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Pinball Industry News: January 2019 Re-cap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 19m·held·Feb 2, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Stern's Monsters launches; JJP announces 2 new games, Japan expansion, and hires.

Summary

This January 2019 podcast episode covers Stern's Monsters theme reveal at CES with coordinated launch choreography and subsequent LE sell-out, gameplay impressions from EAG trade show attendees, and an exclusive interview with Jersey Jack Pinball founder Jack Guarnieri revealing two new games in development (one by Pat Lawlor earlier in the year, one by Eric Meunier later), expansion into Japan via Bandai Namco partnership, new distributor additions, and recent hires including Duncan Brown.

Key Claims

  • Stern sold out the original 500 Monsters limited edition games almost instantly and announced production of 600 total limited editions

    high confidence · Hosts discuss LE sales after CES reveal

  • Jersey Jack Pinball expects to release two brand new games in 2019—one earlier in the year and one later in the year

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri in exclusive interview at EAG

  • Pat Lawlor has a game coming early 2019 and it will be a standard-width (rectangular) machine, not a rotating nine

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri confirms Pat's game details in interview

  • Eric Meunier is working on a game scheduled for later in 2019

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri confirms in interview

  • Jersey Jack Pinball has been partnering with Bandai Namco for approximately one year to distribute games in Japan and all of Asia

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri describes Japan partnership, testing at locations since July prior year

  • Duncan Brown, a game designer from previous pinball work, has recently joined Jersey Jack Pinball

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri confirms in interview

  • Jersey Jack added Amini's as a new U.S. distributor in the Midwest

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri mentions meeting at IAAPA

  • Bandai Namco will represent Jersey Jack Pinball at Japan Expo in the coming weeks with all JJP games in their booth

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri states in interview

Notable Quotes

  • “They really put it well together this time... I think they got it right, and they did a very good job with it.”

    Martin Ayr @ Early in episode — Compliments Stern's coordinated launch choreography for Monsters reveal at CES

  • “It didn't wow me... it's a solid game, but it's not giving you that wow factor.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ Mid-episode gameplay discussion — Critical assessment of Monsters gameplay experience; notes competent but unspectacular design

  • “I think we launch them when they're ready to be launched... if you show a game and you go on production a year later, that's not fun for anybody.”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Interview section — Articulates JJP strategy of announcing games closer to production availability

  • “It was very humbling for me... there were actually people that caught wind of the fact that I was going there and I had quite the welcoming party.”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Interview section — Describes passionate pinball community response during Japan visit to Silver Bowl arcade

  • “I like all of them. Because you never know what opportunity turns up at these shows... I think if you go in with a preconceived notion... you kind of get into this box of an attitude.”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Late interview — Reflects philosophy on trade show strategy and approach

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyJack GuarnieripersonPat LawlorpersonEric MeunierpersonDuncan BrownpersonGary Sternperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern Monsters LE 500-unit allocation sold out almost instantly at CES; company expanded production to 600 units, received negatively by community

    high · Hosts confirm original 500 sold out and subsequent announcement of 600 unit production was 'received with not that great enthusiasm'

  • ?

    event_signal: EAG International 2019 trade show described as quiet compared to previous years; pinball had strong presence with Stern, Jersey Jack, and Classic remakes on display

    high · Martin notes show was 'pretty quiet' with 'more pinball machines than in the previous 10 years' due to Pinball Heaven booth

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball announced new distribution partnerships in Japan (Bandai Namco for all of Asia) and added Amini's as Midwest U.S. distributor

    high · Jack Guarnieri confirms year-long partnership with Bandai Namco, testing since July at locations, and Amini's order at IAAPA

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball hired Duncan Brown and another unannounced designer from previous pinball work; additional hires in prospect

    high · Jack Guarnieri confirms Duncan Brown joined and hints at unnamed colleague also joining; mentions future hires in prospect

  • ?

    machine_intel: Jersey Jack Pinball confirming Pat Lawlor game (early 2019, standard-width) and Eric Meunier game (later 2019)

    high · Jack Guarnieri explicitly confirms two games from these designers with release timing

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.417

0:00
The Monsters Revealed. We visit the EAG trade show. An exclusive interview with Jack Guarneri of Jersey Jack Pinball.
0:17
Hi and welcome to this month's Pinball Magazine and Pinball News Podcast. My name is Jonathan Euston. And I'm Martin Ayr. And we're here to discuss with you the pinball industry news of January 2019.
0:34
And it's been a very busy month, hasn't it, with trade shows, new game launches, lots of code updates, lots of new stuff. Yeah, lots of short news, I would say. So at the end of the show, we might discuss a couple of companies in a really quick time. But, yeah, I guess the biggest news of last month probably was Stern revealing the Mansos at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Yes, not exactly a surprise that that game was going to be revealed there, or indeed that that was going to be the title of it. But, yeah, they had, what do they have there? They have a Pro and a Premium. Do they have a limited edition? Yes, all three models were present at the show. And I really have to compliment Stern on the, is it the choreography that you call it? Is it perfectly set? Yeah, they really put it well together this time. We've seen launches where everything was not very cohesive. And here we had Gary Stern in green grandpa makeup, Zach Sharp as the Wolfman kid, Eddie thing, and Jack Danger as, what's the guy's name? Herman from the show, also in green makeup. Full live stream for three days.
2:06
The website caught up. Facebook caught up immediately. So they had everything synced up that this would be a, like I said, a well-choreographed launch. So I've criticized CERN in the past for when launches weren't that choreographed, so it's only appropriate to compliment them when they actually, I think they got it right, and they did a very good job with it. So that's just me, but still. Yes, it was certainly an impressive launch and I think the game was well received it was known about in advance and there were certain comments suggesting maybe it wouldn't be as exciting as the launch actually turned out to be so I think that did work out well for everyone concerned I think people generally were very receptive to the game was that your take on it? Yeah, I guess so I mean, from what I understood The original 500 limited edition games Sold out almost instantly In fact, I understood that Stern announced That they are now making 600 limited edition games So they added another 100 Which was then received with not that great enthusiasm No, that's not a surprise really That's the whole point of limited edition, isn't it? Yeah. Personally, having played the premium game, which has the black and white artwork on the cabinet instead of the full color artwork on the cabinet with a limited edition, I would just go for the premium. If you're in the market for an LE, then forget the limited numbers and just go for the premium. But that's just me. Okay, I will disagree with you there Because I wasn't as big a fan of the black and white artwork As I thought I was going to be On the cabinet it's nice, I don't like it on the playfield And the reason I don't like it on the playfield Is because all the inserts are coloured And they're coloured exactly the same as they are in the LE version So rather than it being sort of like Centaur with a black and white playfield and red inserts. This has got black and white playfield and multicolored inserts and some multicolored details and various other parts which are not black and white at all. It just doesn't really come together as a comprehensive and cohesive package, shall I say, which it could have been. If they made all the inserts clear or white and just done all the coloring with the LEDs, they could have done some nice stuff, But that one aspect of it makes me think that the LE is the better deal as far as the looks go, as far as the value for money goes. And probably the premium is, if you don't mind the black and white aspect of it and the color sections,
Zach Sharpe
person
Jack Dangerperson
Jonathan Eustonperson
Martin Ayrperson
Bandai Namcocompany
Pinball Heavencompany
Chicago Gamingcompany
Ryan Whiteperson
[name withheld pending review]game
The Wizard of Ozgame
The Hobbitgame
Dialed In!game
The Beatles (Gold)game
Deadpoolgame
EAG International Trade Showevent
Japan Expoevent
?

