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BDYETP 92: Pinbrew 2025, Cuphead TPF?, So much Alice, Walking Dead Remastered, Original Themes, DnD Impressions

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 26m·analyzed·Mar 10, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Pin Brew Fest details mixed with harsh analysis of American Pinball's failed strategy and Dave Dayfix's accountability gap.

Summary

Hosts discuss Pin Brew Fest 2025 (April 10-12) with organizer Keith, covering tournament details, brewery selections, and arcade additions. The episode pivots to extensive coverage of American Pinball's collapse, featuring critical analysis of Dave Dayfix's recent podcast appearance where he claims surprise at being laid off and makes disputed claims about Barrio's Barbecue outselling Hot Wheels. The hosts express skepticism about American Pinball's ability to complete Cuphead and Game 8 without design staff.

Key Claims

  • American Pinball held 160 machines last year and is adding 20 video arcade machines from Pittsburgh Arcade Group this year

    high confidence · Keith describing Pin Brew Fest 2025 updates directly

  • Dave Dayfix was not privy to American Pinball's financial and HR information despite being executive vice president

    high confidence · Dayfix quoted in Pinball News/Pincast interview, hosts criticizing this claim

  • Barrio's Barbecue outsold Hot Wheels in its first year

    low confidence · Dayfix claim disputed by Josh Coogler; only plausible if comparing 2024 launch year vs. Hot Wheels' COVID-delayed 2020 launch

  • American Pinball shipped games with acknowledged weak flippers that weren't addressed until InDisc tournament

    high confidence · Hosts discussing Dayfix interview and confirming weak flipper issues

  • American Pinball laid off Steve and Ryan McQuade among other personnel

    high confidence · Hosts referencing recent layoffs at American Pinball

  • Galactic Tank Force sold approximately 50 units

    medium confidence · Host comparing poor American Pinball game sales; approximate figure

  • Cuphead (Game 7) is not complete and has skeleton crew working on code

    medium confidence · Hosts speculating based on interviews and industry knowledge

  • American Pinball committed to bringing Game 7 and Game 8 to market according to February distributor communications

    medium confidence · NAP reporting cited by hosts

  • Pin Brew Fest features 8 breweries with potential for 2 more additions

    high confidence · Keith confirming brewery count directly

Notable Quotes

  • “Did not see it coming”

    Dave Dayfix @ ~25:00 — Hosts find this claim absurd given American Pinball's visible decline and personnel layoffs, using it as anchor point for criticism of Dayfix's accountability

  • “I said they're going to be out of business in two years, and I think technically they're not exactly out of business, but they're pretty much done.”

    Host (unnamed) @ ~22:00 — Confirms hosts' prior prediction about American Pinball's collapse, validating their skepticism about the company

  • “Three pinocchios”

    Josh Coogler (post on Pinside) @ ~38:00 — Fact-checker's assessment of Dayfix's interview credibility; indicates significant misstatements or exaggerations

  • “How are they going to do this? They got rid of everybody, right?”

    Host (Kevin or Nick) @ ~44:00 — Central concern about American Pinball's ability to complete Cuphead without design staff

  • “We're going to manufacture it... They want you to take all the risk of putting all the product together”

    Host (Nick) @ ~41:00 — Highlights pivot of Ametron/American Pinball from design to contract manufacturing, shifting risk to licensees

  • “That's what caused them to finally fix it.”

    Host (Kevin) @ ~54:00 — References external pressure (Carl/streamed InDisc tournament) forcing American Pinball to address flipper issues

Entities

Pin Brew FesteventKeithpersonAmerican PinballcompanyDave DayfixpersonBarrio's Barbecue ChallengegameGalactic Tank ForcegameCupheadgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball appears to have effectively ceased operations as pinball designer/manufacturer; transitioning to contract manufacturing under Ametron/Funds Up with no internal design capability

    high · Hosts confirm lay-offs of Steve, Ryan McQuade, Dave Dayfix; Ametron launched contract manufacturing service; Dayfix admitted company struggled to sell games

  • ?

    community_signal: Buffalo pinball community maturing; external organizers (Dave Sousa) taking over tournament management, freeing core community members for other roles

    high · Hosts celebrate Dave Sousa's high-quality D&D launch party and custom trophy; note this represents milestone where professional-quality tournaments can be run locally by others

  • ?

    design_philosophy: American Pinball's commitment to original themes (Barrio's, GTF, etc.) fundamentally failed; original IP rejected by market in favor of licensed properties

    high · Hosts repeatedly emphasize weak sales on originals; Dayfix refused to acknowledge this pattern; Josh Coogler notes HTF supply chain delays made Hot Wheels underperform; hosts predict Cuphead (licensed IP) still won't succeed due to incomplete code

  • ?

    event_signal: Pin Brew Fest 2025 (April 10-12) expanding with video arcade addition (Pittsburgh Arcade Group), consistent beer/food lineup, and growing attendance

    high · Keith confirms 5th year, 160+ machines last year, 8 breweries, 2 more potentially, same food vendors, tournament growing annually

  • ?

    leak_detection: Cuphead strongly rumored to be American Pinball Game 7; status ambiguous and production viability uncertain

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.259

0:00
Coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got Keith from Pin Brew Fast. We're going to talk to him. This is my favorite time of year. We've got, will Cuphead be at TPF? Who knows? We're going to talk about D&D impressions, all that and more coming right up. Double Super Jackpot!
0:30
I need a loop. I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super jackpot in my life.
0:42
That's right. The humanity of Buffalo Pinball. Boom shakalaka. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Brody and Talk Pinball for Sunday, March 9th. We're springing forward here bright and early. How's it going, Nick?
1:07
I'm almost awake. Nick was up late winning a pinball tournament last night. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
1:17
And I was there from 3 o'clock in the afternoon working on stuff at the club until about midnight, and we got gypped out of an hour. So I'm going to do my best to limp through this podcast, guys. I'll probably get fired up when we talk about American Pinball, so it's all good. I mean, this was your idea, and I didn't think about it. It is my idea. It's always my fault. That's true. Yeah, so let's kick it off by thanking our partners real quick. Nick, you can take it away. Happy to do so. All right, we want to thank our premier partner, Flip and Out Pinball. Flipandoutpinball.com. Once you go, Zach, you never go back. I'm going to tell you right now, I was talking to a club member yesterday, and he was so happy with a game that he purchased from Zach for the club that he went back to the well. So it's a testament to how good Flippin' Out Pinball is, and Zach and his wife Nicole and Greg for the support. I actually had to get their help on my rush because I had the dreaded note board issue, and Greg was right on it. So I cannot recommend Flippin' Out Pinball enough. They're great people over there. And then shout-out to our other partners, Pinball Life, the best source for pinball parts for your pinball machine. Been going to them since 2011. Multimorphic, pinballmultimorphic.com, makers of the P3. Titan Pinball, Titan Pinball for silicone rings and other goodies. Use coupon code BUFFALO, save 10%. And pinside.com, where we find our wealth of information on mods you don't need. Oh, yeah. That's the best place to do it. All right. Why don't you take it away, introduce our guest here. All right, you guys, if you've been following the podcast, you should know Keith. And if you've been to Pin Brew Fest, you should know Keith. Keith, how are you? I'm good. All right, so Keith, we're on Pin Brew Fest number four, is that correct? Number five, actually. Oh, my God. Yeah. Number five. All right, tell us about Pin Brew Fest number five. Well, guys, it's very similar to what we did last year. We've been really successful. The show keeps growing. And as you have seen and you've been there and you've enjoyed it, we kind of got things working pretty well. Each year we're trying to introduce new beers.
Josh Coogler
person
Hot Wheelsgame
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Pinball News/Pincastmedia
InDiscevent
Pittsburgh Arcade Grouporganization
Ametroncompany
Dave Brennanperson
Dave Sousaperson
Eric Minierperson
Carl D'Angeloperson
Noble Creature Brewerycompany
Buffalo Pinballorganization

medium · Hosts reference NAP reporting of Game 7/Game 8 in February distributor communications; Cuphead identity inferred but not confirmed; game described as 'bare bones' from interviews

  • $

    market_signal: Ametron/Funds Up Manufacturing rebrand communication poor; elementary copywriting/grammar errors suggest low attention to detail and poor brand management

    medium · Host notes 'Let's' uncapitalized and missing apostrophe, three exclamation points, Atari 1979 line photo misattribution on website

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Executive leadership (Dayfix as EVP) had poor visibility/accountability into company financials and operations despite senior role; claimed ignorance of pending layoff

    high · Dayfix stated 'did not see it coming' despite 4 years at company and visible personnel cuts; admitted not privy to HR/finance despite EVP title; hosts incredulous

  • $

    market_signal: American Pinball's pricing strategy (competitive with Stern/JJP) could not overcome weak sales performance on original IP; suggests price is not primary barrier but theme/design quality is

    medium · Hosts imply weak sales (50 GTF, low Barrio's sales) despite competitive pricing; link failures to original theme strategy and design quality issues

  • ?

