Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, host of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast, and I'm joined by my normal co-host, Alex the Waterboy. this time we are doing it remotely. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. For example, our dynamic may be a little different not doing this in the same room, but you know, we're going to provide the same high quality listening experience for our audience. Or at least the same bullshit you've come to expect. What are we talking about today? Today we're going to be talking about modern pinball, which Al and I both have a lot of feelings on, just kind of what defines the modern era, what we like in it, what we don't like in it, and just kind of our feelings on it talk about some different titles in here that exemplify the what we like to see or what other people like to see and get into that fun stuff yeah i think i heard some feedback from some people that are like and you guys never talk about anything new you never talk about new stuff on the show uh which i think we addressed a little bit before but it's like hey almost every pinball podcast focuses on games coming out right now um and i understand that you're gonna see a lot of these games that's what i was gonna say not every pinball podcast has you know us on there and so now you get to hear our dumb take on this generation of games well and i don't want to get too far into certain games i think we're just going to talk about the modern era in general like you were saying and give like to a new listener like what do we mean when we say modern so i i say it like jersey jack pinball i think is the first kind of modern game they announced their first game wizard of oz in 2013 it's the first game that came with an lcd screen following along, you know, versus like the orange DMDs, which were standard up till 2013. I mean, they didn't even ship these really until 2014. So I think we're recording this in the year 2024. So it's been about the last 10 years or so. We can call that game in 2014, the sort of true start of the modern era. It took Stern a few more years until they switched to LCD displays from their dot matrix displays. Their first game was Batman 66. It's notable because that was a Kapow oh, Tidal is one of their kind of like boutique, no, not a cornerstone release. So the cheapest one was a premium model. And they kind of used that as like the excuse to like launch this new tech for them. Yep. It was the first game on their new board set as well, which they called Spike 2. Their previous games were on the Spike 1 system. Production for Spike 2 begins in 2017 with Batman, because they announced it right at the end of the year, and then they sort of started producing them in 2017. so you can see that Stern's kind of a full three years behind Jersey Jack other games that they come out right after Batman are Aerosmith Star Wars Guardians of the Galaxy so these are kind of the first Spike 2 games Keith Elwin's first game Iron Maiden was released the following year in 2018 and I want to hear your take on this but this is sort of the first game I remember hearing almost universal praise for when it was released I mean aside from some guys being like I hate Iron maiden like not liking the theme it's interesting how even in my short time in the hobby the opinions have changed so much on so many of those first five games that you just mentioned or whatever because it's like i got into the hobby 2018 2019 so right around this i remember vividly people at that point still hated batman 66 and this isn't like my hot you know this isn't like a wedgehead podcast hot take that game people were like oh it's a box of lights like it's not the code's not there it's confusing and it really took some time for people to come around on a lot of that and i think a reason or a lot of those titles i think a big part of that and this is me just kind of guessing i think they were putting more resources into the lcd than they were expecting and the code wasn't shipping in a state that people were happy with with guardians of the galaxy it's like they got the rights to the you know the likenesses of the characters but they you know this is kind of a famous thing they didn't get the rights to the audio so although they have like a dub of different voice actors and that really upsets stuff like that will really grind the gears of like the pin side crowd and that one's kind of valid because the voice actors they got those replacements are pretty horrible but it's interesting all of those you know I don't really strongly dislike any of those maybe I'm not a big Batman 66 fan because I think the playfield multipliers kind of ruin it for me personally but I don't know it is interesting just like that run I didn't really realize like Star Wars and Guardians were amongst the first because Aerosmith feels like an ancient game to me. Star Wars and Guardians, they still put on the production line, right? Like regularly. Both of those have been produced within the last year. You see those games everywhere. They're huge sellers, probably because of the theme, but they're also both pretty good games on their own merit. So it's interesting. Yeah, I just remember when Iron Maiden was released, that was sort of like the kick down the doors. Like all of a sudden, there was sort of a little bit of a sea change, a pinball of like, oh shit, this is a game we've been waiting for. Why hasn't Stern been making games like this? This is what we wanted. all that kind of stuff it was huge right when i got into the hobby it was like iron maiden you know the cool guys pick for like this is the best pinball machine of all time and shortly after got into the hobby this will kind of date it so someone could pin it down because i can't remember shortly after like within a few months of getting really into pinball jurassic park came out you know it was the sequel right the follow-up elwynn second yeah and so everyone was so hyped about Jurassic Park and everybody like everybody I knew wanted to go play it everybody was like looking for who would get one first that was like a big deal and it was funny getting into the hobby and to me it was like well there's hundreds of games like why do you care about one now that I've been in the hobby for a while right we all get hyped when a new game comes out but it was very funny that was like the big release and that was obviously a result of the success of Iron Maiden everybody just fucking loved Maiden yeah I wonder how much I think you brought up an interesting point when we first were talking where you were saying like oh yeah these games were shipping and maybe the switch over to the lcd display was causing them to ship with incomplete code i think that started in their later run of the dmd games like their spike one games kind of had the same i'm trying i was thinking about that as we were looking at this episode where i was like when did they start kind of doing the thing that stern still does to this day occasionally where they'll just release a game and it's like pretty far away from being done right and they get a lot of heat for it yeah they adopted like the modern video game mentality like big budget studios it's like yeah ship it and we'll patch it down the line and that is interesting because that's all i've known since i've been in pinball right i never i was never part of the era of like getting the game and we'll kind of talk about that later there's some big exceptions to that and it makes a huge difference on the perception of the game when they actually ship with decent code out of the box right yeah but yeah i i that's just why i was saying that's kind of my own theory that i it feels related to the switch over to the lcds it's like suddenly they had too much on their plate it could have been it could have definitely like i said it those later dmd sterns like game of thrones and ghostbusters had some of that too ghostbusters for sure yeah that's ghostbusters a really good example but that's right before they launched this era so those are like the last games they make before they switch over to spike 2 and so maybe