gameplay_signal: Monsters Premium playfield feedback mixed: appreciated lower playfield feature and Monster Madness multiball, but criticized as derivative and lacking novelty factor compared to past Stern releases

medium · Guest Bobo states 'didn't wow me' and notes shots are 'like a best-of' compilation; host agrees saying 'it's a solid game, you're saying, but it's not giving you that wow factor'

  • ?

    product_concern: Monsters machine at EAG showed shot detection issues; ramp and orbit shots not registering when shot too quickly

    medium · Host notes 'didn't seem to register the shots very accurately' on the EAG demo unit; attributes to 'set-up of that one game'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jack Guarnieri articulates Jersey Jack strategy to announce games only when close to or in production, minimizing customer wait time

    high · Jack states 'we're done with' long delays and wants 'games on an assembly line or really close to an assembly line... when we show the next game'

  • $

    market_signal: Jersey Jack identifies Japan/Asia as explosive growth market for pinball; considering region-specific game themes for future releases

    high · Jack describes Japan market opportunity, mentions potential for market-specific games, and notes Bandai Namco putting 'a lot of effort' into distribution

  • ?

    industry_signal: Jack Guarnieri reflects on unpredictability of trade show results; emphasizes avoiding preconceived notions about which shows will be most profitable

    medium · Jack states 'sometimes a show where you don't expect much... you meet people that want to distribute' and advocates treating 'every opportunity' equally

  • ?

    community_signal: Japanese pinball community demonstrates strong passion for pinball and Jersey Jack games; community leaders and tournament organizers actively supporting distribution efforts

    high · Jack describes emotional response from Japanese fans at Silver Bowl arcade and collaboration with pinball map creators and tournament organizers

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jersey Jack evaluating whether complex rule sets suit entry-level markets like Japan; acknowledging learning curve but highlighting accessibility of games like Wizard of Oz for new players

    medium · Hosts ask if JJP games are 'entry-level enough' and Jack acknowledges 'learning curve' but notes WoZ brought young people through technology and theme appeal