    product_strategy: Cuphead (Game 7) and Game 8 unlikely to reach market; skeleton crew insufficient to complete code and manage production without design staff oversight

    medium · Hosts note designers laid off; Dayfix admitted difficulty finishing games even with full team; no production timeline provided; unclear if Cuphead will appear at TPF or Pin Brew Fest

  • ?

    product_concern: American Pinball shipped games with acknowledged weak flipper issues; only addressed when tournament was being streamed (InDisc)

    high · Dayfix confirmed weak coils/flippers in interview; hosts note flipper fans were added only for InDisc broadcast; flipper upgrade initiated post-InDisc scheduling

    • 3:34
    We normally think about changing up the food, but we've had such good compliments from everybody. We're keeping the same food vendors in there that were there last year.
    3:46
    Hopefully we're going to grow a little bit more every year. Last year we had about 160 machines. Something new this year, we've gotten together with Pittsburgh Arcade Group, and they are coming in and bringing in about 20 video arcades. So some Pac-Mans, they're going to have a Pac-Man contest there this year. A few other things in there, and almost all of our vendors are returning.
    4:10
    So things are looking good. Are you trying to lure Billy Mitchell there with the Pac-Man competition? uh yeah no that's great to hear about the food um food trucks were amazing i know there's like an italian one that i like and um you guys you guys you guys crushed it on that end so it's uh april 10th is the first day which is the opening day that's a thursday i believe then friday april 11th and april 12th and then what um always sucks all my time when i'm there is that you guys uh You guys have folks come in and run a tournament. Is this the same crew that's doing that this year? Yes, it is. Tommy puts that together. So I believe the tournament is pretty much styled the way it was last year. It's on the website if they've done any changes to it. As you guys know, I am so not a tournament guy that I kind of stand back and let everybody else tell me how it runs. Marvin, my partner, kind of handles that end of it.
    5:13
    But you said the tournament last year, You were pretty happy with how it went? Yeah, I'm very happy with how it went, and I can speak to that for the folks who are interested in tournaments competitive pinball. First of all, that tournament seems to grow every year, and there's a great turnout. So tournament folks really like to get IFBA points. I think they think that they can cash it out when they go to the grocery store and buy eggs, but it is worth a lot of Whopper points, which is important for tournament players. But beyond points, it's just a nice way to kind of just do several rounds of match play. So even though it kind of adds up throughout the days, you know, Thursday, Friday, and culminating in the playoffs on Saturday,
    5:55
    you've got to play in like a certain number of rounds, but you can pick and choose which rounds you play in. I think it's $25 for A, $15 for B. But each round is like a match play format, so you get in different groups of people. So there's that. What I love about events is there's the social aspect along with the competitive. So you get to meet folks. You get to play on a lot of these great machines. They were all in great condition last year. It's just a lot of fun. And I think it's a huge draw for me to come out to this tournament. And then when you want to break and you want to debrief, there's all these great vendors to visit. And I remember last year, too, Stern had a lot of games there. I was really impressed with the number of games that they had there. And last year they were showing off Jaws, which had come out a couple months prior to. So they had a ton of that. That was actually an expensive pin brew fest with me, Keith, because I had no intention of buying Jaws. But I fell in love with it at the event, and I messaged Zach during there. I was like, I'm thinking maybe I'll get one in like a couple months. And then by day two, I was like, where can I send the money? So, yeah, just absolutely so much to do there. um highly recommend even coming out on on on thursday but if you can't come out until uh friday or saturday that that's great as well but um there's something for everybody is the way i would describe it yeah one of the things too this year uh it seems also being we're the home of the hard top we we kind of have that because of all the uh hard tops that i've worked with uh bruce and scott on uh they always make it a point to come outside edge sets up and uh getting a lot of feedback from people this year hey i'm bringing my hardtop game i'm bringing my hardtop game so we're getting to see a lot of the older games um you know if my camera was working i could show you a beautiful mouse and around i'm working on right now that i just put a hardtop on that'll be at the show um but so that part of it is also kind of unique to us that we seem to get a lot of those older games and they're in top shape they're look like they're brand new so you're getting to play the stuff you don't get to see and it's and it's running pretty good so i said for the beer lovers out there. How many breweries will be there this year? Sorry if I missed it. I think we have eight breweries this year. I'm considering adding two more.
    8:10
    Juggs is my beer connoisseur. He works with the flight crew. He runs everything as far as picking the beers for me because I just pick IPAs all the time. He's given me a nice selection. We got jelly is coming back. That was a huge hit last year. We brought in a half barrel of jelly from Noble Creature. and we burn through that in about four hours. So we fired two half barrels from them this year. So we're happy to bring that back. Just certain beers everybody loves to have. So we always have two hip from Birdfish. We always have blue balls from Bikers. Also, our charity is the same. It's a charity for Alley again this year. So we're bringing back Alley Strawberry Blonde and then a bunch of new selections and a couple new breweries we're working on, which I can't really give the details until we get something lined up with these guys. I don't want to promise what I can't bring. Yeah, that's amazing. So, like, pinball and beer, as we say, go very well together. Even Kevin, who's not a beer drinker, understands that. And, yeah, I'm glad to hear the jelly's going to be back. That's the blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and vanilla sour, which is at 7%. So it is absolutely delicious. I can recommend it. I think you told me to check it out, and you were right. and also you know last year I didn't drink until like it was the I was getting close to the playoffs and I had to make the cut I think for a tiebreaker so I pounded a beer and then it got me through to the finals which I of course crashed and burned but hey it or the playoffs but hey it works so I'm glad you guys have beer there anything else Keith that that folks should know for considering coming out?
    9:52
    I don't have a lot of new surprises this year. It's similar to the same. So, unfortunately, outside of the arcades and adding some more beer, everything's going to be just the way you guys expected it. And everybody that's been there in the past couple years has told me how much they love the show. So we're trying to keep it in that same focus. Keith, what do you have? I don't know if this one isn't broken. Yeah, what do you have as far as, like, new games coming? I see there's like you know typically it's like you guys tend to follow TPF and a lot of big game announcements happen at TPF so is there anything you want to talk about on that end? Well they're really being kind of quiet about what's coming out we do know that if Stern releases something it'll be at the show we know that if American releases something it'll be at the show so those are some good points but I can't promise anything new I know that Cointaker is working on making sure that we have Alice in Wonderland there so she's working with them on that but this is kind of a weird year last year we kind of knew really I mean we know what's coming out guys right but basically we're just hopeful that if they if they if they're at Texas we're going to have them we'll make sure we have them at Pinbrew you'll have Dungeons and Dragons and all that there right oh yeah Yeah. So if you haven't played that. Definitely going to be there. I'm curious if Tin Cup's coming out, if that'll be out there. Curious if Kong will be ready to go. Yep. Dude, I wish it is Cuphead and not Tin Cup, but I wish it was the 1998 film with Kevin Costner, Tin Cup. That'd be such a better theme. I'd be a day one buyer. Oh, that's great. I want to do a wellness check before we let you go, Keith, because it's been great getting to know you, and I really like you. But, like, last year we were talking and you were eyeing a Galactic Tank Force. And you were like, I kind of want this game. And you were debating it. And I was like, how do I tell him this? Did you end up getting a GTF? And if so, do you like it? I do have one. Okay. Do you like it? How is it?
    12:03
    It's fun. I honestly don't play like I used to since I've changed careers now. And I'm back to restoring pinball machines full time. I'm so in them all day long That at the end of the day I really don't play That much so it just sits there I have it in tank mode most of the time In case anybody tries to invade The lake It's funny though Marvin has One a couple of my other buddies Have one and so we have our own little fleet Don't ask me why But yeah I ended up with one last year So It's okay it's okay high praise um and i should ask you one more one more thing one more thing so you are you're you're restoring games now is that a service that you offer to people yes yeah pirates like pinball uh we're getting ready to launch a website i have about maybe 10 restorations right now that are just about complete we're going to start listing those so you can actually buy a restored game um right off the shelf from us and then we also restore games for people across the country. All right. We should talk. I should talk. All right, Keith, thanks for joining us. I love coming out to this event. I absolutely do. We roll out with a crew, and it's a great excuse to get away from work and play some pinball and see a lot of folks that we like and have a fun tournament and drink some beer. So thanks for doing what you do. Keith, give us one more chance to, if people want to buy tickets, dates and times of the show, that sort of thing. Okay, the show's April 10th, 11th, and 12th It's called IOPinBrewFest PinBrew.com, I believe You can catch us on Facebook And tickets are on sale ahead of time Tickets are on sale at the door VIP ticket sales ends at the end of March So if you want to get in as a VIP And get some of the garb, the shirt And get in a little early and get a pint glass to increase your volume of beer. Suggest you guys get those, and we will see you guys at the show.
    14:14
    All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Keith. All right, guys. Take care. Thanks again. All right. We'll see you.
    14:19