it was like they were pulling programming help for the new system that they're getting ready and so they didn't finish their dmd games it's hard to know without talking to someone from stern i doubt someone from stern would even tell us that truthfully so this is a little bit of speculation there but i think they've it's something that they still do to this day but on the converse or the flip side of it back in the day they used to release games and they would have a exploit or a bug or something and then it would never get fixed so the modern era i think one of the hallmarks of the modern era is that when something is proven to be buggy or yep more often when it's proven to be like a crazy scoring exploit that kind of ruined like somebody figures something out or some stack clearly runs away and ruins it they'll go in and nerf it or change it with a new code update and rebalance the scoring that has been such like a blessing for games because like you said there's so many games and we've brought it up in the past but there's just so many games from like the 90s from everybody i mean even some bally williams titles but like pretty much everybody besides bally williams it's like if you could just patch like one thing out of a lot of those games they would actually be good and they're still fun as is but they're just not balanced there's a lot of games out there where one small code update or one score rebalance would turn a fun game into a great game or a good game into a perfect game or something like that or even a non-viable game into something that's worth playing again yeah and you get that in the modern era but i think we should talk more about like what defines the modern era i started off with the screen because i think most most eras of pinball are defined by for whatever reason display technology is something like yeah for sure the screen matters right like it being a lcd which is essentially like a tv or phone screen rather than an old dot matrix display it clearly makes it look modern you can show video clips if you're talking about movies or whatever and even some other manufacturers like jersey jack they like to put screens under the playfield too on a lot of their games yeah it's just a lot different than what we had before in the 90s and into the 2000s we had dmds and they'd be animated and some of them are really cool but the focus was still you know under the glass it's a very different shift in mindset and i think bigger than that is the shift in expectations from uh customers like the people buying things and it very quickly i mean if you didn't have the exact likeness of someone in the 90s you could kind of fudge it you get somebody to stand in like uh famously um the Williams Indiana Jones right they don't have the actual likeness to Harrison Ford I don't think most people even know that like that might surprise people listening to this right it's not actually Harrison Ford on the back glass or translate it's like just a look-alike and it doesn't matter the game's awesome no one's like oh this is phony Indiana Jones and it really it changed that drastically once you introduced LCDs it was all a matter of like how much of the movie are you allowed to show on the screen how many characters are you like able to show do you have every main character like i mentioned earlier with guardians do you have the voices do you have this clip you have that clip it really changed the expectations from buyers and for me that's been the single biggest negative thing about it like looking at it people are so critical and so judgmental of a game based off of what assets the license holder was able to get and i think that's such a low priority and i'm a big theme like i i believe themes can make and break games i buy games for my home based on theme more than gameplay alan's very well aware of that sure uh well i think that's what everyone does it's not to downplay the theme but it's like you can do so much with so little of a theme if you capture the vibe the dmds themselves were an art form like making good animations was a different art form than animating text on top of video assets and it was a big shift i don't know that it necessarily made pinball better it certainly made it look more modern i don't think a lot of people are aware that pinball machines are being made still i know it's kind of a trope until they see one with an lcd and then they go oh that's a modern pinball machine yeah it shapes your expectations that this is new that this is something yes i don't think that they really added i mean i don't give a shit about screens or displays at all i'm there to see my score that's really all i care about 100 i think they can help add to some of those like the great pinball moments that we like I think dot well done dots I think are a genuine like art form that's now lost which is a shame and I think animations like when you have fun animations they can be great when they're integrated into the light shows and stuff but the screens to me that would be the first thing to go man I mean there's a reason that we love solid states there's a reason that that has just that led to different pinball design and priority and I don't know screens it's kind of like it sucks because that's what became the standard so quick. And I don't know if it does much for me. I mean, the manufacturers now have to spend an exorbitant amount of time not only programming the deeper rule sets that we're going to talk about next that also define the modern era, but they're also spending a lot of time on finding people to do animations because they have a screen so they have to fill it. So they're spending more time not only on coding the deeper rule sets that these games in the modern era have, but they're also spending all this extra time programming just aesthetics and stuff on a screen when really when you're playing the game you're you're looking at the class like you're looking at the play field yeah how much of your time is really spent looking at that screen when you're actually playing and that's why i think it bugs me people get so obsessed with what's shown on there and everything and you're like dude that's not like the audio we're gonna have to talk about pulp fiction at some point but like the audio you realize quickly is so much more important to me than what's shown on a display because you actually hear the audio when you play. You don't see what's on the screen. Well, if you can hear the audio, sometimes you can't hear the audio either. Sometimes. I think that's the next one. Nice segue into this next part is deep rule sets, continuous code updates, which I think are somewhat one and the same. Like we mentioned at the top of the episode, sometimes they'll do a code update just to fix a bug or fix a scoring exploit. sometimes they'll do planned code updates to like get the machine to launch get the machine to play and then add the previously planned modes that they didn't have enough time before they ship but yeah i mean modern games the reason why i think so many people love them is their deep rule sets i mean you hear people talk about it all the time for good and for bad like right like you hear people complain about you hear people like us complain about them sometimes but then you'll hear just as many people or more talk about how you know like stuff from the past seems quaint and boring yeah there's not enough to do alan yeah well i mean that's like a common complaint right yeah you see that come up a lot when people are asking oh what game should i buy for my house first of all dumb question buy a game you like no one on the internet's going to tell you what to buy and you you you know that to me it just like just go try something the number one thing is like oh you need a game with deep rules you need a game with tons of modes that keep you entertained at home and there something to be said for that having more to do more importantly i think it just you want to make sure the rule set is matched to the length of the like ball time and that's the a big thing that kind of talk about in more detail later but long games play substantial modern games play