Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 126 - VR or GNR?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·44m 50s·analyzed·Oct 19, 2020
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

JJP's GNR is visually stunning but gameplay-heavy multiball raises competitive concerns.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss Jersey Jack Pinball's Guns N' Roses release, analyzing its aesthetic appeal versus gameplay concerns, particularly the heavy multiball focus and stripped features on the Standard Edition. They also briefly cover the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset and the impact of COVID-19 on their local pinball tournament scene in Kansas City.

Key Claims

  • Guns N' Roses Standard Edition MSRP is $6,750, down from Wonka's higher price point

    high confidence · Dennis provides official pricing breakdown: SE $6,750, LE $9,500, CE $12,500 (sold out)

  • The game is extremely multiball-heavy; Kevin (Buffalo Pinball) never played a single game without achieving multiball

    high confidence · Dennis watched Buffalo Pinball's stream and observed consistent multiball occurrence across gameplay samples

  • Slash personally called Paul McCartney to secure 'Live and Let Die' for the GNR game after JJP's initial licensing request was denied

    medium confidence · Dennis recounts a story about Slash's direct intervention in asset acquisition, but characterizes it as something 'one of our listeners who had not' may not know, indicating secondhand sourcing

  • GNR Standard Edition lacks upper playfield, guitar neck/bass guitar neck ramps, and four-flipper configuration

    high confidence · Dennis details specific feature differences between SE and LE/CE models based on 'This Week in Pinball' deep dive and photos

  • JJP's games consistently excel at visual spectacle and theme integration but often struggle with gameplay

    medium confidence · Dennis expresses pattern observation: 'this seems to be an issue with J.J.P. where they're hitting pretty consistently how things look, but not being a great player or something will play decent'

  • Kansas City competitive pinball is currently inactive due to COVID-19

    high confidence · Tony describes deleting tournament notifications and canceling plans to play at Pizza West with friends due to pandemic restrictions

Notable Quotes

  • “It looks good. I mean, it physically looks good. Those guitar pick spinners are an awesome touch. And everything about the game and the art looks amazing... the light show also looks amazing. As for everything else, it's a music pen.”

    Tony @ ~25:00 — Captures the core tension of GNR: exceptional aesthetics but questionable gameplay substance

  • “I watched the first hour. I never saw a single game where he didn't get a multiball. A single one... this is really multiball heavy.”

    Dennis @ ~38:00 — Key observation about GNR's gameplay balance; raises concerns about tournament viability and single-ball play appeal

  • “If I replace any one of my games that I currently own in my seven game lineup and put this in, this is what would draw everyone's eye.”

    Tony @ ~47:00 — Underscores GNR's visual dominance in a collection, emphasizing spectacle value over gameplay

  • “I just want their games to be as fun as they look. And I don't know. So say we all.”

    Dennis @ ~42:00 — Expresses the community's desire for JJP to match visual quality with gameplay depth

  • “in a way, ironically, that JJP might be in a bit of a bind in the sense that there is no way that whatever game they do next is going to have the assets that this did because there will never be another instance where they have a slash that will pull every string”

    Dennis @ ~52:00 — Highlights GNR's unique asset advantage through Slash's personal connections and the difficulty replicating this for future licenses

  • “Do you think maybe it's not possible? That maybe to fully capture a world under glass with sculpts, like in this case a game that very much wants to look like a stage show, that making it look like a stage essentially mandates that you compromise its playability as a pinball machine?”

    Tony @ ~44:00 — Articulates a fundamental design tension in GNR between thematic immersion and mechanical playability

  • “we're now in segment three. Sad pinball. Sad pinball things. I went ahead and pulled the trigger yesterday and I deleted all of my reoccurring pinball tournament notices because they were just too depressing”

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyGuns N' RosesgameEric MinnerpersonSlashpersonKeith JohnsonpersonStern PinballcompanyPaul McCartneypersonDennisperson

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball community expectations now anchored to GNR's asset quality benchmark; future games will be compared unfavorably to standard set by Slash's personal intervention

    medium · Dennis: 'now Guns N' Roses is the new Hobbit. It's what everyone's going to compare to'; discusses impact on community expectations for Toy Story and other future licenses

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Uncertainty whether GNR qualifies as legitimate tournament game or falls into 'group experience' category like Total Nuclear Annihilation; potential brutalization/modification requirements may reduce natural playability

    medium · Dennis: 'I still question whether or not this is really a good tournament game'; notes if brutalization required to make tournament viable, game becomes unfun for casual play

  • ?

    competitive_signal: JJP's Standard Edition pricing ($6,750) now undercuts Stern Premium but remains above Stern Pro; stripped features may limit competitive appeal vs. Stern's brutal/aggressive Pro models

    high · Dennis: 'even with all that they've done, this has just gotten it below the Stern premium price. It's still not really competitive at all with the Stern Pro price'; notes upper playfield, guitar necks, and ball lock features removed from SE