    All right. Before we get into things, let's quick shout out to Dave Sousa for running an amazing D&D launch party last night. Dave is crushing it, and I feel like that, Kevin, you and I are getting rewarded in life for all the work we've done in Buffalo Pinball, where we've always dreamed of a day when somebody else can run a tournament locally. And not only can Dave do that, but he's just like a high-quality kind of like everything he does is just top-notch. So thank you, Dave, for letting us come out and have a good time. And, Kevin, I do want to talk to you about one thing. There was a bullying incident that happened last night. Some collusion. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So my son, who's been playing competitive pinball with Nick Lane since he was about five years old, came up. So we were playing the critical hit format. And if you're not familiar with the critical hit format, you get these cards like Magic the Gathering that impact play. and the card that he had allowed him to change the game of a different player's group. So Nick had picked... Did you play the card to pick the game or you had rolled a 20? I can't remember.
    15:40
    I played a... I think I played a card to pick X-Men. Okay. I wasted a card to play X-Men and I was feeling pretty good about that. Yeah. And then my son comes over and he's like, what game does Nick hate the most here? And I was like... At first I was like, maybe hard body. And then I remembered we'd in team league, we had played a genie a number of times and lost on it every time. And I was like, it's gotta be genie. So he put Nick's group on genie. Nick ended up taking a strike and the rest is history.
    16:14
    Yeah. Thank you for coming clean about that, Kevin. It was a, it was a dirty move. I was not even in first place at the time or doing particularly well. But yeah, Both Mannies decided to gang up on me, and they were both very happy about that, and we were very smug. But you know what? Here's this, guys. Oh, there you go. Look at that. Did you see that?
    16:35
    What does that say? It was the fuel you needed to go in and take first place in the launch party. So nicely done.
    16:42
    Can we talk about how people were stealing cards from children, too? Hey, I have no problem with that. I'm like, that's something Nick would totally do. no quarter christy um by the way that uh that that trophy again dave made that um dave made this awesome light up uh dnd trophy so uh just very very happy to have that good job dave thank you it's gonna look good on the on the mantle yeah yeah all right are we ready for some pinball news let's have uh tim kitts introduce us here's the temp it's the latest pinball news so hot it's Come fire him. All right, Nick, you can take it away. Nick's favorite topic, American pinball.
    17:26
    Yeah, it is. I guess it's my favorite topic, for better or for worse. Well, we're wrapping up with the conclusion of American pinball. We talked about it last month, how American pinball is pretty much done. Like, it is and it isn't. The prediction and prophecy has come true that we made on this podcast a couple years ago where I said they're going to be out of business in two years, and I think technically they're not exactly out of business, but they're pretty much done. All right, well, Dayfix, after we did our podcast last month, couldn't help himself but went on a podcast again to talk about everything. And I'm really sorry to all the viewers and listeners that Kevin and I just didn't do an emergency episode right after the fact because it was very recent in my mind, and we could have talked about that and dissected it for an hour. I tried to go back and re-listen to it yesterday to refresh myself. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't get past the first 10 minutes. It's definitely worth one lesson. It is not worth a second one. I can promise you that. So Kevin and I will recap the highlights of this. I don't want to spend too much time on it because what else is there to be said, although there is more.
    18:37
    So he went on Pinball News, Pincast, their podcast in February. And those guys, you know, he's been on there a number of times, and those guys ask good questions. I appreciate that they do follow-up questions, and they bring him back when he gets off-tangent, and they try to make him answer a question, which is not an easy thing to do. Because this is kind of like a historical thing, right, trying to understand the trajectory of a pinball company,
    19:05
    kind of from their start, their progress, and maybe their end here, right? This is maybe the end of American pinball's history. But my favorite part, let me back it up. At the start of the interview, they said Dave was with the company for four years, and his contract was not renewed in December.
    19:23
    Okay, so they started the interview, and they asked him, they said, when you were regarding being laid off and not having the contract renewed, was that something you saw coming? And Dave replied immediately, did not see it coming. and i fucking burst out laughing like martha heard me from the other side of the house did not see it coming dude everybody saw this coming like suddenly you're at american pinball they're laying off steve they're laying off uh ryan mcquade right like these people are disappearing you're like don't you think like oh my god we're not we've sold like five burials barbecues you need to sell pinball machines we sold like 50 galactic tank forces like you're surprised that they laid you off and didn't renew the contract like i think that's like a full stop you need you don't even need to listen to the end rest of the interview after that like you're running a company you have all the financials you know all the details and you were surprised after four years and not selling games that they laid you off Okay, that's kind of, like, there's so many other things to get into, but that, like, right out of the gate is just one of the most amazing things I've ever heard. Yeah, and that was one of the things he kept, like, distancing himself from the business operations of American Pinball. He's like, well, it was Ametron's finances and HR, and I wasn't privy to that, so I couldn't know. And it's like, really, as executive vice president, you should have access to this information, right? Or you should at least have a feel for how things are going, right? Even if you can't see the actual documents for whatever reason, right? No, it was very shameful, blaming the owners, blaming the finance. And then you could tell that the interviewers were kind of just like not having it because they directly asked him. And they're like, hey, what would you say is your – I don't know how they phrase it exactly. But what could you have done differently? Or what's your role in this accountability? And he just like none It wasn like hey maybe after Galactic Tank sold 50 and and reinforcing for the millionth time that people don want original themes maybe we should not have done burials barbecue maybe we should have done like another home run or a licensed theme like nope nope nope no not his fault um some other rapid fire nuggets in there uh he acknowledged that they have weak coils or weak flippers, right? So they were like that they've been selling a product that has weak flippers, and then they finally started addressing it when it was going into InDisc. So you guys were selling a bad product that people complained about, and now you're just trying to fix it, fully acknowledging that the code on their games were bad and incomplete. It's just amazing.
    22:24
    And just kind of disclosing too much information and really trashing the owners. It's like, and then at the same time, he's like leaving the door open for possibly going back there if they wanted him to come back. It's, I can't do it justice because, again, it's a month ago. I'm not going to go through that podcast again. But I don't know.
    22:48
    Look, I spent a lot of time with Dayfix. I've enjoyed hanging out with Dayfix. I you know the American Pinball hired Dave Fix and they got Dave Fix is all I would say Dave fixed it he did exactly what anybody who knows Dave would have predicted what would happen so it's on really it's really on the owners for allowing the company to get where it headed towards right exactly so did you want to talk about this how he said Barry O's outsold Hot Wheels in its first year. A hundred percent. That was next on my list. So another, like, just what the fuck moment was where he claimed that Berrio's Barbecue, I think, I don't have the exact quote, but Berrio's Barbecue, like, in its first year sold more games, outperformed Hot Wheels. I'm like, that is, like, that is impossible. Right? Like, there is, he's either directly lying or layering such a thick layer bullshit on this to make that statement true so we have some context right in terms of
    23:59
    that that's not true but the way he kind of lied about this yeah the the the only way i could feel like that would be accurate is if he was comparing the launch year so what your berries came out in 2024 right uh yeah so yeah so maybe in 2024 they sold more barrios than they sold more hot wheels that in 2024 that's the only i bet i bet what happened well just doesn't josh cougar talk about that like we'll get to that in a second but but my my thing was like you know what probably happened is like hot wheels must have came out i forget what year it was let's say let's say 2020 or 2021 yeah it probably came out in like december 30th right right you know so in the year technically it came out it might have sold like none or a couple so you can lie and say oh yeah barry ells sold more than hot wheels in his first year like yeah bullshit yeah bullshit and again it whatever like this let's go let's go to josh coogler's take on it yeah so uh this is josh coogler former american pinball employee uh he's like i listened to this is his post on pinzide he said i listened to part of the interview and just wow not going to fact check it as that would take way too much time and it's like nice that jason knapp has been vindicated as david net david has now acknowledged that the company was looking to sell a few and then he does a few quick fact checks uh let's see i'm trying to find the part where he talks about hot wheels oh as far as barbecue selling more than hot wheels in its first year well i guess it depends how you look at it hot wheels started production 25 units were made then kovid hit the factory was shut down then as things started to open back up the factory was moved to a new facility by the time the assembly line was put back together and parts were acquired can you say supply chain i knew you could it was pretty late in the year before the line was rolling again so yeah possible bbq outsold that but at least 500 hot wheels were shipped in the next year pretty sure that crushes bbq sales this is my favorite line of the of the write-up he says overall i graded the interviewee three pinocchios i was going to give it 2.5 but there are no fractional pinocchios i doesn't say out of how many pinocchios but i would guess three out of five yeah okay maybe out of ten yeah he doesn't give a full scale there so infer from that what you will amazing i don't you know i have a feeling that we'll be talking about this again because dave We'll find a way to get on the podcast. I hope to Dave fix, not that he listens to any of this. I hope that I know Dave is very passionate about pinball.
    26:40