    • 5:13
    the premium is not a bad way to go. Yeah. So what do you think of the game? We had the chance to play it at the EAG show.
    5:23
    Yeah. I liked it. We'll come to the EAG show in a minute. But, yeah, I liked the game. I quite like the lower play field. I know a lot of people say they don't, and I don't know what your take on that is. We'll get to that in a minute. Yeah. I thought it was accessible. I had a bit of a problem with the lower play field in the one I was playing because it didn't seem to register the shots very accurately. So you could shoot the ram who shot it too fast, or indeed the orbit who shot those quickly. it wouldn't recognise that you'd made the shot. So that might just be a set-up of that one game.
    6:02
    Yeah, I thought it was accessible, understandable as well, which is great. It certainly had a simpler rule set. The ones that we played, I think, were set up fairly easily in terms of certain numbers of things were completed at the start of the game, so you only had to, like, if you had to spell out something, then the first three letters were already complete, Which made getting to the Monster Madness mode A lot easier than it would be I think in an arcade or in a home environment But it certainly seemed fun And certainly had the novelty of the multi-ball And the lower playfield And then in the Monster Madness At the very end having to play the upper playfield And the lower playfield at the same time And I thought that was quite challenging And it made that particular aspect of it A lot harder on the premium than it was on the pro. So, Bobo, what's your take? Well, I think they did a great job, but the only point of criticism, and that's a very personal thing, is it didn't wow me.
    7:14
    It was, I mean, you have, especially with the premium that I played at the show, So you have the extra mini play field, but we've seen that on Family Guy already.
    7:30
    Most of the shots in the games, many people already said, like, it's like a best-of. Take a shot from this game, take a shot from that game. And then there's people saying, yeah, but you can't be all original because every shot has already been done and so on. And then again, I look at Dialed In and I think, no, it is possible. But given the restraints that there were with either the license or the design,
    8:10
    I mean, all the shots are proven shots. the elements of the game, they all seem to be fine, and yet there's nothing spectacular if you get what I'm trying to say. I do, yeah. It's a solid game, you're saying, but it's not giving you that wow factor. I would say that kick-out lane on the upper left side is different. I haven't seen that on any other game, certainly not in recent releases. who know the, I can't remember what it's called now, but where it goes into there, and it's the Super Jackpot Award. Yeah.
    8:49
    Which then kicks up to the top, which I thought was onto the orbit, which is actually quite a nice shot. Right.
    8:57
    So the, but I also, I mentioned the mini play field, and I'm making the reference to Family Guy. That's not completely fair. No. Obviously they improved it quite a bit. um the the ramps in there um the the upticker uh it's all optos now instead of a family guy just being switches i think it has a multi-ball so so they improved they improved that quite a bit um but still i was like um maybe it's because of the the monster theme that i was sorting the rumor that there would be a lower play field, I was probably expecting something in the line of haunted house. Yeah. Yeah, full-size ball and full-size slippers. Yes. And this felt a bit like, yeah, it's nice. There's nothing wrong with it, but we've seen it before, and it's not wowing me. And yet they improved it. I completely agree. Kudos to everybody on the team, because they really did a great job.
    10:16
    But maybe it's a theme I'm not familiar with the show at all. And, yeah, it's a fun game to play, but, like I said, it didn't wow me.
    10:29
    And I wish it did. Yeah, oh, well. You can't have a home run every time. But it's a nice-looking game, I have to say. It's very attractive in both the pro and the premium that we saw I haven't seen the LE yet, other than in pictures But that looks pretty good as well I think of the three, I'd probably... Yeah, as I said, I'd go for the LE if you could If money was not a factor If money was not a factor, I probably would go for a premium and usually I'm more of leaning towards a pro, but in this case, the pro,
    11:17
    lacking the mini playfield, yeah, didn't do much for me. It's a fun game to flip. I'd love to flip it on location or at shows or whatever, But it's not something that I'd be taking a detour for just to play because it's somewhere and it's the only place to play it. Let's put it like that. Okay. Well, fair enough.
    11:48
    So we're playing that game at the EAG International Show in London. You flew over for that along with Aljonka as well from the Netherlands. and there were quite a few people from the pinball world in the UK there as well.
    12:10
    Stern had five machines set up on their distributor, their ElectroCoin stand. Right, Deadpool Pro, a month of Pro, month of Premium, and two Beatles Gold games. Yes, absolutely right. And I have to say that the show in general seemed pretty quiet and didn't seem to have any problem getting on to those games when we wanted to. No, they were generally in use, but you only had to wait a moment and you could get onto one of them, even if it wasn't the exact one that you wanted, which is in marked contrast to previous years. But I don't think that's a reflection on Electrocoin or Pinball or Stern. I think it's just the fact that the show was pretty quiet this year. Right. You've been there a few times in the past. What did you think? Yeah, well, probably true On the upside, there were more pinball machines than in the previous 10 years Yes, because I think we have to thank Pinball Heaven for having, what, 10 machines? 10 machines in their booth, yes Wow, you've got to listen to what they all are Because I would keep going from memory But they obviously had the four Jersey Jack pinball machines That was four games, all four, Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, Dialed In, and Pirates of the Caribbean. There was a home pin Thunderbirds.
    13:36
    There was a Stern Monster Pro, which was being streamed the first day. For the link, see my report on symbol-magazine.com website. There was a Beatles Gold. There was an Attack from Mars remake, a Monster Bash remake, and a Medieval Madness remake. And I think that's ten already. Yes, I think that's it.
    14:07
    And Jack Borneri of Jersey Jack Pimble and Ryan White of Chicago Gaming were both present at the booth as well.
    14:16
    They were indeed. which I guess probably segues nicely into the interview that you and I did with Jack. Right.
    14:29
    Do you want to explain how that came about, what the setup for that was, what the impetus for doing that was?
    14:38
    I asked Jack, like, do you want to do an interview for our podcast, he said. Yeah, that's a good idea. Sure, why not? Okay.
    14:47
    Well, we've got some precedent there because we did do one with him together back in France. When was that, May? April of last year, I think. It was April. Yes. At the Flip Expo show. Right. And speaking of that, Jack has just been confirmed to be present at this year's Flip Expo show as well. Oh, he's come back. Okay. Are you going to that? Yes, I am. And me too. So I can see a tradition being born here. Yeah, we're getting the team back together again. Right. But no, the reason to do this interview was I had been talking to Jack, and he mentioned to me some news that could not be reported at the show yet, but by the time we would do our podcast, it was no problem to report it, because we still had the scoop, but it was no... But now we're allowed to bring the news, basically. That's the whole idea. Yes, and without giving too much away, Jack also sort of very heavily hint at future titles which are coming up from the company this coming year. So there's a lot happening at Jersey Jack Pimple at the moment. Right. So shall we go over to Jack now, or do you want to do that a little bit later? No, that's fine. Let's do it now. As a heads up, we recorded this at the show floor. We tried to find a quiet spot, which is rather difficult. So there's quite some noise from arcade equipment in the background. I tried to reduce the noise. I got some very special software to do that, which I think did a great job. But it's still a bit noisy, so pardon me for that. But still, I hope you enjoyed this interview. So we're here at the AG Expo 2019 and we're sitting here with Jack Guarnieri, founder of Jersey Jack Pinball. Welcome Jack.
    16:55
    Thank you. So you're here represented, or the company is represented at the Pinball Heaven booth with four games, all four games. we're just at the start of 2019 what do you expect for this year and what can we expect? well you know I'm looking forward to a really good year for pinball and for Jersey Jack pinball in particular it's exciting this year for us we expect to release two brand new games and you know one earlier in the year and one later in the year and we're adding some distributors around the world and there's a lot of excitement about that because the things that we've been working on and a lot of things take time they just won't happen overnight so let me just come in there because it's exciting new two games this year are you planning to launch those at any particular shows or any events or do you just launch them whenever are ready to launch it? I think we launch them when they're ready to be launched. I'd love to have games on an assembly line or really close to an assembly line or games in boxes or something. One of those three things when we show the next game. Because people want their games, when you announce something the excitement is really high and people just want to get a hold of their games. So having people wait, it's a pain in the ass. I think we're done with that. You've always said that you wanted to get games that people could buy at the launch. So you're getting ever closer to that. The virus took a bit longer than you were anticipating at launch, but you're getting much closer to being able to buy games at the launch. I mean, the pint I just bought you, Martin, it wouldn't have been good if you went up there and she took my money and she told you to come back in a week. It wouldn't have been so big. You wouldn't have been able to enjoy what you wanted to enjoy right away. So we're trying to shorten that time up. Look, there's going to be a wait anyway, because we're very blessed in a way when we do announce something, there are a lot of people that want to buy it. So not everybody's going to be first, but you have a lot shorter lead time if you're in production or very close to production than if you show a game and you go on production a year later. That's not fun for anybody. Do you ever think you'll be at the point where you actually got games, a large number of games pre-built at the launch time? Or do you think it's always