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Episode 78 - 2018 Year-End Review

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 34m·analyzed·Dec 31, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

2018 year-end review focusing on podcast activity, pinball manufacturers, and industry developments.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers Podcast hosts Dennis and Tony review 2018 across pinball and video games. On pinball, they discuss guest hosts, personal involvement in the community including streaming and writing, a brief news item about Stern accidentally including a Munsters manual in a Primus box (confirming Munsters is coming in January), and detailed manufacturer reviews starting with Multimorphic (P3 platform needing a killer app) and Circus Maximus (Kingpin remake showing promise but production concerns remain).

Key Claims

  • Stern accidentally included a Munsters manual in a Primus box, confirming both that Munsters manuals are printed and the game is real and coming in January

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony discuss this as news, treating it as an accidental but legitimate leak from Stern confirming Munsters is real and production is imminent

  • Multimorphic's P3 platform has under 100 units in the wild

    medium confidence · Tony speculates about production numbers vs. sales demand, stating 'I think it's under 100 in the wild'

  • Multimorphic is exploring modifications to allow hardware changes on the lower third of the playfield, previously limited to back-end modules

    medium confidence · Dennis references hearsay: 'I want to believe I read someone, I don't think it was direct from the horse's mouth, though the person may have heard it from Jerry himself'

  • Kingpin remake by Circus Maximus had the biggest queue of any game at Texas Pinball Festival

    high confidence · Tony directly observed and participated in the queue, played the game, and confirms this firsthand

  • Circus Maximus has released little information about production progress since TPF 2018

    high confidence · Dennis notes 'there has been next to no information that I have seen since the Texas Pinball Festival about this thing moving forward into production'

  • Spooky Pinball is using Multimorphic's P-Rock and board sets as of Total Nuclear Annihilation

    high confidence · Tony states this as known fact regarding board adoption across manufacturers

  • Dennis wrote articles on Atari's pinball division, middle pop pinball machines, and the Stern Spike system in 2018

    high confidence · Dennis lists his writing contributions to Pinball News and This Week in Pinball in detail

Notable Quotes

  • “Stern accidentally put the Munster's manual in the box... I think it's safe to say Stern probably did not think the Primus owner really wanted a Munster's manual.”

    Dennis @ pinball_news_segment — Confirms accidental leak revealing Munsters is real and in production with January release target

  • “I think the P3's problem is it doesn't have a killer app. I think so. Cosmic Cart Racing is not the killer app.”

    Tony @ multimorphic_discussion — Identifies core market challenge for P3 platform—lacks compelling flagship game to drive adoption

  • “I think when there becomes the game that goes viral, the game that everybody has to have, that's when they'll start moving units.”

    Dennis @ multimorphic_discussion — Strategic analysis of what P3 platform needs to achieve commercial success

  • “I would like to have seen a little more, I don't know, oomph, just as a sign... I just don't know if the plan is solid or not.”

    Dennis @ circus_maximus_discussion — Expresses cautious skepticism about Circus Maximus production credibility given lack of post-TPF updates

  • “Modern pinball is in a good place. Don't be blinded by nostalgia and think that it's all A-list Williams.”

    Tony @ twitch_qa_segment — Commentary on contemporary pinball game quality and pushback against nostalgia bias among collectors

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonMultimorphiccompanyCircus MaximuscompanyStern PinballcompanyCosmic Cart RacinggameKingpingameMunstersgame

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Stern Pinball's Munsters game confirmed in production via accidental manual inclusion in Primus shipment; expected January release

    high · Manual leak is treated as legitimate proof by industry observers; both hosts confirm likelihood of January arrival

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic P3 platform struggling to achieve mass adoption despite strong engineering; lack of flagship killer-app game identified as core market problem

    high · Detailed discussion of P3's market challenges; consensus that Cosmic Kart Racing is not the game that will drive volume adoption despite technical merit

  • ?

    business_signal: Multimorphic financially stable due to P-Rock board licensing to multiple manufacturers (Spooky, American Pinball) offsetting limited P3 platform sales

    medium · Tony speculates that board licensing revenue provides financial cushion: 'as long as these other companies are still using the boards... financially they're in a good place'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Multimorphic exploring lower-field hardware modifications to P3 platform to increase swappable components beyond current back-end-only approach

    medium · Dennis cites secondhand report of potential modifications allowing lower-third customization, positioning as response to 'not real pinball' criticism

  • ?

    operational_signal: Circus Maximus Kingpin remake showing strong market interest (largest queue at TPF) but minimal post-reveal production communications raising credibility concerns

    high · Dennis notes 'next to no information... since Texas Pinball Festival' and expresses doubt about production plan solidity despite positive gameplay reception

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.465

0:00
You are listening to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast, 2018, here in review, with your hosts, Dennis and Tony. Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 30th. This is episode 78, and I am Tony. And I am Dennis. We made it to the end. The end of the year. Yes. Yay! The new year. Not the end of the show. We're not like all the other podcasts that are announcing their imminent doom. In fact, we are already talking about what's going to happen with episode 100, which will happen in 2019. Yes, it will. It'll be sometime late summer-ish, I think. Yeah, I don't, you know, I haven't mapped it out. But something we need to think about is another shirt design. We do. I've been considering maybe getting something special like on the back of the shirt, and then the front pocket area would be the traditional logo. The traditional logo. Yeah. And then something awesome on the back. So I guess if listeners want to suggest an artist that, I mean, there would be money. Yeah. I had to pay for the last logo, and that was my kin, and they still charged me. That was your blood. That was blood. Her blood charged you. She didn't care. She's like, no, Dennis, I expect you to pay. you'd pay Fiverr. That was the argument. You'd pay Fiverr, so pay me. So I did. And that was fair.
1:36
Exposure. Oh, I forgot about that. Artists. Don't you want some exposure? You want some exposure. So, we have plenty of time still, so I'm up for suggestions on someone to commission to come up with some concept, but we're not at that right now. Yeah, we're at our annual year-end review.
1:59
And in addition to our normal year-end review, there we go. I was kind of overdriving that mic a little bit, or a lot of it, actually.
2:08
We're streaming it on Twitch. So for those of you who are not watching us on Twitch live right now, those of you who are listening to us in the standard way, we actually stream this live on Twitch also. So we're going to see how that goes.
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Lexy Lightspeed - Escape From Earthgame
Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
Spooky Pinballcompany
American Pinballcompany
Deep Root Pinballcompany
Jerryperson
Steven Bowdenperson
James Reesperson
Ryan C.person
Bruce Nightingaleperson
Don Waltonperson
Jason Knappperson
Joe Schoberperson
Nick Baldridgeperson
Nick Schellperson
  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2018 served as major showcase for emerging manufacturers; Circus Maximus Kingpin generated largest attendee queue of any game

    high · Tony confirms attending and playing Kingpin at TPF; notes it received the event's highest foot traffic

  • ?

    content_signal: Dennis produced prolific pinball content in 2018: multiple articles for Pinball News and This Week in Pinball on manufacturing, design history, and technology

    high · Dennis lists 7+ articles written in 2018 covering Atari pinball, middle pop bumpers, gambling regulation, designers, manufacturers, and Stern Spike system

  • ?

    community_signal: Eclectic Gamers Podcast featured 11+ guest hosts in first quarter 2018, demonstrating high cross-podcast collaboration within pinball community

    high · Dennis names all guest hosts and their associated podcasts; notes this was a deliberate strategy to 'push on trying to have, schedule a lot of guests'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community speculation about what game could become P3 platform's commercial breakthrough; traditional pinball game identified as most likely category

    medium · Tony: 'I think they need another traditional pinball game' and Dennis: 'when there becomes the game that goes viral... that's when they'll start moving units'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Multimorphic Cosmic Kart Racing affected by incomplete code (50% done) at TPF 2018 reveal; both hosts note full-code reviews will better evaluate game quality

    high · Dennis: 'The fact that it was so low-code... That probably solves a lot of the issues'; Tony anticipates full-code reception may improve initial negative impressions

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Measured but cautious outlook on P3 platform's future; recognition of strong engineering offset by skepticism about market viability and adoption potential

    high · Dennis expresses doubt P3 can succeed commercially despite engineering merit; Tony agrees platform needs breakthrough game but acknowledges current market positioning insufficient