    He's fun to hang out with. I hope that he finds his fit in pinball, wherever that is definitely not running a company. But you know, I like to see everybody in life find their fit and Dave just needs to find a good fit for himself.
    26:58
    Okay. Okay, so in the wake of all that, American Pinball, well, I guess Ametron launched whatever this is,
    27:10
    funds up manufacturing, which is hilarious in itself. It's like, oh, the fun's over. We're going to manufacture pinballs. Oh, my God, dude. That's hilarious. Funds up.
    27:22
    So, you know, I'm a critique of communications tactics, and there's a number of issues with this. I don't know if they've been remedied at all since they first launched this, but we're going to look through it together. First off, let's get your project started. Three exclamation points, no capital L on let's and no apostrophe in let's. So, yeah, so that gives me the faith I need to let's entrust this company to build my product, my amusement machines, because the attention to detail is so great right off the bat here. um and so it says they make pinball arcade and fec family entertainment center and redemption machines right okay and then it's like they're showing some of their american pinball games they build these uh i forget what these are the the wall mounted arcade machines um and it's some of their things i don't think they've built any uh arcade uh fec machines but maybe they have uh but My favorite was in the arcade section, if it's still here.
    28:29
    Oh, I think they took it down. They had a manufacturing line from Atari in 1979. There's a photo. I was like, this is not your arcade manufacturing line. So at least it looks like they changed that.
    28:44
    But I guess they want to shift to just putting together machines, no research and development. They want you to take all the risk of putting all the product together and doing all the licensing that may be required. They'll just put it together for you. They're going to manufacture it.
    29:09
    Yeah, and then this is the crazy thing, right? So they told, according to NAP, they told distributors in February that they are committed to bringing out Game 7, which Game 7 is strongly rumored to be Cuphead. I think we all know that. Game 7 and Game 8 that were designed in-house. So there's another game designed in-house that allegedly they're going to bring to market. And then, like, to Dave's point, that does make sense. He's like, how are they going to do that? They got rid of everybody, right? Like, they got rid of the people that designed it. And, like, my understanding when Pimamachines go into production is, like, usually the designers on the line making sure that everything is coming out to spec, right? Like, we hear about Eric Minier hopping on the line and inspecting games or even working on the line for games. So how are they going to do this? And then also, like, Cuphead's not done. I think it's pretty bare bones from what I can pick up from interviews in terms of code.
    30:06
    It's just like a skeleton crew over there. So this is going to be really interesting. Like, even when they had people there, they weren't succeeding at getting these games finished. Now they have nobody there. So what are they releasing at this point? Yeah, good luck. uh yeah you need to have that quality control you need to know have somebody there that knows how it's supposed to be put together right and then after the game is out like what is there going to be for support i saw they hired allegedly this couple who was going to be doing support for them remotely but you know they got they had uh really great support before and those people have burned out and gone away so um i don't know dave brennan and you know all those guys used to used to do that and did a great job. Yeah, could you imagine trying to support those games? Hey, my flipper's weak. We don't have a fix for that.
    30:58
    Sorry. Let me look through my bin of parts and see what I can find. We're going to put some fans on it. Yeah. That was actually what they did at InDisc. They had put new coils on it, but they also had flipper fans on all the games, so that's why the game performed well through InDisc. They didn't address it until they knew the game was going to be InDisc and streamed, And they're like, and somebody forced them to probably like, um, Carl was like, you need to fix this. And like, that's what caused them to finally fix it. These guys are like at the company, like, come on, Steve, like Randy, like, and Dave, like you guys know pinball, you know, this is weak. Why are you shipping games? Why are you making pinball machines? And you can't even get the flippers right. Like, that's insane, guys. That's wild. I don't know. All right. I'm kicking a dead, uh, dead horse at this point. We can move on before I get myself into more trouble. Okay. Yeah. So bottom line on Cuphead, it's like, sounds like it's not going to be at Texas. Who knows? It's a shame too, because that's a fun game. And like, I could see it making for a really cool pinball machine. We don't know if it's a fun pinball machine. Right. Let's just say, yeah. Fun game. Kevin finds the video game fun. The video game is fun. Yeah. Okay. I'm not a VIP to get the Cuphead behind the scenes experience. You don't want somebody clipping that clip of you saying Cuphead's a fun game on a pinball podcast and haunting you for the rest of your life with whatever monstrosity gets released yeah i'm not i'm not one of these guys who's like what's a cuphead like i've played the played the video game it's fun and i understand the guys who are saying what's a cuphead yeah and again once keith said tin cup i was like yeah let's get a tin cup exactly that's so much better let's do tin cup all right okay so is that are we done with ap i think we're done with ap oh look we can hang on We can send them a comment if you want. Let them know if we have any. I have so many questions. We could send them some questions. We don't have time. You guys send them. Send them your questions and let us know what they say. I doubt the owners listen to any pinball podcast, but if off the off chance they do or somebody gets this through them, they are welcome to come on this podcast and rebut all the comments that Dave Bix has made. So we're happy to give you guys your side in the platform. It's probably an AI bot here anyways, but we'll see. We'll see. You guys let us know how that goes.
    33:12
    All right. Let's see. Walking Dead Remaster Rumor is going around. Sounds good to me. I mean, this is a game that, you know, we, you know, back way, way back when we did a top 10 of Sterns. This is back in the DMD era. And this was the top of our Sterns at the time, The Walking Dead. And I've always kind of felt like the art didn't live up to the rest of the package. It's just kind of like a grimy, gross-looking game, which fits the theme, but isn't like a great, I don't know. It's not like a great-looking game in your game room, I never felt like. So if they were going to redo the art, maybe do a graphic novel-style art on it, it'd be ripe for some cool LCD animations, the upgraded sound, things like that.
    34:02
    Yeah, I think this would be a great candidate for a remaster. What do you think? yeah as a former owner who uh sold the walking dead i had a premium which is funny because uh back in 2016 i was like that is my favorite game of all time is walking dead so it's it's kind of funny that i sold it and these things happen i've never sold a game and re-bought a game i would not re-buy walking dead even though it's an amazing game however this is appealing to me as a walking dead remaster as you said kevin in the it's a very i think it's a very ugly game i mean i understand it's horror and it's got to be gruesome, but like, that doesn't mean it has to be ugly, right? Like in terms of the art. So I'd love to see what they can do with, uh, you know, the, the new spike system with the LCD, with stereo upgraded sound, uh, with maybe really cool lighting, how they've got the expression lighting kits with, with maybe, you know, Raymond stepping in like he did with Metallica and just adding more if it makes sense and where necessary. So it's the kind of thing where it's like, huh, maybe I'm a customer for this game. We shall see. And I hope this rumor is correct, because I heard people talking about remaking Ghostbusters. I'm like, yeah, maybe that would work, but I don't care less about that game, right?
    35:17
    So this is good. Walking Dead Remaster would be great. Yeah, agreed. Have you played Metallica Remastered yet? No, I think we're going to get a chance to do that at Pembroke. So that is something to be very excited about. Have you played it? Yeah, I played it at James's place, and it's cool. I mean, it's very much still Metallica. Like, you're going to feel very familiar on it. They did kind of baby it up a little bit, though, because there's, like, outlaying ball saves and stuff. And it just felt like, you know, John Borg said they, like, had to adjust the geometry a little bit because the spike two cabinet is a little bit deeper i think than the um sam system so i don't know if that like give more room to like make the shots a little easier or if they just dialed it in and made i don't know it just it just felt like it played longer or i you know they i do i know they did adjust the uh the rules a little bit so there might be like extra ball saves and things like that in there i know there's some additional modes and things like things like that which is cool uh but yeah it's like the the sound upgrade the lighting upgrade with the um expression lighting was really cool um the screen is kind of like whatever if you want you know concert footage of of the band up there it's got that um but yeah it's it's metallica yeah i really hate this uh if i mentioned i hate this baby game trend that's going on i understand this is i'm not arguing that these companies should stop doing this because look if you're making money it works then by all means I would be making baby games all day if I could make money off of them. And that were you guys. But it's too bad. I think that one of my favorite things about Metallica is it's a punishing game, right? Like it's like one more time, one more time. I got it, right? Like we're losing games like that. And I don't know what the answer is. Like I look at Godzilla and Godzilla is a big baby game to me. And I heard Zach talking about Godzilla and like they're still cranking it out. Like, he's still waiting for more Godzillas to be made because they're still selling new Godzillas. It's like everybody and their mom has a Godzilla at this point, and yet they're still making it. So people love baby games, man, but if they turn Walking Dead into a baby game, then that might kill it for me. Now, I'm wondering on Metallica if you can de-baby it by just kind of putting it in the original rules, if that's an option, or at least changing the outlane saves. Like, I don't know. It's tough, Kevin, because when they add more content, then they make it so we're going to add more content. So to realistically see the content, you need to extend the length of play based on performance. But whatever happened to just going and playing a quick game? I love playing classic games in the tournament that we run at Nickel City Pinball Club because they're quick. You're not there forever, and you can play, and it's fun, and it's exciting because every shot could be death. But when you play baby games, you kind of ease back. And I think, I'm not joking, I think in the last five years around COVID, when I've stopped really competing in tournaments because of COVID, and then I took a different job, which was taking my time, so I really got out of the competitive scene. I'm trying to get back into it. Playing these baby games at home has made me a worse player. Like, it has absolutely made me a worse player.
