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Episode 263 - Maimai... is Texas Pinball Now?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 41m·analyzed·Jan 18, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

J.B. Vincent acquires American Pinball; hosts debate brand strategy and relocation prospects.

Summary

Tony and Dennis discuss the J.B. Vincent L.P. acquisition of American Pinball, analyzing what the new ownership means for the struggling manufacturer's future. They debate whether the company should keep the American Pinball name, speculate about potential relocation from Chicago, and discuss broader pinball industry dynamics around licensing and brand reputation.

Key Claims

  • American Pinball was being subsidized by Amtron and the podcast hosts predicted it would go out of business multiple years in a row

    high confidence · Tony and Dennis discussing American Pinball financial history and prior predictions on the podcast

  • American Pinball reputation problem was not build quality but theme selection and PR launch strategies

    high confidence · Dennis states 'Most of the judgment on American Pinball had been their theme selection and a lot of the PR launch'

  • Hot Wheels was a game that could have done better for American Pinball but launched right before the pandemic shut everything down

    high confidence · Tony: 'they designed a game finally that maybe operators would want, and then operators can operate' but pandemic timing hurt it

  • Non-licensed games struggle in the pinball market despite the community claiming to want them

    high confidence · Dennis: 'people clamor and are loud about wanting non-licensed games and license not being important, that that's not true'

  • J.B. Vincent (the investor) has been on Pinside for years and has a collection of 40+ pinball machines

    high confidence · Tony: 'The lead behind this J. Brian Vincent, who is of J.B. Vincent, is on Pinside. I guess he's been on there for years from what I've read. Has a large collection, like 40 plus pins.'

  • Texas is emerging as a pinball manufacturing hub with Multimorphic, Barrels of Fun, and Turner Pinballs all based there

    high confidence · Dennis: 'now Barrels of Fun is also based out of Texas... with Multimorphic and Turner Pinballs down there and Barrels down there, It's starting to feel like... is Texas the little mini Chicago?'

Notable Quotes

  • “American Pinball was definitely not enthusiast driven. Like it seemed very much like here's a company that makes circuit boards. Hey, pinball companies want these things. Hey, maybe we should just spin up our own pinball side and make a bunch of pinball machines.”

    Tony @ ~40:00 — Critical assessment of American Pinball's business model and why J.B. Vincent's enthusiast background is different

  • “I think it's the gear. I think it's the manufacturing equipment. I think it's the capabilities to build that was appealing.”

    Dennis @ ~38:00 — Clarifies what J.B. Vincent is actually acquiring from American Pinball

  • “When I hear American Pinball, like the very first thing I think right now is, oh, that company that's dying.”

    Dennis @ ~32:00 — Illustrates the brand damage American Pinball has suffered in the community perception

  • “Pinball is a uniquely American manufacturing story... Our goal is to ensure American Pinball is positioned not just to survive, but to thrive by building a community-oriented culture.”

    J. Brian Vincent @ ~18:00 — Key statement from the new owner about his vision for the company in the press release

  • “There would have to be a lot of marketing, in my opinion, by J.B. Vincent L.P. to convince people that this is the phoenix rising from the ashes of the old American pinball and you don't have to have those fears anymore.”

    Dennis @ ~35:00 — Identifies the core challenge: rebuilding community trust after years of decline

  • “If they could change that but keep what good PR they have, it's a question. I think it's a push is where I'm coming from.”

    Dennis @ ~42:00 — Balanced assessment of name change strategy tradeoffs

Entities

American PinballcompanyJ.B. Vincent L.P.companyJ. Brian VincentpersonStern PinballcompanyJack DangerpersonBarrels of FuncompanyMultimorphiccompanySpooky Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: J.B. Vincent L.P. acquires American Pinball assets; positioned as renewal and rescaling of manufacturing operations with focus on licensed titles

    high · Official press release from January 15, 2025; clearly states acquisition of assets and vision for future growth

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: American Pinball brand perception shifted from company 'dying' to potential phoenix/resurrection opportunity, but remains cautious

    high · Dennis explicitly states 'When I hear American Pinball, like the very first thing I think right now is, oh, that company that's dying' but J.B. Vincent acquisition changes narrative

  • ?

    personnel_signal: New management under J. Brian Vincent replaces previous Amtron-affiliated leadership; Vincent characterized as genuine pinball enthusiast with significant collection

    high · Press release attribution; Tony verifies Vincent's Pinside membership and 40+ machine collection

  • $

    market_signal: Licensed IP confirmed as critical to market success; non-licensed games struggle despite community claims to want them

    high · Dennis: 'people clamor and are loud about wanting non-licensed games and license not being important, that that's not true.' New leadership prioritizing 'licensed titles'

  • ?

    operational_signal: American Pinball's relocation status uncertain but likely must leave Amtron building; speculation about Texas vs Chicago area vs other locations

    medium · J.B. Vincent L.P. based in San Angelo, Texas; hosts debate Chicago vs Texas move; note Texas labor costs lower but supply chain implications

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.304

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 18th. It's episode 263. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. We're back. We have a little bit of pinball news, but we'd like to start with our introduction. Yeah. What have you been playing? Tell me about the Battletech. I've not played any Battletech. I'm proud of you. I am Battletech clean. I haven't played it at all since our last episode. Has that been your New Year's resolution? No. No more Battletech. No, that wasn't my New Year's resolution.
0:48
But after we recorded our last episode, I went home and I decided I was going to go ahead and start Rogue Trader. So I fired up 40K Rogue Trader and started it up. And in the character creation, I was like, oh, I'm not going to use one of the pre-generated characters. I'll create my own character. And you're allowed to choose. They've got a huge, like, swath of portraits you can choose to be like your portrait.
1:13
And one of the first ones I saw was... Shiba Inu. No, but it was a gentleman in a commissar's uniform who looked like Tom Selleck with the big old giant Tom Selleck mustache. And since we just had that Tom Selleck conversation, I picked this Tom Selleck-looking commissar guy. It's like, oh, I have to do this. And then I created my actual 3D avatar. It was like, oh, just based off that, a big old Tom Selleck-looking dude. So it's like, oh, a name. And it's like, what do I want to name him? So I named him Quigley.
1:51
And, yeah, he primaries a sniper rifle. Of course. Because that's the way. So I've been playing. I was playing that all last week or two weeks ago, and then all last week I've been playing on it as well when I've been playing. But I hit a level where I was able to choose, like, an adjustment to my class. And the version, the adjustment I chose gave me like a pet, like a cyber pet so I could have like an assistant. And I chose a swarm of servitor skulls which are basically just a bunch of hovering skulls that help give vision and I can use my abilities on them and it turns my single target abilities into an AOE to boost my team. I'm a sniper who does a lot of buffing, but it increases my range so I don't have to be close to buff my people so I can set farther back. I can use him to buff my melee people while I set farther back and shoot stuff. Well, then it's like, oh, what do you want to name your swarm of servitor skulls? And I'm like, Princess Donut.
Jersey Jack Pinball
company
Amtroncompany
Tonyperson
Dennisperson
Chrissyperson
  • ?

    industry_signal: Texas emerging as secondary pinball manufacturing hub with Multimorphic, Barrels of Fun, Turner Pinballs, and potentially American Pinball

    high · Dennis catalogs multiple Texas-based manufacturers; notes similarity to Chicago's role as pinball hub but questions geographic spread within Texas

  • ?

    product_strategy: New American Pinball leadership immediately focusing on securing licensing agreements for upcoming games per press release

    high · Press release: 'already in the process of securing available licensing agreements for upcoming games'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Previous American Pinball management was circuit board company pivot, not enthusiast-driven; new ownership emphasizes community culture and enthusiast leadership

    high · Tony: 'American Pinball was definitely not enthusiast driven... Here's a company that makes circuit boards... just spin up our own pinball side'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community expects Stern Pokemon announcement imminently (as of January 18); speculation about Stern reclaiming market attention from 'upstart manufacturers'

    medium · Tony: 'I can't remember the last year where Stern did not have their kind of Q1 Cornerstone game revealed by now' and expects Pokemon reveal soon

  • ?

    community_signal: J. Brian Vincent's long Pinside history and substantial machine collection (40+) viewed as credibility marker for genuine enthusiasm vs corporate pivot

    high · Tony verifies Vincent's background: 'he's been on there for years from what I've read. Has a large collection, like 40 plus pins'

  • ?

    product_concern: Community has systemic distrust of American Pinball brand due to years of perceived mismanagement and declining game quality; customers fear company will fail and support will disappear

    high · Dennis: 'there's a fear about buying that game because there won't be any support because the company will go under' and company had discounted sales (Pinaween) that still couldn't overcome this perception