    • 2:22
    My guess is we get zero questions. That's my guess. And that's fine. It saves us work. Right. So it's just a fun end of the year thing we can do. So before we really get into the, the way we're going to do the year end review stuff is we'll talk about sort of our year end reviews or our podcast year. And this is different than our annual stuff that we do in January, usually the next episode, actually, where we go over like analytics and talk about that. We're not going to do any of that, but we've had stuff that's related to the hobbies of pinball and video games that we've been involved with in 2018. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Then we're going to talk about pinball. I have one very brief news item. We're talking like 60 seconds. And then we're going to do the year-end review on that, and that's going to be organized by manufacturer. And then for the video games year-end review, it's mostly organized around the major console groupings.
    3:14
    Because PC covers pretty much everything that's on the consoles is in PC also. And console being a larger market share kind of drives a lot of that gaming anyway. Right. So, which is what it is. That's why we're here. So, introduction time. Tell me. Introduction time. You've had some stuff going on. I've had some stuff going on. I picked up, as I've talked about in the past, over on Black Friday, I'd gotten the Spider-Man PS4, the PS4 that came with Spider-Man for the nice cheap price. And I've beaten it now. I beat it on Christmas Eve. Oh. I was playing and finished off the main story. There's three DLCs already. I haven't picked any of them up yet, but they're on my short list. So that's been a lot of fun. I'm not a Spider-Man guy. I don't like Spider-Man. I mean, I don't hate Spider-Man. You made it sound like you pretty much hate him. I don't hate Spider-Man. I just, when it comes to, like, superheroes, and especially the Marvel superheroes, Spider-Man is not on my A number one top of the list guy that I want to go to. So the only reason I really got that was because Spider-Man was the game that came with it. So I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, though, because of the – the bigger thing for me was the web slinging. And the actual movement, the way it handled it, it was a ton of fun. and I was able to take part in it, or not take part in it, but I actually preferred doing it to fast travel. I fast traveled like three times in the game total. Normally I'd rather just web sling, even though it took a little longer. The load times with the fast travel were actually long enough that unless I was going completely across the map, they were the same or faster just to web sling to it. It was kind of weird. But the story was good And it was so nice because with Spider-Man Homecoming, it was Spider-Man whatever the Spider-Man, it was Homecoming. Spider-Man Homecoming was the name of the Spider-Man movie that just came out. And it had nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with that Spider-Man. It's its own story. It centers on all of the classic Spider-Man villains. And I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. Okay. So that's good.
    5:42
    And, yeah, that game's been reviewing really well. through a lot of, I mean, God of War, I think, is sort of stealing a lot of what Thunder, Spider-Man might have had, but we'll probably touch on that later in the video game year-end review segment. I've been playing Sniper Elite 4. I was just playing it before we started recording. That was my one game I received for Christmas. You shot somebody in the eyeball. I did. I do a lot of eye shots. Yeah. I played Sniper Elite 2. I think that's the only other one I played. You played 3. It was a game with gold, so I got it for free. And I actually really liked it. And so when I saw this one, I was like, I'll just plop it on the list as something for people to consider getting. And I ended up getting it. I also have resumed playing Hollow Knight because Nathan W., someone we went to high school with, commented on one of our – I was streaming by the name of Isaac. And he commented – I thought so. But apparently out there in the world, out there on Twitch, people want to see Hollow Knight instead. I'd only ever played it once I didn't get anywhere in it hence the 15 minutes that was what my stage said but I continued it now over 3 hours in and so I've streamed it a few times now 3 times I think in the last 2 days yeah and so someone actually came in and was helping me because it was like oh you poor soul let me you poor you're just oh honey you need to go back to that spot oh honey no I couldn't do it he's like you didn't look hard enough you try again you need to go back You need to go find your waifu.
    7:15
    That's right. It's a Hollow Knight's waifu. Go find her. Like, okay. And I did. Then we had to fight. It was weird. That's how it is. See, and I've been doing a lot of that streaming because I've been streaming Battletech all of this week. I've streamed it, what, three times now? You were the most popular Battletech streamer the first night. I looked right before you stopped. There wasn't a whole bunch of us. There were six others. Yeah. Or six including you. And you had more viewers, or you probably had the same amount of viewers if I took the other five and added them together. That's how popular you are. Battletech is back now. You are the number one Battletech. If I can keep that up, I'd be happy. If that's what it takes, that's what it takes. That's where the fame comes from. I know that already the trailers are coming out because MechWarrior Mercenaries 5 is already being built up for next year's release. Oh, okay. But before we segue to our normal stuff. Yeah, segue. Almost. You were wrong. We actually have a Twitch question already. I am not wrong. That is a plant. That's you. Maybe. It's not. Okay. It's not me. Okay. TurboGrafx7 loves the podcast. Thank you. We actually love it too.
    8:34
    What pinball machine would either of you currently like to own that you do not have? I'm going to go first because I don't own a pinball machine as much as I would like one. So you have all of them to pick from. So you have the easiest choice. I have the very, very easiest of choices and that's, I'd go for an Attack from Mars remake and I would follow it up with a... He didn't ask for a follow-up. Too bad. Medieval Madness remake. And then I would follow that up with a Shadow and then I would have pretty much completed my Brian Eddy corner to start my collection.
    9:09
    Well, I salute your exceedingly cookie-cutter choices. Thank you. With your two AOSN, your big sacrifice, a B-list Williams game. It is a B-list game. I'm trying to fill out the Brian Eddy corner. Well, that would fill out the Brian Eddy corner until his new Stern project comes out. Well, he worked on Black Rose, too. The one I most currently like to own, because there's the thing. I love Attack from Mars as well, but I can play it on location all the time. Walking Dead. That's the one I want. I can see that. You've talked about that. Yeah, and I finally got to at the KC Game Con last month. I finally, on the last day, I went back, and I got to play the Walking Dead Pro. I'd never played a Pro. I only ever played LEs and premiums. And it was fun, too. And that was why, when I bought Star Trek, I almost bought Walking Dead. I knew I liked Star Trek Pro. I had played it. I didn't know if I'd like Walking Dead Pro. And Walking Dead Premium was out of the price range. I wasn't going to spend that much new in box. I can understand that. So, I ended up with Star Trek. I don't regret the decision. But absence makes the heart grow fonder.
    10:20
    It's a great game. And Walking Dead is inconsistently on location in our area. Yeah. It's a great game. I really like The Walking Dead. It's way, way better than the show. I'm not going to, well, I don't think you've seen the latest season. I haven't seen the latest season. The current season of the show is a vast improvement over the prior three. That wouldn't take much. Not necessarily, but you speak like someone who saw season two and left. So what good are you? I've seen more than that. What good are you? I've seen up to... I haven't seen any of the stuff with... Well, I take that back. I saw like the first three episodes when they brought in Negan. Okay. So... Negan is well played. He's well acted. But they were... That show's a big problem. I don't like the pinball machine, keeping it topical, is they struggle with pacing. Yeah. And it's like they just have an episode order, and they really, I think, should only be doing like half those episodes. That makes sense. And then it'd be tighter. That's how the first season was. It was six episodes. I don't think it should be a six-episode season show, but I think it should probably be eight to ten. Right. Well, and I think that's a problem that a lot of like actual on-air stuff is everybody's going for that 24 episodes thing. So it's just. Yeah, I get it. It's indication and all that stuff. I understand. But that's not really what our podcast is about. But thank you for the question. Yes, thank you. I'm not going to try and make a John Borg corner. And a quick follow-up. Termographics reminded that he doesn't own Star Trek or Walking Dead either and would like to get both money per many, which they're both solid choices. They're both great games. Yeah, there's a lot of really good games coming out nowadays. Modern pinball is in a good place. Don't be blinded by nostalgia and think that it's all A-list Williams. That just makes you very sad. Yeah. Makes me sad, at least. But it's your own collection. Do what you want.
    12:18
    So, speaking of collection stuff and our collection of year-end things to review, I thought we should probably start with stuff related to us, our podcast, because it kind of falls into any old category. So I thought the first thing we should note is that we, unlike in 2017 and 2016, we did a lot of guest hosts. Oh, we had guest hosts for like half of the first, for like the first quarter of the year. It was a lot. I decided to really push on trying to have, schedule a lot of guests. And a lot of people were willing to accommodate. So, I mean, we only did one interview this entire year. That was the Robert Mueller Deep Root interview. And that was back in February. It feels so long ago. It was so long ago. So much has happened in pinball since then. But as a lot of long-time listeners, now Tony and I aren't really big fans of doing a lot of interviews, and that's the longest interview I've ever done. I normally don't like them to go over 30 minutes even, because that's how I favor actually listening to them. So, you know, it's our show, so we record it the way we like the structure. But here were all of the guest hosts, and not the interview, so that's aside. Here are all the guest hosts we had in 2018 in order.
    13:33
    Steve Bowden, who's now with Deep Root, but he runs the Fun With Bonus site. He was our first. And we had Taylor Reese with This Flippin' Podcast, who told us about how you can take a whole lot of leftover stage props and sell them and buy pinball machines. We had Ryan C. from Head to Head Pinball,
    13:49
    which is, of course, a very popular, twippy, contending podcast. Then we have Bruce Nightingale from the Slam Tilt Podcast, which we mentioned earlier. And then Zach Menny, who does the Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show, and he's also the regular host on the This Week in Pinball podcast now, but we had him on before that started up. We're the one who moved him to the podcast. That's right. That's what it was. Then we had our E3 episode, so we had Eric Hoke as a guest host on that, and we also had Don Walton, who pinball people may remember. He used to be one of the co-hosts on the Pinball podcast. Yes. Video people may remember he used to be a co-host on the Link Cable podcast. Current video game people may know that he currently co-hosts It was gaming on 10 minutes a week with a pinball podcaster, Nick Baldrige, who does the, for management only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. I hope that I got it right. It's too long, Nick. Change that. I know you're like 350 episodes in. Change it.
    14:48
    Then we had Martin from Head to Head Pinball. It was too, I didn't, I don't want to say it was too difficult to get him and Ryan on at the same time. I didn't even want to try because they're in Australia. Right. But we did that whole big memory lane video game thing with Martin, because he had every console known to man. Made me feel bad. Made me feel poor.
    15:08
    Then we had Mrs. Pin from Mrs. Pin's Pinball Podcast on. And then we had Jason Knapp, who runs the Knapp Arcade Facebook group. And then our last guest we had on is Joe Schober, who is now with American Pinball, but he did the programming on the Alien Pin. And I knew of him back from our E3 episode because he weighed in that I actually set his last name right, which is amazing because I probably messed up at least half of all names. So I guess it's a coincidence. Let's be fair. Names are hard. I'm the two-faced of names. Names can be hard. Yeah, like Smith. Is it Smith or is it Smythe? It's Smythe. You see? Yeah. The struggle is real. So that's what we did in regards to that. And then, as I noted earlier in the intro, we'll do the actual podcast analytics probably on the next episode. Because our anniversary is actually like right at the end of January. Yeah, because we started up like the... January 30th or something in 2016 was our first episode. So we've been at this almost three years now.
    16:11
    Feels old, man. Yep. So let's go ahead and segue into pinball directly. Yes. And pinball news. I said it's going to be like 60 seconds worth of stuff. Yeah. That's it. Here's the thing. Primus. We talked about it. Okay. Someone bought a Primus.
    16:25
    Stern accidentally put the Munster's manual in the box. See, here's an accident. Here's a leak from Stern that I actually believe is a mistake and a leak. I think it's safe to say Stern probably did not think the Primus owner really wanted a Munster's manual. But, okay. So, announcement. The manuals are printed. January. I mean, I'm obviously wrong unless they do it tomorrow. Yeah, that's what they're going to do. They're going to let us get this episode out and then drop it right on. They're going to drop it on. No, it'll be next year. It's going to be early. It's going to be January for sure. It could be. I see that now and it'll turn out to be February 1st or some crap like that. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, so anyway, that's it for the pinball news. Munsters is coming. We know the Munsters is real. So let's go ahead and start doing the year-end review elements on the pinball side of things. Now, the first thing kind of ties into us and podcasting because we have done things in pinball.
    17:29
    A few. And the one that we did together was actually the most recent thing or one of the most recent things, which is – I think you've had another one since.
    17:38
    Those all blend together. They all blend together. It's all just a mess. So we were both on episode 118 of the Slam Tilt podcast, where we did a massive gain-you-like, gain-you-hate segment. Massive, massive, massive, massive one. Frolicking through the meadows of the solid state era. All of the solid state era. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. So anyway, it was a lot of fun. Oh, by the way, there are links to all this stuff in the show notes. If anyone wants to go and just revel in hearing us, it's unfortunately going to mostly be me. but yeah so other than that i was on uh episode 60 of head-to-head pinball which we mentioned is the australian podcast and then i've also guest hosted on several of the this week in pinball podcast episodes specifically 8 10 13 17 22 and 28 one or two there's faith in the outmore which is for the best and uh then on the writing side this was actually my most prolific year of writing for Pinball, I... Ooh, that was scary.
    18:44
    I thought I had sound turned off. No, you don't. The Pinball channel has hosted us, apparently. Thank you, the Pinball channel. Thank you very much. So, in terms of writing, I wrote for Pinball News and for This Week in Pinball. For Pinball News, I co-wrote a Ted Zale article that I did with Professor Dollenfeld. I'm probably mis-saying his last name. And then, also with Pinball News, I co-wrote with Professor Dolefeld and Nick Baldridge, who we mentioned earlier, with the podcast whose name is too long to repeat, that we did one on gambling and the manufacturer's perspectives during that whole era of all those federal regulations and local ordinances. You've been a busy bee this year. I was, at least earlier in the year I was. And then solo articles with Pinball News. I had an article on Atari's pinball division. I had an article on middle pop pinball machines, which are defined as the pop bumper kind of between and below the flippers, which I had a lot of collaboration with Nick Schell, who was a prior guest host last year, to write that one up over. He's with the Roanoke Pinball Museum. And then I also, over on This Week in Pinball, wrote articles on the growth of pinball, a beginner's guide to manufacturers, a beginner's guide to pinball designers, an article about the start of the solid state era, and an article on Stern Pinball's spike system. So I Easy beat I don't think I'll be writing that much in 2019 We'll see Now I did see one thing on us Pinball related That kind of counts But didn't get included We streamed Casey Game Con Back on the 1st And that's All of it's available on our YouTube If you want to go watch it all 10 hours and 4 minutes There's a highlights reel It's probably the best way to watch it Not if you want to see good gameplay Right but if you want to Other than Sunshine, Bond, Blowing Up, Frontier, most of the gameplay is drains during the highlights. Right, right. During the highlights, it doesn't have any of the real gameplay. That's just the fun stuff. That's just, yeah. But definitely, it's worth giving it a check out. And the finals, the finals were really good, too, in that stream. Yeah. So, that was a lot of fun. It was a nice treat to have. It was. I enjoyed that a lot. It was an honor just to be asked. I mean, yeah. It was. I mean, crawling around, moving. I mean, we don't have, like, portable rig stuff. This was, you can kind of make out from the third-person cam, the stands we ended up not using. Yeah. All these stands were just, brought in these stands, and we were just moving around camera rigs all the time, whenever we could, between any rounds. But it got to the point where we were pretty good. We were able to get things lined up and to the point where we were eyeballing it, for the most part, without any real problems. Yeah. Practice makes perfect. Yes. So, yes, so we did that. So that was sort of us and our involvement in pinball in terms of a high-end, year-end review. So let's go ahead and talk a bit about what's been going on in the industry. And I think we did it this way last year as well and probably the year before that. And I see no reason to change it because there's been a lot of stuff that's happened in pinball, but I think it's just easier to stick with the manufacturers and just go through them. It's the best way. I mean, because there's all the drama. We could drama llama for an hour and a half.
    21:59
    And it's just too much energy. But the people don't want that. I can tell. I can feel what they want. And they want the truth. Nobody likes drama. No. And no one wants to talk about competitive pinball. Well, that's true. I play competitive pinball. I don't really like talking about competitive pinball. It's partly true.
    22:18
