Episode 717: "New Pin Week Is THE BEST!!!!"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·18m 21s·analyzed·Sep 11, 2022

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Kaneda hypes imminent James Bond 007 reveal, predicts 999 LEs, announces MSRP raffle for club members.

Summary

Kaneda expresses extreme enthusiasm for the upcoming James Bond 007 pinball machine reveal, scheduled for Tuesday at a UK show. He speculates extensively on pricing, edition count (predicting 999 LEs to enable a 007 serial number), game features designed by George Gomez, and the involvement of Joe Kaminkow. He announces an exclusive Kaneda Club raffle for one James Bond 007 (Premium/LE) at MSRP, with the winner drawn as the seventh name pulled from a hat.

Key Claims

George Gomez completely redesigned James Bond from scratch, replacing Steve Ritchie original direction
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'George is building this game from the ground up. There is nothing that Steve Ritchie touched that's going to make its way into this game.' George Gomez saying 'Steve was working on something, but we just threw the whole thing in the toilet.'
The game will feature content from Sean Connery-era James Bond movies specifically
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'I hear there's four movies that are based from the Sean Connery era.'
Stern will announce pricing information and full game details Tuesday morning via distributor call at 4-5 AM ET
low confidence · Kaneda: 'I am hearing Stern is actually going to let the distros in the U.S. know like four or five in the morning what's going on with this game. That might just be a rumor.'
A special fourth edition exists beyond the three cornerstone versions, marketed as '60th James Bond 007 (60th Anniversary LE)' with different gameplay
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'George said specifically that he designed the three cornerstone versions of the game. And then there's a special mystery game... much like Elvira... I'm hearing it's a different gameplay experience.'
Joe Kaminkow is involved with James Bond as a producer/overseer despite not being lead designer
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'If you think that Joe Kaminkow is not involved with this project, you must be crazy. Of course he's involved with this project... I think Joe Kaminkow had his hand on all of these games.'

Notable Quotes

“George Gomez put Steve Ritchie in the passenger seat of a DB5 Aston Martin and ejected his butt all the way to Jersey Jack pinball months ago.”
Kaneda (Chris) @ ~0:03:30 — Colorful speculation about George Gomez replacing Steve Ritchie as lead designer; suggests major design philosophy shift
“It's been a very long time since Stern has released a new game... Rush wasn't a pin that blew everybody away... but I think a lot more people are excited about James Bond.”
Kaneda (Chris) @ ~0:08:00 — Context for market hunger and James Bond's commercial potential relative to recent Stern release
“New Pinball Week is more fun than anything else in the pinball world... This is the greatest time to be a fan of pinball.”
Kaneda (Chris) @ ~0:01:00 — Captures FOMO and community hype cycle around major machine announcements
“I think Stern should auction off for charity game number 007. It makes total sense... it's a tax write-off.”
Kaneda (Chris) @ ~0:11:30 — Suggests marketing/positioning ideas for limited edition sequencing strategy
“If they were smart, they would make 999 [LEs]. And here's why. Because then you can label them 001, 002, 007.”
Kaneda (Chris) @ ~0:10:45 — Specific speculation on production run and serial numbering strategy tied to James Bond 007 branding
“I don't think Stern's going to raise the price of this game by thousands of dollars... at most it's going to be $500 over the previous models.”
Kaneda (Chris) @ ~0:13:00 — Tempering rumors of £14,000 UK pricing with prediction of $500 USD increase; addresses major community concern
“Pinside is going to love and hate this game at the exact same moment... It's going to be an instant sellout of the LEs.”
Kaneda (Chris) @ ~0:16:30 — Predicts day-one sellout and typical community polarization pattern
“Joe Kaminkow is not going to let one of his dream properties come out and be mediocre.”

