Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the flip side podcast. I'm your host retro Ralph and we're here on this monumental day. This is Stern's next cornerstone release day and this cornerstone is one we've been waiting for for a long time. I mean, it seems like a long time because it's a Keith Elwin design. And the last Keith Elwin design we saw was Jaws, one of my personal favorite games. So there's a lot of anticipation because Keith Elwin is a lot of people's favorite designer. So there's a lot of pressure on this day for him to deliver the goods. So did he deliver the goods? We're going to find out in a second. This is going to be my reaction. I did watch it, but it was super fast. my boss scheduled the call on the launch time. I mean, what was he even thinking? I'm like, dude, don't you know that this is official launch day? Like, come on, man. So anyways, before we get started, I'm going to have a quick commercial for our sponsor, Flip N Out Pinball. Are you looking for a new pinball machine, a used pinball machine, or to trade in your old pinball machine for something new? Look no further than Flip N Out Pinball. They can handle all your pinball needs. They ship anywhere in the United States and they will give you the best experience in the business. Check out the link to Flip N Out Pinball in the video description for more information. Now back to the video. All right. Thank you to Zach and Nicole Many for the sponsorship. And if you're looking for any of these new pinball machines, Flip N Out Pinball is the place to go. Zach ships lightning fast and it's crazy. And if you're, and if you're like, hey, how am I going to do this? I don't have the money. Trade in some games. Man, I'm always rotating my games through, and Zach always hooks me up with good trade deals so we can get something going. So anyways, he's always looking out. But what you're here to see is the Kong reaction. So we're going to go right into that. I got this pretty little view that we can look at here. Oh, I'm hitting stuff off my table. So we're just going to play it. We're going to play it. We're going to walk through it. We're going to talk about it. And we're going to see, like, does this look exciting and is it living up to our expectations? Because the expectations are definitely high. All right, let's go. Hey, everybody, it's George Gomez at Stern Pinball, and we're here today to unleash an epic pinball adventure featuring one of the most iconic monsters of all time, King Kong. King Kong has been a staple in pop culture since his first appearance in 1932. Okay, first of all, George Gomez is the man. But anyway, let's keep going. It looks like, by the way, it looks like, from what I've been noticing, this is a unique adventure, right? This whole myth of Terror Island is a story that Stern has created. So all the animations look like they've all been created net new. So I don't know that we'll see movie clips from any of the movies because I think this is going to be its own thing. And he has been celebrated through time in television, books, art, comics, video games and now pinball to celebrate king kong oh man first of all i know i keep pausing it but celebrated when i did see this initially i saw it so fast but comics video games and now this this animatronic king kong in the back looks pretty cool so i i honestly saw this so fast that i need i'm gonna take it in with you guys here because i honestly didn't so like that just look super cool but let's continue to celebrate king kong's larger than life story we're taking players on an all-new interpretation of the fabled king kong legend from the creators that brought you godzilla jaws and jurassic park we now bring you king kong i don't know why he doesn't mention avengers infinity quest i actually really like that game i think that's one of the ones that if if anybody said there was like a low light in el in elwyn world it would have been that one I really like it. I think the rules are a bit complex, but anytime I get that at tournament night at the bat, I usually have a good game on it, and I think it's pretty fun. So anyways, right now we're getting our first glimpse at the LE cabinet. Of course, it's got the foiled side art. That seems to be their thing moving forward on all the LEs. Side armor looks pretty cool. It is powder-coated. It is powder-coated, just like a black color, it looks like for the most part. I'm not, that's fine. I don't know. I'm kind of, I've gotten big into the powder coating because once you start powder coating your armor, you realize how classy it makes a pinball machine look. So I like that they do that on the LE. It's just, it looks like they played it safe with just black, but it does look like it compliments the artwork. I do notice there's the speaker expression lights. Now, everyone was in anticipation that this was going to somehow be some big introduction into Spike 3. With Spike 3, Spike 2 would have been the prior generation uh looks like we're we're in like a spike two point something because it seems like they've been upgrading bits and components of the of the system but it's not an overall upgrade so the lcd is the same size speakers are the same size you will note Keith Elwin fun fact has never put expression lighting in a cabinet uh that this one does not have expression lighting for what i could tell myth of terror island players will go on an epic journey exploring the mysteries of Terror Island, battling dangerous creatures in addition to facing the eighth wonder of the world. Okay, I like this. This is cool. It looks like Kong's gonna have the ability to kind of trap your ball or stop your ball, and then I'm guessing that's like a subway car. It looks like you lock balls in the subway car from when I watched it earlier, so we'll see what happens there. I honestly watched it