  • ?

    design_philosophy: GNR's heavy multiball focus may compromise single-ball play appeal and tournament viability despite exceptional visual presentation

    high · Dennis observed Kevin never played a game without multiball; expressed concern that playfield layout feels compromised (flat plastic in upper left on SE); GNR explicitly designed for playing through entire songs in multiball sequences

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.135

0:00
This episode of the Eclectic Gamers Podcast is brought to you by a new power rising in the East, the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. Oh yes, my precious. The Roanoke Pinball Museum is an interactive museum dedicated to the science and history of pinball. Their mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and history through pinball while preserving and honoring its role in American culture. Yes, but you don't have any friends, so go to the museum every day except Monday. It has over 65 machines with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. It's the Roanoke Pinball Museum, and we wants it! Roar!
0:54
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, October 18th. This is episode 126. I am Tony. I'm Dennis. I think we're going to have a light episode, Tony. I think so. After the last couple ones, that's not a terrible deal breaker. No, and we've got some new stuff. Yeah, there's some new stuff. I freely admit that I've not been doing a lot of research between work stuff and then the whole family going down with a stomach bug for most of this week, including myself. I've just been kind of a low-energy creature since then. So I actually slept the other day. This is insane for people who actually know me. I slept for 12 hours straight. Wow. That is too many hours.
1:57
Yeah. Considering my normal sleep is about seven hours, if that, I'm normally awake. Like, that's like a lot of sleep. And I'm normally up by like between four and five in the morning. Yeah.
2:13
Definitely been just not a great pair of weeks, really, around the old homestead. rough times. Well, I haven't been doing much. I got Star Wars Squadrons as a birthday present, so I played a few missions of that. I did too. I had it when we recorded our last... I know. Last time we talked, you had it, but you hadn't played it yet. Right. I've played it since then. I need to get... I think I would be happier if I had a joystick. I think I've got an old joystick in storage I need to look for, but with being sick and everything, it's just not happened. and all the joysticks I looked at buying are like, you know, 200 plus dollars. So it's so-so with a mouse.

Tony @ ~61:00 — Reflects pandemic impact on local pinball community and competitive play infrastructure

Tony
person
Kevinperson
The Hobbitgame
Wonkagame
Star Trekgame
Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
Lord of the Ringsgame
Jurassic Parkgame
Aliensgame
ACDCgame
Aerosmithgame
Metallicagame
Oculus Quest 2product
Pizza Westorganization
Roanoke Pinball Museumorganization

design_philosophy: JJP exhibits consistent pattern of visual excellence but gameplay mediocrity; Wonka deemed 'second best playing game' despite poor art; Hobbit looks amazing but plays poorly

medium · Dennis: 'this seems to be an issue with J.J.P. where they're hitting pretty consistently how things look, but not being a great player or something will play decent, but they'll miss on the looks'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: JJP potentially faces structural design conflict: achieving visual spectacle and stage-show theming mandates playability compromises as inherent cost

    medium · Tony raises philosophical question: 'making it look like a stage essentially mandates that you compromise its playability as a pinball machine?'; Dennis agrees this is 'a very real possibility'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: GNR's exceptional asset integration (all band members, Paul McCartney song, tour footage) is unrepeatable advantage; Slash's personal connections enabled licensing that official channels could not secure

    high · Dennis details Slash calling Paul McCartney directly after JJP's label request failed; emphasizes 'there is no way that whatever game they do next is going to have the assets that this did because there will never be another instance where they have a slash that will pull every string'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: JJP continues aggressive three-tier pricing model with CE sold out; Standard Edition price reduction signals volume strategy rather than margin compression

    medium · Dennis notes: 'JJP... very much in my view are still like they're trying to carve out as much of the pie as they can in that upper stratosphere price point area'; SE price drop 'was a great thing for them' and 'smart move' for volume

  • $

    market_signal: COVID-19 causing sustained disruption to competitive pinball infrastructure; Kansas City scene described as 'dead' with community unable to gather for tournaments

    high · Tony deleted tournament notifications; references being 'too depressing to see keep popping up'; unable to attend Pizza West with friends; broader comment 'it's not well it is dead to me but it's kind of dead to everybody right now'

  • ?

    product_strategy: GNR positioned primarily as visual collector/experience game rather than competitive/rules-depth title; appeals more to spectacle seekers than gameplay-focused players

    high · Dennis: 'if the reason to buy this isn't the gameplay, but rather the experience of being in the rock concert'; Tony: 'this is the type of thing that would draw everyone's eye' in a collection