    38:38
    So I'm trying to get back into playing better. And my first game, I've talked about this before, It was Iron Man. I never bought. And, man, that made me such a good player. It really accelerated my development as a pinball player. Within a year, I was winning tournaments. So maybe games, plus and minuses for that. But God bless CERN if it's making them money. Yeah, it's absolutely working for Godzilla. So it is interesting to see what they'll do going forward. But let's get a mix of tough and longer playing games. That'd be a good way to go, I think. all right uh speaking of new games were we speaking of new games what a transition it's uh it's sort of a new game i didn't put this under pinball machines you don't need but it should probably go there um you may have seen this around uh on the social medias it's uh wonderland amusements alice goes to wonderland pinball pricing and details is coming to us from NAP Arcade. Not to be confused with the other Alice in Wonderland game that Dutch Pinball's making because why don't we need multiple Alice in Wonderland games all at the same time? This one is a... The simulation has a sense of humor.
    39:58
    This is up in Kickstarter so there's a warning sign number one. There's a Kickstarter. These folks were at TPF in the fall and just had a blank cabinet it's like they're saying it's an 80 size scale pinball machine and they're aiming for under a thousand dollars so yeah you're gonna get with that what you get with that so it's more of a toy than a commercial pinball machine and uh yeah so it's people who sign up for the white rabbit level of the campaign able to receive the game for 7.99 a 20 discount off of its eventual full MSRP. This is limited to 100 who sign up. Let me get you some pictures here. Actually, I can show you a little video, which is, so for those who are watching at home, you can see what's going on. And the thing to know here is it's not even using a full-size pinball. It's using, like, a smaller pinball. So that's going to totally change the feel of how this game plays versus a standard game. I know they had some gameplay footage in here this is just the guy oh here we go this is just the guy uh showing his uh his kickstarter page so yeah it's got you know ramps and wire forms and the the artwork looks nice enough but you can kind of see there like how big it is right it's think of it like an arcade one-up size machine it's got a little lcd in the back glass but man we've we've been down this uh road many times with these startup companies. It's like, you never know what you're going to get, when you're going to get it. Is the game going to be fun?
    41:37
    What are the rules going to be like? Content-wise, what is it going to have in it? It's got one ramp that returns to the right-hand side.
    41:46
    Yeah, a couple pop-up numbers, some rollover lanes, and whatever this thing is on the right. Yeah, so there you go. Else goes to Wonderland.
    41:57
    Nick, any thoughts? Oh, it's got a dust cover. Yeah. You see my notes, Kevin? I did. Okay. I got some thoughts. First of all, let's have a caveat. This product is not for anybody who's listening to this podcast. It is not for us. So it's going to be easy for us to dunk on, and rightfully so. It's not a product for this market.
    42:23
    I guess the question is, who is this a product for? The people who buy arcade one-up things might look at that and say, yeah, this is more palatable. I'll have a little toy pinball machine along with my toy arcade thing. I mean, I feel like the trajectory of folks who do the arcade one-up either get real arcade games or real pinball machines at some point. So if it is this kind of stepping stone to getting people into pinball and buying a real pinball machine, then great. I do wish them luck, right? Because, again, it's not going to win any of us over. but if it brings more people into the fold where they eventually get a real pinball machine great and that might just be like a comfort level of doing it this is the kind of thing that somebody buys and they just get bored of it within a month I mean it has no longevity to it from what I can see It a novelty and then if you buy the dust cover you put the dust cover on it and that it Which is hilarious that it has a full machine dust cover. Like, wow.
    43:29
    And it's got a topper too, Kevin. That's what I was just thinking. on this slide, so they're selling this topper, but then they also have this dust cover, so if you have the topper on the machine, you're not going to be able to use the dust cover. Right? Yeah.
    43:44
    Unless it sticks out the top or something? I don't know. And there's also all these add-ons, so it's $150 for the topper, $129 for a little shooter rod mod, so you can nickel and dime it up to about $1,500 probably if you put all the well it says $18.99 for everything all in yeah so the chat says haters gonna hate not necessarily we've been down we've seen so many pinball quote unquote startups come and deliver nothing people have lost thousands tens of thousands of dollars on startup companies like this kickstarters pre-orders this is not at that level obviously but you gotta proceed with caution on this stuff it's like you need to understand it you know putting together a pinball machine takes so much work supply chain parts ramping up manufacturing software development sound video all of that to put that into a package for less than a thousand dollars I think we are justified in being skeptical on those sorts of things, right? Oh, totally, right? Like they could have gone out to investors and just come out with a product, but they're putting all the risk on the Kickstarter folks, right? So that doesn't instill confidence. And Kevin and I have seen this before, as Kevin's mentioned, so skeptical. I'm not a hater, by the way. I just like 100%, this is not for us folk listening to this podcast. We want real pinball machines. We buy real pinball machines. I don't know. There's probably less than 1% of the people that listen to this and look at this and want this. have to get. Now, Dave's Arcade says you need a gateway drug, and that's along the lines of what I was saying, right? This could bring more people into the fold. They get this, and then they get the itch for a real game.
    45:39
    Dave's Arcade also says nobody wakes up one day and buys a $10,000 pinball machine. That's not true. People do that all the time. They literally do. A lot of people, their first game is an expensive, new-in-box pinball machine, but I get Dave's sentiment of what he's trying to say. So, this could be another stepping stone to getting people into the hobby. So in that case, I wish them luck, and I hope it does work out. I hope it brings more people into the hobby of pinball. Anything that brings more people into playing pinball, competing in pinball, owning pinball, celebrating pinball, understanding pinball, total champions of. You can also take that grant and get yourself a cool EM and start out with a precise pinball machine. There's that. I mean, the person who's going to buy this is not listening to us and not going to do that really, but that is the real right answer, right? Like they're not going to be comfortable doing that, the person who's the market for this. Oh, totally, yeah. But Kevin is right. You take that grand and you get a real pinball machine. So that is what you should do, but understanding how people think and work and the audience is going to, that's not what they're going to do. But maybe this gets them there. Right, yeah. It's the same kind of argument for the home pins that Stern does, right? It's like, do I spend $3,000 to $4,000 on this home version of Jurassic Park or Spider-Man or whatever? Or do I just go out and get a used, you know, full-size WPC game or like a 90s game? And then a game that will hold its value and actual, you know, has, you know, the full, like, cabinet quality and build of a commercial arcade machine. So, yeah, but then you lose that as a newbie, you would lose out on the, well, I don't get a warranty or the backing of a new product purchase. So there are tradeoffs, obviously. But, you know, pinball is a hobby. If you get into it, you're going to need to either figure out, make friends who can fix pinball machines or figure out how to do it yourself. Right. Because that's part of the fun. Amen. All right. What's up next?
    47:43
    Let's see. Oh, let's talk multimorphic stuff. so let me see where's my pull up here somewhere I had it here we go Multimorphic had a couple updates and they've been kind of cranking up the hype machine a little bit the first thing they announced was a new quote unquote invisiglass a low reflection glass for your pinball machines and I think this is a really smart move because people have always liked the glass that comes on the P3 It's got these nice rounded edges, even their standard glass, and they're bringing that to anti-reflective glass. So think of stuff like HD glass from Stern, Invisiglass from JJP, Voodoo glass that Coin Taker carries. Pinball Life may carry it, too. But this is that style of glass that, you know, when it's clean and nice, it looks like there's not even glass on the machine. so they're launching this starting at Texas Pinball Festival what's cool is like this Invisiglass is usually like $200 or $300 a sheet and they're launching it at $150 a sheet for their Invisible glare reduction glass or if you want just like their standard glass is $50 a sheet you can pick it up at TPF looking forward to trying that out myself I should have a sheet on the way here so we'll show it off on stream when it comes in but I've had voodoo glass on my P3 for a long time. It looks really good. Obviously my JJPs have a visit glass on it. So I'm a big fan of, uh, of the anti-reflective glass. So it'll be cool to see how this, uh, compares to, uh, the other, uh, options out there. The other thing, if you're going to TPF, they're doing a factory tour. So if you order the pin glass, you can go straight to the factory, uh, pick it up from there. And also, you know, check out, take a tour of their, uh, facility, play P3 games. So if you want to get your hands on a P3, you can do it there. They have a whole showroom full of games. So very cool. That open house is Saturday, March 8th from 12 to 3. They're in Round Rock, Texas. So you can check them out.
    49:51
