Welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I'm your host Kaneda. We got a few people here, some stragglers on Facebook right now watching the intro to this show on this episode of Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I'm going to talk all about Spooky Pinball's gameplay of the Evil Dead. We got two videos, one where Bug was just playing and letting us see the game. I really, really appreciate that. There's nothing worse than seeing a game for the first time and having the design team talk over everything you're seeing. It's like watching a movie and the director sitting next to you and just being, oh yeah, when we filmed this scene, we did this. And then in this scene, and it's like, dude, I haven't seen the movie yet. Just let me watch the film first. So they gave us 20 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay. And then they gave us a 20 minute version in which Bug narrated over what we were seeing. So I really did appreciate that. Everybody on Facebook right now watching, join Canada's Pinball Podcast to hear the conclusion of this epic pinball show. We do this three times a week. $5 a freaking month, people. You're cheapskates if you're not joining the show. We'll talk to you later. All right, let's kick those guys out of this show and get on with this show. All right, so here's my thing. I woke up this morning and I watched both streams again because I did feel like last night I was a little bit buzzed. I was also like a little bit bummed out. I'll tell you why. I lost my wedding ring sometime between Saturday and Sunday. I was doing gardening and raking up leaves, and I have no idea where to even start to look for my wedding ring. But I'm still very happily married. So I was in a little bit of a cranky mood. And so I'm watching this game, and I'm saying to myself, is the game floaty? Is this game exciting? Are there moments of wow in the game? And last night, I was a little bit slanting towards it's floaty. And what the heck with this theme? And then I watched it again and I wanted to get more of like an unbiased sort of like point of view on this game. And I want to start out this episode by saying this. I don't know how to overcome theme bias. And I think a lot of us have it. And I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. And what I mean by theme bias, it's like if you don't like the theme, like nothing is really going to get you excited about the game. and I've had that even with Iron Maiden. I don't like Iron Maiden music at all, so I don't really enjoy playing Iron Maiden pinball. I can't get over the theme. And the opposite also happens. I love Guns N' Roses so much. The gameplay is horrendous, but I enjoy the game because I love the music so much. And I understand, like, that's how it works. That's the way theme bias, I think, impacts most of us in pinball. And so as I look at Evil Dead Pinball and I look at the fact that this game in such a great fashion takes Evil Dead 1 and 2 and serves it up to you. It gives you every moment from those two movies that you love. It gives it to you in spades. It integrates it perfectly into the game. There's things happening physically in the movie that become physical things in the gameplay and in the experience. and so if you love Evil Dead 1 and 2, you are absolutely going to love this game, you are going to want to own this game, and you are very happy that Spooky Pinball is making these kinds of themes because nobody else will make it, and when I look at this game and I look at the gameplay, it's hard for me who doesn't like the movies. I just don't. I've seen them. They're okay. It's just not my kind of thing. Like some people like this sort of cheesy horror, like blood, gore, heads being bashed in, all the blood spilling out everywhere, terrible special effects, right? It's all so cheesy. It's all so bad. Some people love that. I know that the people over at Spooky Pinball, they love that. If you love that, I'm not going to make fun of you. I don't think you're wrong for loving that stuff. And so I think that this game is 100% a dream come true for Evil Dead fanatics. I think if you don like these movies though is there enough in this game to make you overcome your bias or your lack of interest in Evil Dead And I don think so I don think so There a lot of fun stuff in it but I don think this game is going to shoot as well as Iron Maiden which made a lot of people overcome their lack of love for Iron Maiden music. I just don't see this game from a gameplay standpoint, absolutely like blowing people away, right? Like Elton John's another good example where like, you might not want to own the Elton John theme, but the Elton John gameplay is so damn good and so damn addictive. And I just don't know if what we saw last night is going to have that addictive gameplay. It's a very mode-based game and the modes are awesome. I will say this, where this game really shines. I want to give you where I think this game really shines. I think this game really shines in that when you start a mode, I love the fact that each mode feels like a moment of wow from the movies. The light shows are awesome. The sequencing in the modes is awesome. I love it when you start a mode and you feel like you're progressing through the scenes in the movie. I don't think the clips are muted. I think you're actually seeing what's happening with the actors in the movie in those scenes. And so that is really great. You know, I love all that. The light shows great. You know, I'm just going to go back and forth between things I saw, right? Some things I liked, some things I was like, ah, I don't know about that. You know, the call-outs. I was worried about the call-outs being monochromatic. And after watching the game, I'm still worried about the call-outs being monochromatic. They just lack energy. I get that he's like narrating the game and you can put it in a mode where he's