    • 3:02
    Yeah, have you tried with just a controller? I haven't. I need to dig my controller out and just try it with a controller.
    3:10
    Yeah, it plays weird. It's less arcadey than I thought it would be. Yeah, I enjoy what I've played of it. But I've just been playing it with the mouse So I'm not sure where my controller is I am sure I think it's in my laptop bag Because I had it because I was playing Ace Combat on the laptop at one point So I've done that And I also I got the Doom series of books Which I've never read Doom I've only been familiar with it I've read the entire series Multiple times So I'm about, as of this morning, I think I'm about 530 pages in on the first book. So I started reading it yesterday. That's not bad. The first book is my favorite.
    4:00
    It's the big one. It is. It's the classic. The first three books are all really solid, and there's nothing wrong with the other books.
    4:11
    They're just a little different. it gets away i think from the yeah that was common with sci-fi authors back in the day too as mob for example has found i don't know if you ever read this foundation oh i read the foundation once okay and so one of the weird things for me with foundation versus a lot of other books is most people who write books they follow characters and with with foundation it was very much well we follow this universe but your characters are changing because your books are going forward in time so much that if you get attached to characters they're gone eventually because time dictates that they will be gone so you're more like you're living in the world and you have to, whether or not you like the new characters just completely depends on the book so yeah there's even some books that take place or more modern sci-fi books that do the same thing where they deal with a like time frame but you don't really get a lot of character jump between them where each book is a standalone story, but it's all in a shared world. But the most you'll get of characters from one book to another is maybe a mention because they're well enough known to be mentioned or as like a cameo type thing. Yes. Well, I think speaking of mentions, we can go ahead and jump into pinball where I only have two things for us to mention. and we'll only spend significant time on one of them. The first item, though, I wanted to bring up is the Virtual Pinball Expo, which had just essentially wrapped up. I did not watch this. I don't know if you watched it. I didn't. You were too sick to watch it. Yeah, between all of that and after seeing what a virtual conference was like that was work-related and much more targeted and focused and how rough that turned out, I wasn't going to even attempt a virtual hobby conference because it just sounded like a train wreck waiting to happen. Yeah, I've heard mixed reactions. Most of the reactions I heard were not that that was okay, but they weren't enamored with it. I have heard a few people enjoyed it. The only thing I have watched, and I did not watch it live, is I did catch the VOD of Final Round, which is a podcast. they did a workshop on discussing pinball podcasts. So I have a link to that in the show notes, but now I know how to start a pinball podcast. Oh, that's good. Yeah, I'm always trying to learn. It's always good to know how to do something. It is. And speaking of learning, let's go to the other and real pinball topic that we have for this episode, which is we are the last ones to talk about Jersey Jack pinball's Guns N' Roses. Yeah. Do you think there's going to be a big secret announcement tomorrow to have three episodes in a row where something huge happens the day after we come out. I hope so. I really hope so, too. Just because it gives us something where it's like a low bar for us to clear because we don't have all the other info to feed off of.
    7:19
    So, anyway, we've got Guns N' Roses. It finally came out. Jersey Jack Pinball has been working on this for quite a while. It's been over a year since Wonka came out. and just, I guess, some real quick stuff about the game. I think a lot of people who listen to us into pinball are already familiar with it, but the design was both Eric Minyer, who did Pirates of the Caribbean for Jersey Jack, and Slash is considered a co-designer of the game from the band. Rules and Software was Keith Johnson. Ted Estes was a software engineer. They also had software support from Joe Katz, J.T. Hartley, Bill Grump, and Duncan Brown. There are 3D sculpts in the game. They were done by Matt Resterer. Digital assets were led by John Paul DeWin.
    8:06
    Art, they had a mix of artists who worked on this game. I think John Paul DeWin coordinated them, but there was also Dane Henry Jr., who I think did the playfield art, and then there was Aaron Buhler, Mark Molitor, and Jesper Abels, who I think did things with the cabinet and back glass. Vikas Dio did sound. He, I believe, was the one who did sound for Wonka. and there are, of course, others involved on the team, but I think those are the main ones I would hit on. Three models, as usual. Standard edition price has dropped yet again. Remember, Wonka fell in price, but this is down even more. The MSRP for the standard edition is $6,750.
    8:47
    Limited edition is $9,500, and the collector's edition, which is all sold out, is $12,500. So LE and CE stayed at the same price as Wonka. So, just overall, all the models have 21 songs, studio master recordings from Guns N' Roses. There is some original pinball music that was created and done just by Slash, not by the band.
    9:12