    • 2:56
    No, I went with Higgins. I had to keep it the Tom Selleck thing. Well, I'm trying to branch out. So I was like, well, you know, Higgins was always kind of the little helpful knowledge guy there in Magnum P.I., as I recall. And he was a little dude. I don't think I ever saw Magnum P.I. So I didn't know anything about that. I named my server skills Higgins. Okay. So it has been a really enjoyable game. It has a very interesting combat mechanic.
    3:35
    I've not had anybody be killed, killed yet. I've had most of my team unconscious at the end where I had two people left to finish the fight because I couldn't wake them up because they were unconscious. But what's interesting is when your people take severe injuries or are knocked unconscious in combat, they take temporary wounds and you have so much time to use med packs to cure those temporary wounds or else they become disabilities.
    4:09
    Right. And if you don't do that, they become disabilities that are permanent-ish. They're permanent until you go back to your void ship because obviously then the Medicos can fix you fully up. Yes. But as long as you're like running around on a planet taking part in stuff, you can get more and more wounded and like some pretty negative stats. Like I had one of my guys had taken like two wounds and he basically had like negative 20 to toughness and he only had like 30 toughness to start with. So every hit, hits that would normally have been like, oh, that's five points of damage. He takes the hit and it's like, he's down.
    4:57
    So it's an interesting system as it makes while you're actively playing in an area on the ground doing story mode, Or not story mode, but following your story and completing quest, if you don't stay on top of it, your stuff just continually gets worse and worse and worse and worse. And then once you return the ship and start over, basically everybody's back to 100%. So when you start again, you start fresh. But if you have a bad run on a mission starting out, when you get towards the end and start worrying about bosses and bigger fights and stuff, your people can be pretty badly crippled. I had a mission where I was in a real rough spot because Quigley and one of my other people had taken several wounds building up to it. And I thought I was at the end. And I was right. I was at the end. I'm like, okay. And then there's a giant wave of enemies. And it's like, okay, so I'm going to have to blow through this mass of enemies. Well, that's all right. I'll keep these two back and use ranged weapons with them and just kind of protect them. And then they dropped a Chaos Marine on me. And it was rough. That was the one where I ended. I only had two people left at the end of that one. And part of the problem was that once I dropped all of the baddies and the Chaos Marine a long way away from where I was, there was a sniper just sniping. And at that point, all of my good ranged fighters were down. So my melee fighters were basically running at them like holding a pistol in one hand like shooting from extreme range. It was very difficult, but it's been fun. It's been interesting, and especially for people who have an interest in 40K. It has a very good system. It's designed, you can tell, for people who don't have the deep lore of 40K because when you're reading and stuff comes up, it's all like naturally in the dialogue and such. But things that might be very specific to the setting and you might not know what it is will be in bold. And if you mouse over it, it gives you a tooltip that explains exactly what it is. So it's very friendly for people who are not buried in the lore of 40K to know what's being talked about. All right. Interesting. Yeah, I haven't played a 40K game. Well, no, I need a hedge because I did play the Space Marine. I haven't played one that isn't that style in quite a while because I played a RTS1 years and years ago. Yeah, Dawn of War. Dawn of War 2, actually, I think, is the one I played.
    7:47
    Well, speaking of Dawn, it's the dawn of a new Patreon member. Dog Days joined our Patreon. Thank you, Dog Days. Welcome. We appreciate it, especially in the Dog Days of winter. It's like the Dog Days of summer but cold. No, I haven't made much progress since our last episode on any video games. I've mostly been grinding equipment unlocks in Battlefield 6. I've been working on objectives for the classes because I tend to favor certain classes. I usually play support followed by engineer with the recon being last. And so my assault and my recon are not all that advanced. I fully love it. I've got everything unlocked for support. I've done all the support challenges. But an engineer is relatively close. But Assault and Recon in particular are way behind because sniping on console has never been particularly easy. And what you have to do to achieve these things makes you play in different ways. And not all those ways are fun for me. But usually it's not like asking for absurd amounts of it. So, you know, you get a little taste of, oh, yeah, this is – and I have actually, by changing things up, learned different ways, like different build-outs, different pieces of equipment. And it's kind of like after I got to use them, like, you know what? I actually do like this piece of equipment. But most of the time I don't. So that is what I have been doing now. Pinball. OK, we have a few listener emails, but we're not going to start with those. I was hoping we would be talking about Pokemon. I thought, I mean, at this point, it's the 18th we're recording on the 18th of January. I can't remember the last year where Stern did not have their kind of Q1 Cornerstone game revealed by now. I don't know. It'll be tomorrow. I thought that this would be the dawn of Stern taking back the attention from these little upstart manufacturers. So it's dawn. It'll be the dawn.
    9:47
    It's always darkest before it's dawn. Don is Jodo. So it's Jodo Pokemon. Dennis just dropped it. It's Jodo-based Pokemon. Anyway, but we don't know. We don't know. Where is Stern?
    10:00
    What's going on with them? I don't understand. Instead, we're hearing about stuff like Jack Danger doing a design by Internet Committee of Tank Girl. Like, I don't know what's going on here. Yeah, no, there's not. Like, we're not talking about that because I don't know enough about it. But however, American Pinball of all companies, American Pinball to the rescue. Or should we say J.B. Vincent L.P. to the rescue? So there is an announcement. Press release came out on the 15th and I will go ahead and and read this press announcement. It is somewhat lengthy, but I won't go. I won't read the about, but I'm going to read the main the main few paragraphs. So, permit me to begin. And this is based in San Angelo, Texas. So, hey, Texas and pinball yet again. J.B. Vincent L.P. today announced that it has acquired the assets of American Pinball Incorporated, marking a significant new chapter for the company. This acquisition positions American Pinball for renewed growth, expanded innovation, and a strengthened commitment to delivering licensed titles paired with the highest quality manufacturing in the industry. J. Bryant Vincent is a seasoned investor with a proven track record in brand imaging, product development, and innovation, as well as scaling high-quality manufacturing operations. Under the direction and leadership of J.B. Vincent LP, the company will focus on building out a best-in-class team, enhancing product design, intellectual property, and building long-term value while honoring the craftsmanship and creativity that the pinball community expects. This investment is about the future, said J. Brian Vincent, managing partner of J.B. Vincent LP. Both American Pinball and Orbit Games have some elements we can build on. However, our top priority is building trust in the company while fostering a positive and engaging culture for employees and customers. I am a pinball enthusiast, so this investment is personally exciting for me. We are hitting the ground quickly and are already in the process of securing available licensing agreements for upcoming games. J.B. Vincent is committed to providing the liquidity and every resource available to make American pinball a market leader that is passionate about serving the pinball community. Vincent brings decades of experience as a manufacturer with expertise in developing differentiated products and brands that resonate with customers. His background includes successfully leading organizations through growth plans that require both creativity and discipline in manufacturing. Pinball is a uniquely American manufacturing story, Vincent added. Our goal is to ensure American Pinball is positioned not just to survive, but to thrive by building a community-oriented culture that attracts people committed to building the best machines that are innovative, beautiful, and exciting to play. We believe pinball is an adventure, and we invite our customers to play the adventure with us. Okay, so you had already known about this announcement, Tony. I just wanted to have some conversation on it.
    12:56
    What do you think? Let's just start with that. What do you think? I mean, American needed something. It's been quite a while since we first started talking about their issues and their growing problems.
    13:18
    Do you think this is a solution that they need? I think it's a solution, and quite frankly, that's better than what they had going on.
    13:28
    It's the solution that I expected most likely to see was somebody to come in and take the reins. The question is just going to be, how well does it turn out?
    13:42
    Now, it looks like this J.B. Vincent is a small shop in terms of an investor. It's an investor dude, not like a big venture capital group.
    13:54
    Nonetheless, obviously the buildup of the assets and the investment in the company is what will speak to the development. Here's what I wanted to ask you. Overall, yes, I think this move makes sense. It was clear to me that Amtron wasn't really interested anymore in trying to make this work. It seemed like maybe with the whole Orbit Games thing that they thought they had a pivot, Pivot, but that pivot, I don't know. We weren't seeing anything pivot from that pivot. Like, are they hoping to get into the – you know, they flirted with so many things. Like, hey, let's be a contract manufacturer for other ideas, but it didn't seem like anyone was going to that. I don't know if the price was too high or what.
    14:33
    Unlike some companies, American Pinball's reputation is kind of an interesting one. Like, they didn't have a reputation for bad build quality, broadly speaking. They had a few issues early on with like the Houdinis with some power supply stuff, but they made right by that, as I understood it. Most of the judgment on American Pinball had been their theme selection and a lot of the PR launch, like the launch strategies and all of that. Not all of that was their fault. Hot Wheels dropping right before the pandemic shut everything down. I mean, that was a game that I really thought could have done a lot better for them. But unfortunately, they designed a game finally that maybe operators would want, and then operators can operate. Yeah, I think you're right on that. And I also think they've had their issue that they have concentrated on non-licensed or minimally licensed games. And I think we've seen enough truth in the hobby to this point to know that as much as people clamor and are loud about wanting non-licensed games and license not being important, that that's not true. Yes, yes. And we've talked about that at length. Here's my big question for you. Do you think they should keep the name American Pinball? Oh, hadn't thought about it. I don't know. I don't think that the brand is tarnished so much that the name change is required. And that's why I wanted to ask, because I agree with you, but is the name worth anything? I don't know that if it's not worth something huge. It's not like it's not like the it's the you know, like the Gottlieb name or right or like Stern or something. Yeah, I see because in the in the press release, J.B. Vincent has announced that they have the assets. So I'm assuming that's like the equipment and all the rest of it. Like so he's got the stuff to have a pinball company.
    16:43
    I don't I don't see why you I wouldn't keep the name. I don't think it brings anything to the table. And that's why I kind of opened with that. They don't have this terrible build quality reputation or anything like that.
    16:58
    But it also – the name when you – what do you – if I tell you American Pinball right now, I'd be like, hey, Tony, do you want an American Pinball game? What comes to your mind?
    17:11