    Pinglass.net is the website if you want to put an order in or see the details about the factory tour. The other thing that's been going around for Multimorphic is the rumor of Portal. So this is heavily, heavily rumored to be the next Multimorphic game. I do not have any insider info so I'm just going based on what I'm seeing online and what's coming from Nap Arcade I think this is a great theme for the P3 I think they could do some really cool stuff with the Infinity Trough and the way you know the scoops and all the other cool things that are available on the P3 platform I think this would be a really good match up for the hardware and the software you know blending those video game themes that's the thing we've talked about a number of times like Like, there's, you know, folks of our generation grew up playing video games. They're getting to the point where it's hitting that nostalgia button for some of these themes. Portal is on the newer side. I guess it was probably like mid-2020s when this came out. But, you know, I feel like 90s themes probably hit a little more nostalgic than this. But I think Portal is cool. I hope that's what it is. any thoughts on Multimorphic's turn or Hot New Glass yeah I mean well first of all if you're going to do a video game it should be a game that more people are likely to know and Portal is well more known than Cuphead so good job if that is true and yeah I mean I was never tempted to pay $300 for a piece of glass and I was always terrified of one of mine ever broken that I would have to replace it so it's good to know that they were able to cut the price in half. I mean, I know there's some for a little under $300, but we're getting to the realm of like, okay, now this is tempting for maybe a game I really love. Be nice that they also have some wide-body glass as well. I know that there's like JGP games out there. I don't know if economically it makes sense for them to look into that or do it, but it might not hurt to have some wide-body ones as well. But yeah, I'm great that that's an option. Yeah, they've said if you're interested in wide-body send them an email and they'll you know they're kind of like taking a a pulse check on that to see if there's enough interest and if there is then uh they'll explore doing it so that's cool i agree because i was a dumbass and i scratched the glass on my pirates when i took the back glass off the other day so um i need a new sheet of glass for that i would like it how'd you do that how'd you scratch it like fell on it or no it i as i was like pulling the back glass off i like caught the corner of it on the top of the glass and it just went oh god that would have that would have sent me spiraling oh yeah a week yeah so when you come over and play it for league i'll point it out so you can only focus on that my heart goes out to you kevin it's okay but if that happens i'll just like move that sheet over to alien i put the the fresh sheet on uh on pirates and things will be but yeah i like that i like that i'm supportive of that there you go got at least one customer there you go uh yep so and i could see i could like you said it's to the price where i could see just like putting it on all my games right it's makes it a little more tolerable um all right uh another one in the rumor mill stern files a trademark for king kong myth of terror island uh this is coming from nap arcade as well he's dishing out some hot rumors he was digging through the the pinball uh patent as he is known to do uh patent filing so i mean is myth of terror island i don't think that that's not like a movie or anything particularly no no this is probably like the dnd thing some i think nap arcade was saying where it's like they created like the i forget what the dnd game's called dungeons and dragons from certain it has like some other tyrant's eye something like that tyrant's eye yeah yeah so yeah interesting so they filed for this, does this mean the game people are saying that this game is going to be coming out next from Stern, they're predicting it does that mean it's not coming out next because they're just filing the patent now, right? or does it mean it's getting ready to come out? I have no idea how to interpret that. Yeah, I'm not a patent expert but the rumor is this is Keith Allen's next game, right?
    54:07
    Yes, sir Dude, it makes sense, I mean I said it, I mean this is not like rocket science, but when he made Godzilla, I go, it makes sense for him to make a Kong game because everybody who owns Godzilla is like, oh, I've got to have the Kong game along with it. They're going to print money.
    54:24
    Keith is like the master of the monster games now between Jaws and Godzilla. If this is a genre, obviously he had a lot of passion for Godzilla. That was a theme that he really liked and was able to one of the things I pointed out in the fact is he knew the exact right clips to find for the different parts of the game so the tilt warnings are good and I love when you beat the monster battles and Godzilla just picks the monster up and chucks it across the city. That stuff is great and when you know the theme like that you can pull those things out and make it even better so kudos to Keith for making that happen and I think this is a great fit.
    55:11
    Yeah. And if you guys, if they're looking for a song for that game, I keep, you know, like, through that Godzilla song into Godzilla, there's a song by Big Head Todd and the Monsters called King Kong. And you can just sample the guitar riff or something. It would be great. But there you go. All right. I love it. Oh, Tonda says he's King of the Monsters. There you go. Good dad joke. I like that one.
    55:34
    All right. We got something for all you original theme people. Everybody who's like, they don't make original themes. When are the 90s coming back? I need original themes. These licensed themes are just so lame. I'm not buying John Wick. I'm not buying this or that. Here's your game. Here it is. Ramps Road Trip, baby, coming at you. But not that original theme, Kevin. I want original theme, but not that one. Not this one? Okay. No, no. Oh. Only the original theme that lives in my head. Oh, that's the one. I'm waiting for that one. Okay. But here it is. New manufacturer, Tilt Bob Pinball. Well, it's Ramps to Pinball Manufacturing now is what they're called. Coming up with a new game, Ramps to Robot Trick. We actually showed a little bit of this earlier, probably like six months ago. We showed some early gameplay footage of this. But there's the pinball theme. There's more between a Galactic Tang Force and this. Is that a porta potty on the rest stop? I just noticed that Is that a porta potty on the artwork? That's the first thing my eyes went to is the toilet I was looking at cows but Nick's looking at toilets I don't know what that says about us but Take from that what you will I gotta go to the bathroom so that's That's why Nick's always on the lookout for a bathroom Yeah I think this is a wide body game It's got ramps And here I've got a little Gameplay queued up we can look at while we talk But But, yeah, LCD in the back box. Some speaker lights, you know, are down the side, blah, blah, blah. A screen in the middle of the play field.
    57:14
    What I found interesting about this video is, like, not once does somebody actually shoot a ramp. So for a game called Ramps Road Trip, they're going to need to spice up those flippers a little bit to get it going. But it's got these big drop targets in the middle of the play field, which is kind of interesting. I do like that you can adjust the shot path. So think of it kind of like on Venom, how choosing your character adjusts the shot paths a little bit. This is kind of a scaled-up version of that by hitting things around the playfield. There's a big rotating mech in the back right of the playfield that adjusts the pinball shots. So you can see there was another rejected ramp shot.
    57:58
    So yeah, so here you go, original thing people. get yourself a ramps road trip I will give them credit because they're not taking pre-orders they are just you know building games and shipping them so if there's demand they're going to make games I think they're going to do 100 they said 500 that is a dreamer yeah I mean like they say like think big so they really took that to heart and I applaud that thinking because maybe I'm small minded I would say guys uh ninja eclipse at 100 you can do 100 and and be profitable then then kudos to you but we'll see 500 i think i think they could sell they could sell 100 of these oh totally yeah if ninja eclipse sold 100 right like there's this like on first blush again like you know the the theme this raccoon or whatever going on a road trip i don't know why people have these road trip fetishes that maybe i just i don't that's not the life i live but there's like there's like Vacation America was like this other game that came out in the 2000s. People really wanted to do that. Roadshow. They really wanted to do a road trip theme. But okay.
    59:07
    Yeah, I mean, I wonder how many he's got to sell to be profitable. I would have made it a little bit less than 500 because I don't think anybody's really looking at this and saying they're going to sell 500 of them on an original theme from a company's first game. Right. so yeah that's my take good luck to them well if you build in scarcity and rarity then people are going to be more likely to pull the trigger right so 100 yeah because then you've got a limited item that not many people have it's more likely to hold its value uh if you know you only build 100 of them and there's only 100 in the world then it's like okay well you're not going to be able to you know see like 30 of them on the pin side marketplace at any one time you know if one comes up and you want it you're gonna have to grab it again it comes down to like who's doing the rules on this what's the hardware package platform behind it you know what is it gonna be fun to play who knows you know get your hands on it try it out that's the thing with original themes too right it's not it doesn't have the uh oh well this is a goonies machine i'm gonna drop my money in because i've always wanted a goonies pinball machine i don't care if it's good or not i just want it in my lineup it's gonna be uh well let me see it in at a show at least they did they had it out at the pinball at the beach event in Florida. So they had that going for them. So that was good. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a tough sell. I remember, you know, JJP talking about when they put out dialed in, there was so many people just like I needed, he needed to get out to so many shows and get people's hands on the game. And it was such a tough sell compared to doing licensed teams. You know, you look at how quick guns and roses sold versus versus dialed in. Right. It's, it's, it's no brainer. You know, we've been over this a million times. So, but there you go. Yeah. I want to, I want to say, so like, I think I get not going after a license when you're just trying to start up and you're like, let's, let's get a proof of concept. Let's get a game out there. Let's get a, like, let's get a base hit. Right. Um,
    61:08