    There is game narration that was done by a couple of the band members. I think all the band members provided voice recordings, though, in addition to the narration. So you have custom call-ups from all of the band members. There is live footage and concert screen animations. Those all come from the Not In This Lifetime World Tour. And it's got the 27-inch back box display. There's a jukebox attract mode option. You can put the game into a family-friendly mode, or in the adult mode there are explicit songs that are not playable in the family-friendly mode version of it. So there's a drumstick ramp, which uses Frank Ferrer Thunder Chucker Vader drumsticks as the actual ramp itself. There are divertable ramps. There are two chrome catwalk steel return ramps. There's an interloop jump ramp. There's a direction-sensing spinning record platform toy that's in the kind of middle right of the playfield, almost underneath a slash-sculpted hat. There's a screaming Axl Rose figure. There's a concert speaker stack. there are guitar pick shaped RGB lit spinners which I think are pretty cool looking there are 30 RGB Guns N' Roses hexagon stage lights there's three pops there's a core playfield magnet it's got the action button it's got a 7 inch stage display it's got all sorts of LEDs hundreds of LEDs the biggest difference between the standard and then the LEC is The LE CE is a four-flipper game, whereas it's only three flippers on the standard. A lot less color-controlled lighting and lighting in general on the standard edition. And the upper play fields are only on the higher-end models. They do have a game physical difference with the CE versus the LE which is there a coma multiball which is a physical ball lock on the CE version so I think that there a lot more in terms of specific breakouts but obviously it going to be really confusing just for me to rattle them off audibly So I do have three links in the show notes for people. I have a link to the This Week in Pinball deep dive if you want to read about all the stuff I just mentioned is listed in there and there's a bunch of photos. I also have a link to Straight Down the Middle's featurette video. So if you want to know more about kind of the creation of the game, I would look at that. And I also have a link to Buffalo Pinball's recording of their gameplay reveal. So if you want to see several hours of hands-on footage of someone actually playing the game, that's what I would turn to for that. So I think that gives a pretty good assortment. So Tony, what do you think about GNR? It looks good. I mean, it physically looks good. Those guitar pick spinners are an awesome touch.
    11:59
    And everything about the game and the art looks amazing. the light show also looks amazing. As for everything else, it's a music pen.
    12:14
    Yep. That is a great, that's a great summary. It seems to really have tried to encapsulate the stage show experience. I'd say more so than any music pen I've seen. It might be the best music pen.
    12:29
    I'm definitely willing to say that is a very real possibility. The fact that they brought the standard edition price down even lower I think was a great thing for them. I think it was a smart move.
    12:47
    If that'll change into being enough sales to make it worthwhile or to, I mean, let's be honest. Nobody at Stern cares that J.J.P. put out another cheap game. Because they're like, oh no, they put out a game. Which one of the four games we're putting out this year should we be worried about? Because that's the truth of the matter. But I think for JGP, it gives a real option for people that aren't able to pull the trigger at the higher levels.
    13:24
    Yeah, I'm of mixed emotion on what they've done with the standard. but broadly speaking i i like the i like it i like the idea i'm glad they're finally uh continuing this push since that they started with blanca to get something into a price range that more people can actually obtain i think they've made really big strides with that i think it makes sense from an operator perspective though we have to bear in mind that what operator perspective is there right now, really, is a factor. The issue, though, is even with all that they've done, this has just gotten it below the Stern premium price. It's still not really competitive at all with the Stern Pro price, and there is so much stripped out on this SE. I wonder how many people outside of operators are really going to be comfortable giving up the upper play field, the guitar neck and bass guitar neck ramp and ball lock feature. You see a lot of the spectacle that you give up in the SE. Right. So now where Stern would solve this problem is that the aggressive nature of how their pro models tend to play, more brutal and faster, if we're to speak in general terms, that appeals to a lot of players, a lot of tournament folks really, really like that. For me, it remains to be seen that this is actually a proper competitive game. so I don't know if the SE can appeal to people like that. When I look at the SE photos of this week in pinball, I look at the playfield layout, and the whole upper left is just like this flat plastic to help feed these loops and stuff. It looks like there was just a lot of space that they didn't know what to do with when they took the upper playfields out and they just kind of put a plastic thing on it. That's a valid point. And that's not necessarily bad. I mean, it's like, well, what were you going to do back there anyway? I don't know. All I'm saying is, like, when I look at this, as you noted about, like, best music pen, I don't know if it's going to be the best playing music pen, but in terms of that well under glass, you know, everyone wants a well under glass, that this looks like the most well the under glass pen, not just of a music pen, of any pen I can think of. but so much of that is on the LE and above. Like the hi-hat and cymbals on the pop bumpers, the hot rails, the lighting that they do on the sides. It's on the SE, but it's just white light. It's color changing on the others. The upper play field and the guitar necks, those guitar necks are gone on the SE. It just, it looks so much more musical, so much more stage show when you go to the LE model that it's like, if the reason to buy this isn't the gameplay, but rather the experience of being in the rock concert, I worry that for most people, you give up too much rock concert at the SUL. It all of a sudden becomes a regular pen.
