Hey there everybody, welcome to the beginning of the week. It's Don's Pinball Podcast, your episode number 49 coming through for you to bring you my views and reviews. And news that you can't afford to lose. Are you ready? Buckle up, there's been some drip feeds of some things going on. I'm going to get to all of that and more coming up after the intro music. Did I cut out too early? Should I have kept the intro going? How about you in the booth? Can you hear it okay? All right. We'll edit this part out. I'm sure it'll be fine. Cash money. Hey, everybody. I don't have the drop because I'm still out here on the road. Man, it's been an awesome start to the summer out here in the European sunshine. Currently coming to you from the great country of Deutschland, Allemande, Germany. Hello, everybody. Man, it's hot out here. So hot that Europa Park spontaneously combusted today. Europe's largest and best theme park is currently on fire, and I was in the park for it. We got evacuated, so we'll see what shakes out later. But hello, everybody. Let's talk about some pinball news, and I'm going to jump right into it because I was listening to—let me turn my mic down a little bit. Jeez. I was listening to the Aussie Pinball Podcast earlier, and they had on mic from Home Pin. Man, is this a non-story. Let's talk about Home Pin for a second. It was actually a pretty good interview. So I encourage everybody to go out and listen to that if you like the kind of insight that comes from these quasi-boutique makers and distributors. So this is the guy responsible for Thunderbirds and then currently responsible for Spinal Tap. Actually a pretty endearing interview. I got to hear a lot about the process and I think I understand the man and I think I understand Home pin a lot more than I did earlier. So, you know, kudos to him for going out and finding, you know, production outside of, you know, European and Western countries. He went out into China and closed out of there. Now he's over in Taiwan. So hopefully he does well out there. But really, the crux of what got to me was, you know, really his process. And he was kind of very adamant that he was not making this pinball machine or his pinball machines for anybody that really, truly enjoys pinball machines, I guess was the takeaway. By that he meant he's not building these to please tournament players, which I totally get that. But he's not building these to please, you know, pinball aficionados, meaning he's not making these things to the level that we would expect, you know, from basically everybody that's in the industry to make pinball for people that like pinball. He's making these for, it's weird, he's not making these necessarily for people on location. He's making these machines for people in the home, but people in the home that aren't really into high quality machines. It was a little bit strange when he got to that part of the interview. But basically, you know, the news is that he announced that there is a new license and Pinball Expo 2024 is when he's going to be ready to announce that. So it's the announcement for an announcement, which in my book is a non-announcement. But he says he secured the license to something else. It's apparently going to be a movie, but he's not really pursuing all the assets of the movie. So I don't know, guys. What I will say is that the Aussie Pinball Podcast episode with him was riveting. I was driving through the Alps, listening to the whole interview, and I was enraptured with this guy Mike's process and his reasoning. And I think he's got a good solid background for not the design of pinball necessarily, but for electronics and circuitry and integrated circuits and all that business. So that's interesting. I'm glad that this guy's making boards for games that aren't available anymore. I think as long as he keeps that in his wheelhouse, he'll have something. But I am not anticipating myself putting down a non-refundable deposit on whatever this new license is from HomePin. And okay, so I get that. He's trying to make games sub $5,000 is what he's targeting for this next one, which is an admirable goal, especially for people that would enjoy having a pinball machine at home, maybe competing on the level of the Stern HomePin, kind of like that market. I could see a way through to that. But what is running right counter into that is the fact that he's charging around $9,000 for a spinal tap. I mean, come on, guy. What is it? Are you trying to market these things lower? Maybe he's small and has some cost overruns and can't afford to produce this game at that price point. But I mean, at $9,000, you're competing with Stern Premiums, and I just think there's no competition there unless he's saying he's going for such a small slice of the market as to be pretty much non-existent. There it is. Also, he says he's heard the bad feedback on Spinal Tap and his retort to that is, well, these were machines that we put out there. We haven't had a time to fix yet. All the complaints that people are having about how the game shooting and everything that's been addressed, but it's in the games that haven't been made and haven't been put out yet. So if you're still seeing a Spinal Tap that still has issues, you shouldn't be complaining, you naughty person, you, because those haven't been fixed yet. So shame on us, I guess. I don't know. Let's, we'll table it for now, but it is an interesting interview so check that out let me move completely on from home pin for a second let's let's get a palate cleanse let's talk about stern pinball what's stern pinball up to okay so it looks like uh there's been some production delays with the foo fighter at least the premiums i don't know if they're complete with the le's we're really not sure but people that have ordered the premiums are still waiting for them people that were assured they were going to be in the first run