    You've got to talk about it the right way. Recapping every tournament you played, every game you had, and who the players were. No one cares. So let's start with Multimorphic. Multimorphic is the company that makes the P3 platform. Yes. They also do like the P-Rock and P3-Rock board sets. Their boards are in a number of games now. I know Spooky's using them as of Total Nuclear Annihilation. And also I believe American Pinball uses their board set. But talking about the company itself, the big thing for me with them was Texas Pinball Festival. They unveiled their new game, which was the Cosmic Kart Racing. And it did not leave a strong, positive impression with you. No. Not with me, but I'd say you were probably a little more vitriolic about it than I was. You were pretty kind on air at the time. I'm not going to tell the community. It was pretty bad. You were.
    23:18
    That was probably your most hated game of the show is what it felt like. Now, to be fair, barbed wire may have technically stolen that. I was going to say... But barbed wire is from a company that's not in business anymore. Right, right. And the truth of the matter is, almost all the issues I had with that is stuff that is... The fact that it was so low-code. It was only about 50% down. Right. That probably solves a lot of the issues. I mean, as much as you can. Sure. Well, in terms of year-end review stuff, that was its big unveiling, and the game just started shipping this month. So, it's in production. Which is good, and I'm looking forward to hearing some full-code reviews. I mean, it had that ball lock it had and stuff like that. That was all interesting. Oh, yeah. The engineering behind P3 is the most interesting thing about P3 to me. Even more interesting than the swappable components. Obviously, that relates to the engineering. But I just think it's very well engineered. It is. The other big thing that I remember about Multimorphic was they put out a whole new art package revolving around Lexi Lightspeed. This kind of got lost because this was when Expo was going on, but I believe this was unveiled at another show that was scheduled the same time Expo was. So it was definitely on the bottom of the herd. Well, it's kind of like there's like a show in California that goes up against Hennberg. And when that happens, no one's going to care about your show. Right. Except those that went there. But I remember seeing it.
    25:01
    Again, I don't get worked up about art. It seems to me that the general community reaction has been that the new package is better than the old package. I didn't have a problem with the old package. I guess I just want to pivot now and just sort of talk about the future of Multimorph, or maybe talk about the future of the P3. What's your read?
    25:23
    I think with Cosmic out now and going into production, I'm hopeful to see another full-up pinball game set up for it, because they've got the Cannon Lagoon, and they've got all the littler stuff, But other than Lexi, they don't have any just like pure pinball type thing. And I think I would like to see something, another pure pinball game come out for it. That's what I think they need. Yeah. I want to believe I read someone, I don't think it was direct from the horse's mouth, though the person may have heard it from Jerry himself, that they are looking at doing some new features that will actually allow modifications on the hardware side on the lower third of the playfield, which up until this point, all the modules have revolved around the back end, and you can't really change your Italian bottom and above. Actually, there's a big chunk there that's just the screen.
    26:27
    I assume this is in response to criticism, that that part isn't like real pinball because you can't, like the swings are always in the same spot and stuff, so this is a response to that. I don't think that's the P3's problem. I think the P3's problem is it doesn't have a killer app. I think so. And Cosmic Kart Racing is not the killer app. Even if it's a good game, it's too much not real pinball. Real pinball. I think they need another traditional pinball game. And at this point, if they want to drive sales, because I don't think sales counts on the number of units. I think it's under 100 in the wild. So I don't know how much of that is production and how much of that is just sales demand. Right. And the question there becomes is what can they do that is going to bring them the ability to make those lower field modifications, but is something that people who own it don't have to ship their machine back and have it rebuilt or replaced entirely to do it. I mean, that's an engineering thing. Right. And I think Jerry will solve that. Jerry's engineering prowess has always been, I'm confident that whatever he'll develop for it will be solid. Everything has to be. Yeah, there's no reason to doubt him. I really still question whether P3 actually can become a successful selling platform. I just don't think it's positioned to do it. The thing that works to their advantage, however, is that P3 has the P-Rock board set behind it. So I think financially, Jerry can spend, as long as these other companies are still using the boards and stuff, I imagine that's not really a challenge. I'm guessing. I don't know. But financially, I think they're in a good place. But if the goal was to just start selling lots and lots of P3s, I just still don't see a good reason to buy it. Right. And I think that's going to be – and like you were saying, I think it's an app. I think when there becomes the game that goes viral, the game that everybody has to have, that's when they'll start moving units. Yeah. so let's move on to company number two Circus Maximus do you remember Circus Maximus? oh I do I remember you should because their Kingpin remake got a lot of attention at the Texas Pinball Festival that had the biggest queue of any game I can recall I actually stood in line for it and I've never played a Kingpin before I thought it was a pretty good game I enjoyed it quite a lot. I played it with Jeff from the Pinball Podcast. Yeah. We played, and he did amazing, and he got the wizard mode, and there was a bug in the code so that I couldn't play, basically, after. Which was fine, because I'd already been destroyed by, like, so far. But it was still a really, really fun game that was quite enjoyable.
    29:33
    I'm hopeful. I am too, and when we were on Slam Tilt, Bruce expressed, I believe it was Bruce, expressed a lot of confidence in this project moving forward. I think he knows at least one of the people behind it pretty well. He's a good friend with them. I don't know the people behind it. I do not have the same degree of confidence because there has been next to no information that I have seen since the Texas Pinball Festival about this thing moving forward into production. There was an interview, I believe, on this flipping podcast with two of the people behind Circus Maximus. That was right after TPF, though. Yeah. And they didn't really have a solution on the production side. They just sort of mentioned some things they were considering. And the whole thing, which logically makes sense to me, is that this should be easier than the first game they said they were going to make, which is that pinball circus thing Python Angelo did.
    30:30
    I don't think Python... Excuse me. Python's dead. I don't think Python's project is a good project, period. And I've not even played it. I've seen it. I think this is a big gimmick, and I don't see why you would want to build it. But that said, they said they were going to build it, and it's been years, and they haven't. Right. So if they can't follow through again, that's my big concern. And I would like to have seen a little more, I don't know, oomph, just as a sign. They don't owe it. They haven't taken preorder money. They don't really owe it to me. No one owes it to me. anything. I don't really owe it to anyone, but I just don't know if the plan is solid or not.
    31:10
    I like the plan. I like the part about what we're going to do, and we'll have a new code set, and we'll put the LCD. I like all of that. I just want to see it actually moving forward, and so far all I see are people can be first on the pre-order or the opportunity to buy list if they bought translights, and it's like and then TPF ends and there's no new... It's like, is this like a weekend project thing? That's what it feels like. I can see that. And my big thing on the no-noose is I'm less bothered by the no-noose thing just because I am, I think we almost get over-fatigued and overused by so many people talking about, there's, oh, yeah, yeah, we're doing this and that, and I just, I tightened this screw 43 turns today, so that's what we're going to get next time. you're going to get... It's the difference between the too much information and too little information. I think it's a little bit on the too little information side on this, but I don't think we need continuous updates of stuff. Yeah. Especially when there's no real... I agree, but I went to their website to prep the notes for this show. Yeah. That's not an update since 2017. Oh, well, that's a little... I mean, I'd like to see a little more. If they're serious, I'd like to see a little more. Give me some comfort. Right. Give me some comfort. Give me some biscuits and gravy here. Mmm, biscuits and gravy. Yeah, that does sound good. Oh, well, it's too late. It's too late now. We're recording. We don't eat while we record. It's tacky. Grouchy grouchy. Okay.
    32:42
    Let's go to company number three. Former company number three. Highway Pinball. So, this year saw the formal collapse of the infamous now, Highway Pinball, a company that is behind Full Throttle and then Alien Pinball.
    33:01
    It essentially filed for the UK equivalent of bankruptcy after they failed to sell enough Alien units. A company called Pinball Brothers, which had stepped in when Andrew Highway was basically deposed from the company, owned most of the assets under their name, so a lot of the stuff wasn't available for liquidation. but it's been quiet.
    33:26
    Pinball Brothers has not come out other than when you read the UK filing reports you quickly learned that there wasn't a lot to liquidate at Highway because Pinball Brothers had been transferring all the valuable assets over under their name and there are a lot of assumptions including myself that think that they did that deliberately planning to liquidate this company that they knew it couldn't be saved but they didn't want to have to put all that stuff up for auction. supposedly Pinball Brothers controls the license for Queen the license for Playboy I believe a third license of some sort which I don't know the name of what do you think of the collapse of Highway Pinball well Highway Pinball is gone and I almost pretty much want to say good riddance they had issues throughout and their collapse was not a surprise Everybody knew it was coming. It was just a matter of when. And I don't think anything has really been lost.
    34:29
    Except for the assets and especially the licenses. Especially specifically, in my opinion, the Queen license is something that I wish had gone to a higher level manufacturer. So you want another music pen? is what you're saying. I would be fine with another music pen, especially if it was Queen. Some people are sick of them, so I thought I'd bring it up. I can understand that because I,
    34:54
    for me, it has more to do with it is Queen than it is. I could care less about, you know, Primus and I honestly could care less about the Beatles. I mean, they're fine, but they're not that big of a deal to me. So, for me, it's just Queen, something special. So, but I think the big thing is going to be the drama that comes out of it and the drama that has come out of it. And we will see how things go, all in all. Yeah. At this point, I'm pretty skeptical that Pinball Brothers is actually going to launch anything.
    35:31
    I think maybe. The market, I feel, is softening right now. I don't think. Two years ago would have been a great time to get in on pinball. I don't think it's the time to start a pinball company. and because their name is in all of those asset documents regarding highway pinball, well, I don't think there was as much online blowback about that as, say, when Deep Root acquired J-Pop or when American Pinball acquired J-Pop. I do think there are a lot of people that once they try and sell something will inevitably ask the question, what about all the people who bought the alien pinballs that didn't get alien pinballs? We know you were behind it. We know you took all the manufacturing assets and put them under Pinball Brothers. There was like $10,000 worth of assets left at Highway Pinball. It's like not even a press. Yeah, they are definitely going to have a PR nightmare when things go up. Now, a quick here on the Twitch chat, Neil says, referring back to the Kingpin, Kingpin was at SFGE and FPF. Southern Fried Game Room Expo would be SFGE. and I think FPF would be FreePlay Florida. Ah, okay. But not playing at FreePlay Florida that he recalls. So it's definitely been out there. So they're showing the prototype. They're still showing the prototype, which means they're still going out there. They're still taking it out there. Well, I know their way of raising money has been to sell things like Python and Joloo art and Translites and stuff. I like that. I have no problem with their funding. I don't have a problem with how they're raising money. I respect it. I just want to see a production plan. I respect anything that involves not having the pre-order, trying the pre-order system. Well, it's pretty much at the point where no one who isn't already established can get away with pre-orders. I have to qualify it because now there are, I mean, Spooky's taking non-refundable deposits now. $1,000. Wow. So anyway, that was Highway. So let's talk about another great company.
    37:29
    Oh, lovely. That would be Dutch. They're still in business on paper. For now, on paper. Yeah. I expect them. I expect them to die in the next... 2019 wouldn't surprise me. If they last past 2019, I'd be more surprised. Okay. Let's put it that way. Well, 2018 has been a year of legal wrangling for the Dutch, or at least the Dutch at Dutch Yard. Okay. And it's been between them and their original contract manufacturer. His name is Ara.
    37:59
    There have been a few updates throughout the year, but they've been pretty sparse. There was a half-hearted attempt by some outsiders to fund the company through a GoFundMe, which I think was lapped into oblivion within 72 hours and shut down after generating about $1,200 or so, I think, out of the requested half a million. Yeah, that's just insane. I mean, my summary of the Dutch situation is there are diehards who hold out hope to this day. but I think most people who are sane have come to accept the fact that this company and the dreams tied up with it are kaput Yeah I mean it is and I said it I said it on the podcast before it basically battered spouse at this point It is someone who just cannot give up because they have to have that hope because that hope is all that they have left going for the money that they've poured into down that well. And as I like to say, you cannot trust a hope. It has forsaken these lands.
    39:06
    Yes. Especially the Dutch lands. The Netherlands. I'm really proud of how I tied that. That was real fun. So, yeah, I mean, I get it. I've actually never played the Big Lebowski. It's always been broken when I've seen it at TPF, and I've seen it at every TPF I've ever been at. Or the line has been not moving fast enough for me to play. Like, Kingpin was moving along. It was. I can get in here, and I waited, and there was a good opportunity where it was only like five people beat. Yeah. Big Lebowski I've always, it's just like, it just sits there in the back corner. Texas-Denver-Velta is full, sad and lonely. And a lot of people love this game. And I'm not saying it's a bad game, but Dutch did not run their company well at all. And I cannot think of a way that they come out of this and are able to, I mean, I just don't see it. You have to, everything like hinges on Ara losing. Ara initiated the lawsuit. This hinges on Ara losing. But that still doesn't get Dutch the money to finish the games. So I just don't... I don't know. Maybe another 40 people get their games that Ara already built, but that doesn't move forward with Zytec, which was the contract manufacturer Dutch was trying to turn to at the end of 2017. I think this is one of those things. And pinball is complicated enough and the machines are big enough or an issue enough and kind of specialist when it comes to building. I don't think contract manufacturing is really without going contract manufacturing with a specialist who specializes or has experience is necessarily the way to go.
    40:54
    I think it's a good point. I think it was smart for Dutch to realize that they did not have the capabilities to build their own production. That they did not turn to, say, Spooky, for example, to have the game built in retrospect clearly was a mistake. However,
    41:12
    I think, mechanically, I don't know that R's assembly was all that problematic compared to other issues we've seen with other manufacturers.
    41:21
    When I was going with that, it was kind of the thought that it seems to me that the issue was that the actual assembly and everything cost more than they were initially thought, and that's where, because they didn't have enough money. Well, that's the nature of the dispute, according to Dutch Pinball, is that ARA kept asking for more and more money. And that narrative is spun a lot on Pinsight. There's another narrative that may accept that, that also claims that ARA never got paid for any of the games they sent.
    41:49
    Which is even worse. And so that, it wasn't just that. Dutch presents a tale of ARA wanted more and more money to do the builds. And so Dutch agreed, but required Aura to meet certain timelines, and Aura failed to meet the timelines. The counter-argument coming from, again, people in the community, I don't know that it's true,
    42:11
    is that Aura didn't get paid for a lot of the stuff they'd already shipped, even at the original agreed price. And that's why they've hit the stop button. They're like, you're not paying us for anything.
    42:23
    You're busy flying to America, and having parties with Cristal and the stripper Cristal pouring it up in a hotel room in an embassy suite.
    42:38
    And, you know, it's a mess. They're done. They've been done. You called it over a year ago. Yeah, the best that can happen is, like you said, that those machines that are finished go somewhere. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. And maybe that happens even if R.O. wins. Right. And here's the question. If Aura wins and Dutch completely folds and Aura just gets assets, do those 40 machines necessarily go to anybody who's pre-ordered? Maybe not. They may just auction them. Yeah. I mean, I would. Aura doesn't have a contract with any pre-ordered person. It would just depend, I think, on if the litigation actually, if the judge mandated a particular condition to the settlement or something.
    43:22
    So, let's move to a brighter spot. A company that's actually doing stuff. That would be spooky pinball. So, you're in review. What's been going on? Texas Pinball Festival, that was the big unveiling for Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. Yes. That game is in production right now. When we saw it there at Texas, the code was bare bones. Art package went over really well with people. Well, here's, in Spooky's, I can't complain about Spooky's art packages. At all.
    43:51