    16:28
    Well, and I think that that's very valid, and I think gameplay will be the decider there, and I've not played it, obviously, so I have no idea. I do know from having watched videos of the gameplay, I'm not sure that it does it.
    16:48
    And that's an interesting one. Opinions on this are very mixed that I have seen. I still have not played it. In fact, someone had agreed with some of the comments that I made on the pinball show and shared them on Pinside, but shared them in a way that I think made people think that I just was giving these edicts without having played the game. And I was like, no, these are the concerns that I have. Just watching.
    17:12
    Tony, you and I have played pinball for a long time. I don't mean this in a boastful way, but at this point, if you give me significant video with a properly set up game and a decent player, I usually can tell whether or not I'm going to like how the game is. Right. I don't think it's a big mystery, especially geometry. This is not magic.
    17:31
    So part of my issue with it is just that I am not someone, as a personal preference, who really tends to like games that are really heavy in multiball, and this game definitely is heavy in multiball. Now, I know some people who think that it works with how heavy multiball is, with how the rules are set up, because you're trying to make your way through entire songs, but that still is, there's a lot of multiball. And for me, I prefer the risk of single ball play and multiball. I always want there to be multiball, but it should be sparing to me. And when I watched Kevin's stream on Buffalo, I watched the first hour. I never saw a single game where he didn't get a multiball.
    18:12
    A single one. I mean, holy crap. I have bad games on Star Trek where I don't get vengeance multiball. Kevin's a better player than me, but still, I was just like, this is really multiball heavy. So from a personal perspective, I'm not sure that that was really going to appeal much to me. I also, given how the geometry works and all the ball locking and stuff, I questioned, and I still question, whether or not this is really a good tournament game, or whether this more falls in the vein that, well, I think it makes a good tournament game. Some people only like Total Nuclear Annihilation because they want to play it in co-op, they want to play it with a group of people, and it's about that group experience. This game, to me, looks like it has group experience in spades. Right, and I definitely can see it. It feels like the kind of game, especially with playing through entire songs,
    19:05
    that makes the very thought of being in tournament play on it scary. And you can brutalize a game. You can brutalize anything. You can brutalize Lord of the Rings. But the issue that comes up with doing that and why I think we don't see people do that too much to Lord of the Rings is if you have to do a whole lot to a game to make it tournament viable, have you made it so unfun to play that you should just have a different game entirely where you can still have a normal experience it's just a short experience yeah but i mean that's neither that's neither here nor there uh obviously the ces as i noted have sold out the game is it's doing sales wise it's doing great for jjp i think for their company because it's so collector oriented and even though i think they're making good strides on the se model they very much in my view are still like they're trying to carve out as much of the pie as they can in that upper stratosphere price point area for them to make what i will call spectacle pens like this where it's about the immersion and the visual experience maybe more so than the gameplay and rules that might be the smart answer for them as a company because it definitely is different than on the Stern store.
    20:20
    Yeah, and it will, like you said, it's going to sell pens, and this is a pen that has the looks that even just sitting in an attract mode is going to look great in somebody's collection. Yeah. And it's got enough toys and stuff going on that even turned off, it's going to look good when you look at it in the collection. If I replace any one of my games that I currently own in my seven game lineup and put this in, this is what would draw everyone's eye. It would. I mean, what's my most visually spectacle game I've got? I guess TNA in the track mode. Yeah, TNA in the track mode would probably be it. I mean, I just, I don't know. I'm not a huge music pin person to begin with.
    21:06
    Yeah, like conceptually the themes broadly don't really grab me. I really have had a lot of fun on ACDC. Like I could see owning ACDC as a pin. Right, but ACDC's a lot of fun to shoot, and it's a lot of fun to play, that I think the same layout with a different theme would still be enjoyable. Yeah, yeah, no, I don't want ACDC because of the music. Well, I like ACDC just fine, yeah.
    21:39
    It's the same, like, I kind of like the layout for Aerosmith, but it's not the music that makes me want the pin. I just, I've enjoyed the layout. So I think that's the attraction a lot of people have for Metallica is they enjoy the layout and rules. Not that it's per se Metallica. But this definitely, I think, if you are a GNR fan, there's a lot to like about just the way this whole thing looks. Whereas I could see maybe someone who is a fan of another band like Beatles, for example, that might say, I don't like how that pin looks. I think it'd be really hard not to like how this looks as a package. I think it's JJP's best I think this is Trump Hobbit and is their best looking artistic assembly overall I will agree with you on that It is simply beautiful I I I am deeply uh happy with how they went with the art package and the way everything ties together. And I, I think that is amazing. And that is the type of thing that JJP has been blowing everybody else out of the water with over the last few years. is theme integration, light shows, and the actual looks of the game. I just want their games to be as fun as they look. And I don't know. So say we all. As I said, I've not played this game. But remember, I don't like how Wonka looks. I think the art package on Wonka is terrible. But I also think Wonka is their second best playing game. and Hobbit looks amazing.