    Like Oktoberfest and that whole thing. So you think of the initial startup, the original rollout of Houdini, but I'm old school. I've been in this hobby like so many of our listeners for a long time at this point. When I hear American Pinball, like the very first thing I think right now is, oh, that company that's dying.
    17:36
    True. But this is the resurrection. Sure, but how many of the enthusiasts – again, there are enthusiasts and then there are enthusiasts. How many of the enthusiasts are going to know or care about – there are probably plenty of enthusiasts out there that don't know that a bunch of – a couple of billionaires came in, bailed out JJP and is why that company stayed afloat. They don't know because who cares? All they know is JJP kept operating, putting out games and doesn't have a reputation for dying. So, American Pinball, on the other hand, puts out a bunch of titles that, broadly speaking, did not connect with people.
    18:19
    Again, depends on your level of enthusiasm. Maybe you know, maybe you don't know about the major transition away from Joe Balser to David Fix. And then the post-Fix era was mostly a disaster, quite frankly, whether it's his fault or not. Right. Mostly a disaster from the effort. The last big effort was Galactic Tank Force, which was a questionable choice on a few fronts. Creative, absolutely, but questionable from – there's a lot of questions that one could raise about from just what they chose to put together in that game, from how they chose to market it, and just also as how quickly they chose to quit marketing it. Yeah. And then pivoting to barbecue, which I think zero percent of the pinball community thinks was a smart move.
    19:07
    Like it just it wasn't smart. It just wasn't like hearts are in the right place. Brains were somewhere else. I don't know where the brains were.
    19:15
    So a lot of things like this. So now when people saw like the Pinaween sales, they had a Halloween sale called Pinaween. I don't think we talked about it, but they did. They've done it a couple times. They've constant sales. And these sales, like real discounts. This is not like the, oh, look, everything's 10% off. It's like everything's always 10% off. Now you're just calling it the Valentine's Day sale now that we're past Christmas. Right. Right? You see them online all the time. No. Real sales, like the pricing is, maybe they're always the same deals, but the pricing is like thousands off. Like it's significant. But people have this fear about buying that game because there won't be any support because the company will go under. Right.
    19:56
    There would have to be a lot of marketing, in my opinion, by J.B. Vincent L.P. to convince people that this is the phoenix rising from the ashes of the old American pinball and you don't have to have those fears anymore.
    20:12
    On the flip side, starting under a new name raises all the new name concerns too. So people would be like, well, is it going to last? Can we trust that I'll be able to get parts from this? So I can't say that changing names will alleviate some of these concerns I'm raising, but starting from scratch to me with their equipment and stuff seems like it may be safer.
    20:38
    They may also have the original IP assets, but they could always do like what Sega and Data E like dual branded, like just do the same game. Honestly, I don't think there's enough demand, especially after the Pinoene sales, to start doing their version of Oktoberfest. I think those titles are played out by this point. I think you're right. I don't think they had any interest in the existing IP. I think it's the gear. I think it's the manufacturing equipment. I think it's the capabilities to build that was appealing.
    21:11
    So I don't know. So the lead behind this J. Brian Vincent, who is of J.B. Vincent, is on Pinside. I guess he's been on there for years from what I've read. Has a large collection, like 40 plus pins. So that part, like he is a real enthusiast. Those aspects, I think, mean that he will. American Pinball was definitely not enthusiast driven. Like it seemed very much like here's a company that makes circuit boards. Hey, pinball companies want these things. Hey, maybe we should just spin up our own pinball side and make a bunch of pinball machines. And then they tried to bring in enthusiasts to run it.
    21:47
    Didn't work out for them in the end. I guess I would start from scratch. I think that's where I'm landing. I acknowledge, though, that it isn't as easy as I initially thought it would be to make that choice. But I'm just not sure. Saying you're still American Pinball, I don't think that's got legs worth walking on. I don't know if it hurts you enough to fully counteract the starting over aspect of a name change too. Unless you are doing the whole, oh, we're Billy Jim Bob Pinball, formerly known as American Pinball. I mean, unless it's something along those lines, because the proven ability to build out good quality games is going to be a huge leg up.
    22:38
    Because like you were saying earlier, they've never really had a quality problem with the game builds. Their quality problem is that most of their games have been terrible. Mm-hmm. So if they can change that but keep what good PR they have, it's a question. I think it's a push is where I'm coming from. Right, and you may be right. I don't think it's one big – I don't think – I think both ways have their negatives, and I think their negatives are so similar and so overall minor. I think it's a push. I don't think it's going to be very much different either way. Let me ask you something even more speculative. All right. So this investment company is based out of Texas. Yeah. Is American Pinball moving to Texas? I wouldn't. But they're not going to be able to keep working out of the Amtron building, so they got to move. They do. But we've seen enough people make the moves because there is a larger pool of experienced people to pull from in the Chicago area. True. But, I mean, back in the day when we would talk Texas, we were really only talking multimorphic. And I know we'd seen, like, their job listings sit for a long time. Now, granted, some of that may have very well been what they were offering to pay versus what Bucky's was paying. Oh, very much, yeah. Because I know you did an analysis of that. I don't know if we ever talked about it on air, but Tony pulled up the amounts of what Bucky's was making, and we looked against what they were advertising at multimorphic. This was a few years ago. And Bucky's was a better deal. Oh, and not like a little bit. Like you'd work less hard for more money. Yes. That's what we mean by better deal. If you loved pinball, then obviously your opinion would have shifted. However, and then, of course, the failed deep root was based out of there. But now Barrels of Fun is also based out of Texas and I believe builds out of there. So, you know, it's starting to feel like with Multimorphic and Turner Pinballs down there and Barrels down there, It's starting to feel like, is that like Chicago light? Is Texas the little mini Chicago? Here's the problem with that. Texas is huge. And these areas where Chicago, everything is, oh, it's all Chicago adjacent. It's all within like 45 minutes of each other. And there's spots in Texas that depend upon where the spread is. It's like, oh, no, we're real close. We're only six hours away. I mean, there are downsides. There are downsides. And I don't know where each one of these companies is based in Texas. And I not saying San Angelo is going to be where the manufacturing is I just wanted to throw it out there It should definitely not be San Angelo But maybe part of his strategy is to Oh oh My guess, and this is a guess. Because San Angelo is like in the middle of nowhere. Well, yeah, yes, apparently further out than everything. Yeah, so.
    25:34
    Yeah, no, I don't know. I'm assuming labor is cheaper in Texas. I would assume, but then you are going to have the cost of so much long distance moving. I mean, yeah, the parts supply, most of your supply chain, unless they're using an alternative supply chain. I don't know.
    25:57
    So you're saying they should stay in the Chicago area? I think it would make the most sense to stay in the Chicago area. Now, I do think if they do move to Texas, they need to move to Dallas-Fort Worth area, San Antonio area, near a place that has a pool of possible workers, not rural Texas. Okay. Well, let me give you a third option that I hadn't really considered, but I am now. And that is, what if they, instead of going to Texas or staying in the Chicago area, go to Benton, Wisconsin and make a play to poach all the spooky employees and become the new pinball company of Benton? I know. It seems far-fetched. But if they were to offer like $5 more an hour and just be like, you know what? We're going to use our venture investment capital liquidity that they focused on in the press release and just like destroy Spooky's workforce by lure them all over to the dark side with greenbacks.
    27:06
    I mean, hear me out. Green. Vancouver. With the tariff thing, that's out. That's out. You forgot about the tariffs.
    27:16
    Vancouver, Oregon. Ah, my one weakness. I forgot about Oregon. Interestingly, they could end up selling a lot of pinball machines right on their back door because Oregon and Portland is one of the biggest pinball meccas there is in Seattle. I guess because of all the rain. I never really fully understood. Yeah, no, I hadn't really thought, I guess in my mind when I thought of this kind of purchase, I thought it was more, it just settled into my head as a change of management with no overall major changes in geographical location and or naming. Hmm. Well, anyway, the and you may be right. I don't I don't know. We will learn more in the coming weeks as J.B. Vincent starts to share more information about the intentions and everything else. But right. But it's interesting. It's big news. I think a lot of people are excited. I'm pretty sure that we have – like when we were doing our look to the future last year, pretty sure we thought that American would be gone. We predicted that they were going to go out of business like three or four years in a row. Yeah. Because of all the business – and I think the issue there was with the business decisions that were happening, It just seemed like how can they keep going? And I think Amtron just kept bailing them. Like Amtron was subsidizing it. And there were all sorts of theories that people are like, oh, they're using this tax write-off and all this other stuff. And sometimes I think people lose sight of that, like being able to have a tax write-off and explicitly going, we want a tax write-off in terms of when they link up is one of those things. But anyway, I just thought that would be a good one for us to go ahead and talk about for a little bit. So thank you for participating with that. Y'all can always email a collectingamerspodcast at gmail.com regarding what you think is going to happen with American Pinball. It might be interesting to hear your thoughts, or I should say read your thoughts about it. Speaking about reading thoughts about things, we have a couple of emails that I did want to go ahead and cover that came in before today.
    29:45
    Chrissy wrote in to us, and I will now read that. Gents, Happy New Year. Listening to your most recent episode, I had a couple of thoughts. First, I too decided to opt out of competitive pinball because of one simple fact. I didn't want to burn an entire day waiting to play. It wasn't as much about whether I progressed or got to get qualified or got the finals, just that a lot of the process was sitting around and not doing the thing I set out to do, play pinball. This isn't a slam on folks that are into competitive pinball. A lot of my pinball friends are not only into it, but excel at it. I'm super stoked that they enjoy it and are excited by tournaments. I pretty quickly, however, realized it wasn't for me. Second, for the listener looking for a cheaper gateway into Virtual Pinball, while it won't give you the access to the widest library, if they have a Nintendo Switch, they should look into the Flip Grip. A quick Google search shows that they've been knocked off by the Amazon Clone Army, but the Flip Grip is a device that is intended to play games in tape mode for vertically oriented shmups, etc. There's even a list of flip-grip-friendly games at HTTPS www.doesitflip.com.
    31:04