substantially longer than past games and so to counteract that you need deep rules because otherwise you will run out of shit to do it has led to some very convoluted rule sets they've tried to kind of combat that there's some games that very like famously stern is put out that have shallow rules and sometimes people like them like black knight sort of rage has a pretty dedicated fan base sometimes people hate the shallow rule set games like monsters which i believe is the lowest ranked uh lcd stern on pinside right now it's the only one that's outside the top 100 it's ranked 103 yeah the other two are like Beatles is at 99, Bond 60th is at 73, and both of those games are higher priced throwback playfields. Yeah, those are kind of outliers. Munsters is the only kind of cornerstone release that's outside of the 100. And you know what? The rest are all like securely in the top half of the 100 list. Like they're all, I think there's some in the 60s, but then the rest are all, you know, all the way up from number one, which is Godzilla. So it's like they released, whatever, they They released, I think, 24 Spike 2 games. We're about to get a new one here pretty soon. And then they have two home pins that they released, which are like cheaper home models on the Spike 2 platform. But, you know, if you're talking about how they've released 24 games and all of them except one are in the top 100, that's crazy. Like, it just goes to show how popular these games are. Stern knows what they're doing. That's what I was exactly going to say. Stern knows what they're doing. They know what people like and they keep delivering it. And they do a very good job of delivering what people like, especially at this point to the point where if a game comes out and anyone tells you it's not good you're like what the hell happened here and it's like that's not how it goes with any other industry i don't think there's anything else where every release is just like oh this is a guaranteed banger especially when it's like such a wide uh like there's so many different ways to do pinball but stern kind of i don't want to say they play it safe because i don't want to insult anybody but they definitely are playing it safe they're not doing anything too outside the box and that includes deep rule sets at this point It's been a while since we saw a Munsters or a Sword of Rage. I mean, obviously there are those outliers, Beatles and Bond 60th and stuff. They know that people like the deep rule sets. Why do you think Munsters is so low? And I'll tell you what I think that Munsters, it being the one outlier, is I think the theme is not A-list like most of the other themes, right? Like it's not a Marvel movie. It's not Stranger Things. It doesn't really have much cash with younger people. Yeah. I think it felt that way when it launched too. People were like, what? Do we need this? Yeah. Like, is Monsters going to earn in a bar? Right. Like maybe in Portland, but like in, you know, like a Creepies or something, but like, it's kind of a niche thing. And then I do, I do think a big part of it really is though the, I mean, pinball players turned on it pretty quick from what I can tell because of the shallow rule set. If you have the game set up easy, you can kind of like go through everything in one good game and get into another loop. and people don't like that people want to be like fight you know they want to have an hour-long game when they finally get to the wizard mode yeah that is sort of the modern thing and that's what we're talking about with deep rule sets is it sort of shifted at some point and i think dwight sullivan who was the coder on this was catching a lot of flack for some of his games and in the complicated rules that he was putting into them and then so he's like i'll give you a throwback because he would hear the criticisms and then he gave it to us and people are like nah not me because i enjoy it like i think monsters is fun i think monsters is also i can't remember which iteration of uh borg's kind of like two ramp center bash layout it is but he's kind of done that pretty similar to like left ramp right ramp bash toy in the center layout a few times like with metallica and iron man so i guess this would be the third time maybe and so people are like well it's a real basic layout and that being said people will say it's a basic layout people can't play this game for shit people have a hard time with a lot of borg's games but i remember when i played games of monsters where people like can't hit the ramps and that upsets that's one thing that we can talk about with modern games in general if someone goes and plays a game and they have difficulty hitting the ramps on their very first time playing the game they'll immediately be like well this game sucks it shoots like shit yeah and it's the entitlement like when i was a kid and I'd go up and play a game you know when I'm like eight years old or whatever my entire goal was to hit like one ramp like hitting the ramp was winning the game to me as a little kid so I don't think I ever felt that entitlement to be like I need to be able to drill ramps first game on this machine to like it Borg doesn't give you that always and I think that was part of the problem with or not part of the problem but part of the reason Munsters kind of got given a bad rap what's interesting to me is I think Keith Elwin makes games with harder ramps and certainly this but i do think that work is the only one there that makes games that are still punishing sometimes for like missing shots uh at stern i think he's the only designer that will like his games will feel punishing versus like a lot of the games you can kind of brick around richie had some and borg's basically the other one yeah now richie's gone so yeah he's over at jjp but i think the last thing i'll add about monsters before we'll move on because i don't getting what's here to tuning into here is talking about monsters but i know it shipped without a ball save dwight intentionally was like that's reason enough dude yeah dwight's like i'm coding this game so if it has a ball save it'll be too easy and you'll get to monsters madness and there is a secondary monsters madness uh where you have to do a second game it's kind of like monster bash it's sort of like the game is like monster bash like in its code layout and how just like how you have monster bash and you have monsters of rock it's sort of like the second tier of that wizard mode uh he does have that here but he was like oh well i'm gonna code this because people say they want a simpler game but you know with a modern layout and the feeds and all that it's like this game people are going to get to it too often so i'll ship it without a ball save and that'll be fine and he just got roasted for it they quickly release an update within like a week or two and uh now it has factory you know ball save every every other game but i remember he getting crucified for that and i'm like that's not a bad idea but like you just can't do that now like you just that's what i'm saying like you gotta play it safe you can't do that you can't do that kind of shit to people they will be mad immediately and you see the direct result of like kind of strain from the formula yeah like oh it's a game that people hate it's sold like shit it's funny because now they're kind of like they're actually selling for those black and white premiums people also shit on the black and white art package they put on the premium and those black and white premiums are now selling for like a good bit more than they cost when they are new i think we have one of those which we'll probably bring back at some point but the premium it's so fucking good dude that black and white art package by chris ranchi is so sick there's a reason they copied that exact idea for that special edition of elvira or whatever that just came out yep they went black and white with red instead of black and white with green and you're like it looks cool man yeah it's just funny what we're talking about to next on the list for what defines sarah yeah what defines the era is i think we touched on a little bit but