so fast that I really didn't get to take much in, so it's kind of like I'm really kind of watching it with you guys for the first time here. witness kong as he wreaks havoc across new york city and now lead game designer keith ellen will take you through this battle of a lifetime by the way i can't tell you how excited i am to go to stern in a couple days so it's going to be on thursday where i get to actually play it so keep in mind this is just my initial reactions to the trailer i know i mean i'm sure there's very finite amount of people that have played it so far uh so i don't have that feedback to give you but i'm excited to give that to you when i'm there at stern on on on thursday so let's see what let's see what l1 has to say man that little twirly shot looks pretty cool hi everyone i'm keith l1 lead game designer of our latest game king kong myth of terror island with king kong we wanted to create an entirely new interpretation there just looks like so many shots like look you got this right shot or no yeah that you've got like the that uh vertical up kick you have this twirly shot right here you got you got this return on the left like there's a lot going on here there's actually a lot going on here of the iconic story and it and i think there's two flippers at the bottom one on the right and then one on the top left too so there a lot of a lot of things This is a very busy play field but I think it going to prove to have a lot of fun shots here Players will join Andaro, Jack Driscoll, and Carl Denham on their journey to the mysterious Terror Island. This results in King Kong traveling back to New York City with disastrous and fun consequences. See, I don't know about you guys, but this is kind of cool. I like this idea that Stern keeps doing these unique story things. And plus, I mean, King Kong, I know there are people that watch the later movies and stuff like the newer ones. I haven't really watched them, but I kind of like this concept of of like we build our own unique story. I think that's cool. Now, it depends on the property, like something like Jurassic Park. I really even though I really do enjoy that game, I wish they had used like there's that movie asset mod where it adds. But that's one where like everyone's really nostalgic for Jurassic Park. So having more of the movie assets would have been interesting, but I don't know that this one falls into that category. So I'm okay with this idea that they've come up with their own storyline here. Thrilling gameplay features and challenges await on this four-flipper adventure. Watch King Kong. Oh, so four flippers. So there's four flippers in it. Okay, I was right. There's one, like, at the top left I think we'll see in a minute. So this is that animatronic-sculpted King Kong. I don't know what he does other than he stops the ball. I think he does something with this subway car too. That's kind of cool. He's like mad and vibrating. He's like, ah, that's kind of cool. I love what Stern does a good job of incorporating sounds into the things that happen on the play field to make them more dramatic. I find they do a good job of that, like having a sound effect for when you do something to sort of like amplify it a little bit more. Like, I don't know if that's actually going to be in the game, but when he was like moving his arms, you could hear those like crushing sounds. I'm assuming that's actually in the in the software, in the audio package, which is cool. This this I'm very curious to see once I play it, like how this this summon Kong with the the gong bash toy. I'm curious how that's gonna work or if it's like enabled at certain time or there's some light lit that says like you got To hit the gong to summons some in Kong So I'm interested to see how that's all gonna work the custom-sculpted gong bash target a kinetic bash toy house and a decorated temple Survived Kong's punch back kicking target which launches balls back at the player or can see that that Kickback targets pretty cool. And then what's this right here into the secret entrance to Kong's vertical up kicker? Oh, that's cool Cool. Okay, so then there's like a drop in there that goes to this Vuck that then I think feeds your right flipper. Yeah, that's cool. Okay, so this is where that little... This is pretty neat. So there's a bunch of drop targets on the top right and then another flipper. I can't tell if it's a full-size flipper, though. Is it a full-size flipper or a baby flipper? It's hard to tell in this video. Let's see if I can pause it in time. I can't see it because they have the writing over it. I think it's a full-size flipper. It's just hard to tell, but I don't know. With that close proximity, it makes me feel like it wouldn't be a full flipper. But I love drop. I'm a big drop target. I think drop targets are cool, so I like this whole, like, little extra thing you got going on up here. I think that's pretty cool. Looks like a baby flipper. Oh, that's funny. That's a little Gary Stern. I love how they always hide little Gary Stern everywhere. That's funny. Treasure target. lock pinballs into a New York City train car and watch an agitated king. That's pretty cool. The train car is the ball lock mechanism. That's cool. I did see that in the video. That's pretty neat. So it looks like he, check this out. So when you lock the balls inside this subway car, I guess when you get multiball, that's cool. He hits the subway car over for i guess it's probably called king kong multiball or i don't know sit over to start king kong multiball yeah king kong multiball okay but i'm digging that king kong isn't the only danger players will encounter as they enter the pit on terror island guarded by a custom i don't know my initial reaction to the spider is not i'm not like that stoked on this spider i don't know that's the one thing i'm not