Entities

George Gomezperson Steve Ritchieperson Joe Kaminkowperson Gary Sternperson Christopher FranchipersonKaneda (Chris)personJohn Borgperson

Signals

?
product_launch: James Bond official reveal scheduled Tuesday at UK IAAPA show; full specifications, pricing, and edition details to be announced
high · Multiple references to Tuesday reveal: 'Stern is revealing this game in the UK on Tuesday at the IAAPA'; 'on Tuesday, we shall see'
?
rumor_hype: Extreme community excitement for James Bond announce; described as 'New Pinball Week' phenomenon with emotional FOMO; Kaneda describes difficulty sleeping before announcement
high · Opening song, repeated emphasis: 'This is the greatest time to be a fan of pinball... Our imaginations are running wild... it's always hard to sleep 36-48 hours before a new pinball machine comes out'
$
market_signal: UK rumors of £14,000 LE pricing; Kaneda predicts more modest $500 USD increase from previous Stern LE prices
low · People are saying that this game is going to cost 14,000 pounds for an LE... I don't think Stern's going to raise the price of this game by thousands of dollars... at most it's going to be $500 over the previous models'
?
product_strategy: Speculation on production run of 999 LEs (vs. 1000) to enable serial numbers 001-007; potential charity auction of #007 unit
medium · I think that is probably next to the excitement about what's going to be in the game... If they were smart, they would make 999 LEs... Stern should auction off for charity game number 007'
?
design_philosophy: James Bond positioned as campy, humorous, toy-heavy machine celebrating 1960s film era tone and gadgetry; George Gomez design philosophy emphasizing mechanical engineering over recent minimalist trends