    It works a treat for pinball games, too, with the shoulder buttons for flippers and the left joystick for nudging. I play plenty of Stern TPA and the Zen pinball games on it, and it is a must-take when I travel. Speaking of travel, last time I was in Overland Park, I visited Chateau's Caboose with some pin friends and found the pins to be in good condition. Definitely recommend a visit. All right. Thank you, Chris. I didn't know about this. Do you know what Tate stands for? I don't know what that – I didn't know that term. I don't. I guess it means vertical mode. Yeah, it's vertical mode. Okay. Well, that's cool. I actually have one. Oh. Why didn't you suggest it? It is in one of my drawers because I haven't touched my Switch in years. Yes, that's true. So it's in my drawers. But I do have one of them because I have used it. I used it more for shmups, but they are very good.
    32:00
    And yeah, Chartreuse Caboose not only has some good pins, they've got good food. Yeah, I believe the people that maintain the Chartreuse Caboose pins, but actually I still have not gone and played, are the same operators that are doing Nub's Pub and Pizza West in 403. So I would expect them to be in good condition. Because I ate at the one on 87th Street last summer and played a couple games.
    32:29
    Well, and Chris brought up the – I don't know that we really focused on this so much other than how long the tournaments were, but he brings up a good point. That was another – I mean, it's nice to have good downtime, quote-unquote downtime, to socialize with people, but there's a lot of downtime in a pinball tournament. A lot. And that's why things get backed up because you have one person have one like certain styles of gameplay are more fun in my view like competitively than others. But, you know, when it's like the the four three or like the four two one zero scoring, I like that format. But nobody can advance until all the banks are done. And, you know, someone's on someone's on Hobbit. Right. There goes half an hour minimum. I've definitely – I will say I have definitely gone to tournaments where I've had my – where I've been sitting down reading a book.
    33:27
    Yeah. It's just one of those struggles that we all face when we try and do it. But I just still want to get back and maybe just do – not like I used to, but – Not two a month every month. I feel bad about not having done any last year. Yes, I do too. I feel bad for not having done any for the last two years. I actually finally threw away my state pinball championship qualification shirt. It finally got a hole in it because I wear it like any other shirt. Yeah. The year I qualified. And by qualified, I mean enough of the better players could not make the tournament. Or we're going to Missouri. Yes.
    34:03
    This was the year that one of our high-level players was getting married that day. So he couldn't go. And there were a few other people. I don't know if they were going to the wedding or they had other conflicts. So I ended up in the 15th seed out of the and it was the top 16 people based off of Kansas score, which don't get me wrong. I had a really good year that year, but I mean, I was I was coming in officially like as the 21st seed or something. Right. And I got 12th in that tournament. So I did better than you would have thought I would have. But now it was tough. That was my after I got kind of knocked out of the process and to get placed in the lower tier. That was the one where I had to play Gordon on Black Rose. And I was like, what is this game, this pirate game? He's like, I love Black Rose. And he proceeded to show me how much he enjoys Black Rose. Let me show you how this game works. Let me show you what I am used to. No. Anyway, so he did very well on it, and I did not as well on it. All right. Another email. Brian G. wrote in. Hey, guys. Great show. I listened to it while driving around servicing my small pinball route that I set up in the north of Portugal. Hey, Portugal. I didn't know we had listeners in Portugal. Awesome. Or does he mean Portugal, Oregon? Is that near Vancouver? It could be. Okay. It might be. Well, hey. I'm just going to assume the country because it's more exotic. It is. But I didn't know we had listeners from Oregon either. So it's kind of like we win either way.
    35:34
    Brian continues. I just wanted to drop a few ideas for pinball slash video game related topics you might want to use. So he's giving us some ideas, but when I looked them over, I thought we could talk about all of these on this episode. So number one, and we'll kind of do them by these chunks. So continuing on, have you ever played a game I created called Rollers of the Realm on Steam, PS3, and Vita?
    35:56
    Have you played this? I hadn't even heard of it. I hadn't. I didn't know about it. Continuing, he goes, it won some awards back in 2014, like Best of Play at GDC 2014. It could be something interesting for you guys to talk about in either the pinball or video game segment, since it is both. It also has a sequel in the works, which will be the first time in my career that a sequel game is being made based off of something I created from the ground up. Best part about it is I just get to play it when it comes out instead of spending half a decade making it this time. Lol. This is the story behind why Rollers of the Realm got made. It was a portfolio project to help a bunch of my colleagues get jobs in the industry after being laid off from Silicon Knights. When that, oh, I know Silicon, oh, sorry, let me continue. When that game they had spent years working on got sold off after Sega dropped the ball and THQ picked it up only to go bankrupt the next year after doubling the budget and the game's scope. And the ideation process and eventual evolution of the title over its development are all very unorthodox and interesting stories. Okay, I want to pause here. Oh, sorry. So, no, I don't know Rollers of the Realm. I'm actually writing it on my little notepad because I think I'm going to look on Steam for this. I literally looked it up while you were reading it, just before you started reading it. It looks pretty cool. Okay. All right, because it might be worth – how much is it?
    37:15
    Like nine bucks, ten bucks? I might just buy it and play it to give a – I don't want to say a review. Now I feel like – Oh, no. We've Gollum'd. He's Gollum'd himself. No.
    37:30
    What's with us? This master. Oh, I still – I still have nightmares. Oh, I have to be very careful. But anyway, so – but Silicon Knights. So they made that X-Men game that – right? Like the – I don't recognize – I don't think you played – I don't recall you played it. I'm looking over at my shelf like I have it on my shelf and I don't because those are movies, not games. But there was – that was – if I'm remembering correctly, Silicon Knights was the company where there was the whole bankruptcy thing. There was a lawsuit and if I remember right, the judge ordered all the unsold copies were to be destroyed.
    38:08
    Oh, fun. Yeah, it was like – yeah, if you check on the power of the internet right now. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, I think I cannot remember. Canadian video game developer.
    38:20
    Yeah, it was. If I'm remembering the brand correctly, it's tough for me to say because it's been so many years. This was back in like in the 360 era.
    38:31
    But yeah, if I remember though, that brand, that video game company, I should say, ran into a whole host of issues related to this. I don't remember if it was the licensure stuff or all of that. X-Men Destiny. It was X-Men Destiny. I bought that and played it before it was illegal for them to sell it. And the game was all right. You could tell it didn't get baked as long as it should have.
    39:01
    And they had a few other things that I think were kind of popular. I think Too Human was something that they did with Microsoft Studios. They may have been involved with some other stuff. I can't really remember. I didn't know most of their stuff. I think they were tied to a Metal Gear in some way, but I've never really played the Metal Gear Solid games. But yeah, there was like this whole fight with one of the other companies. It was a whole thing. I'm sure he's got some interesting stories from it because the whole thing about what happened with Silicon Knights was this weird hodgepodge of just a disaster of stuff going on. They had a fight with Epic Games. Yeah, so it looks like they sued Epic Games. Epic Games countersued.
    39:48
    And Silicon Knights lost bad. Like going out of business because of it bad. Well, yeah, because it wasn't just X-Men Destiny. There were other games. I think it was also too human. I don't know if it was other stuff. But there were two big games that they had out that were told all the unsold stuff would destroy it. Like there is no negotiation. This is over. You're in the wrong. Destroy it. Like, so how could they make any money? Like all their stuff that they were selling was no longer allowed to be sold. So I still have that X-Men Destiny around somewhere. I did finish it. So this is off of the Wikipedia. We always trust it. It's just what it was easy to find. So Epic Games prevailed against the lawsuit and won their countersuit for $4.45 million on grounds of copyright infringement, Misappropriation of Trade Secrets and Breach of Contract, an injury award that was later doubled due to prejudgment interest, attorney's fees, and cost. The presiding judge stated that Silicon Knights had deliberately and repeatedly copied thousands of lines of Epic Games copyrighted code in an attempt to conceal its wrongdoing by removing Epic Games copyright notices and by disguising Epic Games copyrighted code as Silicon Knights' own. So, evidence against Silicon Knights was overwhelming as it not only copied functional code but also non-functional internal comments Epic Game Pro creators had left for themselves. Ouch. Oops. There's one weakness. So, they were directed to destroy all game code derived from the Unreal Engine 3 and all information from licensing restricted areas of the Unreal Engine documentation website.
    41:26
    Okay. So yeah, it was to recall and destroy all unsold retail copies of games built with it, including Two Human and X-Men Destiny and three games that had not been released. Okay. All right. So they had some unreleased stuff using it. Okay. Interesting. All right. Sorry for the aside, but that one, I was just like, oh, wow. I hadn't thought about Silicon Knights in a while. All right. Number two from Brian. What are your top three pinball machines that were fully released last year? So by that, I mean games that finally hit 1.0 or finished code by the developers. So titles like D&D and John Wick still would not count, but something like Jaws and Cactus Canyon Upgrade Kit would. All right, so I'm going to pause here. Here's the problem. I don't know what hit 1.0. I don't even know a convenient way to look it up. I'm sure there is a way. I will tell you based off of the list he gave, I would tell you Jaws because I think Jaws code was awesome before it even came out. Yeah. But Jaws is the only one I think I have played at 1.0 because I have it. I don't own, I've never even tried the upgrade kit. Yeah, and I can't remember every game I played last year, but I will say pretty much everything I played were either games from the 80s or early 90s or last year's new releases, which are definitely not 1.0. Right. So I'm sorry, but I can't tell you my, honestly, I can't do a top three because I don't think I've played them with the 1.0 code beyond Jaws since they got to 1.0, so it wouldn't be fair. All I can tell you is I would say yes, Jaws, definitely. Jaws is, I think there's a really strong argument to be made that Gieske's rules, I think she's the one who's done Jaws rules, are, I think you could argue they are more interesting than Godzilla's code. But, now whether you like the layout as much, that, I'd probably lean the other way and still say Godzilla's got a slightly, I like the layout a bit more on Godzilla, but both are really fun games. Yeah. All right. And his number three. Actually, I think he's got four. Number three. I wanted to give you a rumor on the V-Pin side of things. You know what? Let me go ahead and I'm going to drop in the rumor corner. The music. That's right. The music.
    43:37
    Rumor corner. Dennis Greasel's got the news before Napa case. Is that right, Tony? Yeah.
    43:55