like the de-emphasis on kind of mechs and toys it's not that they don't exist now but it just seems like they put their resources into programming whether that be animations for the lcd or just for the deeper rule sets and so you get a lot more stuff is happening through the code of the game rather than you're hitting something a toy is changing state or mech is doing something spectacular we still get some of these and i'm primarily talking about sterns here but it's like in the pro you will usually get like one mech although sometimes they could be very lackluster like deadpool pro a game that everyone likes there's really not much of a mech right there's yeah a lot of stern pros don't have like a single unique mech on um and i i mean unique as in like it's like they don't have any moving part that isn't recycled from a different game like isn't just the standard pinball part because i'm even thinking about it's like you have something like i guess like jurassic park pro you have the captive ball truck yeah that's pretty unique yep but that's not that's also not what i would really consider a mech because it's not mechanized yeah it's not actually moving under its own yeah but it is it is a cool little thing so i just gotta because i'm trying to think of other ones sword of rage pro has the best one it does because it has like an actual interactive little action figure Steve Ritchie that uh will like you know fight you yeah the spinning flail and the the moving shield like yeah that's dope and it's on you know both the pro and the premium le so this is also the movement the lcds is when uh stern i guess prior to this it's just kind of in my head kind of coincides with when they really figured out the pro premium le pricing model for a while they used to just do the pros and le's i know they started doing pro premium le's when they were in their red dmd days the end of the spike ones i think part of it is the result of that they give the pros are the more stripped down models that you see on location more often and then they put the mechs, usually the premium will have an extra mech or two in it. To me, a lot of the time, I think, I don't want to insult premium buyers, but a lot of the time the mechs feel kind of like an afterthought. It's not an instrumental part. I guess that's not true. That's not really fair to say. It's different than when you design the game from the ground up with a mech in it. Yeah. You're never going to get a Medieval Madness Pro. A Medieval Madness Pro would have a static castle with a static gate and you would just be looping balls through it all day you know it wouldn't have that and you're like that would be a shitty game no one would be motivated like when you're a little kid and you saw a castle blow up for the first time you're like holy shit or when you're a 30 year old or however long you know whenever you saw a castle blow up for the first time you're like holy shit that's awesome and the pros like a premium godzilla has the building moving that's pretty good example that's a you know that's actually that's a great mech yeah and so that's kind of an example of like they can do it and they can do it right and put it in the game and the godzilla pro i think still plays great yeah and so it's like they can do it both ways but it's hard i think to have a game turn out great both ways yeah and jurassic park they have the moving head in um the premium le which i you know hate that they don't have in the pro i wish they would have stripped whatever else they had to to have that thing there's nothing else there's nothing else to strip i know but it's just like there's certain people that like like mechs or toys or to do something i think that's very helpful for new players i know a lot of like what i find a lot of gateway games have a cool mech or cool feature that a new player can latch on to that does something then they're like oh shit you they grab their friends like you gotta check this one out you gotta see this one because it's gonna do this thing and i think we don't necessarily get that now but we give us everything's a licensed theme other than some boutique companies that still are clinging to the past and not getting with the program but you know they've just moved to code it's about code and that's what people want and that's what they're giving them and i also think that the de-emphasis of mechs and toys are just like the market has changed because there's clear priority placed on selling to home collectors and home collectors are typically people that don't know shit about fixing anything so i think and also on location i mean they're very reliable because the mechs are what would break right yeah A Stern Pro does not have anything generally that's too much of a pain to fix, and it doesn't really have much to break in the first place. Yeah, and the stuff that moves, like the mechs on the playfields that they're using, are pop bumpers, they're slingshots, they're flippers, they're scoop ejects. They're things that have been figured out over decades, right? They're not one-off mechs like we got in the 90s that were engineered over a few months or whatever and then put into production for one game, right? like they don't really do that exactly like there's there's a reason like theater of magic 50 of the ones you see the trunk is broken yeah and you're like when's the last time you walked up to like a guardians pro or something and it didn't play how you wanted it to it's pretty rare to see a stern and unplayable condition whereas like bally williams you see broken mechs constantly well and they're also older i mean you know like they're older they have more mileage we'll see in another you know 20 years we'll see what the spike 2 games are looking like but they're simpler right but they have deeper rule sets they also i think have long ball times like you alluded to earlier i think these games play long yeah i don't think that's a matter of like thinking it's like just they play for fucking ever compared to older games yeah i mean even compared to it's like if you compare anything to like uh early solid state like we always talk about early 80s games or whatever or ems you're like well everything plays long compared to an em and then you're like you can compare like a 90s bally williams game to a modern stern and you're like dude like the length you spend and part of that is generally like you mentioned earlier with like l1s games for example you aren't usually punished on an l1 game if you don't make a shot sometimes you are there are exceptions obviously but for the most part the new games aren't so punishing even if they are difficult shooters and i think more than that they're very multiball heavy in modern multi-balls are a guaranteed like 45 second long ball save it's insanity we're completely out of control with modern multiballs you get into a multiball in like a classic game and it's like you're struggling to hold on to it you're really trying to like milk it for points if you can and it's like on a modern game you're just letting balls drink yeah like you can go like fucking walk to the bar grab a beer come back you're still in multiball it doesn't matter and then it's like you get done with that one you're like boom what multiball do you want to get into next there's three more ready to go and you're like holy shit man i think multiballs honestly are the single biggest thing that have made some of these games longer well i think they also do the thing where they feeds out of a scoop or feeds out of a shot occasionally drain because they're mechanical features and and so what they'll do is with a code update they'll be like oh cool we'll put a little three or five second ball save and so you're like well ghostbusters got that big the ball save update that is someone everyone everyone online's like oh now ghostbusters is a good game because it got this big update and what they literally did was give you like 30 seconds it's an insanely long time off the bat that you can continuously drain you can get like three balls back off of a plunge on ghostbusters and then both scoops now give you a ball save by default