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.055

0:00

If there's one song that captures New Pinball Week FOMO and the hype we are all feeling right now for James Bond, it's this song. I get no doubt, but I get up again, cause I have a body beat me down. Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up. Ah, can you feel it everybody? It's in the air. This is the greatest time to be a fan of pinball. New Pinball Week is more fun than anything else in the pinball world, right? Do you feel the excitement? Do you feel the anticipation? Our imaginations are running wild. How many versions of James Bond are there going to be? Is Kaneda going to be right? Is there going to be a special fourth edition of James Bond? How much is the game going to cost? Is this game going to be packed with toys? How many James Bond movies are going to be in the pinball experience? What will the art be like? What will the armor be like? What will the back class be like? What will this damn pinball be like? Will it live up to our expectations? Will Neil McRae go crazy and drive his car across the Atlantic and drive right into Stern Pinball's factory and say, Give me it, Gary. Give me the most expensive SLE you've ever made because I have more money than Kaneda. People, I love this week. And we're going to talk all about James Bond on this episode. And I have some good news for you out there. I'm going to save it for the end of the show. But if you're a Kaneda Club member, don't ever say I'm not doing nice stuff for you. And speaking of that, let's welcome our new Kaneda Club members. Ryan, Paul, David, Jeff, Steven, Jeremy, Jay. What took you guys so long? Welcome to the Kaneda Club. Everybody, this is it. We are going to find out real soon what George Gomez's James Bond is all about. I think this game is going to be great. I really do. I think George Gomez put Steve Ritchie in the passenger seat of a DB5 Aston Martin and ejected his butt all the way to Jersey Jack pinball months ago. And this was originally going to be a Steve Ritchie design. I mean, did you hear George Gomez talk about how, like, well, Steve was working on something, but we just threw the whole thing in the toilet. I mean, George is building this game from the ground up. There is nothing that Steve Ritchie touched that's going to make its way into this game. And I'm excited about this. And I think everybody is because George Gomez is a really great designer. George Gomez is capable of putting a lot into a pinball machine. Now, look, you could look at Deadpool and say, well, Chris, there's not many toys in Deadpool. And there also is like a Deadpool with a head on a spring. So I hope we see real mechanical engineering in this game. I think we are. I think we're going to see some really fun toys in James Bond. I mean, think about the theme, everybody. It's a movie about a secret agent who uses a bunch of gadgets to take down evil villain henchmen. This is going to be such a fun, campy pinball machine. I can see it already because when you watch the movies, these movies have so much personality. They have so much humor and they have so much campiness that's going to be perfect for pinball. And the questions of how many assets will they get with this game? Are we going to see clips from the movies? Are we going to see Sean Connery talking? Who's doing the call-outs? Are we going to have a sound-alike actor do the call-outs? All of this will be answered for us this Tuesday when Stern reveals the game. Now, here's another thing that I don't know if you know this. Stern is revealing this game in the UK on Tuesday at the IAAPA or pinball show over there in England. You know, God bless the Queen. You know, they're doing it over there in England because that is where James Bond is from, right? Ian Fleming's novel. He was a British author. And so it makes total sense to release James Bond to the world in the UK. But here's the thing. That show starts, I think, at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. So I am hearing Stern is actually going to let the distros in the U.S. know like four or five in the morning what's going on with this game. That might just be a rumor. So I think we might see a lot of information leak very, very early Tuesday. And once Stern does that distro call, you're going to have people like taking pictures with their cell phone you're gonna have people sharing it and it's exciting I mean as much as we always complain about cell phone footage we're gonna get full HD images of the game me and we're gonna see a new game from Stern pinball on this is really exciting it's been a very long time since turn has released a new game and I would argue that when rush came out like it was a good game for rush fans John Borg did a great job making a game that has made every single Rush fan happy It also a good shooting pinball machine that makes people who are not Rush fans happy But let's be honest with ourselves. It wasn't a pin that blew everybody away. It wasn't a band that makes most people excited. It's just Rush, you know? It's like, how many of you out there are like, oh, Rush, I can't wait to get Rush. It was a really good pin for a certain audience, but I think a lot more people are excited about James Bond. I think a lot of people are super excited that it's George Gomez. And I think because we've had to wait so long for a new Stern machine, the fever pitch is out of this world, especially because Jersey Jack dropped the ball on Toy Story. A lot of you and I mean, every one of you who's into pinball has been underwhelmed in 2022. and you've all been feeling the cabin fever, the post-COVID world we live in, in which everyone wants to throw money at every single toy that's available. And so here you go. You're gonna get your chance on Tuesday to pull the trigger on Stern's James Bond. I have not seen the pin. I have absolutely no idea what's in it, but here's what we do know about James Bond. It is gonna have multiple movies. I hear there's four movies that are based from the Sean Connery era. We know that. I also am going to die on this hill, Bill Brandes. I think they're making four versions of this game. If you think that Joe Kamikow is not involved with this project, you must be crazy. Of course he's involved with this project. And then it gets really interesting because George said specifically that he designed the three cornerstone versions of the game. And then there's a special mystery game. And that is going to be the high end. It is going to be the 60th anniversary James Bond game, much like Elvira. Now, the real question becomes, what is going to be in it? Is it going to just be like artwork and armor that's different? I'm hearing it's a different gameplay experience. No, it is not going to be a home edition of this game. Pinside speculators are so weird. Why would they make a cheap home version of this game? I expect this to be a super, super expensive, super, super exclusive sort of Joe Kamikau special. And then it gets really interesting because Joe Kamikau works with Christopher Franchi. Now, Franchi said he's not working on Stern's James Bond, but is he just trolling us? Is this going to be like Kapow's special version of the game in which they commissioned Stern to just manufacture it? Are they going to spin it like that? Has Franchi been working on this the whole