    So, here's what Brian's rumor corner is. There is a new company currently developing original IP V-Pin tables. So although we see very few original IPs in the physical sense, we are going to get a few more attempts at it over the next couple of years rolling out on certain platforms. Neat. You've heard it here first. That's your rumor corner. Neat. And number four from Brian. Finally, I've also started a Whitewood for an IP. Holy crap, this guy does everything. Sorry, I'm interjecting opinion again when I should keep reading. I finally started a Whitewood for an IP that still doesn't have any pinball games out there. The theme will be set in a specific era of the Warhammer 40K universe. If both of you were to make your own homebrews, what theme would you choose and what two key aspects would you want in it? Cheers, Brian. Now, Brian, let me say something. I think it's a little unfair that you bring up 40K in front of Tony and then immediately say, so what hunger would you do now that I've taken 40K and Tony can't have it? Because that's how I interpreted this. Oh, that's fine. I'm interested because of the layering of a specific era. This specific era makes me wonder, are we talking horror series here? Are we talking 30K? Ooh, that'd be interesting. But he said 40K. Right, right, right. But 30K is the reference to games that take place prior to – 40K is like the modern setting. 30K is like the Horus Heresy setting, which is where the Space Marines broke and the whole Chaos Marine set action reformed. That's when the Emperor was still fighting on the field himself? Yes. Okay. I've read some of the books. Yeah. So that's 30K. That's how most people consider it. At least most people that I talk to. I mean, would you, I have heard of Horus Heresy. Aside from that and Modern, is there a time that people would want a game set in?
    45:47
    I mean, like, don't know. I mean, I would, I would, that, that, that is a very popular setting. Mm-hmm. And it'd be interesting to see. I would say that I, being my penchant for humor and everything else, I could see the joys of a 40K game that is less based around just 40K as a whole and is more specifically focused on like Cephas Kang and his entire story series, which are just humorous as can be. Also, anything based directly around the Eisenhorn books would be really interesting and fun. But, no, if I was going to do my own IP and my own homebrew with an IP that I would choose from, it wouldn't be 40K.
    47:14
    Okay. What would you do? Oh, come on. Really? I'd do Battletech. No, I thought there was already someone Battletech homebrew. There is. There is somebody. And they've made critical errors. I didn't. I did not say that. I know. I did. Their game is interesting and fun. I've played a decent amount of it at TPF. Oh, pardon me.
    47:41
    But it is also very much based around one of the later time eras than what I would target. I'm kind of a grognard. I like the 3025 time era, so I would probably base something closer to that, that whole little intro text section. Or if I was going to push it out, I'd push it to, well, I mean, no, that'd be right about 3025 is the start of the fourth succession war, roughly. So, yeah, I'd do fourth succession wars, what I would do. So what two key aspects would be in this game that really kind of ram the theme home?
    48:22
    For me, it would be just like we see in Game of Thrones where you choose your house. You would choose a house. To me, that would be a key part of it.
    48:34
    And this is where I would want to utilize the LCD displays because depending upon the house you chose would change what your LCD, your coloration and what you look at. And it would change your obviously your how your bonuses work and how everything else works. So that's one one key thing I would have is you have to be able to choose your house.
    48:58
    And let's see what other key aspect and what I want. I think there would definitely have to be a very large. I don't know how I would make it work, but I would want to make how you choose your or how how the the the combat and stuff would interact with the actual plane. Because I think instead of trying to do something more small scale, like where it's like you like choose a mech or whatever, I would want it to be more strategic. So if you're taking place during the Fourth Succession War, you choose your specific house, and then you would get to kind of direct it. So it would be almost more of a strategic. So instead of being like a battle, it's like when you're playing a mode, you're fighting for a planet, and you could actually have a branching thing based upon winning or losing your various modes. You could have it where it branches out so that it's like, oh, I say I'm the Free Worlds League because I decided I hated myself and I was fighting and I decided because I hated myself more to drop on Hephaestus because I wanted to watch my armies dissolve. But say I managed to capture Hephaestus, that would give me an option to jump deeper in Delirium space. So that would be an option. And it interesting because by doing that timeline if you started right at the beginning of the Fourth Succession War it would actually cut your house count down depending on how you did it What with the joining of the Federated Sons and the Lyrian Commonwealth into the Federated Commonwealth So instead of having Steiner and Davian, you would just have the one.
    50:50
    Interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Or if you hate yourself, you can play Capellans. I don't know if anyone understood any of that, but I think they all were very excited. Yeah, no, definitely. I think it would be really interesting. And anybody who wants to come to my TED Talk, right, where I have a deeper conversation about Battletech, you let me know. You look me up and I'll sit down and talk Battletech with you all day at TPF. Yes, he will. So your choice, Dennis. Yeah, I don't know. I don't believe in Hungary. Look at all of the time I just gave you to think about it. No, I have one, but I would rather – because this one is such a good commercial one. It doesn't really need to be homebrewed, whereas your idea does.
    51:34
    No, I still want to see Die Hard. So it's not like my favorite movie or anything, but I just think it would make such a good pinball machine as just the first one.
    51:43
    Would the first one be better or would the vengeance be better? But that would be debatable about like there's the problem with Vengeance is because it's not like a one scene thing. It's New York. Right. Like there's a lot of element in some ways. It's easier to pick the pieces you would want to convey it, but it's just not as iconic.
    52:06
    So for me, the two key aspects would be probably want if you know, you actually need to drop the play field. This is the part that would make it pretty good homebrew, though. Drop the playfield lower in the cabinet. There's a lot of space in the cabinet. You basically need to sink it more for a couple of reasons. One, got to have Nakatomi Tower as a toy. But I'm imagining it as like – so we know like we have the Godzilla building in the back. Probably needs to be a bit bigger. But instead of it changing levels like the Godzilla building does where, you know, when Godzilla knocks it down and stuff, like there should be something. Maybe it's with one flipper like upper playfield style to be the roof. I also want a chopper toy. He doesn't have to move around other than I want the blade to spin to kind of convey that scene where he has to avoid the FBI snipers and stuff.
    52:53
    And so there could be a little part that you play up there. There also should be on a little bit lower level. Think almost like minifig style. There needs to be a part where his wife is hanging out of the building when that mode activates and you have to or Hans is and stuff. And you have to you have to make and the toy will actually go. It could be like on a little belt or whatever because then it needs to reset. Yeah, hear me out. What? No. I know. I just. What?
    53:23
    Bonsai Run It. Oh, in the back box. There you go. That's a lot of work. You have minifigs jumping out of the building and then getting reeled back in. You've already got a lot of work. Yeah, but no one wants to play the pachinko thing. So those are the main – and again, depending on how deep I could set it and how – because I don't want to lose too much of the visual. You're pretty close, though. It could be pretty small. We could use other levels to do something. Like there would be the little level maybe with LEDs to show the part where he's – where the bad guys are launching the rockets at the police armored vehicle or whatnot. Not like actually literally launching rockets because I don't know how you reload those. I'd use firecrackers. But anyway, it sounds like a fire hazard, so we won't do that part. The other thing would be rather than subways, again, because it's deeper, some of the ball pathing should just be vent ducts. It will look like vent ducts and it will be like an elevated train style. So the ball is rolling above the playfield, but you can't see it because it's in the vent. That would be my second key thing. Third thing, maybe, I haven't decided on this yet, would be if we go ahead and do a plexiglass playfield beneath, kind of lower playfield style because I want it to be a fairly lengthy portion. And I think the balls do fine on that sort of style of surface. But it lights up down below, lights up like the old Gottlieb style would for things like the – I'm trying to think some of the stuff that they did. What's the one where you're building the robot? It's not Bride of Pinball, but there was a Gottlieb one where you're – Genesis. Like Genesis, it lights up when you're doing things with a robot because it's underneath but it's under a clear portion. I think bad girls might do something like that too. Anyway, lights up for the limo crash into the escape van mode. But you're playing up top. The ball is not down there. You're playing up top, but if you hit the proper hurry-ups, you activate it, the Hot Wheels limo crashes into it. But I need a lot of length because I want it to go clink. So that's why we have to have a lot of plexiglass. Those are my ideas. Neat. There might also be like little toys, like a little, like they could have little figurines of the SWAT team and they're holding their little hand because they touched a rose bush and got scratched.
    55:41
    And that one bad guy has to eat a Twix bar. Right. While you're at it, you need to be able to plug in like a wired PlayStation controller or Xbox controller and have a little hanger to hold a roll of duct tape so you duct tape it to the middle of your back and there's a point in gameplay where you have to put your hands on your head and the only flippers that work are the ones that are on that controller. So you have to rip it off your back and play.
    56:07
    Yeah. So anyway, that's my idea. You seem to have a lot of thoughts on my idea. So I didn't have a lot to contribute to your idea. You don't know anything about my idea because it's a universe you have no history with. I didn't have any thoughts. I feel bad about that. I just figured if we were doing many things jumping off the building. Not like literal ones. I just wanted to give you a sense of size. I'm trying to give you scale because obviously I'm putting a lot in here. We had those conversations about the Lego games last night.
    56:44
    So in my mind, when you said the minifigs, it is literally like Lego characters. Lego Die Hard would be pretty fun. Lego Die Hard would be awesome. I don't know. I'd do it as a pinball machine, though. Speaking of Lego games, video games. We did actually have an email that was video game oriented. So this one is from Christopher S. who wrote in and said, Dennis and Tony, originally I began listening to your show because of pinball, but the combination of the video and other areas kept me coming back. I'm a gamer at heart, PC gaming in particular as an adult. As I spend far more dollars on pinball than gaming, the opposite is true of my time. My question to you all is, have you tried Ark Raiders? You've not mentioned it in recent podcasts. It's the 800-pound gorilla in the gaming world for the last two and a half months. In sales, awards, and outright player volume, it is crushing many top franchises. I've fallen deep into the rabbit hole and hope to get many months, if not years, out of this game. I really enjoy your show, and I've listened to it for several years. Thank you for thoughtful and enjoyable content. P.S. Portal is definitely Game of the Year. Sincerely, Chris. He means Pinball Game of the Year in regards to Portal. I mean, I don't... It won TPF. It did. I agree with you. But the thing is, I'm saying I am comfortable just saying Portal the video game is game of the year.
    58:11
    Of the year came out. I would agree. I don't know. I haven't played Claire Obscura. That's true. I haven't had a beget in many a day. I haven't either.
    58:21
