by Gerard van der Zanden, there he is again, he was very impressed with the game.
    114:16
    And, well, Gerard has, of course, seen plenty of pinball machines, so it's not someone who is easily impressed, but apparently they did it again, similar to the Big Lebowski, they really nailed it, so can't wait to see it, it's a pity I wasn't there, but yeah, I'll get the chance to see it in a couple of weeks. Well, hopefully it won't be long because the actual reveal, the public reveal, is it's almost any day. And if not before, then it will, as you said, plan to be at Pinball Expo. And, of course, if not there or even if there, then at the Dutch Pinball Open Expo. It starts in November in Veldhoven, of course. Yeah. It's the first weekend in November. So let's hope it's at both of those events, because we look forward to seeing it there. It may be revealed or announced publicly before it actually appears at either of those shows. So we might be publishing full details of the game in advance of the first opportunity to play it. Right. Now, speaking of the Dutch Pinball Open Expo, which is also not related to Dutch Pinball, but similar to last year, I understood Dutch Pinball is planning to host a party on Saturday evening. So if you're in the position to attend the Dutch Pinball Open Expo, I would recommend going there and attend the Dutch Pinball Party as well. Yes, you might be able to look for more clues as to what the next full Dutch Pinball game, rather than a GPX game, is going to be, as we did last year. Yeah, and we had some clues there. What were they?
    116:22
    Some hints, maybe. Yeah, I'm still waiting for the Duffburn Pinball. Well, aren't we all? Anyway, so in Canada there is this company called Pinball Adventures,
    116:39
    run by Andrew McBain. Yeah, who we reported on quite a bit over the past few months about how they're taking a more laid-back approach to producing their games and not trying to hit self-imposed deadlines. Right, and part of that laid-back approach, apparently, is that they will not be at Spinball Expo this year, unlike last year. Okay, yeah. So, but, well, that's fine, I suppose, if they're taking the laid-back approach. They did show a sneak picture on Instagram of the back box display from Elements, saying they were in the testing phase.
    117:27
    And I'm not sure whether that means that they are just testing the back box display. No. Or the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's not clear, but still, okay, we wish Andrew and his team all the best, and we're looking forward to finally seeing Elements being revealed. You played a prototype of Elements. Yes. Yeah, I thought it was a nice game.
    117:56
    Well, actually, last time I was at Expo, I played it then, which I enjoyed, and I think it's, I've said it before, I think it's a good playfield layout and it's almost a shame it's taken so long for it to actually come to, well, get anywhere. I was going to say to come to production, but it hasn't, of course, yet. So I'm hoping that they actually do get that game out and people can get to play it for themselves because they won't be playing it at Pinball Expo, apparently.
    118:28
    I know last year there was a lot of criticism of the Pinball Adventures stand at Pinball Expo and the fact that the game didn't seem to be working or had the glass off a lot or there was no one there at times. So I think they're probably doing the right thing, waiting until they've actually got a game in the form of elements to bring to the show and let people play rather than approach it. Yeah. Yeah, so, well, I sort of get the impression that they're more in the business of designing pinball layouts. I mean, we've already seen playfield artwork for games that haven't even been announced. So there's lots of designs being developed, but then taking them into production is a whole different aspect of the game, I suppose.
    119:25
    Yeah, well, as you say, making pinball is hard. But most of the fun is in designing it seems. Which is fair enough. Okay, someone who has produced a few games, at least, is Hector Pinball over in France. Who will be present at the Dutch Pinball Open Expo, I have to add, immediately. So that will be our opportunity to play Space Hunt. Great, okay. Well, they've also created an accessible version of their game for those people who have special needs and can't play the regular version of the game, either because of limited mobility or because they are in a wheelchair or have other reasons that they can't play the game in the more familiar position. but their accessible version of Space Hunt allows people to plug in special controllers into some plugs which have been mounted into the coin door. There's a whole range of different controllers people can use from foot pedals to hand grips to, well,
    120:40
    I didn't see them all in action but there's about six or eight different controllers that they can use and they are all easily plugged into the Coindor slots so you can pick the controller that's most accessible for you. So I'd like to see them addressing that particular need.
    121:06
    Right. Okay. And then, as announced last month, Hexapimble is running a 10-week quiz on their social media. I think they're now in their third or fourth week. So now answering makes no sense because you missed out on the questions of the first couple of weeks. But, yeah, they've been asking some pinball trivia questions, like who invented the tilt bulb and all that kind of stuff. How ridiculous. Stealing our show.
    121:50
    Yeah, I know, but oh well. So the other thing is everybody has to comment in the comment section on social media, so basically you can see what everybody else answered and answer the same question. and hopefully everybody got it right. Yes. Well, most people, yes.