    Not at all? No. Okay. I mean, they're all solid. Are there better art packages out there? Yes. But Spooky hasn't had an art package where it's just like, oh, this is trash. I didn't think the Rob Zombie play field was very good. But the art package on the rest of the machine balances it. I'm not talking about the rest of the machine. I play the play field. I don't play the trans. Well, you just need a white wood anyway. Not a Rob Zombie. Art just makes the machine more expensive. Art's what sells games now. Haven't you heard? Art and licenses. Mostly art, apparently. Well, maybe not. I don't know. Actually, I know this game's in production, but I'm not seeing a lot of talk about the game. I haven't seen a lot of talk about it. I know that. I definitely haven't seen it. It's capped at 500 units. I know that it wasn't sold out initially for quite, it may have, I would assume by now sold out. It's been a long time. It didn't sell out like in three days like Rob Zombie did. Right. That's for sure. I think that's one of those, you know, once burned, twice shy. So, yeah, I don't, yeah. And it's 200 more units, so let's not discount that. I mean, that's a significantly increased run. More notably, I think, for a lot of people has been total nuclear annihilation, which that has continued to receive a great deal of production. I believe at this point in the year it's mostly ACNC at this stage. But earlier this year, Spooky did announce, just when they were a little shy of having 500 units sold through that, make a non-refundable deposit system, that that was just under 500 units and that they were going to go ahead and stop production after making 550. They didn't say that that would be a stop forever, but that that would be enough, they felt, to feel comfortable, and they needed to continue to pump out AC and C because they had time commitments they were trying to keep on that. Which makes sense. So the only other news, really, regarding, because TNA was really last year's spooky end. It was. is Ben Heck. He loves spooky. And what I would describe as a cloud of anger. I think it's a pretty fair description. There was definitely some animosity. The announcement that he made when he... I didn't want to say announced again, but I'm going to. When he announced it, it was very curt, but I felt almost a... It was mutually agreed upon. But there's still a tone to it that read to me as negative. And since then, he's done a lot of sniping, as I would describe, sniping from the sidelines about how he was treated by spooky pinballs. Yeah, no, it is definitely a situation of unhappiness. Yeah, and it's been interesting because something that we have talked about, not, I don't feel ad nauseum, but we brought it up several times on several episodes, is historically, at least, there's always been this, like, luster to Spooky Pinball, and I felt it seemed like you or people were very uncomfortable, you in general, not you specifically, Tony, did not want to criticize that company. There's been a lot more criticism in 2018 than I have ever seen about the way Spooky does business. I think the shine is starting to wear off. Do you think that they're just establishing enough at this point that people are like, all right, we don't need to treat you with kid gloves. You're a real manufacturer now, so we're going to slap you around like we slap all the other ones. I think that can be part of it. They just have such a chain of quality control issues, and so many people got burned over Rob Zombie that I think they managed to do a lot of damage to their goodwill. Okay. And especially with the quality control issues on Rob Zombie and on TNA that we've heard of, that there is definitely going to be a much, you can't keep doing stuff like that and have everybody still love you. That's true.
    47:53
    So we'll see how, I mean, their production and their plan, their business model, I think is designed for sustainability. As I've noted before, I think they're actually overly conservative, and that's part of the issue with why it's so slow to get a game. Well, they're located in the middle of nowhere. No one, how do you recruit a workforce in a town that small sort of thing?
    48:20
    The town is the workforce. They've got what they can get, I think. Now, that's up, Charlie's business is up to him how he wants to run it. But, so, because they've been so conservative on ramping up staff and stuff, I think they'll be able to weather, say, a recession better than a lot of bigger players. Oh, definitely. But the question is how much softening of the boutique market would happen in those same conditions. We don't know. But I think that the standard expectation that people have on that quality control thing has gone up. And so people are starting to be a lot. I mean, there was a lot of pin out there to compete for your dollar. Right. And these ain't cheap. And so people, I think, are finally getting to the point where it's pinball is thriving right now. There's no excuse. even if there is an excuse, they don't want to hear it. They don't want an excuse anymore. Yeah, no, there's a certain level of quality that somebody expects when you turn out that amount of money on something. They want a consumer-grade product in an industry that's used to having to only meet operator-grade. Right. And it's a very different standard.
    49:26
    So, speaking of that standard, let's go and do one that I almost forgot. Home pins. How could I? You know, we have talked probably less about Home Pin than any other manufacturer on this show. And part of it is I think it's just they're so far away that, unfortunately, I feel bad about it because I don't want to forget manufacturers. But they just slipped my mind. But I know that Head to Head Pinball just did their Twerpie Awards, which are the worst in pinball awards, modeled on the Twippies. And they didn't hold theirs off until TPF, like Twip is. So Thunderbirds really clean. It didn't win every award. Thunderbirds is terrible. A lot of people are just calling it Thunder Turds right now. It finally got 15 votes, so it got to be rated on Pennside. I believe it is dead last in the list. Wow. Under Hercules. Wow. Or if it's not, it was, I heard some people say originally it looked like it was going to at least be above, it was going to be third last. So above Hercules and above Bugs Bunny's birthday ball. But lower than everything else with a rating.
    50:38
    Everything else. That is rough. So. And you deserve it. Thunderbirds. We've still not been able to play it. I've seen it. I don't want to play it. It's gone into production. But this has been a drama-drenched company. From a plastic ramp, which is now being replaced with a metal ramp. Because the plastic was basically the quality of that clamshell plastic. Or that water bottle. This is the plastic of the ramp. That's what it seemed like when people would put, we saw a video. Yeah. People would put their, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. So you've got that. You've got Mike, the owner of Home Pin, who is managing his own PR, and he's not doing it well. No. The, I'm just being honest, telling it like it is schtick is, and it's a schtick because I have a grandmother who does it like that too, and no one likes her either. So, it's, I mean, it's just, no, you need to. So PR isn't by default being disingenuous.
    51:36
    You've got to spend. Maybe, but maybe just treat your customers like you actually care about them, even if you don't. Because you should care about them for your bottom line. So you may not love them as people, but you should love them as wallets.
    51:53
    I don't like you, but, man, you've got a very nice bank balance. So how are you doing? All these pre-order, he did pre-order model, all these people who pre-ordered in Australia, the Australians don't have their pins yet. The Canadians do, but the Australians do not. It's just, you've got all of that. The code is seen as overly simplistic. The rules are frustrating to people. Spelling international rescue just pisses people off. You're supposed to do it in one game. It's not like Apollo 13 where you spell, what, mission control for the 13 ball across games. Yeah. It's just all that stuff combined. It's just, it's a first effort. I've heard some of the build quality elements are pretty good, but then things like changing the shape and contour of the flipper buttons is just off-putting to people, and they don't understand why that was reinvented, to the plastic lockdown bar, to, it's just, it's, there's a thread, there's a for sale thread on Pennside. that game is $5,000 new.
    53:00
    The person now believes he finally has a buyer for it at $3,250. That's 10 plays. Now, I don't know who buys a game, only plays it 10 times, and then says, I gotta get rid of it, and I better not play it anymore. it sat at $3525 the $25 is to pay for the pin side fee so $3500 game that was bought new in box for $5000 couldn't move it at $3500 I'm surprised he's moving it at $32 I'm a bit surprised a lot of people are because they're like it's a new game this is basically new out of box but that's the challenge What could you get for $3,500? Used. A lot of good games. You can have your Shadow. You can have a Bronze Turquoise Dracula. You basically have any B-list Williams you want and cash left over. And even B-list, let's be honest, C-list Williams are going to be better games. Probably. I haven't played it, so I don't want to judge the gameplay. I don't want to judge it, but based upon the videos I've seen and everything I've read, I've not heard one person singing the praises of this game. I've seen a couple people be somewhat positive to it. Somewhat positive to the best. There's probably people who like Bugs Bunny, too, though. I've seen people be positive to Hercules.
    54:31
    It's just, everyone has their own taste. Yeah, I guess. But they ain't in Florida buying this game. It's the problem for the seller. Who is brutally honest about his opinions of the game. So, full kudos. Full kudos for his... This game is horrible. Please, I just want to make something. Full disclosure. Yeah. Full disclosure. He was very honest.
    54:52
    So let's move to Chicago Gaming Company. This has been the tale of the now very well-received Monster Bash remake. Yeah.
    55:03
    In fact, I believe our area 403 Club in Kansas City, Kansas, has one now on location, the Monster Bash remake. If you want to go check one out. I would like to. this throughout the year was the weirdest it was weird the game quality so far I've only seen good things everything about the game is good that I've seen I've not played the remake myself yet everything about the game everything leading up to the game seems like I don't want to say a disaster but just weirdly like a Mr. Bean comedy of weird slapstick errors So we started this year with this being, this and Alice Cooper being the two expected big reveals at Texas Pinball Festival. Then less than two weeks out from Texas, Chicago Gaming comes out. I'm just going to start calling them CGC. CGC comes out and says, we're not going to be ready, so we're not going to unveil our new game at TPF. Cool. I get it. Some people were disappointed. I was disappointed, too, because I wanted to see it because Attack from Mars had been revealed and it was so cool. the year before, but okay, sure.
    56:14
    Better to don't do a cosmic card. Better to be ready than to show an unfinished product. But it's not ready a month later. It's like a half year later. Right. But whilst that all is happening, it's leak city. There were people who went and checked on the UL certification site and found out the name, so they had to reveal the name before they wanted to. The topper photos leaked early. There were other images that leaked early. You had people who were saying, oh, well, we're going to be giving away one of these games. And then they take that down and say we're giving away a game at this event. This is like, my mind is blown. It was a, I mean, it's not Mike from Homepin PR disaster, just like I don't know how to talk to people problem. But this was like every PR person, they had no control over their message. And so they are just constantly responding to every single leak. It was like, you know, Stern has Leak City over there, but they just pretend like none of it happened.
    57:17
    Chicago Gaming is being reactive to every single leak that comes out. Plus they start doing this weird stuff where they have people signing nondisclosure agreements and coming and playing the game and then publicly saying how great the game that they cannot say the name of is. It's just weird. It's weird. That decision was weird. Quit being weird. You made great games. Quit being weird. Everything you've turned out has been wonderful. No more weird. It's good. Just let it be. And definitely on the leaks thing, I think the best way to go on those leaks instead of trying to get ahead and trying to be responsive and trying to do this and that, just walk away from it. Just let it be. Let it be. Because all you're going to do is all you're doing is you're just drawing attention to it. And once you draw attention to it, it makes it ten times bigger than it would have been if you just let it go. It was just... I don't know what took so long.
    58:07
    TPF was the goal. Right. Why did it... It doesn't matter. Games out, games loved. Great. But I, as a podcaster, want to know, why did Take Your Spicks... What was the hang-up? Was it the topper? Was it really the topper? I don't... I would assume it's something legal. This isn't a T-cup thing, but I'm just really curious because they missed their original release by a mile, a country mile, as we say out here in the country. and I just, I find it fascinating. It's just fascinating. Never heard you say that before. But we as a collective, I use Country Mile all the time at work where I have to fit in with the bummers. Yes.
    58:47
    I guess we can. Yes, we can. All right. So, but anyway, but a good year for the company overall because the game has been very well received.
    58:58
    Deep Root Pinball. So, we mentioned, we had an interview back in February with Robert Mueller. That was the first, I believe, audio interview that he did of the year. He had done a couple of text-based interviews with This Week in Pinball. He's chiefly used This Week in Pinball throughout the year to provide announcements. Deep Root is the enigma company. It's still a company that doesn't have a product. The year, though, was very notable for them in terms of just unveiling their repertoire of people. So we went into this year knowing that J-Pop was now involved. J-Pop is John Papaduke, for those who don't know. Famed Williams designer. Tried to make a company of his own called Zidware. It was a disaster. Magic Girl.
    59:45
    I'm a mild sort of person. And so he's now with Deep Root. But since then, throughout the year, we found out that they've also obtained Dennis Nordman, John Norris, and Barry Osler as designers, and those are all established names, coupled with Steve Bowden, who was known for the Fun with Bonus website, but is known within the hobby as a high-level tournament player in charge of rules development over with the company. And so there was this whole big thing about there going to be a five days of Deep Root and that it was going to be, I guess, revolving around 2019 Texas Pinball Festival. So, like, once you're day five at TPF, I think was the plan. Yeah, because there were signs all over the place at TPF this year. We knew the fifth day was to be at TPF. I don't know for sure if the other days were going to be sequential. Like, is it going to be all in a row? Is it basically a week of Deep Root or not? I don't know. Yeah. But now it doesn't really matter because what came out within the last month was that Deep Root Pinball is not going to be ready to unveil their games, plural, at Texas Pinball Festival. And the plan sounded like they were planning to unveil around 5.
    61:08
    But now, much like CGC, though to their credit much earlier than when CGC did, they're pulling back and saying, we're not going to be ready in time, so we don't want to show then. fair enough is my reaction to that. I think it's better to pull back and not do it than to get burned. Yes, what's concerning again like CGC is there is no recommitted date not even 2019 and as I recall didn't they promise to make certain people with the Zidware thing whole by like June? I think in the summer time, yeah. Sometime in the summer? So that could be an issue for them. So, the non-disclosure of a time may have simply been a factor of, well, we have that legal requirement. Is there really a need to declare another time? It could just be an oversight, for lack of a better word. But I just don't know. They have so much talent there. This is the one everyone's excited about. I was looking forward to it.
    62:15
    It's the one big reveal we knew to expect at TPF, and now that it's gone, that's unfortunate. But setting that selfish kind of desire to see something new aside, because of the names involved and the money behind Deep Root, and that they haven't taken pre-order money, and all this stuff about trying to sort of pave over the mistakes that J-Pop made,
    62:40
    they tried to position themselves to being the bold new thing in pinball. We haven't seen anything like this since Jersey Jack came on the scene sort of stuff. I mean, vague statements that imply that they're going to try and undercut the Stern price, which no one has done except for HomePen. And look at how that thing worked out. Yeah. So, I'm still really curious. I know for that special in Lit when they were putting together their holiday special and they had all sorts of people record audio for them, The thing I said was about Deep Root basically giving Stern a run for its money. But I noted in that, that to me really, and I believe I recorded that before we knew about the case. Yeah. But if I'm anything, I hedge my bets. So I said that that really, in my mind, comes down to manufacturing. I'm hoping that getting their manufacturing set up is the delay. I don't see any reason why it would be the design. I wouldn't think so. So if that's the case, they may just be waiting to make sure they know they have everything squared away. Personally, I don't think it would be a bad idea to unveil a prototype game at TPF.
    63:57
    I need to be cautious because you don't want it to turn into the JJP situation like it was with Pirates. Right. Where, you know, look, we put it out six months early and six months turned into ten months, and then all these mechs and stuff had to change. But does every single one of these games have some sort of innovation?
    64:20
    My thought is, isn't there one? Isn't there one of the cheaper ones that maybe is basically ready to go and you know it's not going to change? Maybe show that one off. Do you have to show five at once? Do you have to show multiple at once? Well, and here's my other thought is, since you know that you cannot make TPF, is it better off for them to save up and what they have and hit, like, Expo?
    64:51