every time you hit them and i believe that even includes while you're in multiball so if you're in multiball you get your default ball save going and then you start hitting scoops and you just have ball saves constantly and they also it's a stern so you get the grace periods on like both sides of the ball save being lit. So if you drain a ball, you get a ball save like two full seconds later, completely unrelated to that first ball draining. And then you drain another ball, you getting two balls back It insanity to me They so friendly on the ball saves now It just bizarre I think it where we go back to There a clear priority placed on the selling to home collectors that it it like home collectors don want to spend a bunch of money to have their feelings hurt so like they want they don want a game to hurt their feelings and make them feel like oh i'm not that good at pinball so they give them these like little things and again i think it's just different what we want is different like i'm a location owner i'm a location player even when I had games in my house like I would go out and again Portland's a great city to play location pinball so we're spoiled but there's a lot of cities popping up around the country and around the world that are becoming great pinball locations so it's not like we're the only spot in the world and I just like to me pinball is like playing on location trying to get a high score I like playing a game for a couple minutes at a time I like fighting a game for control and the deep rule sets just kind of piss me off they're just sort of like I I don't it just makes me upset that they're going to change the rule set every six months substantially add new shit change shit that i'm gonna have to relearn i don't like it it just upsets me like i want to be able to just kind of play a game shoot what's lit sort of figure it out with a buddy with a beer just talk about it i don't care if i've done everything in medieval madness or attack from mars or that i've beaten monster bash or any of these it's like because i know when i step up i know what I have to do and it's just whether or not I can do it it's not have I ever done this once before ever now I don't care about that although I will say that I think that if I was a home collector the rule sets wouldn't bother me so much that's what I was gonna say I can see both sides of this coin and it's something that I have mentioned to you a lot I almost feel like these games are getting to the point with pinball where we need some kind of clear distinction or genres or something and I know it's kind of we realized bullshit about this and it kind of prompted us talking about this episode there's such a difference playing something like a pulp fiction versus playing something like hobbit in expectations and they play very different I enjoy I used to own a hobbit so I just use that as an example a lot because it's one of the most convoluted mode heavy games ever you can't go into one expecting the other and expect to be happy you would be like going into like watch the barbie movie and it ends up being dune and you'd be like what the fuck was that yeah you and i don't know pinball is bizarre because it's like it's pinball everybody expects pinball to be the way they like it and any pinball that isn't the way they like it sucks and totally no other medium across anything movies music video games nothing else do you go in and you just have an expectation of exactly what it's going to be in no other medium does anyone feel entitled to say if something's good or not based off of if it lived up to what their expectation of a movie should be like that's insanity if you went and saw the godfather the movie wasn't very funny oh shit yeah you're talking about like you can not like a certain game or a certain movie but it's you're like well i don't really like horror movies and i went and saw a horror movie but you're talking about a genre you're not talking about like this shouldn't even be considered a movie because it has blood and guts and people killing each other in it so therefore i don't think this is what movies should be and that's what you're saying about pinball right correct i think something like a hobbit is akin to like an rpg in a video game right it's deep it's a long adventure when you play you have to play it in long sessions it takes a long time to learn the rules it's like an investment in every way that's a horrible game to go play on location and just from knowing you alan it's like a kind of game like you would never like an RPG pinball machine like that. It's the opposite of the games you like. And so it's like, you're never going to like it. They could do anything to Hobbit and you're never going to like it. And that's fine. Other people do. And I think it's just hard. It's like, why do we compare everything to each other as if they're the same? Well, we also aren't really getting much variety anymore. You brought up Pulp Fiction. That's the reason, yeah. Which is sort of an outlier, which we're going to talk about in a different episode where it's like throwback designs and sort of outlier throwback designs like Beatles, TNA, Pulp Fiction, Bond 60th, which we'll do in that next episode. But yeah, I wish we got to see some of each. I felt like when they released Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro, I feel like all of a sudden we had a game with short ball times. It was an ass kicker. The rules were very straightforward. You knew exactly what you were fucking doing. And I love that. All the shots are easy and backhandable, but the shots are close in and there's posts in between them and you hit a shot easy shots where you're punished for missing them yeah and so like i love that game so much obviously because that that scratches my itch there are people that are just like i hate that game because i can't imagine having that game in my house because how i would get sick of it you know and that's interesting because i do think i would appreciate some more of these games if i was a home collector like if i had a bunch of money and I lived in a place and like my experience with pinball was buying one or two stern games a year and maybe trading them or moving them on and I had all those months to just play a game and really get invested in you know the kind of rules tree of them all and all that kind of stuff it's like yeah okay I could see getting to it but I'm just location player and like that's not how I interact with pinball nor do I really want to it doesn't mean the games are bad it's such a different experience i think when you're playing the same game and you have access to it any time of day you want and you can put hours and hours on it every week or whatever that's such a different experience than playing on location and it's just uh like it has clearly shifted the priority of like the development teams right yeah stern knows what they're doing and the other manufacturers as well i mean i think that's another hallmark is it's catering to a niche hobby of people that have a lot of money so the people that are buying and collecting these so it's created this own cottage industry of we have a lot of manufacturers now multiple boutiques now stern is still really the 800 pound gorilla they really are the big dog which is why we talk about them but you know there are multiple options now percent of the market and it's got to be more than 90 i guess yeah but it is like very different than when you look back to the decade like the 2000s or whatever and Stern was the only name in town and they could kind of get away with whatever they wanted for a period there. Yeah. And you got some kind of shit games. I mean, we also went through a huge recession. There was a lot going on, right? It's not just Stern, but it's like having the competition for better or worse. Like we're not real happy using the LCDs as a bad example, but it's like JJP putting in an LCD into like Wizard of Oz is obviously the reason that Stern had to do that. They got to force their hand. And having all of the different options out there kind of make Stern on top of their game. And it's also led to