feeling on here so far is the spider everything else so far I've been like I've been really maybe this will be more impactful I don't know just the picture of it bouncing in this little like sculpted spider doesn't do it for me but maybe with the sound effects and the whole package I'll be into it but I'm not this is my first thing I'm looking at and I'm like I'm not as into that but maybe that maybe it's really cool and I'll have a better opinion of it when I actually play the game on Thursday. Sculpted giant spider this area magnetically grabs and attacks the ball so be prepared. travel over okay so that's your other multiball spider multiball so you have king kong multiball spider multiball this helix shaped biplane ramp looks cool actually there's just i don't know all these helen's always so good about the wire form ramps it's just that looks cool by exploring the thrilling helix shaped biplane ramp yeah so that's kind of cool it's like a plastic ramp and then it goes like up and around the back and then kind of comes back down and then and then like across though it doesn't it doesn't it looks like it would want to return to your left flipper but it does like that little loop-de-loo and then it returns to your right flipper so that's two shots it seems like that return to your right flipper i'm liking that they're incorporating more sculpts too i feel like stern's kind of feeling like you know he's even on the le's there's still some plastic like in the on dnd the mimic i feel like the mimic should have been a sculpt like that should have been a sculpt in my opinion so the fact that they're kind of beefing up the and who knows maybe i have no idea maybe maybe elwynn when he looks at the bomb on a game goes hey i don't want expression lights in the in my cabinet because i know that that's because i i do believe the game designers get to sort of manage the build of materials on a game so i don't like it's not like i don't think someone someone dictates to a stern design team like you have to have these things in your game like i think there are certain things that are optional for the designer and Maybe he said, look, I could put more custom sculpts if we don't do the cabinet illumination or cabinet expression lighting. I don't know. Maybe. Because that's cool. I love this little plane thing. It's pretty neat. Navigate. The illuminated river zigzag secret ball path return. Okay, that's weird. Illuminated. All right. I don't know if I caught that. So illuminated. I don't see it being illuminated. Oh, okay. there's like lights in there. Oh, and that is a baby flipper in the little area where you have the drop targets. Okay. All right. I don't know. Illuminated river zigzag return. Okay. I'm not, I'm confused as how you get to that shot, but that's okay. That's cool though. Four, be ready for the river log diverter to pop up. Ooh wait what this What the river log diverter Hold on Zigzag secret ball path return Or be ready for the river log diverter to pop up setting up shots from the upper left flipper to the cliff's ramp. Oh, that's cool. Okay, I wonder what does that. I wonder if you trigger that or if it... That's pretty cool. All right, I dig that. So another way to like, you know, the ball might be just coming back, but you can set up some shots at the upper play field with that log diverter. That's cool. I wonder what make triggers that, though. But I think that's pretty cool, too. On the Pro Edition. I don't know what I'm a sucker for those vertical up kicks. Those are pretty cool. Like, I love the one they have in Avengers Infinity Quest. So let's see. All right. I think that I think that's it for the L.E. Let's see. They're going to go over to the pro. By the way, the artwork on these look pretty cool to me. I know it was a collaborative effort between Kevin O'Connell, Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti), a.k.a. Zombie Yeti and one other guy. players will experience i think they might talk about that same action taking place on terror so i mean i'm gonna expect that it looks like everything's intact here as far as like the play field elements but i'm gonna guess the big change is probably going to be it's probably no animatronic i mean just like dungeons and dragons that it'll probably be either less animatronic or not animatronic at all on the king kong and then like all the wire forms and ramps look all the same so that's cool but i'm sure they took away some other stuff so let's see what and across New York City in their battle against King Kong. Okay, so he's sculpted at least. That's good. At least he's not a flat plastic. At least he's the same sculpt. I felt like on Godzilla, I felt on Godzilla on all trims, they really put kind of a lame Godzilla in all of them. But then Mechagodzilla on a Pro is just a flat plastic. So obviously Mechagodzilla on the Premium and LE look a lot better. So, I mean, they're actual, like, it's a sculpt. So I think it's cool that, like, the main, like, it would be lame if that was a plastic and not a sculpt. So I think it's cool that at least on the Pro you maintain the King Kong, and he looks exactly the same. It just doesn't move. All right, the plane is a flat plastic, which I would expect in a Pro, so I'm not really getting up on that. The gong is a plastic, it looks like. All right, you still get the buck. You still get the punch back target. Let's see. Okay, so you don't have the spider. It's just a magnet. Okay. I'm not really a big fan of the spider. I don't know what you guys think. Let me know what you think about the spider. I'm not like... I don't know why. The spider is not into. I don't know why. Maybe... I don't know what it is. I hope someone comes up with a mod for that spider. I don't know. The spider looks a little cheesy. But everything else so far, like nothing else I'm like overly