    122:11
    Yeah, okay. Well, I think that's it for Hexpinball. So we mentioned earlier about the Newcastle Pinfest show held in Australia. Well, Victor Pinball from Australia were there, as makes sense. And as I think we mentioned before, they're going to have both versions of their Peter brought King of the Mountains custom games in attendance at the show and they did so yep they were there I think they also brought the 8 ball fury game alongside one or two 8 ball furies as well so good to see them haven't heard any reports of how those games played but try and find out and I don't think we're going to see them outside of Australia at any time in the near future, unfortunately. I'm just saying because we'd like to play them. So if anyone's able to give us some details about those games, we'll be happy to bring it to you, and especially if they're going to be making an appearance at a non-Australian show. And while we're in Australia, as mentioned about the long-running saga of haggis pimple, Well, there are no further developments to report this month, I'm afraid.
    123:32
    Okay. Well, we'll see. I suppose. Yeah, it's just basically all gone to ground and the liquidators are just going through the process of trying to recover any kind of money at all, of which there isn't much.
    123:52
    Oh, well. So, well, if you're lucky, you got one of those Fatum games before they were no longer available, I suppose. Yeah. Or even more rare, a newly built Centaur.
    124:07
    Yes, although I think all the games are not without problems. But I think some new code has been issued, which fixed some of the problems. But there's still lots of software issues. issues and of course the fact that it's pretty much all custom hardware inside the game as well so getting spares for that is going to be problematic over the future and games are basically kind of dropping in price as people realise that they are a time bomb waiting for when anything goes wrong and you need to get parts for it but anyway, if you got it I hope you enjoy it and And we look forward to seeing some around, and hopefully people can keep them up and running. Yeah, okay. So then you made some notes about Cardona Pinball. Well, I was interested to see that. I've actually been posting some information, but as it turned out, there were just a few reviews of other companies' games, including Scooby-Doo, John Wick, and Alien, which James referred to as aliens all the way through, including in the title.
    125:25
    But it's a singular alien. Mainly at two games. Maybe he did, yeah. Okay. Good call. Oh, well. But other than that, no news on any new Cardona pinball kits. And now we enter the no news section. Wow. And it's moderately long. So we can say tilt-bob pinball in the U.S. No news. Although I hope that they will bring a prototype of their road trip game to Pinball Expo. But that's just me hoping that they will because I'm rather curious. But there's no guarantee that they will. No, indeed. Also, Biktronic in Spain, SGR Pinball in Spain, Quetzal Pinball in Spain. no news from them and of course the ongoing no news story from Circus Maximus and their Kingpin remake, so no news there either right, so and then the other news, well it's Pinball Expo Month is it? oh you should have said something about that oh we haven't mentioned it at all oh my goodness well anyway, we're going to be there I hope to see you there. I know there's a lot of people going for this special 40th anniversary edition of Pinball Expo. Bigger, better, more, longer, I should say, as well. Starting on Tuesday.
    126:57
    Right, yeah. So, an extra day added, with basically extra visits to another factory and another arcade.
    127:09
    And that's about it. But there's also, well, almost a double amount of seminars squeezed into the day. Surprisingly, only Thursday, Friday and Saturday are seminar days, not the Wednesday, which would have opened up the schedule a little bit. But, oh well, it's a cramped schedule right now. Wednesday is our set up day we're getting all the equipment set up for the start of the seminars on Thursday so I'm kind of quite happy they're not doing it on Tuesday or Wednesday I should say because then we'd have to start setting up on Tuesday yeah okay well good point I'm very happy that Rock kept that in mind when organising the show yes it was very considerate Yeah, so anyway, so we'll be there.
    128:09
    We'd love to see you there as well. We'll be most of the time in the seminar AB room, if you're looking for us. And on occasion, we get to go out and play some pinball or interact with people visiting the show, which is always nice. In the end, it's all about the people. So, like we said earlier, hope to see you there. Indeed. It's going to be a great time. Hope you can make it and hope you enjoy it. And if you can't make it, then watch out for our reports and videos. And if you can't make it, there's a re or another possibility to make it if you can make it to the Dutch Pinball Open Expo, because we'll be there as well. We will. along with our, so you think you know pinball, free prize quiz. Yeah, we still have to shake down a few manufacturer's prizes. Yeah, apart from that. It could be just a free quiz. We gave away everything last year. Well, that's it. We always give away everything. So every year we're going around with the begging bowl asking for more prizes, which we're probably going to bring back from Expo. Yeah. So it's going to be interesting given the limited luggage. That's why I said we have to shake down some. Absolutely. Yeah. Small prices. Physically small. Yeah. So, yeah. No play-fools, please. No. Well, ship them, please, if you want to give them to us. Yeah. Okay. We do have a little bit of news, though, from the long-running, long, long-running case of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S. who had a court case against... Oh, I thought we were still talking about the Dutch female open because there is some news. Oh, is there? Oh, yeah. So, we'll have... Yeah, more news. Well, Jack Guarnieri has booked his ticket and he will be a special guest at the event.