some of the best pinball machines of all time in many people's opinions, you know? Oh, yeah. And so people consider this Spike 2 era of Stern to be a golden era of pinball. So yeah, it's kind of nuts. I mean, we have more manufacturers right now operating, I believe, than we ever did in any point of pinball, which is kind of insane. That's probably once you get into the real boutique stuff. But I mean, back in the day, they had all the different like Spanish companies and stuff that we ever even heard of too. So it is kind of nuts to think how many options like a modern pinball buyer has. Yeah, I think we have two more things that I really want to touch on before we end this episode. Kind of the last hallmarks of the modern era to me, which is playfield multipliers, which leads to exponential scoring. This is the one thing you'll hear me complain about the most. Like deep rule sets are one thing. You'll hear me be like, I don't want to learn this game or whatever. Like people are like, how was this new game that came out? And I'm like, eh, it's fine. Probably I'll never learn it. So, but part of me never wanting to learn it is playfield multipliers are on every game now, and they're so important. Rally you as a player that knows the deep rule sets and a player of reasonable skill, you can come back on any one ball and like storm your way all the way back just by kind of jumping your multiplier up and getting into one multiball stacked with the right mode. or get the right character chosen and then just 10x somebody's score. It's huge. And if you don't know how to consistently get and win to best utilize multipliers, you will never have a high score on any of these modern games now. Yeah. And I find that's like you, I mean, you might luck into one, I guess. Yeah. But it's like. But you'll, that's the thing I hate is like. You're never going to be in the conversation if you don't know how to use those playfield multipliers on a modern title. And I hate that. I hate that too. I wish we could go back to leave it on the bonus. give me something to lose yeah if i tilt or something give me like bonuses now are worth almost nothing on almost every modern game they're you know a pittance and yet everything's about the playfield multiplier yeah we love it when they're not like it's exciting anytime you have a modern game where the bonus actually matters yeah and like oh shit stranger things you're like bonus yeah yeah the bonus is big on stranger things i like that yeah yeah i agree and i think they only have the 2x right is the one playfield multiplier in that game unless they've changed it well enough i feel like that might be the case that's one of my favorites by two games but that's probably why fairly easy to understand rule set playable layout yeah less reliance on playfield multiplier yeah but i just wanted to touch on that because that's a big thing is the playfield multipliers and i know a lot of players like that it's clear hallmark it's not going anywhere despite my protestations but i just think it's in bad taste that anyone could win a game hitting less shots getting less progression in the game and you to outscore another player i think that's just bad that yeah i don't like it i don't like it i think it should be like it should always be the person that completes more modes starts more multi balls hits more jackpots in their multiball makes more progression i don't think it should be a multiplier based on one of those things at one time i don't like that um it's it's a bummer because there's probably nothing we can say will ever change oh no it won't ever change it but it's like the the playfield multipliers i'm just confused as to why that's become the standard on everything it's like you know why i think it is you can get a 6x playfield multiplier and you're like yeah now in like whatever a minute you get six minutes scoring and you're like fuck you know why though it's because i think it allows a player that's at a plateau like say a a very average player or someone that buys it for their house to crank away and they're like i can't get past whatever 30 million 30 million and then one game they just look up and they really need to do anything extra but they got the multiplier and the right stack and they're like oh i got 150 and they're like oh shit that's awesome even though their skill hasn't really increased their score jumped substantially and i also think that in tournaments you can kind of do the same thing where you can get you can be way behind and then come all the way back on one ball and not even a great ball right like a mediocre ball and come back and win i think people like that i think it's the same thing as giving people a ball save out of a scoop it's like it's like exactly it's kind of like you get this like opportunity for a comeback or whatever it's sort of like when you're playing mario kart and you're in last place and it gives you all the best shit nah it's the rubber band effect kind of that's how i feel it's like rubber banding in video games i don't like it in video games and i don't like it here either so big surprise but yeah the last thing we got to touch on with the modern era is uh stern in particular stern insider connected oh i was wondering we're going to get to this the biggest the single biggest innovation in pinball in the last 50 years correct alan okay i mean i guess if you're going to put it that way it's you know i said i said originally if they're going to take one thing from pinball machine they could take the screen i wouldn't even consider this like a thing in the pinball machine i use stern insider regularly anytime i play a connected game i don't really know what compels me because i don't really check the badges they don't really do anything i'm always hoping they'll use it for something more it really still feels very inconsequential to me and maybe if i had like a buddy that was really into him we're constantly competing for stuff it would be more fun as is man i'm just like this is a misplaced effort in my opinion well okay i will say that they do bury the lead on this a little bit from the operator perspective and i heard george gomez in an interview when he first launched this where he just sort of like yeah yeah yeah yeah it'll it'll automatically download new code yeah yeah yeah but that's not even close to the cool shit that we're doing and i'm just like whoa okay whoa whoa hold on first of all for all players out there one of their biggest gripes about a bad operator is it still has factory code from four years ago on this game right and for an operator if you're running a route and you got to go around with the usb stick and those usb things and changing it was an unnecessary pain not only just the physical act of it but like sometimes it would get like 80 there and then fail and then you have to go and delete it and then re-download it and then reformat your your little thumb drive and then put it in and hope like it was just unnecessarily frustrating so like automatically downloading new code is so sick that is i can't believe like i can't imagine trying to run a route and having to go manually update code across town no that's that's why operators famously didn't do it right like only the best operators would but now it's easy i do see that some people really like it they really like their badges you'll see arcades now that they'll put up a leaderboard so if you're logged in and you get a high score it'll populate on the screen i think everyone likes seeing their names on a on a leaderboard so i think that that's smart and some people like chasing badges it's just like any video game or whatever i think some people really like it i don't even have an insider connected account i don't i i just i it just doesn't it's not what i get into pinball for i don't want to take my phone out to play pinball so i mean i take it out every single time I'm taking pictures, I'm, you know, I'm tweeting my high scores, Alan. Yeah. I mean, and this isn't to say that it's bad that people like it. Like, and for me as an operator, like they ship with it connected. So all I have to do is like connect it to the