also like negging you as the player, but there's just no energy, right? It's all delivered so monochromatic, so deadpan. And I get that's like Bruce being Bruce, but I think it needed a little bit more ash, a little bit more excitement, a little bit more energy for the player, because I do think it's going to get a little bit old over time with the call outs having such low energy. All right. So I wasn't a fan of that. You know, when it comes to the actual design and layout, they had the game set at an interesting angle because they wanted to show you all the stuff in the game. Look, I just don't know if there was anything I saw from a geometry standpoint that was like, wow. Like I didn't really see crazy shots, crazy combos. There's that extra flipper, the sling flipper above the right sling. That was neat, right? It wasn't like a wow. It wasn't like the things it was shooting were doing something incredibly awesome. I bet it's fun to utilize that extra flipper. But when you watch the gameplay, it does feel like it has more of a wide body, wide open feel. And so I don't know if it's floaty or not. Like sometimes I was watching footage and it seemed a little bit floaty. Other times it did not. Other times it seemed like there was a lot more speed and there was a lot more going back and forth between the ramps and stuff like that. I did love the way you play the game where you can sort of start a mode or get a mode qualified and then not start it. Hit the action button and you can still play the game and qualify other modes. So you can keep qualifying your modes and then choose which mode you want to do. I really, really like that. I love the fact that this game's got a very like choose your own adventure. No two game is going to be the same. So they give a lot of power to the player and it's not going to be boring and linear. When it comes to the actual modes themselves, again, this is where not loving the theme is hard for me because, you know, when they're like, oh, this is my favorite scene where he's like Linda's head is like on his hand and he's bashing her head against the wall. And I'm watching this and I could care less about everything I'm seeing again. But for those fans out there, that's probably an exciting moment in the movie for you. And you probably look at that mode with a lot more enthusiasm. When it comes to stuff like the music and the sound effects, I don't know, right? I think the sound effects were cool. I just didn't find the music to be that amazing. And again, the source material. If you go listen to the Evil Dead soundtracks, they're not good. These were movies made with a shoestring budget. It's not like they put a lot into the orchestration. So you're not going to hear like music that gets you going. And again, I think over time, that's why you really, really, really have to love these movies. Because I just don think the game is going to like get your energy levels up with this source material Because the source material you know doesn have that like high energy thing going on Elton John does Avatar does not Guns and Roses has high energy stuff going on all the time. And that's the thing with pinball, right? It's like Halloween suffered from the same thing with me. It's like when you play Halloween pinball, it's such a slow movie. Same with Godfather. And again, pinball to me is a high energy game. And so when you take stuff that's slower. And this is the thing with like scary movies and these spooky movies that these guys love. Some of these horror movies, right? The movies themselves are all about the tension, the urgency to escape. Something bad's about to happen and then you get scared and something jumps out. It's really hard to create that kind of feeling in a pinball machine, which is always going. It's always fast paced and high energy stuff is just more fun than sort of building that tension. Like a pinball machine cannot scare you. I mean that. I think the only time I saw a pinball machine scare people is when the Ghostbusters machine screamed out loud at midnight and people didn't realize that was in the game. That's the only time I think anybody ever jumped back from a pinball machine. So that's sort of how I felt after watching the gameplay. The other thing I want to talk about on this episode is this. I don't like the fact, and this is me talking on behalf of you, the consumer. I think this was a smart move from Spooky and from Zach who filmed the featurette and everybody else and all the distributors who took your money last week. I just want to say this. These guys had gameplay footage ready to go on the same day they revealed the game and took money, but nobody got to see gameplay. So gameplay was strategically held back to get as much money through the door and here's what they said is the reason why luke was like look we want spooky fans to be able to be front of the line so like we don't want to show gameplay we actually want to reward the faithful who have faith in us and believe in our products and by not sharing gameplay we're almost giving you just enough to know what the theme is and who it's coming from and what the art package is. But we're not going to show you like all the meat on the bones. And that way, the spooky loyalists will be the first ones to be the early adopters and order a game. That's their rationale. I can't argue against that. All right. It makes sense. It makes total sense that they do it that way. They locked in over 500 orders without showing gameplay. Now, as a consumer, right? This is me standing up for consumers. I don't like pinball companies asking us to buy a game and not showing us gameplay. It is a game. You have gameplay. That is the most important thing to see is how the game plays. And I don't like sending in a non-refundable deposit without being able to see how the game plays, what the assets look like, what the modes are like, what the shots feel like. You