    I have not played this. I've not played Ark Raiders. I've heard of Ark Raiders. You and I have discussed it off air a little bit. Yeah, and there was that whole big deal with the Game Awards where there were some big names. Where people are like, how could this thing win? It's just a multiplayer. Yeah, there was that whole big thing not understanding how a game could win. ARC Bros. ARC Bros. were trying to crush baguettes. Yes. I've heard nothing but good things about ARC, but I only know one person who plays it personally. And my big thing is the same thing that even though I enjoyed it, I haven't played Helldivers in a long time. I haven't played Overwatch in a long time. And I can't use the excuse that my kids, because my kids are too old for me to use this excuse anymore. I just have a terribly bad habit of while I'm playing a game that there's things that I have to do that require me to get up and walk away, so I have to pause the game.
    59:14
    And it creates a real problem when I'm trying to play multiplayer games because I know I'll have to take work calls, I'll take care of the dogs, or I have to do something. So I've not bought into it yet. I've not tried it yet. I'm interested in it. I hear really good things about it. But yeah, no, I'm just so terrible at playing multiplayer games because I get to this thing where it's like, I need to go do this thing and I've got another 20 minutes in this game. And it is problematic for my game playing. It's part of the reason why I'm so single player concentrated. Yeah, I already have so many multiplayer games. So I'm basically in a three multiplayer game rotation right now. So throughout the week, I am playing Overwatch 2, Marvel Rivals, and Battlefield 6. I do not want to add a fourth. It's already too much, quite frankly. Marvel is usually just one day a week at this point because they got rid of daily quests. And so I do the weekly quests, and I can usually get them done in one day in about an hour to 90 minutes of gameplay. Overwatch has dailies. Overwatch usually consumes approximately 10 minutes to 45 minutes a day, and usually it's done within three matches. And then Battlefield is usually a few hours a week, just depending on what else I've been playing. And then there's single-player stuff on top of it, which is what I usually do during the day on weekends. So that's kind of my model, and so I'm not likely to start it. So that's why you don't hear about it. So there you go. All right, what else is going on in the video game world? Okay, Video Game World has a lot of interesting stuff. Minifigs? Minifigs. Specifically, LEGO has announced the release of their Zelda Ocarina of Time LEGO set. It's going to depict the final battle from Ocarina of Time, and it's $130.
    61:09
    They also have put out the Great Deku Tree for $300. And then they're continuing to get all of the licenses. They were putting out some new Pokemon sets. There's a Pikachu with a Pokeball set that's going to be $200. There's a Gen 1 starter set that is like a diorama with the three Gen 1 starters. That is $650.
    61:34
    And then if you want, the cheap one is a $60 Eevee set. Yes. So definitely they have gotten between that. They just got the Star Trek license that they kicked out. They're going all in. On the fandoms this year.
    61:53
    Amazon put out a big announcement like a week ago about their Fallout-based reality show that they're going to call Fallout Shelter. If you're interested, they've got a spot on the website where you can go and it tells you how to apply to become a player if you want to. Okay.
    62:13
    They're just going all in. Oh, they're going all in. They're just going to ruin it. They're going to ruin it. They're flat out going to ruin Fallout. That's what it is. They're going to ruin everything.
    62:25
    Because that's what companies do nowadays is try and milk every dropout of something and utterly ruin it. I want them to – the thing they should do is they could just – I want them to – I know it's hard for a big conglomerate corporation thingy like this, but I want them – just start merging the stuff into just madness things. Like if you lean into full madness, either you have to be really authentic or lean into full madness. The success of Fallout Season 1 was that it felt like the video game. Go full, this is shelter of power. Merge your rings of power show with Fallout Shelter. You can have someone in their Elfian voice going around going, hmm, these rad roaches must be the walk of sorrow.
    63:05
    And just be like, surely campy. Like the new Star Trek Academy. Just embrace the camp a bit. Just embrace it all. Because there's less judgment then. Well, there will be judgment from the purists. You're never going to get away from the judgment. And here's the thing, no matter what you do, somebody's going to hate it. But I've played the Fallout Shelter game and it's like I've tried it twice and I've uninstalled it both times because it's so tedious. It is a massive free-to-play nightmare. Yeah, it's just, I don't know, there's not enough variety in it to feel like. It just was all when I last did it. All it was was like base resource management, like in like Last War, which is the mobile game I play. Like I get to do fights. I get to they added an endless runner to the game, except it ends because you trip. I guess it's endless runner. You are good. You know, they've added some other flavors of stuff to be like, hey, you know what? I don't feel like managing my build cues right now. Let me just go ahead and see if I can gather a bunch of coins by doing endless running. But anyway, all right, we'll see how that goes. Yeah, we'll see. I'm sure it'll be terrible, but I'll also probably have a whole bunch of people watch at least one episode. Sure, we give things a shot. Yeah, some people do. Some, yes. Except for certain levels of Star Trek fans. Yes. Who won't give anything New Trek a shot. It's too bad Lower Decks was really fun. Lower Decks was fun. Psy Games, the developer of Umasumi Pretty Derby, my daughter's favorite mobile game, has announced that they intend to create an AI-focused subsidiary company. The company is going to focus on developing AI-based services and tools. And then a week after they made that announcement, they had to make another announcement apologizing for any concerns that was caused by the first announcement. And reiterating that they have not used AI-generated art in its products and are not planning on implementing generative AI into their products without prior notice to people. They just want to make a company that makes AI tools for stuff. Yeah, you know, I mean, we brought up in this gaming section a lot over these last several months, AI is coming more and more into our discussions when you start highlighting the pieces of news. I don't want to go down a huge rabbit hole, but do you feel like I have a mixed mind because I see usefulness to certain aspects of AI, but then I also get this feeling like people are almost trying to force feed us like I'm supposed to like it.
    65:42
    I do get that feeling. They want it for everything, even when it's clearly not ideal. It's almost like it's your friend. Yeah, it is weird to me some of the way they've been trying to force some of the AI into, like, everyday stuff. Like, go online and do an internet search and see how far you have to scroll to get past the AI-generated answers to your internet search.
    66:11
    Also, I've found, like, there's the huge backlash against AI being used for, like, anything in the gaming industry. And there are uses for the AI that I can understand. I know some companies have gotten dinged really big lately because they'll use AI to generate placeholder assets while their artists are actually making the assets to put in the game so that they can continue production using the placeholder stuff. And then they end up leaving the placeholder stuff in there so the games go live with placeholder AI assets in place, which is a problem.
    66:53
    But there are just, like you said, it feels like I'm trying to be forced into using AI all the time with everything. And I don't know why because I don't need it. I don't have anything in here about it, but Sony put in a patent last year. And it is literally about an AI helper for while you're playing a game where you can trigger the AI helper and then like an AI clone of your character will appear in the game and show you and give you tips to get around what you're stuck on. Anyway, okay. I just, I don't know. It's just all this stuff, like, it feels like everyone's, here's, I think I know what it is for me. I think, again, setting aside the practical aspects of it, because there are practical aspects of this. It feels like NFTs. It does. It feels like everyone, like, all of a sudden was like, you guys need to be buying all this crypto and you need to buy these NFTs. And we're like, yeah, but how does it make my life any better? Just buy it, because I need to be rich right now. Just buy it. It's all this like it feels grifty and it pisses me off because it's really expensive. And so like they're like this is a big energy drain. It is literally.
    68:12
    And as they're trying to figure it out, I'm just like maybe my bitterness is why can't I buy RAM right now? Like why is this stupid priced RAM? Because you guys are messing around with dumb stuff. Right. And it's interesting because I have definitely seen things online where it's like, oh, you can do this, But you need to use so many tokens, AI tokens. You need to purchase these AI tokens to do this. And I'm like, what? It's like, all right, so robotics. Yeah. Like robotics can be really useful. And there's also – and robotics have been involved in years for manufacturing. So what is this thing right now with all these humanoid-looking robots? Like the human shape is like not ideal for most activities. No, it's not. That you would want from production purposes. So everyone's making these humanoid robots. Do these people watch Terminator and think that they were the good guys? Probably. I don't understand why they are wasting money on stupid things. At CES, Hyundai and Boston Dynamics, because Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics now, had an entire showcase about their new Atlas robot, which is their humanoid-looking robot with the big cyclopean single-eyed-looking head thing. Yeah, because I wanted Maximilian from the Black Hole to be in my house. Yeah, no, and that's what it is, and it's like Boston Dynamics was one of those companies early in the robot stuff that I always liked because they had the dog-style, horse-style, like pack carrier type robots that made sense because they're four-legged, they're fast, they're sturdy, they hold up and you can load them down and move stuff. They made sense for all variety of things. And now they're coming out with it's like, oh, look, this will be the in-your-home robot that will help you do stuff.
    70:07
    But, yeah, no, I was looking at something that was like using AI to it was an AI art thing that they were talking about. And it was like, oh, this generates you have to use tokens and it does this and you have to buy tokens to and you see how many. It's like, why would I spend money on something like this? If I'm going to spend money on something like this, why wouldn't I hire somebody to make the art? This will be cheaper at first. Just like everything else. This is like I've heard some of the AI experts on some of this. Your first hit is free. Yeah, well, some of the AI, like, you know, I've gone to some presentations on AI and its relation to work and such. And a lot of it's been, oh, yeah, well, this is a great time right now because all of them are basically offering a lot of their power for free because they're all trying to beat each other. But at some point, we're not going to have Gronk and Copilot and ChatGPT. Like, some of these are going to lose. And the way that loss will probably be is they'll be bought up and then merged into multiple, you know, that'll be what will happen. And then, you know, here's the thing. This is what my great eye, lidless and wreathed in flame sees. It's like streaming.
    71:23