internet. So like, it doesn't cost me anything. And for people to enjoy it, that's awesome. That's the best thing. I mean, the best thing about it is it's free. It doesn't cost anything. They were going to raise the price. I mean, people bitched because it coincided with like a $500 increase in pro prices. And you're like, uh, that was like right at the tail end of COVID. Like the inflation was way more than 500 bucks at that point. Yeah. They were going to do it anyway. They were going to raise the prices, whether or not they gave us a new thing. Exactly. So it's like, Hey, they want to give us some free shit to do that adds more replay value for people at home. That's the thing. It's like, if they do stuff like this, that people, the home buyers appreciate, and it doesn't impact location play, like doesn't negatively impact us at all. Like, that's awesome, man. It's a win-win like, cause I don't have to use it. So I don't and it doesn't bother me. But some people really love it and it gets them more into football. I got 801. I'm looking at my achievos right now, man. 801 Oh you got some nice achievos So I got 919 plays I don log in every time but that uh yeah seems like a decent bet yeah yeah go follow me on insider connected x ron paul x 420 my username on there yeah um did you want to touch on you want to go through like a quick just a real quick burn of your uh some of your favorite modern games quick yeah i think we needed to talk about some of our favorite modern game i know we're going long but this is a long episode well i think we need to like i think most people pigeonhole us as the classic pinball guys or the classic pinball podcast because of what we usually talk about uh i and i don't want this your big concern was like if we do this episode we're just gonna bash modern pinball and i was like that is not my intent at all uh so i want to make sure that we talk about some of the games we really like this goes back to me i just want to be on record again clear as day is that i think there are great games made in all eras so we focus on classics and stuff just because i feel like some games or some generations of pinball don't get their shine anymore yeah they're underrepresented underrepresented and i want to talk about those games because those games get me hype however modern spike two games black knight sword of rage absolutely top top five machine for me all time love that fucking game love the art love the music the light show i love the rules Steve Ritchie with dozens and dozens and dozens of quotes in that game screaming at you as the black knight i love the theme i know that i'm fighting the black knight i know he's throwing monsters at me i'm fighting them great mechanical toy punishing i fucking love that game absolutely favorite modern game by a wide margin to me like absolutely love that game thank you stern you fucking killed it guardians which you mentioned at the top of the episode guardians is one of my favorite games i don't even really like the movie or i mean i don't care about the movie i guess like it doesn't matter but i think it's super fun i like i like shooting the modes i think it is that board it's got fun music in it they paid for some of like the big songs from yeah which is good I think the art package is good I think it's super fun to shoot I like that you know collecting your lanes allows you to shoot a shot and put a shot multiplier for the rest of the ball on there I think that's a shot multiplier I think that's a better way of doing play field multiplier is to place a shot multiplier and I think Lonnie did that with kiss and then he did it again here with guardians so I prefer that as far as like than just a carte blanche play field multiplier Stranger Things which we also mentioned Brian Eddy's Return to Pinball again I don't even like the show like I've seen the first season didn't like it started the second season really didn't like it so I stopped watching it I just say that because these are like you know a-list themes and I think some people are like oh well maybe you like this because I don't like the themes but I think I like the game I think it's fun I uh I know what I'm supposed to do it has a tree in front of each shot like a 90s game of inserts a million inserts yeah like shoot it three times start this mode shoot that shot three times start this mode and some people are like what a simpleton like that's what you like and i was like i just like that it keeps track i like that i could just look down and know what i'm supposed to do next the uv kit is sick on it the uv kit is so sick which we have on both of i think roadsy has two pros and we have the uv kit on both of them iron maiden iron maiden is one of my favorite bands so this is one of those where the theme i like a lot and zombie yeti did the art package on this it's keith's first game i think i still think this is keith's best layout to me they let him put so much shit in there too dude there's like yeah i love the left ramp through the pops uh which is reminiscent of congo another one of my favorite games again i love the band and what i love about this game is it's not just like pictures of the band members being old and like still trying to look like they're young rock stars like i love that it's just like it's cool shit cool shit cool iron maiden art with the eddies and they're able to tell like a narrative in it it's great as an iron maiden fan and as a pinball fan those things came together so well uh and the last game is gomez's uh james bond is 007 i think is so much fun to shoot and i think the art package on it is maybe one of the best art packages they've ever done i know it's a lot of like the classic james bond art but it's just such a that art is good it's just so cohesive and nice and thematically appropriate and restrained in modern art in pinball has gotten so much better but sometimes it's still really garish and loud and a lot and I just love aesthetically I think that game is beautiful I'm whatever on James Bond as I say I think it was better with the code it shipped on before they added the playfield multipliers yeah I haven't really gotten a lot of time since they've changed that but I also I understand this like if I'm going to play modern games I got to deal with playfield multipliers it is what it is so what are some of your favorite games start with Godzilla you know it's not really like a cool pick because it's like everyone's pick but I really do I you mean the number one game of all time i love the theme i'm like i i love kaiju stuff as soon as they if for those i don't know spooky announced ultraman before godzilla i kind of knew godzilla would be coming from stern because it had leaked that they had gotten a hold of the license but i had said since i got into the hobby if someone did a proper homage to like anything kaiju or any kind of anime that i was leaning towards i would put my money where my mouth is and buy it i did the same thing with rick and I was like, if they actually get a young theme, I will buy it regardless of anything. And I bought Ultraman. It's a pinball machine. It's fine. Godzilla, though, delivered. Like, Godzilla's fucking good. Godzilla's good, yeah. I've got gripes about it. I'm not here to talk about them, though. I think it shoots fun. I think it works perfectly to do, like, the monster-v-monster fight. That's kind of become a trope for a lot of these Stern games where it's like, oh, you're getting into a mode. You're fighting somebody. They have, you know, do these shots, and then you beat them. And it's like, yeah, it works. It's Godzilla. What else would you expect him to do? Yeah. foo fighters uh jack danger's first cornerstone i think the shots on that thing are just very fun it's one that you could give me the whitewood of that and i'd probably play it for hours i think it's just genuinely fun shots yeah i'm like that way that you don't see a lot people prioritize in some of these modern games like they let him do what he wanted with the ball trails and stuff i think that's sweet i don't really care for the band much but i think they did a really good job with the band license