are now saying they've been bumped to the second run uh there was a run of food premiums that were scheduled to already be on the line, but that got bumped and we saw Iron Maidens instead and the rest of those Jurassic Park. So there still seems to be some sort of, you know, hold up in the pipeline there. The next run of Foo Fighters, I'm told from distributors that I've been talking to, the people that may know a little bit about it, or at least be, you know, getting these weekly updates from Stern, seems to be looking like the fall. So if you got your premium, which I have, and we were lucky, you know, fortunately for once I was actually in on it early, I was able to get one. Everybody else, you know, even if you ordered day one, you missed out on the first run, it's going to be the fall. It's still a great game. It's not that much longer to wait, but man, that does sting, you know, especially if anybody has already paid in full promise that it was ready to ship and is now being told that it's going to be the fall. That sucks. So, so I commiserate with you on that. That seems to be a bit unfair. Um, I really wish all the distributors would actually, you know, ask for those full deposits only when, you know, the game is complete in box in transit. You know, I still think it's a bit harsh to ask for it full up front and then be told later, oh, hey, guess what? It gonna be months down the road Let me just hang onto your money for you So Iron Maiden are on the line Is this the last final run for iron maiden i saw a distributor post out that there was like a final call for jurassic park and i haven't seen anybody really talking about that so has that happened have we sunsetted jurassic park and iron maiden now that on the horizon we've got the new venom coming foo fighters is going to be in production for two or three more years um just like godzilla was because it's just doing gangbusters so maybe it's time to sunset jurassic park and iron maiden uh what else do we got uh july will be the last production month the full production month of stern's current factory they'll be moving on to the new factory sometime in august i've been hearing reports that they're going to have you know one to two weeks shut down where they're transitioning everything and you know they'll flip a switch then and all the new production will be on this new production line the new production facility which is supposed to be like 40 bigger um you know than their current uh place so that would be i guess good i mean they're nothing but behind on orders given the demand for stern's machines rightly so might i add but this would be interesting could they do multiple lines then you know of you know cranking out these you know cornerstone machines like they've been doing but also have a separate line for things like toppers expression lights accessories also what about vaults you know maybe limited special runs of hey guess what there here's um 600 ghostbusters that are coming out next month call your distributor get in on this limited edition 31st anniversary edition of ghostbusters or something and they can run that simultaneously on a separate line like you know a little little shorter shorter runs you know than than what's on the main line i'm just speculating but that would be interesting to know that um you know they could dig back into those back catalogs and so when games do sunset they can then open them up in the vault format for the folks. All right. So otherwise, August, late August, September, probably September more likely is when I'm thinking we're going to hear about what's next from Stern Pinball, that next cornerstone, right? Are we going to see a third cornerstone this year? I don't know if that's very likely, given that September is going to be the next one, probably going to be Venom. It's consistent with what I've been hearing. I know we were hearing Venom prior to Foo Fighters, but really everything I've been hearing is really on message. And when that happens, it tends to come to fruition. so I can't wait to see actually what this Brian Eddy and Zombie Eddy inspired machine comes out to be like hopefully it plays well I'm on a list so if this thing looks like it's just totally crackers I'm gonna go ahead and get one crackers is a new term let's move on let's move on uh what's going on what's going on everybody I've been having a great summer out here in the European region so I'm a little bit sunbaked let's talk about Jersey Jack pinball I'll just let's just talk about every company here Jersey Jack let's give the stage what's up jjp so uh i've been hearing nothing now but more confirmations on elton john and that matrix rumor has just shriveled up and died on the sidewalk in the hot sun so elton john my personal take on this i'm kind of over it already i was at the time when toy story was announced i was super hype on jjp i just bought my guns and roses a few months earlier i was liking the direction that this company was going um i was seeing kind of kind of like the higher end you know builds and the light integration and things that and just more care and more more build quality uh from what i was seeing compared to stern like a game where i have to then you know put in art blades and put in all this other stuff jjp seemed to be heading in the direction where they would have they would be all inclusive for everything that i would want in a pinball machine you know more wire rails and and and vux and playfields and all that stuff so toy story gets announced and then i'm just immediately deflated when i see what it looks like to me half a game In addition to that, the value argument comes up. Here's half a game for more money than a game has ever cost me before. And so I was disheartened with Toy Story. And then, you know, the Godfather rumors came out, a theme I had zero interest in. I've seen the movie. I respect the movie