    So they still have a major gathering to make a drop on. Well, that's a lot of people in the hobby are assuming currently that if Deep Roots is not doing TPF, Expo is the only other option. I don't. That's hard to say. I agree that it would be your best platform if not TPF. TPF is the new expo. It's the best show to do the unveiling if you're going to unveil at a show if you can't do it and you want to unveil at a show you might as well take the second best choice which is Pinball Expo it's so much later that could play to their timeline needs pretty well but you have to consider TPF was shaping up to not really have a bunch of unveiling competition Stern doesn't unveil at shows right JJP I guess rumor mill is going to unveil Wonka at TPF but when are they going to unveil Toy Story Expo some people were saying summer I don't know based upon well we're jumping ahead I'm going to hold that I thought the big thing for TPF is that Deep Roots is a Texas based company So it made sense to do a close-by show if they wanted to bring a bunch of money. You know, just logistically, it made a lot of sense. Maybe that's not a really big deal. They had that panel that they did at Pinball Expo, which was of questionable value. They weren't really willing to unveil any information. Right. So other than a couple little small tidbits, there wasn't really anything new to be gleaned that you hadn't already gotten out of one of the interviews that Robert had done with this week at Pinball. So, I just, I don't know. This is a, I think it's an egg on the face moment. I think that their decisions that they've announced are smart. I think these are the right decisions. But when you market it so heavily about doing these five days, you can't really unring that bell in the same way. So, anyway, that's my thinking on it. But it's still the company I'm most excited to see. It is. I think they're the most exciting thing coming right now because Stern is a known commodity. We know basically what Stern's going to do. The only thing interesting with Stern is what license is coming out and when and this and that. This is the first new, big, whole, brand-new thing to drop and hit. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah. All right. I guess it goes this year at all. we might be talking next year that it doesn't go and it hasn't gone well assuming that the comments in his last interview with This Week in Pinball are accurate there is an issue about the level of cash that they are now burning now that they've staffed up with all these developers that they cannot for financial reasons sustain that without income forever there has to be some point where if you're keeping these people on full time you're bleeding certain level of professional grade cash. I mean, these aren't line workers that they've hired. They're professionals. Right. Paying them professional salaries. So, yeah, I think they'll have to move into, I think they have to move in 2019.
    68:09
    The other issue is, of course, is the market softens in 2020. They still need to, we just don't know. The stock market's down for 2018. I know a lot of that has to do with the tariff stuff, and we're not going to go into politics, but economically there are a lot of decisions that are being made that are flat out wrong on an economic level. I'm just telling you that they're wrong on an economic level. And we will pay, and we already are paying a price for that in the market. That will have an impact on disposable income for a lot of people who buy these things because a lot of them play the market. Right, and that's one of those things that, I mean, it's going to have. Just like when the market dropped in 08, stuff, extra stuff, hobby stuff. That's when Stern almost went under. Right. And they had to get a new investor group in. And if we get another hit like that, I can guarantee that all these little guys who aren't set names are gone. There's no way.
    69:05
    Well, let's talk about one of them little guys. Little guy. Hey, little guy. Aren't you cute? Team Pinball. They're not cute. Aw. I kind of like the art package. I do like the art package. That's the only good thing on that name. All right. So, Team Pinball. It's a UK-based company. It was formed with people who had experience working at Highway Pinball. And they made a game called The Mafia. It's an EM style of gameplay, single ball play. It's powered by Raspberry Pi. And it's a solid state of electronics. I mean, it's not an EM. But the gameplay is very EM rather than this one. However, they applied a, I believe, $7,500 price point. but the first 10 units were priced more than that, closer to $10,000, I believe.
    69:55
    They announced, the cool thing was their announcement. They had a big piece in Pinball News. They were ready to sell right then. They'd already built those first 10 games.
    70:06
    They indicated that they were willing to build up to 100 games. As of this month, they announced through one of the distributors who actually carries their game that the count's now down to 20. What are your thoughts, Tony? I haven't played this game. Has anybody played this game? It was at a show. It was at, like, UK Pin Fest. I watched a video of it. Yeah. So we're looking at high-end, modern price points on what amounts to an EM.
    70:39
    Yeah. From a first-time company that you can say, oh, it's formed with those with experience with highway pinball all they want. Well, that's fine, but that doesn't guarantee that it's going to be a good thing or that we're going to see anything special out of it or see the kind of stuff out of it you would hope to see.
    70:57
    What it says to me is here's people who had enough knowledge to try something, and that doesn't mean it's enough knowledge to not fail. Yeah. I remember when we covered this when it first came out, I remarked that I thought it was good for pinball. And I did that for two reasons. First, Ryan C. dared me to. So I did it. Second, I did think that it was good to do at the price point they announced, the $7,500, because I thought it was a valuable test. The market has been experimenting to a consumer side in a negative way. There have been price increases in excess of inflation. It is now, I bought my Stern Star Trek at the end of 2015. If I were to buy a new Stern Pro today, it would be $700 more than it was three years ago. $700?
    72:00
    I don't think that's, I think that's ridiculous. I think most of the prices in pinball are I think the reason why it's that way is because pinball is hot right now there has been a market for it and I think Jersey Jack trailblazed that and I think Stern Pinball has exploited it and I think the other manufacturers have all settled in, they're all in that spot you know, they're all like let's go $6,000, let's go $7,000 the thing was, this was a game because the gameplay was so simplistic the art was fine. It was good. I will just as far as say the art was good. I liked the art. There was no depth to it and the layout was not well you could argue it was original in the sense that we don't see a lot of EM style games anymore. I mean TNA had already come out. We'd already seen another single level. There was nothing special about the game beyond its rarity. So that was the thing. Are people willing to pay high-priced amounts, boutique amounts, for games that don't have compelling play but are fairly defined as rare. I mean, an LE, Stern's LEs are going to be at least 500 units. This was only going to be 100, at most. At most. They weren't saying they were going to do 100. Just they promised they wouldn't go more than that. I don't think that they could have gotten it without having a big name attached. and even then in this day and age and how pinball has moved at this time I don't think that would have been enough I think they would have needed a name attached and for it to have been four years ago sure I don't know if it needs to be that long ago but for me the test was this was the control group it ruled out having a big name designer it ruled out coming from an established company It ruled out having a popular pinball artist. It ruled out having a line-and-sheets key for on code. It controlled for everything except rarity. Will you pay more for a rare game, even if it's simple? That they cut down to 20 tells me the answer is no. So we found one of the limits on the market. So that's why it's good for pinball, because we understand that limit. I think Team Pinball is done. I don't think they'd make another game. I think I understand from none of their decisions I think were bad they priced the game given they had to hand build the team hand built this with their family they priced it where they needed to price it they didn't want to end up like a highway where you end up having to oh the Mount Alien is $1500 more or Jersey Jack well Wizard of Oz is now $2000 more $2500 more because they just priced two up they played it safe They did it. Their idea of creating a boutique manufacturer will not work. No. We didn't know that, though. They proved it for us. Team Pinball, I thank you. I thank you for proving it. Now go away. Or don't. Make a new game. I don't care. I'm not bitter to them or anything. I'd like to try the game because I wouldn't mind playing an EM style game. I would never pay you that much. No. Because I could buy ADMs at that for that amount of money. easily working. And that's the thing you always have to, or at least that's the thing I always factor in. It's like, what could I have gotten for the same amount in the hobby? It's the same challenge that Thunderbirds had in trying to sell that model used at $3,500. $3,500 is a lot of good games to be had. You can get multiple games for $3,500. And that's going to be the thing that I think overall in the hobby has the most impact with these pricing and these price points is what gets you, what can you get, because you have classics. There are so many classics available out there that being able to put a new game in, that it has to be at least as good as the classics to be able to cost what it does. Well, only two manufacturers left to review for 2018. Let's do Jersey Jack. Okay. So, one of the big boys. Yep. So, following their 2017 Expo reveal of Pirates of the Caribbean, as we noted, there was a lot of PR backlash when two major mechs, the triple spinning disc and the treasure chest ball lock that's lit originally opens and closed, were changed. The triple disc went away and was replaced by a single spinning disc, and the chest became an always open, I don't know, we want to call it a mech because it's not moving. It's a ball. It's a toy. Non-moving toy. So, Pirates itself faced a lot of delays, and it still seems to me here at the end of 2018, it's pretty slow coming off the line. I think the CEs just got finished up, it sounded like, and shipped out. Some people finally got them. I've seen some photos of people playing them and showing them. That's the one with the ship in the bottle. Oh, yeah, with the big fancy topper and all that? Yeah. So and as we noted recently on our episode I think it was the last episode in fact maybe the one before the public comments that I been seeing are suggesting that the sales of Pirates are not particularly robust And now a lot of the discussion about Jersey Jack as a company is revolving around the presumption that Willy Wonka and Toy Story, which have been the presumed upcoming games for a number of years, that they are both hitting in 2019. and one of them being revealed at TPF. So, here's what I'm curious about. Do you think they reveal, I'm not saying produce themselves, do you think they reveal two games in 2019?
    78:09
    I have such a hard time believing it, but I think it's possible. If you go with just reveal, yeah, I can see them doing a reveal. I do not think they can get two games out They can't get a game out every two years That's why it was so amazing When With the turnaround between Hobbit to Dialed In To the announcement Of Pirates Was because Dialed In rolled out So fast for them And it's something that I They might make announcements But I just can't see them putting a game out Every time they just have delay after delay after delay, and they just have to explain it away. Oh, we had to do this, we had to do this. This is part of that whole thing where so many companies get so wrapped up in just talking about constantly what they're doing and putting everything out there. And we're being, oh, look how transparent we're being. We're transparent. And the game will be out next month. I mean, the month after. I mean, you know, it'll be out by the end of the year. I mean, middle of next year, for sure. It's something that we're running up against and that Jersey Jack has severely run up against ever since they've come into existence.
    79:25
    I think that they will reveal the two. I was very skeptical when I first heard this. However, I listened to the Special One Lit holiday episode. Jack of Jersey Jack did one of the things, and he said two JJP games in 2019. So I think he'll reveal them. Well, okay. I don't think they'll be ready. I just, I hope. The best he's ever done is six months from reveal to production. Roughly six months. Six to eight. And that was dialed in. That was their fast one.
    80:04
    Wonka at TPF, I can see. I don't know that that's smart. I think you're basically sending a message that you've given up on pirates and maybe you need to but as much time blood sweat and tears has got poured into Pirates of the Caribbean I feel bad for the developer or designer I feel bad for Kiefer and the time he spent on the code I mean could we actually see a game that sells worse than Dialed In from them now? Dialed In shouldn't be their worst selling game but all the reports I have are that it has been however maybe Pirates will be you have repeatedly stated that the theme choice was terrible oh it's horrible and I concur with you it's not the worst theme I've seen from 2019 there's a company that I didn't put in the list that we're going to touch on called American Pinball that will have that but But it's just not the – we're past the prime on the pin. So I really question strategically the value in doing it. But on the flip side, I get it because Jack has also said that he really wants to be on a nine-month production cycle. Every nine months we birth the new pinball machine. So that means he's got to start doing it faster. and do you hold up other things because pirates took longer to get out? I don't know. I think yes. I think yes because my arguably limited understanding of manufacturing is your priority is keeping the line busy. So I guess the question is, is the line busy making pirates? If the sales aren't there, then I guess you've just got to move on. But if Wonka's keeping the line busy, why would you then cut the legs out from under it and do Toy Story to make the movie? You think you're going to sell a lot more because of the movie? I agree, launching it when the movie's out is great because Toy Story 4 is coming out in the summer. Why not unveil Toy Story first then? I would think with the movie coming out that you would want to reveal it first. When I was on that This Week in Pinball podcast 28 episode I think the discussion that I had with Zach was he had indicated, he had heard that Pat Lawler is doing Wonka, and he doesn't know who's doing Toy Story, and his assumption, which I concurred with, is that it's Eric Meunier going to do Toy Story because Pat Lawler's been busy with Wonka. Okay. I have heard from other sources now that Lawler's doing both. Well, then there's no way. Well, he could already have them done. how long does it really take? Zach's argument kind of fit in your line of thinking, which was, it took Pat Lawler so many years to do Dialed In, so he can't get to, he couldn't get Toy Story in and Wonka done that quickly together. Yeah. It's been years since Dialed In came out. He could have been working on both already. They could both be done. That's my counter-argument. Which brings us back to production. Yeah. I think JJP's biggest issues have been getting into production and or getting their mechanisms mechanically sound. Their mechanical engineering is why pirates suffered a lot of the time. It wasn't just the production line issues. There were mechanical flaws that they weren't able to master. They had to basically, not basically, they just had to change the mechs. They couldn't solve, you know, they didn't have enough time and money to solve the problem. They may have had the expertise to solve the problem, but they didn't want to spend the money to do it, or they couldn't afford to wait any longer to try and fix it.
    84:00
    So it sucks to be them because that's the one we played. Right. They had all the mechs. All the mechs, yep. Some people say it plays a lot better. I hope it plays better with the changes they made. I mean, they made the changes. Right. But, you know, it was still disappointing to a lot of people. So, yeah, I really question. I really question the long-term viability of Jersey Jack, quite frankly. I just don't. I think this catering to the high-dollar market is such a gambit. It works great when times are good. I just don't see how they weather a recession.
    84:36
    And there's going to be one. There always is. I just don't think they have a plan to get through it. And they waited a really long time to do their better themes. Wonka and Toy Story are better choices than a theme of Dialed In, a theme of Pirates of the Caribbean, and a theme of The Hobbit, quite frankly. Because we already know the first three Toy Stories are good. And Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic. But Hobbit turned out to be a not very good, bloated set of films. But we also know that just because a license ends up being poor doesn't mean that the game's bad. No. I agree. I'm as bad for its own reasons. But their market is the rich collector, not the real players. Yeah, I went there. Huh? I'll take it. And so you've got people who are buying on theme. Okay. And that's why, well, I mean, that's why Zach, I believe, Zach Many thinks that Munsters is going to outperform Deadpool. I think he believes that solely off of theme. I don't see how. I don't either, but what do I know? I'm not from the 1960s I don't know I just don't see it but that's the argument and he could be right I might actually be wrong but I looked at it and I go if I were an operator I'd want Deadpool for days people know Deadpool when we were out with Jason D a couple days ago Jake people were on Deadpool all the time including us Right. Deadpool and Addams Family were the two games that were hardest to get on there. And so, I mean, it's a theme that people know. And you can say, well, you know, it's not Ryan Reynolds. So? Oh, well. We'll get to that when we get to Stern. Let's move on to American Pinball.
    86:32
    So now we're on our last two. Now we are, yes. Which did not work. This is what happens when I try and write the list ahead of time, and I'm trying to memorize everything, and I thought I had already typed them in, and apparently I had not.
    86:44
    So, Oktoberfest. That was the big reveal. They've been turning out Houdini's throughout the year. Which was a fun game. Yeah, I enjoyed the game just fine. I guess my reports I've seen are it's been a modest seller. It's taken a pretty big hit in terms of you can get it a lot cheaper on the second-hand market already than buying new. Because it's a $7,000 game. Right. It's selling for around $5,000, I believe, or $5,500. You get $1,000 off at least. Yeah. $6,000. So that's quite a hit in less than, I mean, because they shipped some right at the end of 2017, like one, to keep their promise. But it was a 2018 production. Right. So the big news has actually been Oktoberfest.
    87:28