critical on. but the spider looks cheesy to me. Okay, you still have the little Kong area with the drop targets. The plane looks like, obviously, the plane's plastics, but at least it looks like multi-layered. Yeah, it's multi-layered plastic. So, better than... I like the art. Oh, it was... Oh, it was Greg Freres, the other one. Okay. Packer, a.k.a. I think the art looks cool. A zombie Yeti all contributed to this art package. And it looks like a little bit more. I don't know. I think the collaboration maybe was a good thing. I mean, I love zombie Yeti's artwork. I think some people get I don't know, they get like really critical of his artwork. I think his artwork is cool. But anyway, so far, all new animations, music and sound effects. OK, and the animation looks cool. Stern's been stepping up on the animations man i mean metallica looked was amazing i feel like dungeons and dragons like there's little subtle details in the dungeons and dragons lcd um animation package like there's things that happen like like uh environmental effects that you don't i know that when you're playing you're not really paying attention to it but i gotta admit they're they have to be pushing the limits of what the spike 2 system is capable of though i don't think that processor is like all that i know they don't publish the specs on that processor but i don't think that thing's super beefy or anything and so it's impressive sometimes to see the kind of stuff they're able to do on what to me is probably a dated hardware platform at this point um i mean unless they've done some cpu upgrades but the board looks the same i don't think so i think it's pretty much the same cpu memory that it's it's maybe they beefed up the memory for some of this stuff but i gotta think they are pushing the boundaries like i'm actually kind of shocked that this wasn't spike 3 yet and not because I think they need to change a bunch of stuff. I don't feel like I like the spike to the way it looks LCD and everything. I just think they got to be running out of horsepower. Like they have to be both in memory. So like how much they can code and also in like CPU resources. So I don't think in any video they would say, Oh, and this has elements of spike three. I think that's just like naturally going to happen, but it is interesting because if you look at the bottom of like D and D, the hardware PCBs are all of a sudden red and they look slightly different. So I wonder if those like red PCB boards are like the next gen ones and they just haven't got to the CPU yet. And it does seem like they're using a slightly different power supply. So I don't know. I think they might be like slow rolling spike integration. So it's not, it's not like going to be a big splash to us unless they change some physical elements like bigger LCD and stuff like that, which is rumored that they're going to do. It also features custom speech by comedy legend Brian Q Quinn from Impractical Jokers. Okay, that's pretty cool. I love, man, they've also been killing it on the voice acting. The voice acting in Dungeons & Dragons is so good, so this is exciting to see. I just think when they get these good voice actors, it makes the call-out special, man. It's like when I was, I know this is a Stern, obviously, release, but in Evil Dead, the voice, I can't remember his name right now. Bruce, what the hell is the guy's name? He's famous too, and I can't think of his name. Anyways, the guy that plays the main character in Evil Dead, having him do the voiceovers is really cool when you're playing that game. So things like this, I dig. And I think sometimes they get overlooked, but they really do add something to the overall experience. And all you have to do is play a pinball machine where the callouts aren't good, and you're like, oh man. Or they're not enthusiastic, or they have no soul to them. It makes the game feel hollow, in my opinion. no no no that ape's not keeping huff along we're going in and through the power of insider connected it looked like he was doing that in his house like in his yeah it's like a refrigerator in the background so i guess he didn't go to stern he's like doing his house it sounds good though no no no that ape's not keeping huff along we're going in and through the power of insider connected players will be able all right so now i'm curious about this so insider connected to me. I know you guys have heard me talk about gush over D&D. I really like the save progress thing, but I was having a phone... I did have a phone call with Kaneda last night and he had a good counter about saving progress Because he like look will people get bored of the game faster Now I already beat D and D but D and D code isn done but it makes me wonder like I does. I don't, it says track progress, but I don't know if it's like, cause D and D, you don't have to play the same mode twice. If you're tracking your progress. So I'm curious what this will be like. Um, cause like really, if you think about it, I don't know any other games other than Dungeons and Dragons where you do not have to play the mode again. so that's kind of interesting i like that in the sense that it allows players that aren't as good or aren't as skilled to see more of the game so i'm kind of a fan of that but we'll see how it's implemented here i doubt they're going to get into it in deep detail but i'll maybe i can find out more on thursday able to explore terror island on an unforgettable treasure hunt we are beyond excited for you to battle the eighth wonder of the world and become the king of your game room with King Kong, Myth of Terror Island at sternpinball.com. Solid. Solid, man. I don't know. I think it looks good. I think it looks good. I think, you know, oops. Sorry about that, guys. I think they got a winner on their hands, but we'll see. You have to play it, but I