going to leak out? Well, I think it'll always leak out because vendors talk, contractors talk, people talk about what's going on. and our thoughts in many places sit next to other companies' thoughts, and people love to talk. It's part of the fun of everything is to get information, and share that information whether you like it or not. But it could be a day where we have games, and we just announce it, and hey, come and get them. That would be great. I'd love that. So, if you're talking about having games ready to ship when you announce them... Ideally. Would you... Don't you miss, like, the time that you need to test them thoroughly to make sure that, like, every mechanism on there is working properly and... It's a good point, but if we test them internally, and we test them in multiple locations internally, which means that New Jersey would have games and Illinois would have games and other people that work for the company in other places would have games to test, you could accomplish what you wanted to accomplish just as well under an environment where it's controlled maybe there won't be people kicking them or trying to break into them or things like that but certainly you'd be able to test mechanisms and devices and electronics to a level where you have confidence to build a game an interesting point you raised there just now about the Illinois office and the New Jersey office, or factory in the New Jersey. Can you explain for those who aren't familiar with the factory and the business, exactly what goes on in which office and how those two, New Jersey and Illinois, obviously put each other and work collaboratively? Yeah, so, you know, when we started the company, a lot of people in our industry live in the Chicagoland area. And we have contractors and people like, you know, JP is in Holland, and Butch is in New Mexico. We have other people in the West Coast and things like that. So, you know, one of my other favorite companies, Apple, they design in Cupertino and they build in China. I didn't think it was such a technological wall where people couldn't collaborate and share, especially with technology today, with all of how you could communicate, to have an office in one place and a factory in another. It has its challenges. I mean, people just can't walk over and see something. They have to, you know, rely on each other or do FaceTime, things like that. But the office in Bensonville, Illinois has engineers, artists, programmers, mechanical people, electronic people, that basically design the games. But they design the games in concert with production in the factory in New Jersey. So it would be great if you designed something, but if the factory can't build it easily, it's really not a good design. So, you know, we have people constantly going back and forth. It's not really that far to go. Again, it's not Cucatino to China. It's an hour and a half flight from New Jersey to Chicago, and it's not really a big deal. So, both officers, all the people, they're counterparts. They have a mutual respect for each other. When they design things, they accept each other's criticisms. They accept each other's suggestions and they work as one team to make the best product they could possibly make, make the greatest game they could make. So it's effectively all mechanical engineering, effectively, in New Jersey. Or is that also happening up in Illinois as well? No, that's in Illinois, but we have people in New Jersey... Listen, Thomas Edison, I don't think he was an engineer. So you have a lot of brilliant people that don't need an engineering degree that know how things should be built because they have experience doing it. And those people are very much desired in the process. So if we have people in New Jersey that build things and people in Illinois that design things, sometimes in any kind of product, design and manufacturer don't agree. and you need to get them all to agree and that's the process especially when you're designing new things you know if we were using over and over again things that were already proven things that were off the shelf things that were on other games if you're just going to take everything and recycle it and toss it on the play field and see where it goes the process gets a lot shorter and probably a lot less fun because things have been done before So, you mentioned two new games this year. Can you say anything about the designers of
    25:22
    those games? They are two designers that work for the company. Well, obviously we know that Pat Lawler is working for the company. Yes. Is there going to be a new Pat Lawler game this year? Yes. Is it going to be a game early in the year or later in the year? Yes. No, it'll be his game will be earlier in the year. It's so easy and cheesy, you know, it's just so much fun. At least we know something. Well, you know everything. You know, maybe you don't know everything, you know almost everything. Okay. But Pat has a, let me say, a preference for narrow-body games. Is that something... Standard size for young. Oh, the regular side. Well, I can tell you that Padmex game is standard or a white one. Okay. It's a rectangular game.
    26:23
    He hasn't built a rotation nine, has he? Okay. Okay, so... Not enough, not enough yet. So is there a chance that Pat is releasing two games this year? No. So you also have Eric Meunier working at the company. Yes. Is he working on a new game? Yes, he is. Is that game scheduled for release later this year? Yes, it is. Okay, so we have two names. There you go. So we got something. That's good. See how easy that was? Yeah. You also mentioned expanding distribution. Yes. Obviously, in the U.S., you're probably covered quite well. We've actually added another couple of distributors in the U.S. We added Amini's in the Midwest. They're a really great retailer. They have big stores, and they've been selling pinball for a while. They've been buying some of our pinball machines from other sources, but we met at IAAPA, and it just made sense for them to be a direct distributor. We stepped up, and they made a nice-sized order, and it's exciting to have them on board. We welcome them. Okay. So how about internationally? Any news you can reveal? I'll go easier on you. So I've been working on something for about a year in Japan with a really great partner, of Bandai Namco. So when I think of Japan and the landscape, from what little I know, pinball was pretty big in Japan for a while. And it kind of went away. I got an opportunity last month to visit Japan and I think my head exploded about 40 different times going to all of the amusement centers and seeing the equipment, these multi-level, beautiful, I can't even think I can call it an arcade, but, you know, between all the online gaming and the redemption gaming, the instant win gaming, and by gaming I mean not the gambling side of things, but the amusement games, and, you know, I got to go to a couple of test locations where Bondi and Namco has been testing our games since last July. and Bush Peel came with me, we did a service seminar, and in a couple of weeks at Japan Expo, Fondai Manpo will be representing Jersey Jacks tomorrow in their booth. All our games will be in their booth. That's within Japan? That's within Japan. They have the rights for all of Asia. So, you know, we'll be expanding to other parts of Asia with them as our partner.
    29:29
    So, that makes me wonder, obviously, Jersey Jack games with Keith Johnson being your lead programmer, they're quite deep, but since Japan is a new market, are your games entry-level enough?
    29:50
    So that people who are not familiar with pinball can easily get in and get in. Well, you know, there's going to be a learning curve. But, you know, it was kind of, I don't know if you guys saw on social media, you know, you're on my Facebook page, both of you. I got to go to Osaka to the Silver Bowl.
    30:13
    And it was very humbling for me in a way because there were actually people that caught wind of the fact that I was going there. and I had quite the welcoming party and it was a little... it was honestly embarrassing you know, because people came out to meet us and there's a lot of passion for pinball there we met the people that run the pinball maps for Japan we met some of the tournament people and they're all behind us to get pinball out in Japan in a big way and they're going to be working with the people at Bondi Namco on the ground to get games out and to teach people how to play.
    30:59
    You know, I think our games in a lot of ways, especially with games like Wizard of Oz, it brought young people to pinball because of the technology and because of the team. And you know how I feel about Wizard of Oz, especially with women, girls, young people. and we were at a test location where there was people playing all of our games and there was a gentleman playing The Hobbit at the time and he turned around and he saw me and it was just this surreal kind of moment where he was almost going to cry when he realized it was me. He started shaking and he wanted the picture and autograph and again it was very humbling but they have a lot of passion involved there. So I think we'll be very successful. I think the market for us is just explosive.
    31:55
    Very exciting. And with that potential, do you think that will impact on the kind of licenses and titles that you'll pick in the future without having an eye to what would sell well in Asia? Yes. Yes, absolutely. and, you know, it's funny you picked up on that. You're very perceptive, Martin.
    32:17
    I discussed different licenses with the executives I found on hand for future games, and they had some suggestions for us. Is there any possibility you might make games just for that market? Yeah, it's possible.
    32:31
    If they come through with a lot of orders? Yep, it's possible. It's possible you can have a game themed for one market they're the same exact place they'll be in some other market. Obviously that's been done before in Bingo. I'm thinking about what Pohnpin did in the Chinese market. Their second game is very much more focused on that market. Although it has come risen to that in the West as well. So they all think that's a growth area. You see it as a growth area as well. Yeah, yeah. And again, we never say never. We don't know where some of these roads lead, But again, we try to blaze new trails and go where nobody's gone before. But at the same time, not reinventing the wheel, because that takes a lot of time and energy and money. And to have Fondai Namco get behind our product, it wasn't a five-minute decision. It was, it took proving what the product is and proving that it can be successful, that it makes money and it works. and that they want to get behind it and put their efforts in it. And they're putting a lot of effort into it, and we're really proud of them.
    33:44
    So that's going to be meaningful for me, some extra effort. And I understand you've been taking on some more people recently as well, some people we might be familiar with from previous work in Pindlewood. Yes.
    33:58