    So that was revealed at Expo. Gameplay response seemed pretty positive. Code was only about 30, 35% complete at that point. as we noted Joe Schober is on code with Josh Kugler did the code I believe exclusively for Houdini I like what I saw of the video of Oktoberfest's gameplay in terms of the shots seem easier so I think it'll be more appealing to people I'm not a big Balser layout fan so like his long looping ramps don't impress me I think the visual spectacle gets old after the third ball but there are some cool ideas, like the hidden beer barrel ball lock and stuff on it. That looks pretty cool. Also, I like the ideas that Sober brings to the table on code. I liked Alien's code. I didn't like the gameplay when I played it, but it wasn't that I didn't like the code. I like his idea of rewarding. He's got a tournament mindset that I think works for everyone. Coogler's programming seems much more about more home play style stuff, more gimmickry that certain people might like to see in a collection. It's a different stuff. It's something that gives you more replayability. I think that's the potential. But then there was Monkeygate, the molesting monkey on the back glass. So that, I think American Pinball nipped that in the bud pretty well. They responded really quickly, and they're solving that issue. However, the biggest complaint about October Pheasants, and the complaint that existed on Houdini, is the art package is described variously as inconsistent in terms of quality to incoherent to just a smorgasbord of color. I don't know. People tell me that art sells games. That seems to be what they need to solve. They've got the programmers. They have Walter now. They got him with JJP, so they have an established designer. It seems like the art direction is where they're weak right now. And the problem is, purportedly, art sells games, not Game Boy. Doesn't matter how good the code is. It's got to look good. Right. And their games don't look good enough. And since they're not going with a licensed game, you have to have something to draw people in. And quite frankly, just looking at JJP, JJP's best game, without a doubt, is Dialed In. And it's also their worst seller because it doesn't have a license. True. And that's the strategy that they're going... My theory on American Pinball, and we heard an interview on Special and Lit, had an interview with Nerval, who I believe is their PR man. And American Pinball clearly wanted, and I'd heard this long before, that their original plan, in fact, was to become a contract manufacturer that specialized with pinball. Right. Like your idea, that what Dutch ideally should have found, a specialist contract manufacturer, that that's a market that they almost exclusively wanted to do. And then they kind of fell into making their own original games. And they still have a desire to make a line where they're doing that sort of work. So I think that's the direction they ultimately want to move in. I don't think, I could be wrong, they've clearly put resources into it, but I don't think long-term American Pinball's main strategy is to become a major original machine manufacturer. I think you're right. I think they're trying to prove that they have the chops to build them mechanically and then carve a niche for themselves in the let's bring homebrews to reality market or do boutique runs market. Because Spooky clearly wants to do their own games, which is why they don't have the line capacity to constantly want to do big contract jobs. I mean, when it's going to take you 18 months to do Oz Cooper, and Stern's too busy as well. they used to do the Medieval Madness remakes and then they didn't want anything to do with that because their lines are busy with their own stuff and their own boutique jobs. And their boutique jobs are small run of games that they've already done. They're just re-skinning stuff.
    91:41
    Primus isn't coming to them and saying, here's a layout we want. If anything, Stern says, here's a catalog of two layouts. Spider-Man Home Edition or Lonelli.
    91:51
    That's the postcard. That's it. It's a baseball card. You want this one? You want that one? Oh, you want the Wonelly cheap one? Okay, that's what we'll do.
    92:00
    No dots. Easy to do. So, that's my thought. I don't think Oktoberfest... I think Oktoberfest is the worst theme of 2018. From a demand standpoint, I think it has less innate attractiveness than even Pirates. Than even Thunderbirds? Thunderbirds, at least, was a show people loved somewhere. Not anywhere in America, but apparently it was a big British show, it was a big Australian show. There are people who care about Thunderbirds.
    92:29
    Even alcoholics don't care about Oktoberfest as much as they do other holidays. True. That is valid. That's it. I don't have anything against Oktoberfest. This is my fundamental issue from a theme perspective. Not a good thing. Just not. It's not. It will sell despite the theme, not because of the theme. But I don't, I think it sells worse than Houdini. I think so. It's priced higher, even though I think it's going to be a better playing game. The theme's less attractive. Houdini, at least, was a very popular illusionist.
    92:59
    And Houdini had some interesting stuff on it. I think the art package, even though it's not loved by a lot of people, I think it's a lot more cohesive. I do, too. And I think it looks good. I think it looks decent, at least. The animations may look weird, but I think overall it's fine.
    93:16
    So, the last manufacturer I have for us to do a year-end review on is the big dog. Stern pinball. The bell or the ball. I said right after TPF on this show, Tony, that I thought this was going to be the year of the Empire Strikes Back. This was going to be the year where Stern was going to quit getting kicked in the nads all the time by all these little gag flies that are swarming around it and just crush it. And I think they have.
    93:46
    I think that their sales numbers, if we could see them, would say that this was their year. They owned this year. You're just renting space in it.
    93:57
    I think their sales numbers every year say that. Yes, but I mean... In particular, this year, because I think, I honestly think, Stern had a bigger year last year just based upon releases.
    94:15
    Well, let's see. What did they have last year? That's the problem. I'd have to look it back up. To be positive. That's the thing. I can remember a couple of them, but they released a bunch of games last year. So this is why I think, I mean, here's where I'm going on that. Last year, I remember Aerosmith and Star Wars. That's what I remember.
    94:39
    And Guardians, I think. They have their three cornerstones. But Aerosmith, I don't know how well it did. That was their first big LCD game. Obviously, Batman was first, but they didn't have a pro model on that. And then there was Star Wars, which a lot of people were very disappointed with in terms of the lack of... I mean, it's a beloved franchise. Right, and it did not turn out well. And the codes complexity put a lot of people off. And then Guardians, which started with pretty bad rules and got to, I feel, a great place. but our operator who was running a Guardians already sold his. He felt it wasn't earning enough that he even would ever put it back out on location again.
    95:24
    Though I think it was a great theme. I actually liked those games. I probably liked Star Wars the least, and I need more time on it, because I never mastered the complexity. But here's the thing with 2018. This is why I think it is a big year. So they didn't have the three cornerstones, because Monsters hasn't been announced. I'm assuming it won't be announced tomorrow. They only have two. Iron Maiden knocked it out of the park, though. The Twippy for Game of the Year is Iron Maiden's Hilloos. It is. I know some people think that Jersey Jack Pirates of the Caribbean is a better game. It may very well be. Doesn't matter. Took too long to get out into production. Not enough people have played the finalized version. Iron Maidens are everywhere. It's the Archer layout perfected. I'm not saying it's a perfect layout, but it's seen as an improved layout over what his draft Archer game was because it's much narrower and that means it plays better. It's just math. It's how it works. And it's not my most favorite game but a lot of people really like Elwynn's rule choice where every shot is always moving you towards something. It's fun. I like a lot of the shots. That's a game I think suffers from theme. A lot of people do dislike the theme. A lot of people are amazed they love the game, even though it has the theme of a metal band. But it's a known theme.
    96:49
    Yeah, I would have preferred that layout had been applied to a more attractive theme. Like Deku, for example. But that said, it was an example where Stern said, we're listening. Here's a killer art package.
    97:04
    Here is a brand new designer. here is a brand new rule set person and this does not look at all like a cookie cutter stirrer. At all. The closest you could say is that it's got an Italian bottom and all pens have Italian bottoms now. So that's irrelevant.
    97:23
    A pro with four flippers? Are you kidding me? There's no... I mean, no. It was like the prop bar people want to work on is back. that's been out. My Star Trek doesn't even have a proper bar. I have to either put it all the way up or it's got them silly little pegs. No, it's just it felt full-featured. It had almost 1.0 code out of the box so this whole we're shipping with bare bones code is addressed with that. It hit on so many levels.
    97:57
    I think I remains the reason why there are only two Cornerstones by starting in 2018. I think the line was busy for so long that they just saw no reason. Right. If it's selling, there's no reason to move on. So then when sales slowed, they moved on to Deadpool. Another pretty unique layout.
    98:16
    Clunkier than Iron Maiden? Sure. Also shorter ball times than Iron Maiden. Code, again, almost at 1.0 on release. I think the code could use more work for depth purposes, but the rules weren't bad. It wasn't like Guardians where it was like Groot all day. The rules were pretty fun. Doing the villains and stuff. I think it has a better animation style than anything Stern has done before. I think the 16-bit approach was brilliant. Use of minimalism, but still feeling fun.
    98:46
    People can cry about Ryan Riddles all they want. Nolan North has voiced Deadpool for years in the video games. That's going to resonate with a younger crowd.
    98:55
    Ryan would resonate as well. But Ryan Riddles sounds like Ryan Riddles trying to be Deadpool. Nolan North sounds like Deadpool. Because he's been Deadpool forever. I've heard Nolan North longer than I have. Right, no. That's where I'm coming from. I mean, I have too. It's a comic book character. That's the comic book style. Ryan Reynolds makes Deadpool be Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool. Right. And it's fun. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. It would have been great to theme it off of the movie. But hey, here's an example of it's not another movie license. They licensed it off of the comic book. So maybe some credit for a little... I mean, it's stern. You're never going to get total originality, it seems. Yeah. We might hear with the Steve Ritchie game coming up. We'll see. Again, I think that while people have been more ho-hum on Deadpool and the Gomez layout that it has,
    99:42
    it hasn't been overall negative. And a lot of people have liked the layout, and I think that it, as a location game, is doing pretty well. It had more launch parties than any other game in Stern's history.
    99:57
    I think that speaks a lot to the theme, and I think it speaks a lot to here's some more original. Also, I think the Pro looks pretty full-featured with your sword and your little baby Deadpool and, you know, you're not missing a lot. The sword was a lot of fun. You're missing your little lifty ramp and you're missing your disco ball. It's not, you know, they're not big sacrifices. So, coupled with those two cornerstone games, you had Supreme Pinball, which got the company a ton of attention because Supreme is such a big brand.
    100:31
    And then obviously doing another boutique project like Primus. And again, other than Supreme, which has its own branded look, everything that came out had off-the-mart packages. Yeah. Because people worship the Holy Trinity.
    100:51
    Zombie, Franchi, Donnie, and Stern controls all of them. you're not wrong. Stern, as always, won. They've not lost yet. I've seen arguments for them having maybe lost, but I don't agree with it. I think Stern's been the best every year that I've paid attention to it, which, to be fair, is not a whole lot of years.
    101:16
    I think that we're probably going to see the same thing next year. Long-time toy story, Mike. I don't believe it. Two JGP corners. I can't believe it. JGP does not make me believe. Just because there's talk about it. I mean, there's been rumors on those games for years. Sure. Maybe it'll actually happen. Maybe it'll come out. Maybe it'll actually be fun. It could be. I hope they are. I hope JGP gets that win because that's what they need is a win. I hope they get it because Pirates wasn't. but Stern we already know we've seen the looks we've seen the leaks we've seen everything on Munsters we know what Munsters is going to be so we know they're going to open the year with a big hit I don't see how it's going to be anything but a solid hit I don't see where it's going to be anything but the first game to come out next year from anybody I agree so I think they're going to start strong I think they're going to continue strong because it's Stern. We don't know what else is coming. We're not going to know until more of the rumors start hitting. But like I said, Steve Ritchie has a game in the pipe. Brian Eddy has a game in the pipe. We know they're coming. The question is how much longer do we have to wait before we see them and who's doing the codes on each individual one. And Stern at this point has such a powerful team that it doesn't matter. it's like where you're just going to find the best combination of really good things.
    102:57
    The reason why I phrase it that way in my Empire Strikes Back mannerism is that at the end of 2017 with the big great Buffalo Pinball shown Pirates reveal everyone was saying how much better JJP did that launch.
    103:15
    And then after that all they did was bungle stuff. It was a good launch. And Stern just stayed there, nose to the grindstone, chipping away. Let's also not forget that Beatles pinball came out as well. Mixed reaction again. A lot of people were polarized by the pricing. Right. My understanding is that rule set is another new coder, someone I'm not familiar with. He wasn't obviously the designer because that's a reworked, improved reworked Sea Witch layout. but awesome FranchiArt package a big seller, they built half of them already and sold that half out the other half was expected to be done in 2019 so it's just they've had a lot of stuff their name is the one that's in the news all the time and this mix of them doing their cornerstones their kapow and their boutiques has worked to keep them in and they don't go and say let's reveal at Expo. They call up IGN and say, why don't you do a feature?
    104:14
    And IGN's like, yeah, why not? Yeah, no. They're talking about Red Dead. Now, I do have a quick question. As you've spoken multiple times about the recession that will happen, because there's always a recession. It's a cyclic economic behavior. Yeah, there's always one. It might be... That doesn't always happen at the same time. Some people try and act like they've got that down to a science. It's not. You don't know. It's just nothing can stay climbing forever. So it might be, it could be tomorrow, it could be in five years, it could be in ten years. Who knows?
    104:51
    But if it was 2019, if we took a hit on the same levels 2008 and 2019 with the pinball field as it exists now, who survives? I think the ones that would survive, my four sure categories would be spooky and stern.
    105:15
    My maybe category would be deep root because we don't know what's going on with that model. And I think the rest go away. I think you're right.
    105:27
    My question mark is CGC. CGC does more than just pinball. So they as a company could survive. I don't think they would release a new remake. At least not for a while. During the recession. So I don't want to say they go out of business because their business model is not we make pinball machines. Their business model is we make game room stuff. Oh, and now we do our own pinball machines. And we made a little – they like have a little assembly line where they do all that work. It's pretty cool. But that's not their bread and butter. I don't know what share of their total revenue portfolio is now pinball. It could be the majority. But I think that they have the adaptability to scale. So let me say they survived, but don't think of CDGC as a pinball manufacturer. They're not first and foremost the pinball manufacturer. They've gotten into that late. They're already in the status of manufacturer on other products. So they may very well be able to weather that. I'm sure all of their lines of stuff suffer because it's all game room. But, see, here's the thing I think. Spooky may be able to survive off of loyalty from the community, wanting to keep a boutique in play. They've got controlled costs. That's how they do it. Stern, I think, can reduce prices. I think they just don't right now because the market doesn't make them do it. I think Stern has a model right now where they could knock $1,000 off those pros and still sell. And still make money. and then so now they've got a they've recession proofed themselves in a way also they may be stockpiling cash from these boom years right now they've indicated that their growth levels have been significant like 40% like 2016 was I don't remember a 40% increase on 2015 17 was another 40% and 18 was shaping up to be a 25% increase on top of the prior year so obviously the growth percentages are going down but the sheer volume of money has been going up and up and up.
    107:25
    They're not just spending all that on new staff. They've done some of it to address concerns. I think they're hoarding a lot of it. And that is a nest egg. And cash is a very useful nest egg. They barely survived the last recession and they were the only game in town for a long time. I think they probably are setting up an emergency fund, a war chest. Yes. The difference between the, let's assume, imminent recession and the prior one is pinball was not in a resurgence in 2008. When a recession hits, if it hits soon, pinball does not all of a sudden become unpopular. Right. There will still be people wanting to play in tournaments. There will still be people wanting to play on locations. Operator devices used to be seen as recession-proof because people always had a quarter in their pockets, even when they were out of work. And that was a cheap, easy, quick amusement.
    108:27
    Things are different now because so many people play in homes. Homeowner sales could suffer. It's conceivable to think of homeowner sales suffering in a recession, but the operator market still growing. That's conceivable. especially if the pricing for them to acquire the products goes down because they're going to have a harder time unloading it at the same high dollar price as they make it because currently you don't take much of a hit I could sell my Star Trek, I'll take a hit because I bought it new in box, but I don't want to take a $1000 hit so that's not a bad thing the Guardians that was at 403 Club when it sold the list price I believe was $1000 and that was a routed game it was just a $1000 loss Compare that to a car or something. They hold their value pretty well. Yes. A recession will mean they probably won't hold it as well. So the new manufacturers will have to respond. But a company like JJP, which is not oriented towards the operator at all, I don't see it. I just don't see it. Plus, I don't think they've turned a profit since inception. I don't think they've ever been profitable. I think it is an unprofitable company. That's not unusual for a big company starting out. But it has to turn profitable at some point or it has to go away. Right. And just case in point, other than Dialed In, none of their games are on location in our area. No, not anymore. I mean, I've seen Woz on location. But they've never lasted long. Well, no, they weren't good playing games. I mean, Woz was broken all the time. It was a nice problem. And Hobbit, none of the tournament players liked it. So they wouldn't drop quarters in it. Because it was boring. Because it's not a good game, unfortunately. Great rules, terrible layout.
    110:13
    Well, middling layout. Let me not. I'm letting my old debates rise up. It's a fan layout in a body that's too big for a fan. That's the problem with it. Stocks don't feel awful. They just feel slow. Because they are slow. That's its flaw. In a home environment, I think it probably fares a lot better. But we're not in a home environment. We're in the real world here on the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. All right. Well, with pinball covered at least some of the high points, we're going to go ahead and segue to the year-end section for the video games.
    110:49