like kind of giving it its own little like saturday morning cartoon spin yeah they handled the license very well with maiden it's like i like when they spin the bands it's like you're gonna be listening to the music we don't need to just see pictures of their faces the whole time like give me something else going on clips of them at a concert playing the song that's playing while you're playing the game yeah like guns and roses is the opposite of it's like if you're you have to be a guns and roses fan to be like this is cool whereas like foo fighters i don't really care particularly about foo fighters but i'm like this is a cool game they did a good job with it i think like the throwbacks to all the other like saturday morning cartoons and action figures are really fun and fitting works good i like a lot of borg stuff i'd say guardians i do like monsters quite a bit i really though i have enjoyed basically every stern machine i can't think of one that i didn't have fun on like ever there's not a single one that i walked up to and i was like wow okay actually no i didn't care for avengers but i'm not here to talk negatively Oh, yeah. That's the one that I just was like, I don't care for this right off the bat. But other people love that thing. Yeah. But like Deadpool was a game that I'm just like, I've played that enough in my life. I will walk by a Deadpool pretty much every time I see it. But I loved it when I first got into the hobby. Yeah, most people do. And it was just like, man, that game, it's got really fun. That's another one that it's like, I think it's just fun to shoot. That little katana path is awesome. Yeah. A little like the left ramp that you can kind of like back in and just loop over and over. That's awesome. It's a cool game. in like something like zeppelin it's like zeppelin gets shit on by so many people in the hobby and it's like i still like zeppelin a lot well you know that's another one that people well yeah what did you say as a soft spot well what do you say there's photos of you having a wedding reception at wedgehead and we had a led zeppelin there at the time premium in the back and there's great art pack and then there's a picture of you and your wife megan and when we were talking about this and you were talking about led zeppelin and why people still shit on it and you're like obviously i'm biased because it saved my marriage which i thought so maybe i'm a little biased for zeppelin i saved you the best i do think they're the best dad rock band like that genre of classic rock or that classic rock i think they're they're far and away my favorite and so i am biased but like i like that game man people are hard on it people need to be not so hard on games they don't yeah yeah i agree mando that's another one people really turned on mando quick for some reason that game's fun in the software options rule dude like all the yeah and one versus three and like impossible mode all that shit is awesome everything should have that kind of stuff in it because that feels like low effort programming compared to adding like a single new mode or something that involves assets and it adds so much replayability it's like the fact that you can play mando co-op is probably why i've played it more than half the time i've played mando it's probably been co-op with Megan yeah and it's like that should be in everything well and I like the impossible mode where impossible yeah it's so sick no cradling and stuff yeah that's everything should yeah every stern should have that kind of shit that's how you can add huge amounts of replayability without just making the code deeper and deeper yeah so to me that's a big takeaway from that as far as boutique stuff because I can't skip the boutique stuff I know I'm already going long here longer than you but Rick and Morty is obviously a huge favor for me that's one of my favorites it doesn't really fit it kind of bucks a lot of the trends that we talked about it's not deep it's not long plain um that's kind of why i like it hobbit is very long plain very deep i really enjoyed it for the long i had it for maybe a year and a half and i somehow missed that thing everyone hates hobbit i just missed it because i like the lord of the ring stuff it's a big example of the theme really carrying the game for me it's a game i think you could put any other theme on that and I would not care for it. But because it's set in that token world, they nailed the music. It's got gorgeous light shows. Oh, yeah. It's a fun one. It's Smaug. Like, when he starts and he blows fire across the play field, it's sick. Dude, especially at the time, I hadn't seen the spooky light shows, and they're kind of the only ones that have one-upped that in my head. But it's like the full RGB light shows on Hobbit were sick. Yeah. Elton John is sick. That's another one I'd love to play more Elton John. I wish it didn't cost 13 grand. Even like Galactic Tank Force, I really like the way Galactic Tank Force shoots. I wish the code and the mechs and everything cooperated with Nordman's layout. I think there's a lot of potential there. I think Hot Wheels is fun. Yeah, I think both of those games are fun. I have to say again, the best LCD stern of all time is Sword of Rage Pro. And I think I put it at the end of the list because it technically, I mean, it's obviously a modern game, but it's almost like a throwback layout. we joke about that a lot it feels like they just slapped an lcd onto a system 11 game yeah and i think that's kind of a good segue into the other modern outliers which the biggies would be like well i guess we'll save it for the next episode i don't need to even list them yeah we'll save it for the next episode but i think we had a good discussion here about uh modern pinball and new listeners or new to pinball like when we say modern this is like what we're talking about pins from last 10 years what we like about and what we don't like kind of what's changed a lot So I've been in the hobby for a long time, and so I've just seen it change a lot. I mean, I remember when I would go out on location and, you know, CSI was new, right? Like, I remember playing and being like, this game's actually pretty fun. And people were like, why are you playing that piece of shit? And so I remember being like a stern apologist on location. They're like, you've got to play these Ballet Williams games. And now I've been alive long enough playing pinball where I see people like, why are you playing those Bally Williams games? Those games are pieces of shit. Like you're like, you got to be insider connected. You got to have these deep rule sets. And I'm like, it's funny how it's like, I still like and dislike some, but it's just funny to see the sea change of public opinion of the average pinball player change so much. I think modern pinball is super fun. I'm glad they're still making games. I'm glad we're getting some new manufacturers. Hopefully we'll get a new big manufacturer that can truly kind of rival Stern in a real way. Because I think Stern, even with the competition they have now, they've upped their game. Like you said, a lot. They're making some of their best work now. Yeah. I mean, you're going to see these games everywhere. If you're into pinball, this is probably what you mostly play anyway, because even if you're having lots of new places show up, these are the games you're going to see out on location, right so i guess the message of this is always as it is the end of any one of these episodes which is go out and play some pinball play some pinball on location support your local operator put some money into play some modern games you probably already are you know maybe log in get some chivos this is like the this is the easiest sell of any of these we've done yeah you go play the games you were gonna play anyway yeah exactly but yeah don't take them for granted they're fun yeah go play at monsters i guess that's what we'll say go play monsters yeah go play the shittiest one go find the lowest ranked one at your local place and realize how good it still is yeah but until next time good luck don't suck © BF-WATCH TV 2021 © BF-WATCH TV 2021 you