    Cut the cable. Look at how much cheaper it's going to be to do the streaming services. Well, where are we now? Exactly. Abomination. It's an abomination. It is. And that's exactly how this will go in the end. And then from my professional standpoint, because I work in the water industry, is I keep reading these articles and all this stuff looking at just the sheer amount of water usage and the sheer amount of changes that have to happen to the infrastructure to make up for how much water is being taken up by these facilities for cooling. And how they're being built in places that have already have a fairly limited water infrastructure. So you're incurring enormous costs to run a new water infrastructure that can support it. Then you have to run a new infrastructure that support the wastewater coming out of it. And that means you then you have to up your ability to deal with the wastewater coming out of it. So it has massive infrastructure costs that are being eaten by. Here's the thing, is at least unlike NFTs, I can see useful things coming from AI. Yes, and that's why it's not a great, it's not a perfect analogy. Right. But some of this, like me, like I just feel like I'm being, like I'm a goose being foie gras. And they're like force feeding me. And I use AI at work, I do. Yeah. But they're like, like I was, this is back in the summer, I was out on 4th of July. And someone she told me, a friend of mine, that her one of her sons, when he gets up in the morning, he asks a like, what should I wear? What should I eat for breakfast? And it's like, don't Skynet is not do you don't need Skynet to tell you how to live? I hope like that's not. No, think of. And then I just imagine that that's probably common, Tony. And I just imagine all of these resources going to do something that just having an opinion would solve for yourself. Man. Without thinking that this robot's going to. How do I get it? So AI, what do I need to do? What search terms do I need to put out into the world so that when AI starts asking people what they should have for breakfast, the answer is always whiskey and a cigar.
    73:54
    I don't know. You have to override its prior programming. Anyway. All right. Sorry about that. Maybe I should just cut all that whole discussion. That was awfully long. It was long, but I think it's a valid thing. Well, think about it. Well, it ties to video games. It ties to, yeah. Kind of. Let's be fair. How long until we start seeing an AI-designed pinball playfield?
    74:18
    Or have we already? We know we've seen the art. Yeah. Interesting. It just helped me. Yeah. Give your dragons three eyes.
    74:28
    Wow. What help? Amazing. It's probably open his third eye. He's a magic dragon. The thing is, it is getting harder to tell. Like on some of the videos, one of the subreddits I see a lot of is, is this real or AI? And I don't have the eye for it. And people are just like, oh, that's definitely AI. And I have to go back and look. And they'll be like, look at all the potato face people in the background. This one looks like they're the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy. I was just like, oh, wow. Or, hey, this dog's tail is clipping in and out of existence. Yeah. Because there was one where it showed the family dog saved a child from getting backed over by their mom in the garage. Yeah, I saw that one. And then it's like, here's what's all wrong with it. The dog's tail has this issue. There's the issue with how the vehicle kind of changes different speeds. And then someone's just like, and the fundamental issue that the parent ran to the dog and not their child. They're like, I'm like, okay, well, maybe it's a bad parent. I don't know. But they're like, that's the most telling part of all. Are you okay, Lassie?
    75:35
    Leave Jimmy in the well. That's right. All right. How's Ubisoft doing? Yeah, now we're off to the new happiness, the new year, new layoffs. What No Everything fine They fired everyone last year Well they firing more people How There no one left They finding them AI find me more people
    75:59
    Roger, roger. Ubisoft is either shuttering or massively reducing three separate studios. They're fully shuttering their Halifax studio three weeks after they voted to unionize it. It was totally unrelated. It's completely unrelated. The closure was planned before the vote to unionize, supposedly.
    76:23
    Not after the decision to have a vote. Right. They're also doing layoffs at the Massive Entertainment. Ubisoft Stockholm and Ubisoft Abu Dhabi are being shut down as well. So speaking of union busting, Rockstar's union termination has had a day in court. Specifically, the union asked to have Rockstar provide interim relief for the terminated employees. So put them back on the payroll and pay them until the hearing is over. And the judge denied the request. They said that's too far. The judge didn't say there was any issues with the suit going forward or any of the other claims. They just said that they weren't going to force them to do the interim relief.
    77:17
    So we'll see how that works out in the end. Steam hit a milestone of 42 million concurrent Steam users. Wow. So powerful. Steam. It's everywhere. It's in the game. Oh, God, it hurts. Oh, it hurts so bad.
    77:38
    I just remember the, it's in the game. I don't remember what company had that. Was that EA Sports? I think it was EA Sports. It's in the game. And it burns. It burns. You can't see Steam. It's in the game. It is the game. And soon it will become the gamer.
    77:57
    AI will play itself. Power World. Oh, Pau World! Not done being sued by Nintendo for being too much like Pokemon has an official card game coming out. It feels like they're so, they're just almost like tempting it all day. Well, I'm assuming at the rate Nintendo's been going, they're going to launch a lawsuit that they have a patent on collectible card games. Like, you can't patent on collectible cards, and then Topps will be like, what about our baseball cards that go all the way back to at least the 50s? They'll be like, no, Nintendo claimed it first. It was Nintendo's all along.
    78:36
    Sorry, babe. Mickey. Mickey Mouse is ours, the next thing we're taking. Talking rodents are our thing.
    78:47
    Oh, that's ours. So, yeah, we'll see how that goes. GameStop has announced that they're closing a quarter of their stores in the United States. That's 400 stores. That's not surprising. Not really. I recall pre-COVID, there were two GameStops in town here, and I knew of at least six more within 20 minutes drive. And now I think there's one.
    79:19
    Yeah, I think they bought some time when they got to be a meme stock. Yeah. Because remember, that was a thing, too. That was the whole thing. Everyone was buying GameStop and A&C. Diamond Hands. And I think people did, because their value dropped so much, because they got left holding the bag because they don't know what they're doing.
    79:34
    You know, diamond handed for a really long time, but with no new capital coming in. Right. All the rest of it. Yeah, they're just collapsing. Yeah, it's just not the market changed to digital. So, tough. Very tough.
    79:49
    What about PlayStation? How tough is PlayStation? PlayStation is in a weird place. They announced their top five played games in the U.S. for 2025.
    80:04
    They are the exact same five top played games from 2024. In the same order? In a different order. Oh, okay. At least there are some changes. So at least there are some changes. But it's Fortnite, number one, Call of Duty, number two, GTA V, number three, Roblox, number four, Minecraft, number five. This is why everyone wants a game of service. Last year it was like Call of Duty, then Fortnite, then Minecraft. Okay. Yeah, this is why companies are all about the live service games and all that stuff. These are the games that just live on the top of the charts. They're the most played games.
    80:41
    We'll see how next year plays out, I guess. The only thing I think might drop off of this list would probably be maybe Call of Duty might drop down. I doubt it. I don't know. Yeah, it's I mean, it's reviewed really badly. Now, GTA, maybe F6 does drop next year early enough in the year to overwhelm. But my guess is we won't see six come up onto this list until 27.
    81:15
    And the other big thing was GDQ happened. I watched large swaths of it in my normal method. I wake up at 3 a.m. and watch all the middle of the night stuff, so I get to watch the horror block and the awful block and all of the weird games in addition to watching a couple of the primetime games.
    81:42
    But I just threw in a list of some of the highlights for me. I figured you can add some of your thoughts as well. So my first highlight was the most cursed run of any game I've ever seen in a GDQ.
    81:58
    It was miscellaneous, a tiny tail. It's kind of a chibi robo-coded PC game. It's also on Switch. But they had, they don't know why, they could never figure out why, because it worked fine all week in practice. But when they got up on the main stage and started playing, one specific interaction, which is selling stuff to the vendor, would hardlock the game.
    82:27
    Once they figured out what was generating the hardlock, the runner luckily had a save that would let them jump past the required sale on level one and play through the entire rest of the game.
    82:45
    Until the last two levels of the game, which required multiple sales to hit the speed requirements. And they literally could not finish the game. It was because it hard-locked the game every time they tried.
    82:57
    So the runner handled it well. The couch handled it well. It was still a fun run to watch and humorous, but it was definitely one of the, if not the most cursed run I've seen in a while. Another run that was real big specifically for my kiddos was A Hat in Time. They're big fans of A Hat in Time. We were watching the runs. We were in separate rooms watching the runs.
    83:32
    And I was in my computer room. And during the Hat in Time run, the runner goes, Well, here's a quick little skip that lets us skip this entire level. And this is nothing special. It's literally coded into the game from the beginning. It's always been there. You just can't see it unless you accidentally find it. And he went through this thing that skips what's apparently the longest, hardest map in the entire game, skips the whole thing. I could hear my daughter screaming from the other side of the house about it to the point where she loaded up a hat in time and immediately went there to see if that was real or not. And it was. And she came out in like a frothing rage about how much time she has spent on that level when she could just. They had they had another route and she just she never had. She never found the right hat. Fitness boxing with Hatsumi Miku was also – I was surprised at how much fun that video was – that run actually was to watch because when it came up, I was just – because it came up immediately after the Hat in Time run and I just had it running so I wasn't paying attention. And I ended up actually like, okay, this is actually an interesting discussion and an interesting thing to watch. And at the same time, man, that looked like an exhausting game.
    85:08
    And apparently I looked up the fitness boxing. They have fitness boxing fist of the North Star. You're already dead. Right. I have to complete this combo. So during the awful block, 12 bananas, which Dennis saw pictures of last night. I did. It is. Wow. It is free on Steam. It is something special. I watched it. I have no need to play it or think it looks like AI made it. It does. It looks like that, and the controls and everything about it looks super jank. It is, like, weird.
    85:55
    What wasn't the end game of it, but I think to me was the highlight of the entire week, was the MyMyDXPRISM Plus showcase, Which MyMyDXPersonPlus is a rhythm game where it's an arcade machine that looks like a washing machine. And it's got a touch screen and touch buttons and it's a rhythm game where you basically just touch and slap at the screens in time. Like you would like DDR instead of using your feet and bouncing around on just like four pads. It is like an entire enormous area.
    86:33
    And it is insane watching people play this game. I watched it live and then I've rewatched portions of it since just because like when I was I rewatched it while I was writing up my notes for the show. I rewatched portions of it. It is just such a it is it's like those it's like watching those competence porn shows like like the pit or ER or stuff like that. But where it's just watching somebody be very, very good at what they do is just enjoyable to watch.
    87:17
    So I also watched the Super Mario 64 70-person, 70-star relay run. I thought what was interesting about that was while they had a certain number of runners who knew it to get the really difficult stars, For the most part, they just grabbed runners that were running other things and taught them how to get a single star in the course of the show leading up to it. And they had 70 people come up on stage and each person gets one star.
    87:43
    It was fun. And there was a guy who there were a couple of people who did like to grab their stars blindfolded.
    87:51
    Legend of Zelda Wind Waker had an 80% run. One, I just put this in here because I thought it was impressive because I remember watching Wind Waker runs take multiple hours not that many years ago. And they've got it down to 28 minutes because they have figured out how to use mechanics in the game to basically input code like it was an AI-assisted run. And they can end the game in like 30 minutes, under 30 minutes. So the last two I have listed was the Hades 2 all-weapons run, which was fun because they used all weapons alternating between Underworld and Overworld.