time? I don't know. We'll see. On Tuesday, we shall see. I don't think so. Here's why I don't think that's going to be the case. I wish it was the case, but I still think that Gary is not going to let Franchi sit on top of a major release like this for Stern Pinball. It's all Gary. George would love Franchi's artwork to be on his games and on Stern Games, but it's Gary. Gary felt burned when Franchi was selling the Beatles artwork. All right, so here's the thing. On Tuesday, what do I think will happen? There are going to be 1,000 LEs. I think if they were smart, they would make 999. And here's why. Because then you can label them 001, 002, 007. It makes more sense. If they have four digits, I don't think it makes as much sense because then you'd be like 0007, which doesn't make sense. So will Stern make 999 LEs so that there is a 007 in the mix? I also said this on my Facebook page. I think Stern should auction off for charity game number 007. It makes total sense. It would be really fun to do it as a charity event, see how high the price could go, do something special with that machine. And then also for the buyer, it's a tax write-off. I mean, this is what happens when you take like the first Corvette off the line to Barrett Jackson and it sells for $4 million. I mean, it's also a tax write-off. So will they do that? Probably not. Everyone gets mad at Kaneda because I keep saying the prices are going to go up and up and up on this game. Now, that's a big question mark. How much is this game going to cost? I think that is probably next to the excitement about what's going to be in the game. I think the cost of this machine is really going to be the biggest conversation driver come this week. There are rumors in the UK. People are saying that this game is going to cost 14,000 pounds for an LE. 14,000 pounds and the conversion ratio for the US dollar to the pound or the euro now is horrible for the Europeans they going to be spending more money than they normally used to have to spend on these pinball machines Look, I don't think Stern's going to raise the price of this game by thousands of dollars. I think if we see a price increase, I think at most it's going to be $500 over the previous models. I think they're going to chalk that up to COVID, supply chain, and just the cost of materials has increased over the last few years. Now, I also think it's going to be a day one sellout. I think it's going to be really hard for people to get LDS if this game is packed with toys. I do. I think we've been waiting for a game like this that's going to have a lot of assets, that's going to have toys, that's going to be campy, that's going to be fun, that's going to make you laugh. I think that's the most important thing, right? When was the last time you played a pinball machine that had a lot of humor in it? I would argue Godzilla has a lot of humor in it. I don't get any humor. I don't laugh when I play Toy Story. But Godzilla is a campy game that made you laugh. I also think Batman 66 did. I think Rick and Morty did. And I think we need more pinball machines that are campy, that do make you laugh. And I think that's what pinball should be. It should be really enjoyable. You know, Rush is a music pin. It's not supposed to make you laugh. Music pins are not really designed to do that. So I think James Bond and 1960s James Bond is going to translate perfectly into pinball. And I do hope Stern leaves in some of the stuff that would be deemed inappropriate today. Because if you watch these James Bond movies and the way he treats the women and how he always gets the girl, multiple girls, and within like 30 seconds of meeting a new woman, he's probably kissing her. And this was so of the times. But I really hope they don't dial out all of that from James Bond because that's part of the whole James Bond character. It's also part of the Sean Connery error James Bond. Now, look, I bet Stern does go totally woke. They're going to go totally woke on us and remove all of that stuff and we're not going to see it. But I hope they keep some of that humor in the game. I was watching the movie and I was like, wow, like they could never make this movie today when I was watching Thunderball. But I'm like, some of it you could keep in, some of it you could put into a pinball machine, but some of it might be too inappropriate. Like, for example, there might be a beautiful woman in a bathtub and she says to James Bond, can you give me something to put on any hands or a pair of flip flops? And that's it. No clothing. And I'm like, will that fly today? You know, will some of the female pinheads complain about this? I don't know. In today's modern world, everyone gets offended by everything. And I think we're entering into a little bit of a post woke world in which if you want to make money, give people what they want. If you want to build woke content, you're going to go broke. But we only have a few days left before we're going to see it. This is so exciting. I don't know about you, but it's always hard to sleep, you know, like 36 hours, 48 hours before a new pinball machine comes out. I felt this giddy before Toy Story, and then I was like, oh, man, that's Toy Story. But this is it. Like, this is it. I think Stern's going to deliver. I think George Gomez is going to deliver. Are we going to bitch about this game? Absolutely. Like, Pinside is going to love and hate this game at the exact same moment. And here's what's going to happen. It's going to be an instant sellout of the LEs. Instantly, they're gone. You know, and then we're going to get the typical conversation around pricing as people start to flip their LEs for a profit. It's going to happen day one. People are going to try to flip their spots. It's going to be a mad scramble to get an LE. Now, here's the good news for Canada Club members. And I'm going to do this for the first time exclusively for a member of the Canada Club. If you are looking to get a James Bond LE, I am going to do a raffle in which one of you will win the right to buy a James Bond LE at MSRP. Okay, this is how we're going to do it because Mike over at Automated said, Chris, this is what we're going to do. We're always going to do an LE raffle and give someone the chance to win one and pay sticker price for the game. Now, previously, I just opened it up to everybody and you could email me and I would pull names out of a hat. I'm going to do it differently this time because I really want to say thank you to you club members. The only people eligible to win this game have to be Canada Club members. And I'm going to keep it exclusive to this group. Now, that being said, if you would like to enter for a chance to win that, you have to email me at canadapinball at gmail.com and tell me what a big James Bond fan you are. Because I really want this pin to go to someone who's a James Bond fanatic. I don want this to go to a scalper I don want it to go to a flipper I want this to go to a genuine fan So if you not one please step aside and let a real fan of this property be in on this offer And here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to make it fun. You know me, I'm Kaneda. I will draw the name on my Saturday morning spectacular, most likely next Saturday. Okay. And here's how I'm going to do it. The seventh name I draw out of the hat will win the game, okay?