    Such as Duncan, I guess. Yes. Duncan Brown, he's joined us. Absolutely, yes. How did that all come around? You know, the opportunity was there. Larry was making a change in his life, and Duncan was making a change in his life, and the beneficiary was Larry Duncan and Jersey Jack.
    34:17
    So what is Duncan's role going to be in Jersey Jack? He'll make great games. But in what capacity in the sense that is he going to be a programmer or is he going to be involved in a different way?
    34:33
    Exactly. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Well you know you already paved the road so I can go down it Well even for me that be interviewed by these two guys Are there any other hirings taking place or in prospect There are, yes. Anyone we might have heard of, possibly? Maybe.
    35:01
    What do you know, Martin? I don't know. I'm trying to find out what I know or I don't know. One of Duncan's contemporaries joined us as well. so, yeah. Does he have a knife? He does, but I'll let him talk about it when he's ready. Okay. So, I might cut this out, so I leave a blank space to make it an easy task. Oh, you're telling everybody you might cut it out? Yeah. Wow, that's like a real foot hanger. Yeah. So, how do you feel about your daughter? No! What? No.
    35:41
    All right, whatever you want to say, go ahead and say it. How do you feel about your... Well, really, you know, there's a name for it, what you are, but I'm not going to use it.
    35:53
    You want me to finish the question, or you know where... I know the question before you're going to ask it. I know, yes.
    35:59
    So, how do you feel about your daughter naming her brand new son, congratulations, by the way, Thank you. after your biggest competitor?
    36:14
    Well, um... So, little Gary. Little Gary Salvatore was born the day after Christmas. And he's named after her father-in-law, Gary. The double R. Two R's, yeah. I realized that. But, you know, he's really cute.
    36:35
    And Olivia really loves him a lot. She's always helping Jen and Gary with, you know, getting his diapers and getting his cream and getting his little bib. He's already got a bib that says Pinball Wizard.
    36:56
    And it's really great. So, yeah, I think that's really great. I'm happy about that. Like I said, congratulations on becoming a grandfather. Thank you. Congratulations to Jen as well. Yeah, and her husband Gary. Yeah, yeah. A lot of fun.
    37:16
    So 2019 is going to be an exciting year for you. Yeah, 2019's a great year already. You know, it started nicely, and it's going along nicely. This is our first show of the year. I always look forward to this show.
    37:34
    It's a little bit warmer weather here this year, So that's nice and not freezing. And, yeah, it's a good show. It's a good vibe, a lot of people here, a lot of great reaction to it. On that point, New York, you travel as well and go to lots of different events. What is this one? On New Year? Indeed, yeah. What is your must go-to show, trade show, chimney show? Which are the ones which you enjoy most and which are the ones which are the most profitable, most beneficial in terms of the business? You know, it's a funny answer, I'll tell you. I like all of them. Because you never know what opportunity turns up at these shows. Sometimes a show that you might anticipate would be great is just good.
    38:23
    Sometimes a show where you don't expect much to happen, you meet people that they want to distribute the games or they tried one game and now they're ready to step up and order a lot of games. So I think every opportunity has to be looked at the same, where the potential is really great. I think if you go in with a preconceived notion of, oh, this show's going to be this or this show's going to be that, you kind of get into this box of an attitude or a mood that you get into. I'm just excited to do this. I love doing this. I think I could do this forever. I'd like to believe I could do it forever.
    39:09
    You'll do this forever? Yeah, I don't mind. I don't mind. You know, really, the travel part of it is fun.
    39:18
    You know, I'm a little spoiled. You know, I get to go back tomorrow, and then next week I'll be on vacation, you know, the Friday. So we'll be away. My wife and I will be on vacation, and then I'll be back. I'm working on my vacation, am I answering my cell phone, am I answering emails? Of course. I try to balance things out without being a complete idiot. Being at dinner with my wife, answering the phone, or answering emails or texts. You've got to try to put technology somewhere where it works out for you. But do you ever wander around these shows and look at products that other companies are producing? or even things like Touch Boys or any kind of modern-day games and think, hmm, that might be a good license to make a pinball for it. I look at everything. And I think you knew the answer to that before you asked that question. Well, that's why you want to go to the licensing shows. Yeah, absolutely. I look at everything. Because you need to be in touch with what your customers are doing, your young customers, potential customers.
    40:27
    You know, at the same time, you need to look at what your competitors are doing and be aware of what's going on. And, again, not look at things through a lens of you know better or you know what will work.
    40:41
    You really, you know, I don't know who said it. I'm sure it's been said by more than one person running the company. You need to just shut up and listen to your customers. And a lot of times that's some of the best advice because for our company, the whole company was started by our customers. Customers became employees. Customers became investors. You know, so I think the customer base is the thing that we have going for us that we can always really embrace and appreciate. And what are your customers cutting you now?
    41:20
    You know, they're telling us that they really love what we're doing. Don't do what other people are doing. Don't make certain things happen that other people are making happen. And they're responding by buying our products.
    41:35
    So, since we're at the start of 2019, the general expectation inside the pinball market is that 2019 is likely going to be a year that might see more new games released than let's say the past decade possibly even 20 years on the other hand here at the show I also hear computer solving like there are so many games out there and there are more and more games coming we don't even get the chance to sell the game, and the new game is already there. How do you feel about that?
    42:16
    Well, you know, the market is going to do what it's going to do. It's a simple answer to that. And the customers will buy, pick and choose. Obviously, not every customer can buy every game coming out. So they're going to be more choosy about what they buy. I see some customers buying certain games and they keep them a short time and they turn them over to other people coming in the marketplace at a little bit of a discount. So maybe that's healthy because it gives other people the opportunity to buy a game that's only a few months old with a few plays on it for a lower cost.
    42:57
    You know, one thing I say, I don't have all the answers. And I don't have an answer to that one. You know, what companies decide to do and how many of what they decide to build, how soon, they have their own plan and their own agenda for what they're going to do. I think if you look at a lot of products, aside from pinball, exclusivity is something that consumers typically chase after. People as human beings, a lot of times, people want what they can't get.
    43:37
    And whether it's an elusive girl that you might be chasing in a younger life, or whether it's something that's very difficult to get because of limited availability or because of a higher cost to acquire it, there's collectors that want to acquire things and want to buy things that not everybody else has. So sometimes making more of something is not really the answer. I'll give you a quick story. When I was a kid, there was a gas station in New York called Hess, H-E-S-S. And they had these little toys that were called Hess trucks. and you had to get on a line, a physical line, to buy them like the day after Thanksgiving. And they would sell out. And every year people would like almost have fights to get online,
    44:35
    you know, Thanksgiving afternoon, to get on one of these hash drives. And they would wind up on eBay for a whole month. They were $19, maybe $39 or $49 a pack. Well, Hess in later years, they kind of went out of the gasoline business, but they still kept the Hess truck business, and they made these available online, and in the last year or so of their gas stations, they were selling them all the time of the year. Nobody cared about it. You go now on eBay, the Hess trucks that were $49 were like five bucks. Nobody cared about it. So I know it might not apply to exactly what we're talking about, but just I know that our customer base waits for our products. They might buy other products while they're waiting for our products, but the loyalty is there. We never want to abuse that or take that for granted, which is why we want to shorten up the delivery time and the time it takes to make a game or to create a game. So, you know, the market will decide what something is worth. And if it's worth buying it, keeping it, paying for it. And my reality is only my reality, but the customer's reality is real reality. That's what matters. If I can expand a little bit on your answer there. Of the four games that you've produced so far, one is the original title, and the other is the original title. If I can expand a little bit on John Conquerton and also on your answer there. Of the four games that you've produced so far, one is probably the original title and three are licensed. One of those is, I'd probably say, is a more contemporary license than the others, a whole bit. It has a more time-based, because it had come out around about the time the movies came out. But the Wizard of Oz, obviously Empire of the Caribbean, are more sort of classic students, or classic licences. Has the experience of working through those three licences pushed you in the direction more of classic titles, rather than trying to bring out a game around about the same time a movie comes out, or a banned new album comes out, or a tour takes place, or is it all fair game and everything works along with the time it works? I think all works if the game is good. You know, if the movie is good and the game is bad, it's a bad game. But if you were to hop it out now, people are going, oh hang on, let's buy it here, It's kind of funny that we released brand new Hobbit code today.
    47:23
    So how many more Hobbit games will we sell because we released code today? So that's kind of part of the answer. I mean, the answer is zero, right? Because Hobbits are built and gone. We may go back and build Hobbits again. I don't know. I mean, there are people asking us to build Hobbits. We do.
    47:43