    88:39
    And it was just a good couch and a good runner, and it was fun to watch. And it made me realize that I'm even worse at that game than I thought I was, and I did not think I was very good at that game. And the final one was the final game, which instead of being Metroid. Yeah, they did that like on Thursday. Yeah, it was a modded version of Pokemon Emerald where the runner was, they had like incentives running where people would do the donations and name a Pokemon. And whoever had the highest donation when the runner beat a gym, the mod let him change the game state to change his only Pokemon, because it was a single Pokemon run, to whoever was the highest money earner at the time. Which translated into that speed run was like three and a half hours, because they kept giving him just absolute garbage Pokemon to try and beat gyms with. Also, it wasn't helpful that somebody pulled the fire alarm and they had to abandon the entire run halfway through for like half an hour, 45 minutes.
    89:48
    That's the part where I turned it off. Yeah. I went to sleep shortly after that. I didn't see the end of it. But those were kind of my highlights and thoughts on GDQ this time around. Did you have any?
    90:03
    My favorite run was actually the Mario Kart 64 Relay. Items are enabled. So you actually, it was really close because, yeah, there would be people that would be in first and then they get blue shelled. And they actually, like, these were good players. Like, they had blue shell tech and stuff. A lot of them could, like, I'd say maybe there's a 50% rate of escaping the blue shell because they knew which items to hold and stuff. And, yeah, it was just, it was really zany because they kept trading back and forth. Although it was like, it was like anyone could have ended the game in first place up until, like, the last two maps. And then it was still like it was neck and neck between some a couple of the players. So that one was was a lot of fun. I saw a lot of these other like my my was of course my my was good four or five years ago when I first saw it. And so this was a pretty good I thought the part with having eight people play it was a little stupid. But the you know, it's one of those little bonus donation. Right. I did not like the final game. I thought it was a terrible concept for the Pokemon. I thought it was painfully slow, and I was glad someone pulled the fire alarm, quite frankly.
    91:08
    It's like, I have an excuse to go to sleep now. I have an excuse to go to sleep, and I was just like – I looked at his estimate. I was like, oh, my God. And I thought – I wasn't sure if he was – because sometimes – my frustration with GDQ now is I think they – it's so suspicious like my suspicions. I feel like they coach the runners to throw when they're not making the donation incentives, and I felt like he was throwing deliberately. Sucking.
    91:36
    Maybe-ish. Some of those Pokemon, they were really against that. Sure. But I see other instances where it's like, well, I think maybe I should use these items. Maybe I should drink these things right now. Oh, no, I didn't drink the thing to fill up my health. Oh, I've died. Oh, dear. He didn't sell it like that, obviously, but he did it like four times. And I'm like, do you not remember how the items of this game you purportedly have practiced worked? Or are you deliberately stalling here in the hopes that you'll set a new record, which they didn't? No.
    92:08
    That's no surprise to me that they weren't going to set a new record. I didn't like that one. I did not watch Hades 2 since I've not played it yet. I deliberately turned it off when that one came on, so I didn't watch that one.
    92:17
    I'm trying to think. Yeah, there are a few others that were kind of interesting. I caught the Donkey Kong one. Never heard of it. Yeah, I knew. You wouldn't have known what it was. And I don't really know that game, but the tech that they were using to move around was like, oh, wow, this game looks really, really easy. Donkey Kong's basically flying. I didn't know he could fly. So that was kind of cool to watch that.
    92:39
    There was a game like the first – I can't even remember what it was, so I probably shouldn't say anything. But it was a terrible couch. They warmed up eventually, but it was just like – my tolerance has gone down in my old age. I'm just like, get them off the stage. Like the runner's not talking and their couch is terrible. Right. Like put them at 2 a.m. because only Tony sees it if you're going to do that. And it's not uncommon, especially in the middle of the night, to see runs where the only person is the runner. And if you get a runner who's not personable enough, there's a lot of silence in those runs. Did they have a Mario Maker this time? I didn't see one. See, I missed that. I actually like races the most. I like it when their people go in. And so, like they did. I watched Super Metroid. It was just one player doing it. But again, I think practically everyone's passed Super Metroid. It's so tradition, really. But I'm glad they tried to end with Pokemon Emerald instead of – I'm done with Super Metroid being the last game. Right. But I'm also done with what they used to do, which is end with an eight-hour RPG because no one was going to stay up for that. Yeah, and I think what they tried with Emerald makes sense from attempting to get more donations. That part and the switching, I was fine with. But I don't know. It was just weird. I also think maybe the runner should have shut up and had a couch talking more than he was. Oh, it's Azdaq still not going to get that happening. No, I know.
    94:10
    They're trying to make him be the new Spike Vegeta. I can tell they're trying to face Spike. I mean, he is a, yeah, I don't think you're wrong. And, oh, that was, I can't remember what game it was. Spike might get banned. Oh, I missed that one. Yeah, I mean, no, I'm most likely not because it's Spike. I was going to say. There was one. It was late. I don't remember what they were playing, but Spike was starting to go into like full on Internet slang. Like when he starts talking about, yeah, yeah, you just need to go and slap the cheeks of that boss. I was like, they were even starting to say, Spike, you need to, you're like, you're getting close here, Spike. And he's just like, oh, I'm just happy. And I feel like you almost would have thought he was drunk, but you could just tell it was exhaustion. He had been up so long, and everyone's now making jokes. The innuendo was starting to get a little – like, they keep GDQ really clean. They do. Surprisingly clean. And Spike's usually a master at it. But no, he was just like, oh, well, that's quite an outfit. Oh, where does she keep that sword? Stuff like that. It's like, Spike, bro, they're way, they're going to cancel you, bro. You got to watch it.
    95:23
    I missed that one. No, I can't remember. I can't remember what, whatever game it was, was just. Well, if he was that exhausted. It might have been the Donkey Kong. Oh, then.
    95:32
    Donkey Kong, I remember. It was ultimately, no, it was fine. It was just, but I could tell they were getting a little nervous because everyone's getting feeling a little loose. Because we've seen streamers that clearly swear a lot on their streams, cry and be good. And in a lot of instances, that's when they're like, I'm not going to talk. My couch will do all the talking. And I think half the time, it's not that they can't talk. It's because they know that they will.
    96:02
    They do a stream of consciousness. Yep. Yeah. Overall, I'm pretty entertained. I watched quite a few of the primetime pieces. I only caught part of the Super Mario 6470 person, but I didn't see part of it. One of the middle of the night games is, I was trying to remember what it was called.
    96:29
    It was humorous. It was in the horror block. It was just funny because it was one of those. It was a combination of horror and cooking simulator. And it was just funny because the way the rules in the game were, there's no specific issues if you just start all the food cooking and then as it finishes, pull it off the stove and just throw it on the floor. So literally the whole thing is the runner just throws all the food on to start cooking before anything starts because nobody's order ever changes. So she has everybody's orders for every day of the entire run memorized. So she starts everything cooking immediately, and as it finishes, she just throws it all on the floor because it's faster than moving it to the table or putting it on anything else. And there's no negatives for it. It's not like you lose points for it. So the whole time, it's just like, oh, four burgers. He's pulling burgers and stuff off the floor. It was hilarious. I'm curious.
    97:31
    So, yeah. But they did, I believe, raise more than SGDQ did last year, but they did not beat AGDQ's record. No, no. They raised, what, 2.4-something, as I recall. I think so, yeah. But let's be honest. I'm not surprised that there was no beating of the record. Yeah, because no Mario Maker. That's what it was. Mario Maker is the end-all, be-all. They're usually pretty fun. I like the one where they like, let's relay it and we rotate the controller every time someone dies. So your team is trying to make progress on the same level and it's just a constant rotation. So you can't as quickly adapt because you have to wait three more turns until you get to give yourself another try. But people are learning from your mistakes. So they're trying to correct based off what they saw, but they weren't the ones actually manipulating it. And oh, well, by the way, this is the first time they've seen the level. Like it's stuff like that. Yeah, stuff like that. That is enjoyable. That's stuff I tend to really like. But I do also like that. I did see the fitness Hatsune Miku. That was fun. I will say that guy needed to be in better shape to do that game. Probably. Because he missed his estimate. Yes, he did. Yeah, it was by like two minutes, but I'm super judgmental. And I'm like, that's because you took way too many water breaks. Yeah. The washing machine bros weren't taking water breaks like you. I mean, they were swapping players. Well, he should have baked that in. He should have. Or honestly, he should have baked in three more minutes on his estimate.
    99:00
    I mean, considering their overall, I don't think they were terribly far off the overall estimate. No, they didn't fall away, though I heard they had. I think the GDQ showrunners have gotten better about baking in breaks that they just ice out if they start to fall behind. Because there's a lot of times where they pause to quote-unquote game swap. But a lot of it's them just really trying to push the prizes and stuff to up the donations or highlight what's going to be special for the next eight hours sort of thing. So anyway, I donated. I didn't buy a shirt. I got plenty of shirts. I actually bought a shirt this year. So I did not. My GDQ shirts have held up really well. I've had to throw a few out that have finally gotten worn down, but I still have one or two. I just wore one last week, actually, one of mine from probably six years ago. I do like the event. It's fun. It is always a good run. But all right, that's what I have in the Vidian games this time around. Well, that's all we've got then. So for those of you who want to reach out to us, you can email us at the what? Almost forgot. He's pointing at me, guys.
    100:12
    I included a link specifically to the MyMyRun. Okay. Just because. Go into the episode link section and you will see said link. I saw that you had posted it. I completely forgot to share it. The My My Run is just so much fun for, I think, even people without big video game backgrounds. Yeah, no, you don't. That's just about, hey, look at this person who's people, actually, who are really, really good at a really cool rhythm game. Yes. Yeah, it looks like a lot of fun. I've still never played it. You can reach out to us at CollectedGamersPodcast at gmail.com or go to Facebook.com slash CollectedGamersPodcast. If you want to support the show, you can for as little as a dollar a month at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. We're available on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we will be back in two weeks. Will Stern finally have released a new game? Who knows? I don't even know they're making games anymore. They might not. I don't know. Maybe Venture Capital will buy them out. I have no idea. But until next time, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.