for what it is. For pinball, I don't see in my mind how I would make an enjoyable game out of that. I see the way that they made an enjoyable game out of it was to make a gangster game and sprinkle the Godfather frosting on the cake. I still don't care enough about it to pay 12 to 15 thousand dollars for a game especially one that nobody else seems to either and that's why they're sitting on the secondary market now under MSRP under a year after release so after seeing what happened with Toy Story after seeing what happened with Godfather I just don't really care anymore right now um you know so I will wait and see I will be optimistic with Elton John I don't hate the theme as much as you know like I didn't hate Godfather. I was just disinterested in it. And I don't have a whole heck of a lot of interest for Elton John for dragging that machine into my house. I think that this is a game that I can't wait to play on location is what I'm saying. Especially at these prices, if it's $12,000 to $15,000 for the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road edition of Elton John, my goodness, it better have a chandelier swinging off as a topper or I'm just not considering buying this game at all. I'm going to wait and see now. It's going to take a JJP that is pretty gangbusters, I think, to impress me to get me back on board as far as home ownership in this company. When is the next question? When are we going to see Elton John? So I guess it depends on how Godfather is doing. Have the CEs left the studio? Have the CEs left the factory? Are we seeing unboxings? I am not. I haven't seen one CE on location yet. I haven't seen one show up at interior even so i don't even know really what's going on with the factory i haven't seen a production update from jjp from the factory for that matter so i guess once all of the uh pending godfather orders are ordered and distributors are saturated with supply that's sitting around probably going to be discounted i think that's when we'll see them make a new game um either that or they're just going to keep cranking these things out and filling up a factory warehouse i don't know are people still ordering these games and i hate to be harsh or come off like i'm just being, you know, some jerk or something. But listen, they're asking for $12,000 for a limited edition version of Godfather, and I don't think it delivers that much gameplay for me. It's fun to shoot. I like the flippers. You know, I dig how they integrated the theme. I love the finishes, particularly on the collector's edition. The topper's fantastic. I like the side rails. I like the gold accoutrement. I like all the different shot paths and layouts and diverters. I dig that, but it still seems to be a more hollow experience. You know, this theme isn't pulling me right into it. It might as well just be Space Hunt with better finishes right The elegance package of Space Hunt with twice as many ramps and diverters that how i feel about it and for me my value for this game i don know uh 7500 le uh 11 maybe 11.5 for ce just because a topper's so cool but that's where i'm at and they're asking for four grand three to four grand more than that and that's just i'm it's out of my reach i don't i don't want to go for that at that level i don't think the value for me personally for home ownership is there with this. If I had a location, I would for sure have at least a limited edition in there so people can come by and buy it. Because I think there's a lot of other people that are kind of my way of thinking. They're just going to hold onto their money, wait for another theme that's really hitting on all cylinders like a Foo Fighters. I think buy Foo Fighters and go play Godfather on location. I think if you operate a location, it's a no brainer to go ahead and get this game. Because even at $12,000, you're going to be drawing a lot of people, a lot of traffic. So, you know, there's a secondary gain by selling these people drinks and things. I don't know if this game is being played in tournaments much. I haven't heard from tournament players on them playing this, but I haven't heard a lot terrible about how the game is holding up and playing or any kind of issues. So there's that. So location, yes. Homeownership, not for me, for Godfather. It's pretty though. I'll give it. It's pretty. It's just not pretty enough to warrant the price that they're demanding. And I think other people are with me. Moving forward as we do. Spooky Pinball. These guys are still making Scooby-Doo. They've got probably three other machines lined up in various stages of production. Probably their next one out is nearly complete, I would imagine. When are we going to see it? I don't know. I guess whenever their factory really needs to start putting another game on the line. so uh from from where i'm at i'm still in at around the mid 700s for my scooby-doo and i haven't heard yet um about you know shelling out any money for it so i think they're still around 500 550 right now i'm anticipating september october maybe then that's when i'll get called to go ahead and do it and that's only 750 that's not even halfway through the production let's you know conservatively assume that maybe they've sold 1500 of these things they're going be building Scooby-Doos well into next year. So would summer be a reasonable target to see the sales kind of catch up? Games are shipped that have been ordered, and maybe that's when they transition to a new game. And that may coincide with the completion of their next building. They're building their newest production facility, and the hope is that they can then move the actual production and building of these machines to one solid single level floor. So they're not running up and downstairs carrying playfields back and forth, you know, solder upstairs, wire harnesses downstairs, you know, printing in this room, you know, cabinet