    If more people ask for Hobbits, we might go back and build another few hundred. And, you know, there's always been this thing that said, well, if you have games in a movie theater, when the movie came out, it would really be great. And I remember years ago when I did collections for Mondial, and they operated a lot of games in movie theaters, and I think they were owned by Coca-Cola at the time, when Gottlieb was owned by Coca-Cola, and they were Columbia Pictures at the same time. and they had some games in movie theaters when the movie came out and not one extra person went over to a pinball machine and put a quarter in it because the movie was there.
    48:30
    I think that's the psychological kind of thing. Yeah, it makes sense that if The Wizard of Oz was going to be released on a certain date, you'd want to have that game around the same time.
    48:47
    You know, six months after the movie is in the movies, there's a DVD release. And then six months after that, there's another promotional release, and then it kind of tails off until somebody decides to make that movie two, or that movie three, or that movie four, or that movie five.
    49:06
    I never think it's a bad time to sell a good game. And I really tend to stick to that thought process.
    49:16
    It's difficult to hurry creativity. That's kind of a top-out excuse, because designers and engineers and programmers making any kind of product in the universe will say, you know, you can't rush greatness or you can't rush creativity, or, you know, that's just an excuse that I can't stay on a timeline or a budget.
    49:37
    You know, we're still a young company. I mean, the company's eight years old. never mind that I'm doing this 40 plus years you know a lot of people want to make great games and I think that's what we need to focus on and will I take another license Martin for a movie that's in the works that we don't know what the intellectual property is that they won't release the main character protagonist or no I won't do that that's kind of silly I don't think I'll do that again and we've been off with a couple of days and the memory of the Hobbit still stings a little bit because I was asked about this for Replay Magazine, we were going to be interviewed in Replay in February and they got into asking me about the Hobbit and Casey, who's the pinball guy, said, you know, I know that you showed the game in 2014 and then you stopped and you backtracked and you put snows on there and you changed all the graphics and everything. Was that a good thing to do? As painful as it was to talk about it, it was a good thing to do. Because I would have made a game that's less good than what we did make. Hobbit is an epic game, and a lot of people really love that game. And it's beautiful, it's funny, it has a lot of amazing firsts on it. and I'm very proud of it. But, you know, it came at a difficult price. But you still had to do the right thing for the customer. That was what we always did. I always pictured myself as a customer, paying really good money, and we're trying to give them the best product. So you mentioned two new games this year. That kind of makes me wonder, does this mean that production time per game is going to be less because there's another game waiting in line, or has the capacity increased that you can produce more games in a shorter time? The capacity has increased and we can't produce more games in a shorter time. Both of these titles I expect to sell over 2000 of each. I'd be really surprised if I sold less than 2000 of each of them. Are we looking at three different models per game? Yes. Okay. In the meantime, so just to discuss The Hobbit, but obviously your first game, The Wizard of Oz, turned out to be a real classic in the sense of the movie, I would say. Are you still planning on continuing production of that game while in between runs or something like that? Yes, so here's a little nugget for you. We will build more Wizard of Oz games this year. We bought plots to build about 250 games this year. So, we'll let everybody know when that will happen.
    52:48
    There's been a lot of interest from distributors all over the world. At this show, probably ten people asked me about Wizard of Oz, when they could get more Wizard of Oz. You know, our supply chain of, let me say it this way. Our distributors, what they have in the channel is not much. there's not much Jersey Jack product sitting on anybody's shelves I can tell you that we have zero Wizard of Oz games available we have zero Hobbit games available we have zero Pirate games available basically the whole production run is sold you know we'll be building games for another couple of months for people now ordering Pirates and some people order them today they have to go on a wait list in case somebody somehow decides, doubtful, extremely doubtful, that they don't want the games that they order. We're stuffing containers right now that are going to Europe. We finished up 200 CE games. I have about 22 dialed-in games in the building. There was about 80, like in November. So dialed in typically, you know, sells, you know, I said the other day, I was talking to Jim, I said, well, I'm going to go to the show. I can sell, what can I sell? You know, here I am, like, at the beginning of the company. What can I sell? You know, I could sell the future. I could have announced the game like an idiot, which I won't do. So look, it's not a bad place to be. It's better than having 2,000 games in inventory, a warehouse full of games and millions of dollars tied up in games. So our customers are very willing and eager and able to buy our product.
    54:45
    It's a good place to be. So there's zero piracy in stuff right now, and if people want one, they basically have to wait for someone else to back out. Does that mean that the production of pirates is limited in the sense that you can't produce more than you have produced right now? What do I say? Everything is limited except aggravation.
    55:07
    So if we ordered X amount of parts to build X amount of pirates, that's all we could build until we order more parts. So, you know, would we go back and build pirates again at some point? Yeah, we might. I think it's a great game. A lot of people came up to me today that have them. They love it. but we can only build as many as we have possible so if the next game is coming down the track it's time to switch gears and go into the next game at some point in the next several weeks and get that game going okay well that's you now but wait I want to say one other thing distributors may have games because I don't have games you know I don't have a pair of games There might be some distributors that have games that are not sold or accounted for, but the entire run is sold. Everything is sold. Is there any way that a potential buyer can find out who has got a problem? Or does it have to ring round every single distributor and say, have you got a pirate? Have you got a pirate? Bingo. Bingo. I mean, that's... Is that something you can help with? We're able to sometimes, you know. Sometimes distributors... I don't want to say this the wrong way, but sometimes distributors are not completely forthcoming with information to us. You know, we know if we sold a certain distributor 100 pirate games, and we sold distributor B 30 pirate games, there's more of a chance that the guy that ordered 100 might have some games than the guy that ordered 30. So that's the only direction that we could point customers. You know, we love all the distributors equally, like you love your children, but certainly the world is not created equally. some people order more and some people order less you think it would be in the people's interest to tell you when they have games available so people inquire where can I buy a Pirates game you can point them at their local or nearest distributor with stuff you know I think that's true if they got stuck with something and I never hear that from any of them I don't hear anybody ever calling me or Jen saying you know I have you know five of these XYZoo games and I can't sell them, can you help me sell them? I've never heard that. That I've never heard in years. That's our problem. No. But going back to my original question, which was, with two games a year, does that change the dynamics of how the development teams work? Have you ever been like Williams were with their, as I'm describing it as gangs, a developer, game developers fighting against each other or each developing their own game in isolation. Previously when you were producing one game every 18 months or something like that, it was much more a collaborative effort I'm guessing. Well now you've got two games coming out this year and you kind of have to divide your resources a bit more. Is that correct? It's correct, but there's some friendly competition. There's no street gang mentality, there's nobody battling with each other, there's no slamming doors, there's a lot of collaboration and cooperative work together. You know, when Eric came into the company back in 2012 when he was still in college, when I hired him, his hero was Pat Lowe. He took games apart and brought in translights and aprons for Pat to sign them. So he had Pat up on a pedestal. I'm sure now that we're working with Pat every day, maybe Pat's only on a soapbox now. he might not be way up on the pedestal he might be closer to being human to Eric than where he was before as a guy there's a lot of mentoring there's a lot of teaching and sharing that happens united together we're a lot stronger than we are individually we may be great individually but we're a lot greater working together and that's been the DNA and that's been the mindset of the company really from day one. We're not trying to, you know, the rumor of many years ago we had one designer make one game and one designer make another game. They would come to shows like this and they would tell buyers, don't buy his game because my game's coming out and it's a lot better.
    59:30
    That doesn't happen. I'm sure everybody wants to see the best they can do. That's what I see.
    59:39
    Okay. So we're still in January of 2019. I thought you got me into February. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know you were going to throw me on the grill here. I thought we were going to have a five minute conversation. Okay, so where I want to get is... I would have gotten Martin two pints. He's already done, you're already done. I had my little drink here, my soda. I don't even drink soda. Let's round this up. There's the announcement of a Texas-based competitor who was originally planning to release about possibly even five games this year.
    60:22
    Is this something that's concerning you? Or is it like we just do our own thing and... I don't even know what he's talking about.
    60:31