    So, starting now, we're just hitting the big three consoles, as we said at the beginning, and we're going to open with Sony. Sony continues to rule the console market in 2018, and they're going to rule this entire generation. It's over. that's a fight that they've won. They've had a few stumbles this year. And most of them have had to do with them stepping up and just thinking that they're so big it doesn't matter. Well, it kind of doesn't. And it's true, because those stumbles, while they made big news on the Internet, in reality, if it wasn't for the fact that it was all about Fortnite and how Fortnite has taken off to become the biggest thing in video gaming right now, nobody would have noticed or cared. when their refusal this year to do cross play especially with Fortnite that's what came to the head they fought against it and they finally had to break this year and surrender their cross play and allow cross play with other platforms between the fact that they weren't allowing it and if you had set up a Fortnite account and bought Fortnite stuff on Playstation and then you decided, oh, I want to play it on my PC or I want to play it on my Switch or something. You couldn't because Sony had your account locked down. It was a lot of pain in their PR for them while still letting them be huge.
    112:17
    Yeah. I mean, they did give in on the Fortnite, but only on the Fortnite. Only on the Fortnite. They have not opened up the wall of the garden. And I don't think they will this year, Jen. And there's another Fortnite 2.0 sort of thing. But, I mean, you're talking about, I mean, Epic Games showed $3 billion in profit because of Fortnite last year. Or this year, technically. It's still 2018. I mean, that is just too big of a chunk of change. You cannot alienate that many people. If you go on Twitch, it's Fortnite everywhere. If you go on YouTube, there's Fortnite everywhere. There's Fortnite stuff popping up on the news and in regular shows and stuff on TV. It's just an inescapable thing this year. So it makes sense that Sony buckled on that specific instance and that specific reason while keeping everything else the same. So we'll see how things go for them. I think that they're going to always remain as the top dog for the generation as I said every major game release this year was on PS4 even if it was multi even the releases, the big releases that were everywhere always had PS4 if it was just on PC it was also on PS4 and that put them, that's what helps push them to the top But the big thing are their biggest releases of the year, including one game that has won almost every Game of the Year award that I've seen this year, are all PlayStation exclusives. God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man, Tetris Effect, Shadow of the Colossus, all major first-party titles.
    114:11
    And that alone is the reason that PS4 is staying on top, is because of first-party. and they're going to remain that way as I said earlier for this generation and because of that Microsoft has made the changes going forward that they've made they have no other choice can you think of anything big specific that Sony's done this year good or bad that you like well I mean Sony Studios in their first party stable are great studios. So, I can't ever really... What I like about Sony and their studios is those first party games are really focused on that single player narrative experience that it's hard to find elsewhere. We used to be able to... There's a couple third parties we used to be able to turn to. Bethesda,
    115:10
    pre-Fallout 76, used to be a company you could rely on, but they wouldn't always have a game every year.
    115:18
    Yeah, the big stuff, again, was just... I actually thought this was a relatively quiet year. It seemed like last year was a bunch of really, really huge games. God of War came out quite a while ago this year, and it's just been a... Like, two years ago, it was like everyone was dead on games, and then last year, it seemed like there were a lot of really, really great games. This year has been more subdued, so Spider-Man obviously looked really cool that was done by a company that did a Microsoft exclusive game called Sunset Overdrive which I guess kind of pioneered some of those mechanics that were in Spider-Man, I've not played Sunset I have it around somewhere and here it's a good game so that looked really interesting to me I've never done any God of War games so I don really have a sense I played like the original one as to whether I like it or not They you know it just I like that style of game Everything I mostly When I heard about people talking about great games this year it's mostly been God of War and Red Dead. Right. And Red Dead just came out, which is part of the reason why I think Red Dead hasn't won as many awards, because it's been getting more from what few I've seen. Like the Game Awards, they did get game of the year too God of War but more awards went to Red Dead overall and the question there is how much of that is because Red Dead is the new hotness and God of War has been out for most of the year and how much of that is because it's actually a better game and I think that's something that will I don't know, one of the other awards that God of War won, did their awards stuff before Red Dead even released so I don't know if that means Red Dead's in the 2019 awards, or if it's just the S.O.L. Yeah, most of the people that I've seen do that, they choose like the end of October and do their cutoff. I can't evaluate because I haven't played God of War. I can say that Red Dead Redemption, and I've played Red Dead Redemption 2. Red Dead Redemption 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. But Rockstar is a god, and I think it's probably better because they're a better team. But I don't know. I also think some people didn't want Red Dead to win because Rockstar has got all the money in the world, and they don't like seeing the big dog win. It's a stern pinball thing. So people are like, screw Red Dead. It had all the money in the world behind it, so let's make it lose. Also, I think the Stoney people are, Stoney fans are really, really, really looking to love something about a company that kind of came across as the black hat this year because of the Fortnite thing. Right. It just kind of needed something to rally behind. And a good narrative experience with God of War was a pretty good choice. But, you know, I was more interested in their games last year.
    118:06
    That was true of all video games last year. Like Year or Horizon. Yeah, that was true of all video games last year. I just thought 2017 was a better year for games, period.
    118:19
    Yeah, I think 2017 is going to be one of those years that goes down in history like 2008. It's just a year where a lot of amazing games come out. I do think one other thing Sony has going for it is that the PSVR is still probably the VR system with the most integration in the market. It's the most affordable. It's the most affordable, and it doesn't require all the extra stuff that most of the other ones don't. I still think VR is a fad. I think it is, too. I don't think we're there yet.
    118:55
    So we're going to slip from Sony. We're going to slip over to Microsoft. Microsoft has obviously this year spent all of their time and money, a lot of money, setting themselves up to win the next generation of war. Well, I mean, I guess one is a Microsoft owner. I'm hopeful, but they didn't spend it on putting out any good exclusives this year. So I hope they spent their time on something.
    119:26
    Forza? Forza is awesome. It is awesome. Gran Turismo should just go away at this point. And Forza should just go multi-plat. Multi-platform. And just solve every racing person's needs. Yeah. Granted, this is Forza Horizon. I was going to say, do you prefer Horizon or Motorsport? Horizon is so much better. Is it? Yeah, I mean, if you're into hardcore racing, stimulation racing, you'd probably like Motorsport more. They're both very, very good games. Horizon is just so much fun, though. It's just for stupid, racy art. You can set it to be more simulation if you want, or just set it into ridiculous arcade mode. I'm going to be monster truck driving across the... I'm going to drive over all these cheaps and... It's not violent like that, but it's just... It's beautiful. In your mind, it's violent like that. It's beautiful. It's got amazing graphics. It's an incredible... The Playground is one of Microsoft's really great first-party studios. I wish they did more than just Forza. Yeah. And they are now. They have a second team working on something. Rumor is it's fatal, but we don't know. We don't know for sure yet. We don't. So, as he says, Playground.
    120:35
    This year, Microsoft purchased Playground Games. They were like a second-party relationship. Right. They went in behind. Because they worked in addition to Take-10 that does Horizon, or Motorsports, to do the Horizon games. Yeah, they share tech. That's sort of how it works. But they're separate teams. Right. In addition to that, they also purchased Compulsion Games. Not known for a whole lot, but the big game that they've put out, has come out this year, is We Happy Few. I got that for my birthday. I haven't played it yet. Yeah. It's on my wish list, but it has not been picked up as of yet. It's not been wished. Or turn 10, yeah. Locke just pointed out it's not take 10, it's turn 10. Oh, turn 10. Yeah. That's what I get for not knowing racing. I don't know racing games. I haven't played racing games in forever. It's not a big genre I like. I'm not, and I'm really not into simulation racing. Right. Horizon is the arcade game, so it's more fun. So it's the one that is fun like Burnout's fun. It's not the same way. It's not like a crash course. Well, yeah. Nothing fills that void. Right. But Burnout was fun even on the racing side. It's easy to do. Let's put it that way. It's easy to drive the car. You're not like, oh, gosh, oh, I forgot to shift at this right point. Oh, now everything's messed up. Now you can turn off the settings to make it like that if you want that experience. But it's designed just to very pick up and play. I need more time on it. I just have so much other stuff to play. There's always... It's their open world. That's the thing about Horizon. Their open world. So you can go everywhere. You just go around everywhere and do nothing or go around everywhere and do... And they had good weather this year. The stuff they did with the weather have had really good things. They added seasons to it as the new thing. They did weather in Forza Horizon 3, which was very good. Because they set it up, the physics behaved differently. They got the physics right. They would never wide-body their roads. Yeah. They know what they're doing.
    122:31
    Their next purchase of the year was Undead Labs. Undead Labs is known for they put out State of Decay and State of Decay 2. I've not played them. I played the first State of Decay. It's fun. It's your pretty standard.
    122:44
    It's an open-world game, and it fell into that trap of open-world games there for a while where it's like, oh, I have to climb a tower or a balloon to open up part of the map and learn more stuff and go to this and that. But it was still a fun game, and it's very much a survival. It's a zombie survival game, and it was really enjoyable. I've not played State of Decay 2 yet, but all in all, that's a solid purchase for Microsoft because they're going to need it.
    123:11
    They followed that up, and they picked up Ninja Theory. Ninja Theory kicked out. DMC Devil May Cry. I've not played DMC Devil May Cry. I've played actual Devil May Cry I've not played any Devil May Cry but I'm not thinking of playing I know a lot of people who are fans of the Japanese hack and slash style are interested that this acquisition was made and I like hack and slash it's seen as a portfolio broadening move that Microsoft was in need of because Microsoft has been weak on Japanese style games right which leads to part of their sales issues in Asia and overseas. I think that's a chicken and egg thing, going back to the 360 era, where I noticed Microsoft made a very serious effort to penetrate Japan.
    124:01
    Japan, I think, is not inclined. This is an unfair stereotype on my part. I think they're not inclined to be very accommodating to an American manufacturer when Sony is home turf. I don't know. And maybe it didn't help that they put out a bunch of exclusive JRPGs, and most of them sucked. I don't know. That definitely doesn't help. Well, it's just a different type of play style. It's just different. But anyway, JRPGs aside, yeah, it's like Microsoft back then on the 360, they didn't really. They tried a little bit on that, but they never really grew. Like, where were the smups? There weren't a lot of smups. It's like they didn't really grow in those genres. And Phil Spencer, who runs Microsoft's Xbox division, has said that one of his goals when he got in charge was he wanted to deal with what he viewed as a portfolio problem. Xbox is too much known as the bro-shooter console. They want to be more than just being a bunch of cover-based and first-person shooters. They've done that with these purchases. That's what they've been trying to do. Hopefully. That's what they're trying to do. Next was what I consider their biggest purchase And probably the actual jewel in the crown for them They purchased Obsidian Entertainment is known for RPGs And some of the greatest RPGs in video gaming That have been put out over the last decade Have come out of Obsidian They were put out Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 They put out Neverwinter Nights 2 Fallout New Vegas, which is my personal favorite of the new Fallout. That's good. South Park Stick of Truth, which was a lot more fun than it had any right to be. Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire. Probably the, I would say the best pure RPG experience I've had in a video game in years is Pillars of Eternity. Interesting. enough so that I need to probably sit down and roll up a new character and do a new playthrough of that.
    126:17
    And their game coming out that was just announced here in December, and I'm sure everybody's looking forward to, who liked Fallout New Vegas, The Outer Worlds. Yeah, that looked pretty cool. That was the highlight for me from the Game Awards. It was. Of all the trailers, yeah. It was the best one. I re-watched it a couple times. I'm really excited for it because I really like New Vegas.
    126:41
    And their last one was they picked up InXile Entertainment. They put out The Bard's Tale, Wasteland 2, The Bard's Tale 4, and they're currently working on Wasteland 3. Yeah, that one, that company has some interesting past tie-ins with Obsidian. It's like two groups that kind of went their separate ways that have the same roots. Yeah, they started in kind of the same place with the same style of thing, and they kind of, yeah, it's, these purchases from Microsoft show to me that they're looking for the movement. They're looking for, I mean, you have two big RPG groups.
    127:20
    Undead Labs is all about the whole kind of survival, open world thing that, the popularity has finally started to fall off on those style of games, but it still gives them a very good starting spot. Playground just makes sense because Forza's been bread and butter for Xbox for a while now and I think Ninja Theory and Compulsion are both opening as you were saying, widening their horizons I think this is Microsoft setting themselves up to do the best they can. It has to be there's no other reason to do it the thought at the start of the generation especially given how badly Microsoft managed their PR on their launch what their original plans were, the very muddled message about the Xbox being an entertainment platform and not about being games, pricing at such a higher price point than the PS4, they made a lot of mistakes this generation. I feel more severely than Sony made in the prior generation, which mostly just had a pricing point issue versus the 360. Otherwise, they didn't make nearly the same level of mistakes. Actually, I heard someone comment it was a video game journalist that they thought other than the first party problem, which is a problem for Microsoft, Microsoft has the better system in every regard over Sony at this point. If you compare the Pro to the X.
    128:47
    And that was one of the big things that a lot of people have. Apparently I saw a report from MPD, because Microsoft does not release sales figures for their Xbox One. And they're assumed to basically be at about half of what Sony has had. So that's a significant lag.
    129:04
    One of the big things, though, is that the X sales have been from those third-party sources have been very high. In fact, one of the NPD analysts said it is the highest-selling console, period, right now. More than the Pro and more than the Switch. Maybe some of that is driven by the fact that supposedly Red Dead Redemption 2 looks visibly better on the X than it does on any other system, and you can't play it on PC. Right. So they're comparing it to the Pro, and apparently lay people can tell the difference. So maybe that's part of that. This was some of the analyst stuff. So because Microsoft did something with the X that they had never done before, which was beat Sony on hardware power. The reports I'm seeing on the next generation sound like they might even be using the same chipset this next step. It's so tight in terms of what's going on. There's one other thing that I think needs to be noted. in addition to these acquisitions, Microsoft formed a new company, a new studio. I believe it's called The Initiative.
    130:02
    Great name. That's a great name. It's the brochure name. They said, The Initiative. Yeah, man. Let's do shots. The Initiative. Name sucks. They'll change the name.
    130:19
    They're going to make brochures. Even worse, even hokey-er. quadruple A games. What? What is a quadruple A game? It's a triple A game with bro! I'm like, come on! It's just a triple A studio. They want to put out... They want it to be a thing that does... I don't want to say Halo, because then you'll think... They want it to be something that puts out cornerstone games. They've been hiring people away.
    130:47
    I think they got some people from Sony Santa Monica, which is behind the Uncharted series. They took some of their poaching talent. When they don't just buy it outright. Right.
    131:00
    In terms of this year, from a content perspective, Game Pass has been a bright spot for Microsoft. But as you noted, Sony is, as they always have this generation, they've got all the good exclusives. If you want to play exclusives, that's the console you need to get. That's why I got one. Of course. I don't tell anyone not to buy a Sony. It's a good console. I mean, I prefer the Microsoft ecosystem I've been in it for a while I prefer the controller but the products are there on the Sony side like everything you're not missing you're going to miss Sea of Thieves you're going to miss Forza Horizon you might, but sometimes you can play on the PC and that's Microsoft's strategy too so I understand that to them that's okay it scares console gamers have a chip on their shoulder about PC gaming even though console gaming is growing at a high because that aside from the racial overtones that that statement has that put a lot of people off and that more minorities play on consoles and they get sensitive about that and it's a true thing that I've read articles about it's an interesting article but we won't go into it in the year in review it's just that whole some of it's just that the PC people have more power and more control on stuff and some games have been PC only. Of course, that's happened to the PC people too with the console stuff. There's no reason for people to get worked up about it. Bottom line is though that Xbox gamers have been scared. They've been scared. No one wants to see, no one wants to get Dreamcasted.
    132:35