    23:24
    Hate how it plays. It's just, this seems to be an issue with J.J.P. where they're hitting pretty consistently how things look,
    23:40
    but not being a great player or something will play decent, but they'll miss on the looks. If they can bring both together, I think they'll have a great patch. Do you think maybe it's not possible? That maybe to fully capture a world under glass with sculpts, like in this case a game that very much wants to look like a stage show, that making it look like a stage essentially mandates that you compromise its playability as a pinball machine?
    24:09
    I think it's a very real possibility that that is an issue. that we might be locked down because there are too many concessions that have to be made to get the looks and the theme integration to maintain the same amount of enjoyment in the actual game. Let me ask you a theme and asset question, because this clearly, we're talking, they've got narration from a couple of band members. All of the band members currently in Guns N' Roses did call outs for the game. You had the heavy involvement of Slash. There's a story, which I don't know if you've heard it or not, but for those on our listeners who had not, apparently one of the songs in here is Live and Let Die, which is a Paul McCartney song. people may know it from the James Bond film when it was performed by Paul McCartney in Wings and Guns N' Roses has that as part of their stage show but it's not their song, it's Paul's song and when JJP was working on this, because it's such an integral part of the tour and there's a big light show that goes with it and of course it's an awesome song it's one of my favorites they really wanted it but they reached out to the record label they reached out to Paul McCartney and no one would answer them They couldn't do anything. And so when Slash was there talking with them, helping them with the game at one point, they mentioned that they wished they could have Live and Let Die in the game. And Slash goes, oh, I'll just call Paul. And he called Paul McCartney and they got the song. It was handled immediately.
    25:47
    And my point of that is because of Slash caring so much about this, he brought all these assets along with him because he can just say, I want this to happen. I'm going to make it happen. I know all these people. So when we think about next games, like Toy Story and such, my long-winded tale here is to ask you, Tony, do you think that, in a way, ironically, that JJP might be in a bit of a bind in the sense that there is no way that whatever game they do next is going to have the assets that this did because there will never be another instance where they have a slash that will pull every string and get them every piece of content they might dream of? I think that's entirely possible, and I think definitely with Toy Story there's not going to be any way. Disney is notorious with asset control, and I believe it's to the detriment of a lot of the games that have come out with their ties into their IPs, that their level of asset control actually hurts it. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I can't say that this is bad because this level asset integration is definitely part of what's going to help make people want to buy Guns N' Roses. But in a way, it makes me a little sad because there are so many other themes that are more attractive than Guns N' Roses, but now Guns N' Roses is the new Hobbit. It's what everyone's going to compare to. And I blame, in a good way, I blame Hobbit for why so many people take things like Stern's Jurassic Park and say, why can't you have all the movie assets? Hobbit had them.
    27:26
    Hobbit was the thing that had a whole bunch of assets in it that felt like you weren't. Or pirates, J.J.P. Pirates. Why is it always just these random boat shots? It feels like we're not actually in the movies, unlike Hobbit, which was great. Maybe that was because Hobbit had a dragon and it was easy to use the dragon. It doesn't matter. People felt like Hobbit got all the assets they needed for Hobbit. Right. And I think that's the big thing is if you can get the right assets, even if you can't get all of the assets, if you can get the right assets. And I think the important thing is knowing what are the right assets.
    28:00
    Like aliens not having Sigourney Weaver was a problem. Yeah, at least for me. I know some people were okay with it. I know some people like that Jurassic Park tells a different not movie, not novel story. Well, I think that's fine, but I think specifically with Highway and Aliens, if you couldn't get Sigourney Weaver, you needed to tell a story that wasn't trying to retell those two movies without Sigourney Weaver. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a good point. And for my part with Stern's Jurassic Park, I wanted the movie assets. And if I couldn't have the movie assets, I wanted more than just Nedry's voice. Yeah. I hear the wannabe Samuel L. Jackson and I just cringe. Yeah.
    28:45
    that's yeah, that is definitely you get a point where it's better to not bring in the wannabe to not get the imitator and to just go a different route. Yeah, a whole new character.
    29:06
    Then you have something like Guns N' Roses where it's like, no, you have the actual people doing the actual stuff. It's like, it's the perfect asset integration. It's the, well, under glass. Well, that's all I had for Guns N' Roses, unless you wanted to bring up any elements?