just feel like what I was really looking forward to was, hey, there's definitely a shift in the industry where some of these newcomers are starting to put a little bit more of the magical mechanisms and stuff. And I know I've talked about it on prior podcasts. Those don't make or break a game for me personally, but they're nice to have. Like when you have a cool mechanism you interact with that's fun, that's not overdone or just there for the sake of being there. And I don't like when playfields are too crowded with stuff, like too many mechanisms or toys to play with. I think this is a good balance. I like the Kong in the back. I think that's fun and it's a cool, I like the mechanical ball lock with the subway car. I think that's pretty neat when he smashes it down. I like the fact that it looks like Kong can stop your ball, just like kind of similar to an X-Men where either the wire form breaks or the Sentinel hand can like flick your ball back up. So I like that stuff. That kickback thing is cool. Like everything looks really neat. So we'll see. The only thing that I'm not the biggest fan of is the spider. That's the only thing. Now, if I'm going to get the Ellie. So that's that's that's that's settled. I think they all look nice, though. Like artwork wise, they all look really nice. You know, that collaboration is cool because I think it makes this looks a little less full zombie Yeti. And I think that's kind of nice. You know, like I think zombie Yeti is a great artist, but he does a lot of the games. and some would argue that it's a similar style. I personally really like his style, but I also think this is cool because it looks like a variation. It doesn't look like it's all Zombie Yeti, although there's Zombie Yeti influences in there. And I think that's good. You know, like him being, by the way, if you guys didn't hear, he got promoted to the head of the art division within Stern Pinball. And I think that's great. He deserves that. I think he's put in a lot of hard work. Some of the best games have his artwork featured. So, yeah, overall, I'm pretty stoked on this. So the real test, the true test, though, you can look at the trailer. We can break it down and do all that. But the true test is playing it. So on Thursday, I'm going to try to really be in the moment at the Stern release, the Stern Media Day. I'm going to try not to film too much in the sense that I want to really get a good – this is my opportunity and the other content creators' opportunity to really get in tune with the game. Like how does it shoot? What is the code like right now? Asking questions about where do they see the code going, like things like that because I love what they did with Jaws. And that was a similar team on that game that's on this game. and I have no doubt that they're going to do some really cool stuff with this. So it'll be interesting to see where the code is now and then what maybe their future plans are. I'll try to ask a lot of those questions. But if you guys have questions like you want answered now or things that you're curious about, put it in the comments below and then I'll try to take those things with me because they do give us the opportunity to talk to various members of the development team. So we have a chance to ask that. Like when we had D&D, there were some things I didn't like about how you trigger the shield. So I was able to talk to Elizabeth and Dwight and say, hey, I feel like the shield isn't as responsive. And they're looking for that feedback, too. So this will probably be the first at the same time they have it at that zoo show or something. So this will be the first time, like, really the public and players of various different skill levels are going to be hammering on this thing. So we'll see how it goes. But I did want to do something different for the outro here. So those that don't know, there's been a lot of comments lately about the theme song, the intro song to my podcast. People said they enjoy it. Someone actually came up to me at Electric Bat last week and said that. But there's a remixed version that I'm going to use as the outro today. So this is actually the same theme song, but it's like an acoustic version maybe. I mean, it's not acoustic, but it's like more dramatic. now I dig it though so let me know what you think of this I'll let it hang for a second I like it I like it so I used this in a video there was a montage moment where we used this in a video but I like this I'm not going to replace the main intro but I dig this anyways guys thanks so much for hanging out with me this is my initial reaction to King Kong are you excited I'm excited because it's Elwynn it looks like there's an amazing shot layout and uh you know they're doing I think Stern's trying to make the trim levels make sense for everybody that hey you can buy in on a pro or a premium and you're not missing out on too much of the of the of the mechanical magic within the game or the things that make the game uh you know look aesthetically better anyways guys thanks so much for watching i'm so excited i have a couple of ideas that i'm going to do at the stern thing i didn't get full confirmation that i can do it yet but if i am able to do it i will be bringing you a step closer to that event as if you're there and maybe you get to experience a little bit of that event with us. So we'll see. We'll see. It's up in the air. Zach Sharp gave me the, eh, maybe you could. I'm like, no. No, Zach. Zach, come on, man. We're bros. Like, let's do this. Let's up the game. Everyone here listening to this wants us to do that. I'll give you a hint. We'd be doing a live stream, not of the gameplay, but of everyone's reactions. We will grab all the content creators, all the guys you know and love and listen to, and gals, I think it's a good idea and we will see you on the flip side