    Think about all those people who bought in on Sega and watched it. When it had better gear, Nintendo, it was more powerful. It had more compelling games. I bought into the Dreamcast. I had a Dreamcast. And a lot of people feel it was the superior system on multiple fronts, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. And so there's some of that that exists to this day.
    133:02
    I completely agree with you. Microsoft is playing the long game. They have to play the long game. They were so far behind on the first-party studio setup that there's no way they can compete toe-to-toe when it comes down to exclusives. And if the tech is converging in terms of the same power, the same performance specifications, that's all you're going to have left is the, I guess, the operating system experience.
    133:30
    Yeah. As long as it's not too clunky. You know, your online capabilities, that sort of stuff, that functional stuff, which Microsoft is good at because that's what most of their real business is, is networking. And then the exclusives, which is what gamers care about. So this, with Microsoft money behind, some of these are so small. I see it and I'm like, okay, you bought a lot, but is it going to be meaningful? But the big difference is these people won't have to worry about where their next paycheck comes from. They don't have to worry about is their next game going to be enough to fund the next game. Microsoft solves that for them. So with the Microsoft money behind them, anything is possible sort of thing. Because the thing that one has to remember is even though Xbox as a division is way behind PlayStation as a division, Microsoft as a corporation is doing far better than Sony is and has a lot more resources. and what this has done, I think, is reassure people who want to buy Microsoft Xbox products that Microsoft is standing behind the brand, not looking to spend it off, which when the CEO change happened, that was a big suspicion. Microsoft is going to sell this off. Xbox is going to be its own company, a little company, a weak company, because it would only have the Xbox to make money on. Right. It wouldn't have that big infusion of cash that could be put in when they needed it and help them do stuff. As soon as Phil got to be in charge of all of Xbox, all these changes happened. I've spoken about Phil like half a dozen times this year. Phil is the savior of Xbox. Yes, very much so. He is. He knows. He's like how people love Reggie when he comes out on Nintendo. It's like that. He's like, Phil. I think even more so than Reggie. I think Phil understands, maybe it's because Nintendo's in such a good position right now, but Phil understands where Microsoft's weaknesses are on the Xbox. He's trying to fix it. They finally opened up the checkbook this year and said, and apparently they opened it up wide. Yeah. They said, we understand your concerns, Phil. We're tired of hearing you whine. Buy your way out of this problem. Here you go. Buy your way out. In fact, I would not be surprised if they acquire another studio within 12 months.
    135:44
    I wouldn't be surprised at all. Not at the right thing going. Because just right here, I mean, just the fact that they picked up InXile and Obsidian, that those two studios alone are enough to put me already thinking about Xbox for the next gen.
    136:03
    That's all it takes. Sure. Because, I mean, I don't have the brand loyalty to one machine or the other. No. I bought Xbox One really early because I had just been doing the 360 and it just seemed to make sense and then the next thing I know there are no exclusives but I wasn't going to buy another console because I'm cheap and most of the stuff that I play is third party so it's not a big deal to me but I have to admit when I see things like Zero Dawn come out I'm like dang nabbit I wanted to play that oh well, I guess I can play a pirate. No.
    136:42
    Because just like pirates is a bad thing, pirates is a bad thing in video games too. It depends upon if it's done well or not. Seriously, it actually sounds like it was a very bold plan with very little content when it came out. I've heard it's gotten a lot better. But you know, that's No Man's Sky. You got No Man's Sky. Which I played again recently. It's better. I don't play it a lot, but it's better than it was.
    137:10
    Our last people, the people we don't want to forget. No, no, can't forget them. Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft have always been for this generation, and even for last generation, they're the big, fancy, high hardware, high power, this and that, and Nintendo's always just kind of done their own thing. And with the Wii, it worked for them. With the Wii U, it did not. No. With the Switch, it's definitely worked for them with the Switch. Yeah.
    137:45
    When the Switch came out in 2017, that was the big thought. Is this going to work? Does anybody really want this portable system that you can just plug into your TV? Is it going to be the thing? It's the thing. It's taken off. It's huge. It's everywhere.
    138:03
    There are people I work with. I mean, people older than me that I work with who will pull a Switch out on lunch and play on a Switch. So, I mean, it has definitely found its niche. And they've had a solid year for them. The Switch is selling extremely well.
    138:20
    Nintendo's done the thing that they've had issues with in the past. They've embraced indie developers.
    138:27
    They've opened up their platform and allowed a fairly large amount of indie games on there. And like any platform that lets indie games out, some of them are terrible. Yeah. But some of them are really good. And on top of bringing those indie developers in, they're Nintendo. They probably win the actual first party group just because of their cornerstones, because of the titles they have that nobody else has and everybody remembers, loves, and wants. That's why they spent a year and a half Hyping Smash Bros. Ultimate And guess what It sold huge My daughter got it for Christmas She's Played it almost exclusively Since Christmas She took a break yesterday to play some Splatoon So I mean It's huge Pokemon has always been A huge Nintendo thing It's finally given a halfway decent entry into the actual console market with Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee.
    139:37
    And they're huge. That's the game people that I work with are playing. They're bringing in and playing Let's Go Eevee at work on their breaks and at lunch and stuff. And Let's Go Eevee is, for what it is, is I've played it because it's got a co-op mode where you can play. Me and my daughter have played it, and I don't see why anyone wants to play it, because it's like Pokemon Lite, but it's super popular. It does some things right, but it is literally the original Pokemon. It's the Kanto region played with a slightly different play style. Okay. Because instead of actually battling, you literally just use, like, the Pokemon Go, throwing balls and stuff until you catch them. Okay. I've seen some gangplans. They entered heavily into the RPG with Octopath Traveler, a game that has taken off quite well and is probably... Okay, I'm going to go with Octopath Traveler is probably the best game that Square put out this year.
    140:47
    Okay. I don't know of any other game they put out. That's why I said that. I think they've done a couple, because they've had so many hurdles this year. I mean, they cut all that Final Fantasy XV stuff. They laid the Buster Claw. But Octopath has been very well regarded. And their big thing is they've also brought in all the ports from that failed Wii U. They've ported, like, every major Wii U game this year. Not Mario Maker. That's the one. It'll happen. It better. It'll probably be a new game. Actually, I never, because I didn't own a Wii U, I never played that, but I used to watch it on Twitch a lot. Because you see how it's a creative level. And I've seen some totally insane levels.
    141:36
    Oh, we've got a message here on Twitch. Lux is better than the Quiet Man. I've never... I've never even heard of that. It sounds made up. Made up. Yes, better. Yeah, there we go. You meant Splenderman. We'll go with that. I don't know about that. I don't know if Slenderman's better than anything. No. Octopath is better than Slenderman. Oh, yeah. Obviously.
    141:58
    Slenderman's fat shaming. I don't approve. So, I think Nintendo has had a very strong year. Their initial sales information that came out at the beginning of the year for their 2017 sales on the Switch showed that the Switch was just selling insane. Their sales numbers I've seen from the halfway point in the year shows that the Switch is still selling extremely well. Everything for Nintendo, from being a company that in 2016 and the start of 2017, before the Switch actually hit, was in a very bad spot financially. They were definitely, I don't want to say they were failing, but they were very badly hurt. They rolled around between the launch of the Switch and now with 2018. The only thing that they missed in 2018 that I think would have helped them is they needed more mainline releases. Yeah, I noticed that. I mean, maybe part of it's just that compared to 2016. It's just like when we were talking about Sony and Microsoft. Right. Compared to last year, everyone felt like it was a lighter year. Yeah, and you can only, you can't, you don't want to and you can't. and do a good job of it. Do the EA thing and throw out, you know, a Call of Duty every year. You can't throw out a Battlefield every year. I mean, you can't do that when you're talking about Mario.
    143:23
    Okay, oh, this is Mario 2018. This is Mario 2019. It doesn't work that way. Not to get those games as polished as they are and with that type of franchising. It just doesn't roll that way. I expect we'll see. I mean, Metroid, I honestly expected Metroid this year, and it didn't happen. I think next year will be I hope they put it out next year. We know they're putting out an Animal Crossing next year and that's going to be huge because that game has got my wife and daughter super excited. They'll carry that. They will. Animal Crossing and a Pokemon mainline game and Animal Crossing. Both. I don't see how they could do anything but make whenever that happens, a huge year for Nintendo. They're just too popular for series line. They are.
    144:18
    So we're going into finish up our video game section. We're going to talk about our personal favorites of 2018 real quick. And then we'll call it a beautiful day. Alright. Would you like to start? I can, but I don't think... Do you want to bounce back and forth? Nah, that's fine. Real quick, because I don't, and this is typical for me, I get games so late, I don't usually buy a lot at release. I don't think I've played a single game that released in 2018 in 2018. Wow. So, let's see. So, the games I've been, I'm actually currently playing Sniper 084, which came out almost two years ago. I actually enjoy that quite a bit. It does what it does, and it does it well. It lets you shoot Nazi testicles. It does. But they hide my cover a lot, so I usually have to shoot them in the face. And it makes me sad. At first I thought, did they take that out? Can I not do ball shots anymore? No, they're in there. You just got to get them exposed. Vulnerable.
    145:18
    So I've been playing the latest Tomb Raider game of the reboot. It's the third in that series. Mechanically, very well polished game. Visually, very attractive game. Not nearly as good of a game as the first two of the reboots, which I thought were very strong, worthy of playing games. this you better just you better like Tomb Raider or else don't play it like I would say play the very first reboot of Tomb Raider to see if you want I mean if you want to like Tomb Raider it's a great one the first one was great I played it the puzzles are just a lot easier in this one and they're not nearly as many of them and it's just the story is not compelling it's like it's okay hey, it's serviceable, but compared to the other two, it just feels like a step down. And she's a murder bomb now. She's just like, she gets, I mean, not to go into spoilers, but let's just say, she just gets a lot of people killed, and then kills a lot of people, and then seems to sort of feel bad, but not much. And Saul's feeling bad by killing the people who made her feel bad. It's just... Why are you making me kill you? Yeah, I know. It's just like, it feels like it has, like, the pieces from the first two games, but less, like, there seemed to have been less hunting, less animal issues. But a little bit, they're like, don't forget, we can make leopards attack you. But not like how it was, like, a fear of all the time. It's like, oh, here's the stage where there's an evil leopard. So,
    146:55
    it's an okay game. I'm actually going to give a shout-out, though, to a phone game. Dr. Meep. I know where you learned about Dr. Meep. Dr. Meep from Gaming on 10 Minutes a Week. I really liked it. I kept playing Dr. Meep. The only problem is I played it so much I won it pretty quick. Yeah, me too. I say that's my favorite phone game of 2018. I don't know if it came out in 2018, but it did to me. Yeah, that was a great game. I played a lot of Dr. Meep. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of the other stuff I've been playing has been Staples. I still play my Gems of War. I'm still playing my Overwatch. So, that's that all is what it is. your staple games I'm going to hit my top three because that's the only really important, I've played a lot of games that came out this year but these are the three that have really stuck with me so I'm going to start at the end I'm going to start as number three my number three game is Marvel's Spider-Man but you don't even like Spider-Man I don't even like Spider-Man but Man Alive that game has been fun and I mean, I'm looking forward to the DLC. I'm going to be picking it up and playing through it and it's great. It's amazing because I did not expect to like it. It's like, oh, this is a game that came with my PlayStation and that's what I'll play until I get, you know, God of War and Zero Dawn and Red Dead and then it's like, I just kept playing it and going back to it. So that worked really well for me. The next one is a smaller game, Into the Breach. Now, Into the Breach was put out by the same studio that gave us FTL. They're both roguelites. I am a huge fan of roguelites. FTL is one of the, like, real, really best of the best out there. And Into the Breach might be better than FTL.
    148:47
    I like this game so much that when they released a port of it for the Switch, I got it. I double dipped on this game. I own this game in two different places. You know what? If they release this game so I can get it on my phone, I might triple dip this game.
    149:02
    Waste of money. It's just... Now, part of it is that it works amazingly as a mobile game. That's why I like it on the Switch. It's a great game that you can play on the fly.
    149:17
    Put a couple ten minutes into it and set it down without a problem and come back to it and have a lot of fun. Now Anybody who's paid attention Listened to us Over the course of this year And honestly last year Knows what my favorite game of this year Is going to be Cold Waters That was my favorite game of last year So Though the expansion for Cold Waters was very good It made the game much harder And You get to fight the Chinese And that did come out this year But my favorite of 2018 and I fully admit it's due to my fanboyism and my nostalgia. Battletech by Harebrained Studios.
    150:05
    Battletech is a wonderful game. I'm not just saying that because I kick-started it for a lot of money.
    150:14
    It touches all of the stuff that I really like about the Battletech universe. It gives me the feeling that I haven't had since I played Battletech on tabletop. As I said earlier, there is a new Battletech. There will be another game coming out. There's a MechWarrior game coming out next year, which will be the classic first-person mech combat style game. I'm looking forward to that one. But for this year, Battletech was amazing. I've got 145 hours into the game, and that was before the first DLC came out. I have the first DLC out now. I'm adding more hours as is. I've actually been streaming my career mode playthrough here on our Twitch channel. And I've also been uploading them to our YouTube. That way it can all kind of be pulled together. So if you have any interest in seeing what the game's like, feel free to watch when I'm streaming or watch one of the YouTube videos that we have up on it. And otherwise, just that's my game. That's my game of the year. No, that's not a surprise. No, it's not. Now, there's other games that I think could have easily taken it, but I've not played them. I mean, I didn't get a PlayStation until a month ago. I have a 2018 game, Forza Horizon 4. Oh, yeah, we did talk about that one. Yeah, I actually haven't played it nearly enough, so it's good, but it's not all that different from 3. I mean, between, you know, work and family and doing stuff around the house and pinball and video games and everything else, it's hard to sit down and just pour yourself into one game when there's like four other games out that you need to do. Yes.
    151:54
    I've got a comment here from Neil. PUBG added a winner map. I'm amazed that PUBG is still doing as well as it can considering what Fortnite became. Yeah, it's kind of funny that two years ago it was like PUBG, PUBG, PUBG. Every video game podcast I listened to was almost obsessed about PUBG. Back when I only had one map. Right. And the thing is, is from everything I've seen and read, when it comes to actual, like, shooting and this and that, PUBG is probably the more refined game. Because Fortnite is much more insane. Yeah, I've heard. But that insanity helps as well. Right. In the sense, like, I've heard, for example, a lot of parents are a lot less concerned about having young kids play Fortnite because it's cartoony. It doesn't seem like real violence in the same way that PUBG feels like. It doesn't seem like real violence as you murder everybody. Yeah, but with, like, colorful sprites and stuff. Right. It made them just insane amounts of money. And they've done it with a free-to-play. Well, it's free-to-play. It's free-to-play, and PUBG is not. Right. And not only is it free to play, but it's one of those ones that does the microtransactions correctly because all the microtransactions are cosmetic.
    153:21
    So, yeah, we'll see. That's an interesting, the whole growth of the Battle Royale because the new Call of Duty has a Battle Royale mode that, from everything I've read, is the only reason to play that Call of Duty. Well, there's no single player, so it probably is the only reason. Right. And from what it is, other sections aren't supposed to be as good as some of the others. And Call of Duty's been slumping for a couple of years. Well, they've got three studios working on it. It probably depends on who's doing what. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't played in a very long time. I haven't played a Call of Duty in a long, long, long time. I wish listed the last one, Infinite Warfare, because of the single-player game, but I've never gotten it, and I'm not going to do it. I mean, unless it's super cheap. I'll pick it up, like, on a Steam sale if it's, like, super cheap or something. But I think the lowest I've seen, it's, like, $20 or $25, and it's always like, oh, I've got better things to spend $20 on than that. Yeah. So, but I think that pretty much does it. Okay. Well, we can close it out. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. You can follow us right into the show, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. You can also contact us on facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Instagram and Twitter as eclectic underscore gamers. We're also on Twitch as eclectic underscore gamers. And our next episode will be episode 79, and that will be in about two weeks. But until that time, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. So long, everyone. See ya.