don't get any of that with those featurette videos. And so good move by Spooky from a marketing strategy to lock in money. And I guess there's over 500 Evil Dead and Spooky fanatics that it was successful. successful. But I'm just saying moving forward, I will always hate this. I hate that Stern does it. I hate that Spooky does it. I hate that everybody wants your money today and you don't get to see the game. And by the time you see the game, you might not like it when you see gameplay. And that is why when I say wait and see, it's not just wait and see to buy the game. It's wait and see to make sure you like what you're seeing gameplay wise. So it was a smart move. But again, it just goes to show this is still kind of a little bit of FOMO in action. I know they've sold over 600 games. Is this stream going to sell them more games? It's funny because Luke was like, well, nobody canceled after the gameplay stream. I had to remind him that nobody can cancel because the deposits are non-refundable. And this always happens with a new game. Everybody who ordered one is going to see what they want to see. They are going to say the game looks amazing. The skeptics right now are going to be quiet and they are out there You just can't be a skeptic right now because you are kind of a jerk, right? If you come in to the evil dead buyers page or the hype page And you say you don't like this this or this or the theme is bad or the game looks floaty If you walk in there and you start complaining about a game you not even gonna buy You are kind of a jerk You are a jerk And i want to say this i was a little bit of a jerk last night on my chat and i don want to be a jerk and i think they made a game for a fan base that loves this movie and these movies i think they made a great theme integrated game that embarrasses what we're seeing from some other companies when it comes to theme integration. It might not be my cup of tea, but I respect those who enjoy this cup of tea. So this is going to be a successful pin for Spooky. Yes, personally, I would like them to make something a little bit more mainstream that appeals to me. I have faith in Spooky Pinball that they will make a game that is my cup of tea, but I will not insult anybody that says they love this cup of tea and they can't wait to get their game. And I think there's too much of that. I do. I think there's too much of people just coming in and raining on other people's parades and people not being happy for people who are happy. Because if you reach that point in this hobby where your sole existence is to be angry and to be upset that other people are finding joy in pinball, then it is time to find a new hobby and there's no place for you in pinball. My last point about the stream, why did they have a camera on the topper the whole time? It was so stupid. The topper does the same thing over and over and over again. It doesn't get any more interesting or more dynamic. It's cool. I love looking at it, but I don't need to stare at it over and over and over for 20 minutes. There's way too much prominence given to these damn toppers. I'm serious, people. They don't matter. And hey, the flat plastic Christopher Franchi topper looks really damn good because it's kind of like more artistic looking. I kind of like that just as much as the 3D sculpted one. I have to be honest. So overall, a beautifully theme integrated pin that is going to make Evil Dead fans happy. I don't think it's going to convert other people over to the game. I don't think it matters. I think Spooky knows they've got three to four more themes coming and they're going to have something for everybody. And again, I thank them for coming into my chat and being transparent and not acting like they're better than any of us. And I think it's the way to do it. I think this company continues to impress me and everybody else with how they approach us and how they treat us with respect. I mean that I can't say enough good things about these individuals. I just wish they would pick themes that spoke to me a little bit more. Everybody have a great Thanksgiving. Enjoy the next few days off. I will most likely be back Friday with a show. Yes, we will have Saturday Morning Spectacular. Everybody, I'm very thankful for each and every one of you. I'm very thankful for my wife who allows me to do this show. Yes, I say allows me because if she really did put her foot down, I probably wouldn't be doing this, but she absolutely loves this outlet for me. I'm very thankful for all my friends that I've met in this hobby over the years, even Ed Ed Robertson. I'm very thankful Bill Brandes has not subscribed to this show because it just reminds me there's still work to be done. I'm very thankful for all the people that go on Pinside every week and share your feelings about pinball. Without doing that, it would be boring. I'm very thankful for all the men and women who work at these companies and make these games. It is really easy to be a critic. It is really hard to make a product. And those people that actually put their lives on the line and their livelihoods up and everything is at stake to make a great pinball machine. My hat is off to each and every one of you. You are really doing the hard work. This is the easy work. Being a critic is easy. Being a manufacturer and a maker of something is very hard. And lastly, I just want to say I'm thankful for all of you who subscribe and donate every month. I know, I know. The whole world is asking you to subscribe and you decide to be here. I really do appreciate that. And I'm going to make a joke. This is just a joke, but I'd be much more thankful if some of you would up your subscription amounts because, damn it, you know, are we going to start to have Canada tariffs? You know, am I going to charge Canada tariffs for people who want to listen in Canada and in Europe? Everybody, have a great day. Love you. Talk to you soon.