    spooky did that with America's most haunted. Yeah. And, and, you know, it's not an amazing game by any stretch, but they launched a game. I think they had limited it to 150 and then they sold out. Right. Like, you see somebody that's got America's Most Haunted, you're not, like, dying to play the game, but you know that there's not a million of them out there. So I think that's not a bad roadmap. I'm not – see what I did there? I'm not faulting them on the original theme so much when they're trying to start up to save some money, but I think it's more or less just like the 500 is just – they're doing that wrong. By the way, speaking of spooky, you sent me a funny clip, Kevin. Kevin rated one of their live streams. They had – they're like – They didn't know what to do. Bug was like, do you know what to do? Bug's like, I listen to those guys' podcasts, and they always don't say nice things about us. But, Bug, if you're listening, dude, I appreciate that. I hope you know I do throw you guys a lot of love and always praise you guys for being successful. And, like, you guys are the roadmap of how to be a startup pinball company. And what you're doing is working. So even though I don't have any spooky games, I might not be a buyer, I do appreciate that. So hopefully everything I say you can say is at least fair. But thanks for listening. And hopefully, you know, if other people want to enter the market, look at what Spooky did because they showed everybody how to do it. Right. Yeah. And so a couple things on that. It's also, you know, if you look at Multimorphic, they came out with Lexi Lightspeed, Cosmic Car Racing, because you've got to ramp up to the point where you have the cash on hand to shell out for a license, right? It totally makes sense. but you gotta back it up with a good game and also get it out in front of people and kind of build up slowly it's gonna be a slow ramp up see what I did there, ramps me while manufacturing alright, let's go on we're crushing it I'm also, you know, I rated Spooky because I'm a Spooky owner now I'm team Spooky, baby I was playing Rick and Morty that night and Bug was streaming Evil Dead so I was like, the hell, let's throw a rate over to Spooky Pinball and it was great. I was laughing the whole time.
    63:21
    All right. Oh, quick plug to our friend Joe Chervino. The only pinball award ceremony that matters, the D-Jennies are taking place Saturday, March 15th at 8 p.m. Eastern, live from Super Wonder Gallery in Toronto, Ontario. The fourth annual Pinball Degenerate Awards, hosted by degenerate Joe Chervino. This award ceremony will be presented in front of a live studio audience featuring a jam-packed night of pintertainment. These are his words, not mine. Including live variety acts, comedy, music, a game show with prizes, and the most awards in D-Jenny's history. Get ready for surprises, fun jokes, special guests, and a whole lot of pinball degeneracy streamed live on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. um yeah like we've talked about how dumb the pinball awards like actual pinball awards are because you know five machines come out in a year and for the popularity contest awards stern's gonna win most of the time because those are the games that everybody has played the most so it's just the numbers game and you know the podcasters are gonna spend months talking about it you know giving free marketing to the awards hosts and all this is so much that's dumb about them that's why we never talk about pinball awards Here what I talk about because I think Joe is doing something fun uh it not serious at all it a good time he puts a lot of time and effort into it and uh look forward to checking out the d jenny uh next saturday uh live on on the internet and i'll be joining the festivities briefly i think around 10 30 ish eastern so we're going to the pinball league next week and then after that coming home to to do a virtual appearance on the degenerates award so uh thanks joe looking forward to it always a good time joe does a good time and once again uh joe has acknowledged this but look at look look look joe it's back on the uh buffalo pinball versus city pinball we've got the trophy it's at the club i put it in the trophy case come and get it dave warm up the streaming kit uh uh streaming rig whatever we're gonna stream it we're gonna fight those canadians it's on tariffs are on pinball wars back on we're booing each other it's great that's right i boo the canadian geese now when i see him i'm like boo go back to canada geese and we do the uh and we and we do at the um city versus buffalo pinball we do the national anthem. Joe Chervino actually sings it, I believe. He sings the Canadian one. So God help them if they boo the U.S. national anthem because just like the hockey team, we'll kick the shit out of you.
    66:12
    USA, baby, let's go. All right, that's it. That's it for news and events. We've got some impressions of Dungeons & Dragons to give. We've played a bit of it. We had our launch party last night at the club. What are your thoughts on Dungeons & Dragons so far? I'm trying to get thoughts on it I mean I've played it definitely a handful of times Oh yeah Not a review by the way It's not a review guys it's an impression I really so I really need Here's what's going on with this game I need to go down there To the club but before I do that I gotta read the rules and really try To wrap my mind around what they're trying To do with this game So I can just talk about kind of the presentation of the shots As a game that shoots I like it.
    67:00
    Some people would call it a baby game at our club. I can't seem to crush it. Yeah, I don't feel that at all. I feel like it's reasonable. I like it. It seems fair. I think it's a great-looking game. I think the LCD animations are cool. I like the narration that goes on. And I do like games. I think this game helps get the player immersed, which is nice. I do like games where if you're fighting somebody, which you're fighting creatures on this game, you know, shots do damage and they have health bars and stuff like that. That does really help with what's going on in a game. Other than, like, Wick, you just never feel like you're interacting with the game at all. It's just points. So they do a good job of that. There's a lot in there. I just don't know how it all comes together from a rule perspective, especially with, like, the characters and how the characters influence the game and how they progress and how you work your way around the map and all that. So this is really like a high level, how does it feel at first blush, how does the presentation feel and look. The dragon's cool. We've got the pro.
    68:05
    It looks great, kind of sculpts great. I like how you fight the dragon and the rule around that where it's like if you, the balls are constantly coming out even when you drain, but if you drain so many balls versus getting so many hits against the dragon that determines who wins or loses. It does have a victory lap, which I don't like. But the gelatinous cube is really cool with the staged magnet in the balls, the way it handles it. So I don't know. I think it's got a lot going for it. So there's good potential here, and there is reason for people to be excited about this game if you are. Going through the dungeon crawl when you are navigating through the shots and doing the video screen and choosing which path to go down and how it changes every Sunday and memorizing it. That's cool as well.
    68:55
    It's still early, right, Kev? There's still like eight-something in the code, so it's hard to get into it when you don't know how it's going to change. But the next step is I will sit down, I will read the rules in the game as people are starting to put it online, and then I'll really dig into the game, and then maybe in a couple months we can do a proper review of this. Yeah, for sure. And, yeah, I like the overall package is really good. Like you said, the presentation, artwork, animations, voice work, all really good, right? So those are some things that stuff like X-Men took big hits on, right? People like the layout on X-Men, but, you know, the call-outs are bad. The animations are not great.
    69:40
    I think this does a good job of bringing in some interesting shots. It's a unique layout. It's not a straight-up fan layout or anything like that, but it's not doing anything super crazy either. So it's interesting but also a little bit familiar, right?
    69:57
    But the mechanics, like the gelatinous cube and the dragon, I do want to see. I haven't played the premium, so I want to see how cool the dragon is when he shoots pinballs at you. I bet that's pretty sweet.
    70:09
    The shield mech I like a lot. It comes up slower than I expect it to most times, though, I see the ball going for the drain and I hit it, and most of the times I miss it. So I need to get better at predicting or being a little more proactive about using that. I do like using it during the dragon multiball. That helps you kind of battle the dragon and not drain as many balls and get to the victory last part of that. Right now, my strat on the game is do dragon multiball, and you're going to get probably like $100, $150 million. And then I finished a mode last night, and I got only like $20 to $30 million. so that's kind of where the scoring's at right now i'm sure there's some weird like do this one mode or go to this one village and you you get what crazy scoring and apparently if you progress so you can save your progress using insider connected and we disable this for tournament play obviously but if you're playing uh just casually you can do that and there's a character you can unlock that gives you 2x playfield scoring i guess dave was telling me about that yesterday so um yeah so it seems cool it definitely this feels like a game that you're gonna want to have it at home to really dig into it and and dig into the rules and which is cool right um and overall gameplay wise it feels like middle of the road difficulty wise it's not a total ass kicker like uh you know black knight sword of rage but it's also not super uh baby game either it feels kind of like somewhere in the middle yeah so promising and as i pointed out in the last podcast and chris the pinter is pointing out now is there he's chris says there's going to be like two things that run the scoring and will never be addressed so again dwight has a reputation or habit of leaving either bugs or problems in the game with scoring or balancing that that ruins it from more of like a tournament perspective, right? Like at home players, they're probably fine with these things, but just be wary, right? Like these past sins will come back to haunt you, right? And you got to just go into that eyes wide open. This game's not complete yet, and you might have issues in there that will be frustrating to certain people. We'll see. Yeah, so again, it's a stern, there's going to be a million of these out there, so you don't have to rush out and get it. go out, play it. If you like it, maybe consider it once they move the code along a little bit more. But it does feel like there's a decent amount of code here already. It's not like 007 where it's a shell of a game, right? It feels like there's a lot of features in here.
    72:51