    29:20
    No, I mean, this is where we run into the issue of having not actually played it. I'm not willing to really give thoughts, because until I flipped it, I don't know how well I'm going to like it, other than the fact that it's beautiful. I will, while we're in pinball, I will talk a little bit about my very sad pinball thing. Tell us the sad pinball. We're now in segment three. Sad pinball. Sad pinball things. I went ahead and pulled the trigger yesterday and I deleted all of my reoccurring pinball tournament notices because they were just too depressing to see keep popping up.
    30:05
    Now Kansas City competitive pinball is hashtag dead. it's not well it is dead to me but it's kind of dead to everybody right now we'll see it'll come back I just keep getting these notifications it's like oh any if this wasn't 2020 I'd be on my way to Pizza West to eat yummy foods and play pinball right now with all of my friends and instead I'm laying here at home watching stuff and just being sad. Yeah. I was just thinking earlier this week, it was so different because I hadn't been reading. Pull out Dune and start reading the book, and I was like, well, at least this is different than what I've been doing. Yeah. I've just been in this rut of just, okay, I'm going to go to this. I'm going to go to the grocery store and pick up food for the week. I'm going to sit here and do... And then, of course, what interrupted my reading on Saturday? Work. Of course. I mean, because that's what it is. There's work and there is resting so you're ready to go back to work. That's where we're at right now. Yes.
    31:24
    Yes. We make do with what we can. Speaking of making do, let's go ahead and go to the video game segment. It's going to be a short episode. We told people that. Yep. It's going to be short. I've only got like one or two things to talk about overall, and I've only got one written down. Well, what do you want to talk about first? Let's go ahead and hit the first, which is the VR, the Oculus Quest 2. VR is out. That's the wireless VR from Oculus. Yeah, you've been exploring VR. I have been. I've been exploring VR. I've been looking at it. I've been trying to decide what's the right amount of money to spend. Honestly, the Quest 2 is probably the right amount of money to spend.
    32:09
    It just, because it's $2.99 for a wireless thing, and all the other ones I've been looking at that I'm happy with are all going to run me like $1,000. Hmm. Now, that's quite a gap. Yeah. Well, then you run, but the problem that runs into the issues is all the others are designed for heavy work with PC, and the Quest 2 is wireless and it's a bit more less PC required. It's aimed at a different demographic.
    32:46
    But my issues with it are the fact that, A, it requires it to be signed into your Facebook. But you have a Facebook. But I have a Facebook, so that's okay. Also, the fact that some people, when they've been hooking their Quest 2s up, have been getting permabanned from Facebook.
    33:07
    How? How could Mark do this to us? Oh, no. The algorithm has something wrong and it causes a problem. Oh, no. A permabanned problem. That's a pretty big problem. That is a pretty big problem, though it is apparently fixable. they've been telling people if it happens to get in contact with them and it can be fixed. So it's not so perma-perma-ban. It not a perma It just tells you it a perma because it already been reviewed and you done and gone Fake news Fake news You fake Your VR is not the reality. In here there is no COVID.
    33:50
    So we're yeah. So you're going to wait and see if that all gets sorted out before making sense. I've very much over the last several years moved away from being a day one purchaser of almost everything, but especially hardware. At least with games and software, it's a lot easier for issues to be patched out and fixed than having a hardware problem. so I normally like to wait when it comes to hardware until you're seeing like the second run through the factory to be sure that any issues are fixed I kind of did the same thing with the Switch the Nintendo Switch I didn't get a Switch at launch I got my Switch when the second wave of Switches were coming out so So part of it, like I said, is just not wanting to fight everything. And with video game consoles, a lot of times it has to do with the fact that there's not any games that first day to be worth playing anyway. Right.
    35:12
    But we'll see. I'm going to keep my research up. I'll probably make a decision by the end of the year, one way or the other.
    35:20
    We'll call it VR Watch. It'll be its own thing. VR Watch. We'll do our whole own segment for it. One of the other things I was going to toss in out here, it's not really important, but I just thought I was interested, is Cyberpunk 2077. We're, what, three weeks out from it now, I think? Maybe.
    35:49
    Supposedly. the tabletop roleplaying game that it is based on is getting is launching a new version around the same time 2077 goes live maybe so people who want to do a tabletop version of it will be able to get everything and run it run their own tabletop versions I know it's all cute and nice other than that the only big things we have still we're in the final lead up to the releases of the new consoles they're just talking themselves up a lot there's not been anything huge Playstation and Sony did a talk about their backwards compatibility which is set at like 99% There's only supposed to be like 10 games that aren't playable at all. That's pretty good. Though a lot of the other ones are, there might not be any improvements over playing them on your PS4 for some of them, but a lot of them are supposed to at least load faster if not having some other enhancements. And some of the games, especially later ones, are supposed to have a decent amount of enhancement capability for at least frame rate and graphics. a lot of them will jump up some.