    130:16
    Is it refundable? I'm not sure whether Jack Guarnieri is refundable. So Avatar is also confirmed to be at the event. That will be the European debut of that game.
    130:35
    It also looks like all the games that Stern Pinball had presence at the IFA show in Amsterdam will be present at the Dutch Pinball Open Expo. So that includes the Inkenje Axeman and John Wick. which many people still have not played.
    130:54
    We're talking to various other people to become a special guest at the show. I mentioned some. Daniel Jensen of Pinball Brothers is invited. Andrea Pedretti of Pedretti Pinball is invited, of course.
    131:15
    We're also talking, well, David Spitz already booked his ticket, So assuming he's not refunding it, he will be at the event. So that means that we'll have an interesting seminar program over there as well. Yeah, and Dave Van Ness, you mentioned earlier as well. Yeah, so that should definitely be a little bit of icing on the cake on that show, I suppose. And, of course, we'll be doing our quiz, like you mentioned. So if you can't make it to Pinball Expo, I hope you can make it to the Dutch Pinball Open Expo.
    131:57
    Not related to Dutch Pinball or Dutch Pinball Music? No, and not related to Pinball Expo either. Good. I'm glad we got that out of the way. Right. Now, you were talking about Deep Root Pinball. Well, Deep Root generally and Robert Mueller and the SEC and all that. But the SEC had until the 27th of September to file what they thought was a reasonable claim for ill-gotten gains and penalties against Robert Mueller for the collapse of the Deep Root funds and all the stuff we covered in the past. Anyway, so they did. They were looking for $52.116 million U.S. dollars, plus interest of $16.5 million, for a total of $68.7 million. from Robert personally for his so-called ill-gotten gains from the use of the assets, I suppose, from the Deep Root Funds.
    133:08
    Robert Mueller and Deep Root Funds as well, jointly and severally liable for, according to the SEC, another total of $52.58 million and further payments of about £15 million and £5 million.
    133:27
    Anyway, this is all what the SEC claims. Now, what happens next is that Robert Mueller's attorneys respond to that by the 15th of November, saying why he shouldn't be liable for any of this or should be liable for a much smaller amount.
    133:45
    And then the SEC can come back on that by the 13th of December. and there'll be a court hearing on the 27th of January next year, which isn't going to last longer than, it's only scheduled for two days in court, and where a judge will decide what actually is going to be the penalty, and it may end up being a rather remote point because I suppose you've got much money in order to pay these millions of dollars, but we'll see what comes out of that. But, yeah, nothing's going to be actually decided until basically the end of January next year. And when it is, we will bring you all the details in our pin cast starting beginning of February next year. February? Yeah. All right, yeah. Looking back at January. Yes. Right. Okay, yeah. But before we do that, obviously, I suppose this rounds it up for this PINCAST. We'll be back a lot sooner, precisely, I assume, the 1st of December, looking back at... No, no. No, the 1st of November.
    135:02
    Oh, yeah. I was thinking of taking a break, sorry. Oh, no. 1st of November bringing you all the excitement news of the pinball industry from October which includes Pinball Expo of course so that's going to be a very packed episode I suppose in the meantime make sure to check out both pinballnews.com as well as pinball-magazine.com Martin will be posting all of the seminars in the AB room. I will be writing a personal diary report, which I do almost every year, which means that I describe what I run into at Pinball Expo and not to interfere with Martin's coverage of the show, which is also very in-depth and complete, I may add. So that's pinballnews.com for Martin's coverage of the show and pinball-magazine.com for my coverage of the show. I was just thinking that we're saying we'll be back right at the beginning of November, looking back at all the excitement of the month of October. Of course, the beginning of November is when the Dutch Pinball Open Expo is on. so we are either going to be doing it from the show or we will be a few days later we'll let you know which one of those two options we choose but either way we will see you in November towards the start and looking back at the month of October as Jonathan said and until then I suppose have a fantastic rest of October and we both look forward to joining you again next month for the very latest edition of our Pinball Industry News Pincast. So until then, from me, Martin Ayer, a bit of goodbye. And from me as well, Jonathan of Pinball Magazine, goodbye. Bye.