production down over in this building and running everything all over the place. I think if they can get a consistent assembly line, that's going to mitigate a lot of opportunities for error, let's say, which would only benefit. So, you know, Spooky is still on the climb, still on the rise. I don't think they peak yet at a company, which is great. I want them to keep doing what they're doing because they're in a position where they can take a little bit more risks and liberties and still they're a little bit of, you know, fan community versus just completely corporate. So that's why I think this industry needs spooky pinball. There's the balance. Even if you're not a spooky fan, you're not going to buy their games. You play them on location or maybe you're a location that had a bad time with one of them. You sworn them off forever. They're good to be there because of their perspective that they bring. One other thing is a very approachable. I mean, I've never had a problem talking to these guys. If I had a problem, I fired off an email. They got back to me right away. You know, when I went and bought my Halloween, Bug just gave me his cell phone number. He's like, hey, text me when you're ready to come back and pick it up. So I had posted the other day, I saw this great dark ride in Italy at Gardaland. It's a big theme park in Northern Italy near Lago di Garda. And they had a Jumanji dark ride. And this thing was fantastic. It was themed after the recent set of films, you know, with The Rock, Jack Black, and all that. And it was a cool, fun dark ride, going through collecting a gem. You lose a couple of lives, but towards the end there, you manage to pull it off and save Jumanji. And it's got this great themed facade on the outside. I put some pictures up on my personal Facebook page. I may have thrown some up on the podcast page as well. And Spooky Pinball did chime in. Now, I tagged them in it and I said, someone make this theme. And Spooky was one of the companies that I tagged. And wouldn't you know, they got back to me with a comment saying that that's something that they've been thinking about too and they would love to do it so now it's on me to come up with the you know drawings of a layout or something and send it to them so i think this would be a fun theme let me know what you think don's pinball podcast at gmail.com would you be down playing a jumanji game here's my thought here's my elevator pitch congo plus the rock and jack black i think i'm sold right there's got to be a pop bumper field that's a hippopotamus pool that you have to navigate and shoot through to hit some shot, just like the shot through the pops on Iron Maiden and on Rush. I love shots through the pops. They're high risk, high reward. They're very satisfying to hit. And hitting through a hippo pool of pop bumpers, I want to start with that and then build everything else around it. I'm thinking a temple in the upper right corner with an upper play field, but not something that encompasses the entirety of the lateral field there. Just something on the top right. That's the temple. You got to get up into the temple, maybe a Vuck shoots balls at the top, and then You can have different rail and wire forms coming off of it. And you can pick one of the four characters to start with. Each one of them has their own perks. I think this thing would be fun. Could you afford the assets of Jack Black? Probably. The Rock? I don't know. Maybe just quips from the film and not any actual call-outs. I think that would probably be cost prohibitive. The other actors shouldn't be too hard. Or you go a different direction. You go the stern direction where you get the Jumanji theme and you just re-record the voices with other voice actors that aren't high dollar ones from the film. But either way, I think Jumanji would be a fun game. If every other theme has been done and another one needs to be done, I think Jumanji might fit. So I'm going to keep kicking that idea around. Otherwise, my arcade at home personally, I'm waiting on an Iron Maiden Premium. I'm waiting on my Scooby-Doo. That'll be later this fall. And I did go in on a special edition Pulp Fiction, and I'll tell you why. Because I went to Interium and I played the game about 10 or 12 times. I played it. My family played it. We all enjoyed it. I am satisfied now that this single level play field is super duper fun and it priced less than the limited edition It available And I think if I ordered one now I probably have to wait until Christmas or after that until I actually going to get it Who knows when these things are even going to be produced So I don't think I'm really tying up my money that could go elsewhere. Like if Venom comes out and Venom is fire and I need to go on it, I'm going to have the money for it because I just put down a little deposit. So that's where I'm at currently. Oh, also, I'd like to let me let me let me give you a shot out here. All right. Cash money. Cash money. So, deal of the week is my Halloween collector's edition. I'm considering getting rid of it. I know, I know, but I only have so much space. I do love this game. That hot new code just dropped, and it is dripping. I can't wait to get home, load it in, and put some games through it. But, you know, I've had my Halloween now for a year and a half. I really love the game, but I think an Iron Maiden would look good in that spot, so I'm going to offer it up for sale. Now, this is a collector's edition Halloween. It's unnumbered because I picked it up from MGC from Bug himself. It's got about 600 plays through it, and it is modded. I've got a Rocket City start button. It's 3D. It's sculpted. It looks like a pumpkin jack-o'-lantern. It's fantastic. It's lit. Also, it's got a better tactile feel. I've got the, was it Vinto Man that made the house mod with the LCD screens where you see Jason peeking out, and there's some