    37:20
    Xbox also, we're talking about their final list of launch titles, which is kind of weak. Yep. Kind is being generous. I mean, it's basically all Xbox One games. There's a few, but they don't have, neither system really seems to have. There's always been that big launch title. The new system really seems to have that this time around that I can... that I've really picked up on. Yeah. It just doesn't exist. Xbox was gonna have it with Halo, but with Halo Push, then there's nothing.
    38:08
    They just... Yeah. We will see where those end up. And the last thing is the normal, or what is becoming the normal, postseason of the Overwatch League. All the teams release all the peoples. Oh, yes. I went through a list yesterday of the latest free agents versus retirements. Holy cow. So, yeah, I guess there are a few teams that didn't totally free agent everyone, but, like, Dallas released their entire squad. Yeah, I think there are a couple teams that released, like, all but one person.
    38:52
    And it's been – I've been watching them pit over the course of the last week or so, all the announcements and all the new looking for teams and stuff, and it's like, wow. that was rough because what are we looking at here fewer than I thought though announced shifts to Valorant yeah though I did see Gamsu retired yeah he's going to go back to lead yeah and Messiah player retired went Valorant Unko went Valorant that was known to be happening AKM is the same way They haven't been, they didn't even play all season Those were givens They were just getting free money Yeah Is Valorant Is Valorant's esports section even a thing yet? Yeah, I think it's a gambit I don't think so Is Valorant even a thing right now? I remember there was the big The big launch The big Early access stuff Where people talked about it and you watched it. The hype was huge in the beta. Yeah, but there's really not been anything other than oh, I'm going to Valorant when it comes to this. I mean, this is it's not like you're seeing Valorant real high up in Twitch or anything. No, I've actually heard a lot of people say they don't think it's nearly as watchable.
    40:23
    Yeah. It's no Among Us. Oh, yeah. Whoa, I've got this awesome game. It can do 120 frames per second at 4K. When are you going to play with it? Among Us. Yep.
    40:40
    I saw one where somebody posted a picture the other day. They had one of those ultra-wide monitors, and they were playing Among Us. That's awesome. Like 40-inch ultra-wide, super-high, freaking 4K hyper monitors that are like $3,000. and they're playing Among Us. You know, here's the thing.
    41:03
    I've been watching the crud out of Among Us on Twitch for the last couple weeks. It's one of those things where I'll fire it up and only half pay attention to it because it's just... If you watch the right people,
    41:19
    it's just so darn funny to watch. And I've still... I've not played the game. Both of my daughters have played the game. They play it a fairly large amount, actually. But it is just... It's humorous to see such a game get so high and so popular and run for so long. And it's like there are whole streamers who've been entirely made by this little Among Us game. People who have, like... One of the guys I've been watching pretty frequently. He's like, yeah, I had 300 subscribers until I started playing Among Us. And now I've got 400,000 subscribers. Wow.
    42:08
    It's like, well, congratulations. You made it until this fad dies. Yes. But cash in while you can. It's like cash in while you can. Keep working the day job. And yeah, I don't know. we'll see. Video games is weird. Yo.
    42:31
    Well, you know, what else is weird is we're done. We're done, and this is probably not our shortest episode ever that had, but it's probably one of our shortest episodes ever where both of us were present. That's true. Maybe people will like it. Maybe they like the new short film. Maybe. It all depends on the topics. Yeah, I mean, there just wasn't a lot going on. I mean, we could have done some real weird deep divey stuff on Squadrons or on some of the other stuff, but yeah.
    43:05
    I don't... I find it weird to do that kind of generalized talk about something. I mean, a review is one thing, but just some of that deep dive stuff, like there's some people I follow on YouTube. They'll do deep dive where they'll spend like two hours talking about a 30 minute episode of TV.
    43:28
    And it's like, how do you do that? Yeah, I, I can see how to do a dive like that. My only issue is like, so for like squadrons, for example, it becomes how many of the listeners are playing squadrons? Because if they weren't, I would think that would be kind of suck. Yeah.
    43:51
    I mean, pinball is narrow enough that most of the time when we talk about pinball game, We know everyone's aware of that particular game. Video games is a lot trickier because there's so much more output. Right.
    44:02
    Speaking of output, though, if you want us to do dives or let us know what you'd like us to talk about. By the way, the reason why I haven't done any more build events is when Facebook changed the format, we can't do the polls anymore. And I don't want to do a third-party poll. Oh, I didn't realize they'd done that. Yep, yep. So that's why I haven't continued it. But anyway, you can reach out to us at collectthegamerspodcast.gmail.com if you want to tell us what you'd like to see, or message us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we will plan to be back in a couple weeks. I don't know if we'll have a guest yet or not. I've reached out to a couple people to see if maybe they'd be interested, but I do not have dates set, so we will wait and see. But until then, I am Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.