    Fair enough. Thank you, Jack. And there you have it, Jack Warnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball. Yes, very revealing, and good luck to him and the company on their adventures out in Japan with Bandai Namco. Right, and of course, well, planning on revealing two games this year, that could be very interesting. Yeah, I think that's going to be a very busy time for everybody in both the factory and also in the development office up in Illinois. Right. So I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I understood that Pirates is basically coming to an end production-wise by the end of March. and I got the feeling that was kind of a short production run. Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's been that long. No, because I mean, obviously the game has been known to come out, but then it took quite a bit for them, almost a year to get it actually into production, which was like October last year. So it's almost six months and then move on to the next game. Obviously, it certainly would have been much quicker, But still, for Jersey Jack, either that means that they really ramped up production and they are putting games out in a much quicker fashion than they used to, or the game is quite underrated at the moment, and that might be reflecting in sales. Well, I guess if they want to produce two games this year, or at least two games this year, then March or April would be about the time they want to launch the first of those. And Jack has said many times that he wants to get to the situation where he can announce a game and have it ready for sale. So they certainly need to start producing their first 2019 title in March or April in order to fulfil the initial orders. Right, so hopefully, but there's no guarantee, but hopefully we might see a New Jersey Jet Game at the Texas Pinball Festival.
    62:58
    That would, I'd be surprised, but you never know. Stranger things have happened. Well. Stranger things happen in Texas. Right. But if they are planning on starting production at the end of March, with the Texas Fingal Festival being the 22nd to the 24th, that's basically the last week of March, I'd say. Well, it's almost.
    63:21
    Then again, it would also not be surprising if they didn't reveal at Texas and instead would reveal three weeks later at the Midwest Gaming Classic. Yes, Texas seems to be quite full already with, shall we say, Munsters-related appearances And two of the special guests of the show are from that show The Texas show are from the Munsters, I should say So that's where the big promotion is So I don't know if Jack or the rest of the team there would want to sort of be plain second fiddle to Stern and the Munsters. I'm sure they'd rather have their own promotion going on. Right, well, they might still do that and even see the show. That's possible, yeah. I mean, the Munsters have been out for a while now, so it won't exactly be new by that stage. Right. Okay, but talking of upcoming games There's been a change for another manufacturer this month This past month With American Pinball Who have made some artwork changes What do we know about that?
    64:32
    Well, we discussed this earlier There was already some new artwork produced After there were some comments on The image of a monkey grabbing two women on the back glass. And what they have done now is, basically, the main two characters,
    64:54
    I forgot the name of the guy. There's Otto. Otto, that was it. I was thinking Oscar, but that wasn't it. So, Otto and the female, I don't even know what her name is. No, I don't know that either. But they're basically now portrayed each on either the left or the right side of the display on the back glass in quite a large way. So they got rid of the monkey and anything else that might offend people. And that's supposed to be the new artwork for the game. So That's about the news about Oktoberfest that I can Think of I prefer the new artwork Not so much Well the back glass as well I think But also the cabinet side art Is greatly improved Because before it had a huge great head From Otto on the side Which actually covered over the name of the game So you only saw Octob From the name on the side and the rest of it was covered up by his head. But now the entire game name is there, which looks better and more complete.
    66:11
    Right, okay. That's sort of all the news from American Pinball I could find. Did you find anything else? No, I think that's about it. They're obviously busy working their way on getting that game ready for production. I don't think it's in production yet, is it? Or is it? I'm not sure. Personally, I think they might still be busy moving their factory to that new plant and getting started over there. I'm not sure how quickly they planned to do that. Well, they had planned to do it by the end of last year, or by the end of December, I should say, and be making games in the new factory by then. That seemed pretty ambitious to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a couple of weeks later. And with all the cold weather and everything they're having over at the moment, that's probably impacted on things as well. Right. Okay. So moving on to Well let's say Spooky Pinball Yeah Okay so they've been Well basically we said in the last podcast That this month they would be in full production With Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle And I believe that's now the case And along with that The seemingly endless stream of new code updates for TNA, Total Nuclear Annihilation. Well, it's not that there are that many code updates for TNA, but, I mean, the last one has been quite some time ago, but, yeah, there has been a new code update for TNA, and I haven't installed it on my game yet, but I'm looking forward to do so.
    67:50
    Do you know what it adds to it? I read it, I forgot about it. Okay. But, yeah, sure. Scott always does a great job with his code updates, and he puts in some very clever stuff. Apparently, there's a new way to play the game, which has to do with, as you know, TNA is about destroying nine reactors. That means, by default, the factory setting is set to that you have to destroy nine reactors, and then the game ends.
    68:31
    But some clever guys figured that since the number of reactors that you need to destroy can be changed by the operator, you can also set it to for example, once which means that as soon as you destroy one reactor then it's game over but in a tournament setting that actually turns out to be pretty fun in the sense that everybody basically has to destroy one reactor and then it's game over but before you do that you have to score the most points in order to make it so that's a new type of way that the game apparently is playable and you might see it with such a setting of a show as a side game or something like that. It's typically fun. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, as you said, and as a side tournament maybe that would be a nice, a fairly quick one one might think but although it one of those games which encourages you to not complete the objective at least not until the very last minute the point where you think you about to drain Right.
    69:42
    Okay. So that's spooky news. Yeah, and in the meantime, Scott is still working on Scott D'Amesi's Haunted House Adventure, or whatever it's called, although nobody believes that will actually be the name of the game, but still. No, yes. Let's just call it Scott's second game for now, then. Yeah, okay.
    70:05
    Chicago Gaming came also out with a code update for Monster Bash Remake. Yeah, interesting. Do we know what the code update was? Because Monster Bash is Monster Bash, so soon new bug fixes or display enhancements, maybe. Probably that or light show enhancements, that kind of stuff. Obviously, the main code is the main code. Yeah, exactly.
    70:32
    So it'll be for the enhancements they've added to it. Right. But they've been having a few problems with playfields, is that right? Well, I understood there were some posts on Pinsides about the quality control for the playfields for the limited edition games, which apparently they require a higher standard for than for the, well, it's not the pro model, but the standard games. And they had some issues with that. And I'm personally not that really that deep into that kind of stuff.
    71:12
    But basically it indicates that they have a very high level of quality control and these playfields weren't up to par, so they decided not to put them in games, and that caused some delays in the production of the limited edition games. But they're working on it, and I think it's a good sign that their quality of control is at such a high level. Yes, it's obviously in their interest and everybody else's interest to make sure they don't end up with a bunch of playfields which get damaged or easily worn when they go out, or indeed faulty from the start. So, yeah, they want to make sure that's leaving the factory in the best condition it can be.
    71:52
    It's quite surprising, given their history in making playfields. You'd think they'd had that kind of thing nailed, having done it for the past God knows how many years. But then again, when we've been to the factory before, we have seen quite a lot of second playfields from previous games, which were just stacked up there for recycling. So, yeah, clearly it's not a foolproof process, and it's good they're paying extra attention to the limited edition models. Right. Well, interestingly, Chicago gaming owner Doug Dubai even commented on Pinside and explained that even after all these years, the screen printing of the play fields is still the most difficult part in their business. Hmm. Yes. Well, the rest of it's computer controlled and that's a very manual process, isn't it? Right, and I have no idea whether... You mentioned that there's currently the cold weather in Chicago, which is apparently quite extreme.
    72:57
    I'm not sure whether that has anything to do with it, but it could be, because we're talking about wood and that responds to temperatures as well. It's a large factory. If you can't get it, I'm purely speculating here, But if it's difficult to get it to warm the entire factory, that might affect the woodwork. And, well, that might affect your screen printing as well. Yeah, absolutely. They might have supply issues, you know, with getting the right wood or getting their wood delivered to them. If a trucking company is having problems bringing in the timber or the sheet wood, although that comes from actually I don't know where it comes from it's a top secret they won't tell you exactly right okay so since we're on the topic of Chicago Gaming we were planning to do an interview with Ryan White and for whatever reason we decided not to record that at the EAG show where Ryan was present and said we agreed to do an interview by Skype after the show but we haven't gotten to that yet so hopefully next month we'll have that because Ryan did have some interesting well news to report on the production of Monster Bash and obviously that's a game that had been delayed for six months as well and there was some news on that and I find it always interesting to hear, like, okay, why was this delayed, or what was going on, and what was the difficulty, and all that kind of stuff. Well, it certainly gives you an insight into the manufacturing process of these games, which you don't necessarily get. You think everything just goes reasonably smoothly, but in fact there are an infinite number of things which can go wrong, and are liable to go wrong. But it would be interesting to get to speak to Ryan and find out about this latest issue, and, in fact, as you said, the whole process leading up to the release of Monster Bash and what they're working on now. Right.