blood coming down. I've got the house mod. I've got some other little mods sprinkled around through there. The gameplay is great. I lucked out and I got a version where that center wrap does not really have rejects or anything like I've heard other people having problems with. So it's a good shooting Halloween. It plays well. After MGC, it's been in my home, in my corner and decorated. I even have a Halloween floor mat I'll throw in there. I could see this game going for $7,800 to $8,000, you know, high end on the price for my listeners. If you want it, I'll let this thing go for $7,500. Give me a call. I'm willing to ship it. I'll drive it to your house if it's reasonable. We can work something out. I haven't listed it on Pinside. I haven't listed it on Facebook Marketplace. You're hearing about it here first. If you want a Halloween fun playing game, 7500, hey, OBO, huh? 7500 OBO. I'm not even advertising that part of it, but if you're listening to the podcast, donsbinballpodcast.gmail.com, kick me your interest. Let me know what your thoughts are on picking up a Halloween. One other thing I want to cover. Do I want to cover Galactic Tank Force? I don't think so. I think this game is dead. I said this earlier, but six months earlier, anybody that bought a Galactic Tank Force is going to be able to give you reasons why they bought a Galactic Tank Force. Everybody else that did not buy one is going to have no problem coming up with a million reasons why they didn't buy one, and I think that's where we're at. The game isn't completely terrible. The game has some fatal flaws there that keep it from being truly exceptional. I think we really all wanted this game to be better than it was, I think we're all suffering from what I call anticipation, where we were anticipating a game that was much better than what ended up being delivered. Then you add in all the secretiveness of what's actually going on. Is this thing being produced? Who's getting these? If you paid $16,000, $17,000 for the top shelf edition, where the heck is it, man? Nothing sucks more than spending that much money for a game that's not that great and then not even getting it. Where are we at with it? Who knows? I have not that much faith in this company for that reason. otherwise i think their build quality is okay i think the uh the graphics are fine the lights are great you know there's there's things to be to be happy about with american pinball but i'm not buying one uh i'm just not buying one uh godfather kind of same thing i think anybody that wants one and has one and enjoys it will tell you exactly why they like it and why they have it and everybody else that hasn't bought one can come up with a laundry list of why they didn't buy one So I think we're kind of dead on anything new from GTF, from Godfather. Hexa Pinball's out there. There was a review that's been out. Somebody went down to the pinball expo that they had down in the southern part of France a couple weekends ago. Basically said, I didn't really read anything about what they thought about it. But there were some interesting little tidbits from Hexa. I'll just cover real quick. Hexa Pinball refers to the hexagonal shape of France. France is known as l'hexagon. If you look, there's kind of five sides to the country. the south there on the Pyrenees and the border of Spain another side with the border with Germany to the Alsace-Lorraine region you know northern there with Belgium and there's like two sides that are facing the ocean in the UK so the hexagon hexa that's where that came from so mystery solved if anybody was wondering um we're regarding the price what they were really trying to do again was was hit a market in France and not the United States that's why when they revealed this game and it's nine thousand dollars for the base model an extra two twenty five hundred dollars for the elegance package. That just screams insanity to me because you're going head to head there with Stern Premium with your base model. What they were trying to do, though, was meet the Stern Pro price for what it would cost if you were in France and had to import the damn thing. So if you want a Foo Fighter Pro from Stern Pinball, new in box, you're probably paying 8,500, 9,000 euros, which is where they're marketing their base package of Space Hunt, right the only problem is space hunt is not a stern pro right you're going completely like dead said eye to eye level in competition with deadpool pro iron maiden pro foo fighters pro godzilla pro and space hunt as charming as it is and i'm sure the artwork looks better in person i'm sure it plays okay and the little tampon string hanging thing is fun to play with but it's not iron maiden it's not Deadpool right it's not Godzilla it's not even Rush Pro come on bruh I think you know discounting this game a thousand euro would have made a little bit more sense at least um you know it's always hard you know you launch a company you want to get the first game out the door get some sales so you get some freaking capital so you can go and go and invest maybe these guys have a bunch of capital already maybe they're a subsidiary to a different company that I have no idea about. But this is a questionable marketing decision for me. But who am I? I am not a marketing genius. I'm not a professional marketer. I'm just a guy that likes pinball and has a pinball podcast. Keep sending me the emails, everybody. If I've got haters, I have not heard from them. Everybody's got great things to say. So I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing based on what you're telling me. Join the Patreon at patreon.com slash Don's Pinball Podcast. Join the Facebook page and give me a follow. I'm trying to get to a thousand Don's Pinball Podcasts on Facebook. Otherwise, Don's Pinball Podcasts at gmail.com. I try to keep it simple and straightforward. Happy flipping, everybody.