    All right, Kev, it's the time for game room updates, which also means bathroom break for Nick, and I'll be back. I don't have much, so you better make it quick. Filibuster. All right, here we go. Game room updates. So I've been playing a lot competitively this, uh, this past month. So Nick and the crew opened up the nickel city pinball club. They've had, I think, feel like three tournaments there already. So we've done that. Uh, we also started up team league, which has been great. We, I've also gone out to the Rochester pinball collective a few times. They had their monthly, uh, strikes tournament, which I finished third, tied for third. so that was pretty fun and i also went out for the classics tournament before the national championships on wednesday which i played terribly so i've had my ups and downs competitive pinball wise i at the uh dungeons and dragons launch party yesterday at the at the nickel city club uh i did okay i was like middle of the pack so it's i'm kind of all over the place competitively but um that's fine it's just been been fun to get out there more and and play a little bit more on location because I've been playing in my game room mostly over the past you know few years so been fun to do that video game wise uh I've been playing a new game called split fiction it's like cool yeah my son and I were like we should find a co-op game to play because we we both like video games but we don't end up playing games together very much uh because we've both got our genres that we like and you know friends that we play with and things like that so we're like I saw that that popped up in my social media feeds and I was like, Hey, this looks pretty cool. And it was getting really good reviews. Um, so I grabbed it. It's, it's supposed to be not super long too, which was appealing to me. I supposed to be like maybe a 20 hour campaign. Um, not that I don't want to play games with my son for that long, but it's just like, I don't need a 50 hour video game all the time. So, uh, what's cool about split fiction is it's a couch co-op game. You can play it couch or, uh, over the internet, but I was looking for something we could play couch co-op and we started playing it and it's cool it's just like all these cool different little bite sized pieces of gameplay different genres that you can kind of dig through so we've been playing that really highly recommended especially if you're looking for a co-op game check out Split Fiction it's on all the modern gaming platforms it's an EA game it's 50 bucks so not your full price crazy modern game either and then The thing I've been doing in my game room mostly is doing these weekly streams.
    75:30
    Ever since the last podcast at the beginning of February, we've been doing monthly streams. Actually, I think we went back to January on that. It's been good. I've been, every other week, been doing P3 stuff in between Touch and Base with some of the other games I've got. We did Royal Rumble. We did Alien.
    75:50
    We did a few games on the P3. I think next week it's going to be pirates. I might try to do some wizard mode run action on pirates. Probably not going to get there, but we could try because that's a, it's deep into the game, but we'll, we'll load up Norrington and see if we can crank through some, some pirates. I haven't really played that too much since then.
    76:13
    It's for me and Nick has returned. He did it. I did it. Yeah. And which is remarkable because my best new in box purchase last year was a bidet so honestly i i'd be forgiven if i was up there for quite some time i'm proud of you you did it yeah thank you you bought two by the way one went over so well martha and i was like how can we go on with life while having the house stock of them so are you gonna get a robot toilet like matt has that's that's like next level yeah it's a robot we got one of it's a robot one's one's like one's a full thing the other one's an a mod okay that you do need yeah you You really do need a modded toilet. Bathroom mods. That's right.
    76:55
    Yeah, so one thing I want to do in this – I don't know where we put this section, but I wanted to shout out. So I had a call to action and said, look, if somebody wants to donate and support the stream, it's even better than doing it on Twitch. Just send a PayPal donation to buffalopinball at gmail.com. And we had somebody come in, and so it's Steven – I'm sorry, Steven. I'm going to be butchering your last name. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. It's either Paradis or maybe it's Paradise. That would be amazing. But, Stephen, thank you for your donation. I'm going to say anybody who donates more than $25 at any time, we'll give them a shout-out on the stream. If anybody donates more than $10,000, Kevin will fly out to your house and make you a hamsteak, which I understand that Kevin can make a good hamsteak. I can throw a hamsteak in a frying pan any day. There you go. Okay, so keep that in mind. But, yeah, I mean, I've been spending a lot of time at the Nickel City Pinball Club. I absolutely love it. I love being there. It is an amazing spot. It's like my sanctuary where I get away from work and everything else, and time kind of just flies by there. So I've been loving that. But my one update is I want to sell Jaws. I need to list it for sale. Maybe I'll do that today. And I'm going to sneeze in a sec. But I want to buy a John Wick LE, I think. So Jaws is going to go up for sale.
    78:15
    There it is. There we go. There's the sneeze. if um if somebody wants to buy a jaws you can reach out to me i'm going to get up on pin side if you're around the area or whatever you want to make life easy and if somebody's got john wick la and you want to trade for a jaws premium maybe we can make this easy so there you go that sounds like a deal to me all right let's go to this is a fun new topic i see you got kevin we don't have mods you don't need but kevin's got a thing that says machines you don't need yeah so i'm i was telling dick i'm not going to force the mods you don't need they have to happen organically and authentically, right? I'm not going to shoehorn something in here that's like a borderline Majid on me. So this came across my inbox the other day, and I had actually seen this in Facebook Marketplace, and our buddy Rob sent this along, and he pointed out the fact that the way this is listed is really good. So without further ado, let's take a look at the Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest Pinball Machine. This is the Zizzle pinball machine. Okay, this is the, like, we were talking about the Alice in Wonderland machine earlier. That's basically a slightly better Zizzle-sized machine, right?
    79:27
    So this is, the description of this is really good. It's located in Buffalo, New York, originally listed at $1,400, on sale for $1,200. Okay, just let me read the description to you. It says, Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest Pinball Machine by Zizzle Games. the last time I checked if you want to look up the price for the same console it's $1,800 due to its rarity and the fact that it's Johnny Depp's last movie with the franchise that makes it more of a collectible than a toy everything works on it as it should if this post is still up then it's still available it was posted 19 weeks ago and it's still available Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest there you go there it is you can play this little amazing game for yourself. Apparently he says some fun stuff in the video. I'll leave that to you. His justification for the pricing, I think it's still in here. There you go. So he went to eBay and found other unlisted items. It's typically listed at $1,800 apparently on Pirates or on eBay. So that's all the justification you need. Here's another. He found another. These are brand new in box ones, just for the record, too. And it looks like the same picture from both. So one listed on eBay, one listed on Facebook Marketplace.
    80:52
    Oh, no, this is the one on eBay for $1,800 new in the box. So there you go. If you want a Zizzle for way more than it's worth, for a Zizzle, you should pay like $100 at that. So good luck. Available for you on Facebook Marketplace, Buffalo, New York, the POTC Zizzle. So there you go.
    81:13
    That's the pinball machine you don't need. Yeah. Bless his heart. He's trying real hard, trying real hard. Good justification though. I think, you know, uh, all right. So that's it. That's the machine you don't need. That's going to do it for another episode of Brody even talk pinball.
    81:30
    Um, if you, I'm going to take you on a little tour of the Buffalo pinball website before we go. So if, if you're like, man, I love this show. Uh, I want to, I want to interact with Buffalo pinball, even more Buffalo pinball.com former nominee for Twippy best website of the year. Uh, you can go to the merch site, uh, merch tab right here at the top. Uh, it'll, it'll load you up here and you can get yourself some sweet swag. You can rep the Buffalo pinball, uh, t-shirts play angry, the classic skull design, or even a Brody even talk pinball or Brody even pinball shirt. Um, we got mugs stickers, put it on your, on your ride, on your laptop, you'll be looking good. You'll be impressing everybody with your Brody Even Pinball mug or stickers or Buffalo Pinball merch. So there you go. You'll be looking good too. You can also check out past episodes of the show on the podcast tab. We've got our review ratings back here if you want to see what we've rated games before. Check out all of our upcoming events or streams, all that fun stuff. It's all there waiting for you at buffalopinball.com. Don't forget you can follow us on social media. All the links for those are there as well. You can sub to us on Twitch. Share your Amazon Prime sub with us at no extra charge, and we'll make a little money off of that. And, you know, like Nick said, PayPal, or you can drop us a review. Click on the Spotify link and drop us a review there. Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, wherever you happen to listen to the show, drop us a review. It helps other people find the show. It helps us out. So make any parting words for the fine folks at home. uh no but thank you for listening i was gonna i was gonna read what grock wrote about jay fairbrother but it's not that uh not that interesting i asked grock the other day uh what about like facing jay fairbrother from buffalo pinball and competition and some of the highlights that grock says um if jay fairbrother from buffalo pinball is at your pinball tournament you're dealing with a guy who's more than just a player he's a key cog in the Buffalo pinball machine. As a league treasurer and a longtime member since the group's start in 2013, Jay's not a top-tier competitor like Kevin Manning or Martha Donovan, but he's a community glue guy with a solid presence. I feel like that's pretty accurate. That's a nice thing. And here's the first tip. It says if you're playing against him in a tournament, here's what the AI Grok says on Twitter. Don't overestimate. Jay's not a consistent winner. His name doesn't pop up in league podiums or big tourney results often. He's finished mid-pack and stuff like the 2016 charity event, blah, blah, blah. Play your game. He's not likely to out-tech you with wizard-level shots. AI is getting so advanced these days. Let me tell you, he knows Jay very well. It's very impressive. Nice.
    84:22
    Those are like the quote-unquote benefits of having done this for 10-plus years. There's all this content out there that AI has just devoured about us. all the YouTube video transcripts and blog posts and social media posts. It knows a lot. So there you go. It also says you've got a tilt edge on him. Allegedly he tilted out on Sopranos at some point. I don't remember this, but there's a lot of things. If he's nudging hard, he might risk it again. Keep your own... Yeah.
    84:57
    Alright, and Nick Lane locked up. So with that, let's wrap it up. have a good, have a good month. We'll see you next month. I should be streaming tomorrow night. Pirates. That's the plan. In the meantime, follow us on Twitch and YouTube and hit the notification buttons and all that fun stuff. And you'll know when we go live. So off you go, have a good rest of your spring forward day. The warmer weather's on the way and we will catch you next time. Have a good month.
    85:32
    you