    75:06
    Moving on, Multimorphic announced a new game. New, but we'd seen it before. I was wondering about that because I think I've played that before even. Yeah, I think it was, it might have been at Texas last year. Yeah, exactly. We're talking about Grand Slam Rally, which is a sort of pitch-and-back type game, which uses the upper playfield from Cannon Lagoon.
    75:35
    But unusually for Multimorphic, or for the first time, I think, this is a game that isn't an in-house design. Right. Yeah, the software, even though the upper playfield is, the software isn't. Right, because it's developed by Pixel 86 Which is a third party Outside this party They developed that But I think that's a good thing To see multiple parties Developing games for The P3 platform Well absolutely, that's what Jerry's been extolling all along The idea that once the platform Is there, then it's up to Other companies to go ahead and make games For it, and if you need to get the user base grown and at a size which makes commercial sense for other companies to do that. But this is, I guess, I would say purely software, because there's probably artwork as well available to go on the upper playfield and maybe even on the cabinet sides. I don't know. I haven't seen that yet. but it makes it sound like it's a reasonably simple process to come up with a new game using existing hardware, and that's something they're very keen to promote. Right, and if I understood correctly, but let me check, because I think I still have the website open,
    77:04
    obviously people not familiar with the P3 platform, with Multimorphic, basically you buy a cabinet with a game in it, in this case, let's say, Lexi Lightspeed Escape from Earth.
    77:20
    There's a certain price for the Lexi Lightspeed module at the top of the playfield. But then there's add-on games, which cost a lot less, in the sense that they might use the same playfield, but you play a completely different game. which is the case in this case with Grand Slam Rally, which is rather economical, I'd say. If you want to expand your pinball machine to the different games, then it's just a matter of like a few hundred dollars and you have a different game in your machine without having the hassle of reeling in a complete new game and having to set that up and all that kind of stuff. So that's very interesting.
    78:10
    I think I played this at Texas last year in whatever demo stage it was back then. And just like with the traditional pitch and bat games, it is like there's a ball coming at you, and you have one chance to flip, basically, to make a hit and to knock it out of the park or wherever you want to knock it. But I think it's a nice and simple, easy way to basically expand on the platform that you already have. So I think it can... I'm not sure whether it will work for locations because I don't see locations changing games over that often. But if you I don't know, if you have kids growing up And they like baseball Then this is certainly a great Extra that they can Install easily on the game And have fun with it And if you're done with that then you just start playing another game You can still play Cannonball Lagoon Or whatever it's called Or you change the module And then you play a different game Yeah, absolutely So that's one of the great advantages Of having that platform is all the games are just software-based if they're using the same playfield module, upper playfield module. So you can just finish playing one game and switch over to another one and just reboot effectively. Right. And you're good to go. Right. And I'm looking forward to seeing Jerry Stellenberg and his multimorphic team at the Texas Pinball Festival. They're from Austin in Texas, so it's, I wouldn't call it a home show for them. Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, it's still a couple of hours drive, but still it's relatively close by. And they're always very nice to hang out with, great people, obviously very talented, very skilled, and the technology inside the P3 game is truly amazing. If you look inside that game, you're like, wow.
    80:24
    It's truly innovative, and I really hope that they will manage to come up with a killer game that will basically convince everybody, like, yes, this is a great platform, and I want to have one now and expand on that onward.
    80:46
    Absolutely. And so that's looking forward to the Texas show, which we'll do some more of a bit later. Right. So that's all. I saw that Multimorphic also seems to have a lot of Cosmic Kart Racing upper playfield modules that are being produced and are available to buy now. So that's Quite an amazing upper playfield module Because it's got LED Lights all along all the paths And they do some amazing light shows Right So certainly play that game If you get a chance to play it Either at the show Or any other show because it's definitely worthwhile And it's a very different Way of playing the game And they do some nice tricks on the ramps With locking balls on there as well Yeah, very innovative and very, well, interesting. So if you have a chance, either come to the Texas Pimple Festival or any other show, and hopefully their games will be present. And I highly recommend you give them a try.
    81:56
    Okay, so that's multi-morphic. Let's move over to your sort of area of expertise then, with what's been happening regarding the legal actions between Dutch Pinball and their contract manufacturer, ARA, which I believe has had some kind of developments in the past month. Yes. Okay. So what happened was in December, Dutch Pinball had a court hearing together with ARA where they both explained the situation from their point of view. and then it was up to the judge to make a ruling and I've been talking to Barry a couple of times in between but most of that was off the record. In the meantime, obviously, Jaap was also being treated for throat cancer for which he's being cleared, thankfully now, after treatment. So that's good news on their end. In the meantime, their lawyer told Dutch Pinball that it would be best not to discuss the court case in public, and I respected that. So basically what happened is after both parties basically did their singing court,
    83:27
    the judge came with a ruling a couple of weeks later. Well, it wasn't a ruling, but basically the judge said, why don't you try to come to an agreement by yourself just outside court?
    83:44
    And so Dutch Pinball reached out to ARA, and from what I understood, ARA turned down everything that they had to offer. So they were not interested in manufacturing the games at all. So anybody thinking that, oh, sure, they can work it out, and ARA will start manufacturing the games, no, that's not going to happen.
    84:07
    There are still some possibilities, but basically, so what Dutch Pinball and ARA reported back, yes, we talked, we couldn't reach an agreement, please make a ruling so that there would be a verdict.
    84:22
    And that was, I think, mid-December that they came back to the judge. And typically there is a six-week period that a judge can take to make a ruling. and with Christmas and the holidays being in between there, it could even end up being six to eight weeks, which it turned out to be, I guess. And surprisingly, the judge basically told them again to try to find a way to solve this matter by themselves.
    85:08
    Which might seem odd. Now, I did talk to Barry earlier this week, and I got the feeling that having the court basically sending them back to see if they can work things out tells me they better work something out. because if the court really has to make a ruling, then they're not going to like it. And it's probably that may have to do with a judge not being fully aware of how much costs are being involved, how much time and labor and effort are on both sides, basically.
    85:53
    And if they don't find a way to reach an agreement with IRA in any type of way, they're probably better or a word if the court would make a ruling they were probably going to say like you both get nothing get out of here and case dismissed and that's probably the worst case that because then you spend all this money on court stuff and you still have nothing um and the court might even say like okay you know what um you guys made expenses uh ara made expenses okay, we're giving the games to ARA and all the inventory goes to Dutch Pinball and good luck, guys. And that's probably not, it's pure speculation at this point, but if the court would say, like, if you can't work it out, okay, this is my ruling, and out of my face.
    86:45
    Right. From your interpretation so far, it seems like Dutch Pinball have come up with a number of possible solutions, all of which have been turned down by ARA. Right. But that's obviously a one-sided discussion because you've only been talking to Barry, you haven't been talking to anybody from ARA. Right. Maybe I shouldn't do that. Well, if I talk, yes. I don't seem very keen on talking. But is there any kind of timeline on when this is going to be sorted out or when there might be some kind of decision if they can't come to an agreement then there's no court schedule, no next hearing or anything like that taking place?
    87:32
    Not that I'm aware of. So in this case, I'm not sure whether it's like, okay, you have to reach an agreement within four weeks or so, or else the court will rule. I don't think that's the case here. On the other hand I do think that both ARA and Dutch Pinball both want To Draw a line Sure they do So What I expect Will happen is that Dutch Pinball Will probably reach out to ARA And see if they basically can do a I'm not sure the right terminology for you, but just okay, sort of like a final offer, take it or leave it. If you leave it and the court will rule, then we're both screwed. If you take it, then at least we both make some money. it's obviously very clear ARA is not going to build any games for Dutch Pinball, that's not going to happen so they need to find a way what are they going to do with the inventory that's currently there and if they can work out something then anything is possible if Dutch Pinball is able to walk up to ARA and say here's a bag of money this is our final offer take this we take everything away and who knows if ARA says yes ok that's fine and then we're done and have a nice life who knows I can't see Dutch people turning up with a bag of money in any circumstances but let's hope fingers crossed that they can work something out and come to some kind of agreement because this has dragged on a long time and there's a huge amount of uncertainty. And it's a mess that needs to be sorted out and resolved one way or the other so people know where they stand. Either they're going to get something, they're going to get nothing,
    89:58
    or there is the serious prospect of more Big Lebowski games being made sometime in the future, which probably needs to happen. Well, it's a great game, so it should happen. it won't happen at ARA, that's one thing that's certain. Now they just need to see if they can find some sort of deal on how they can basically go their separate ways in such a way that both parties are happy to move on and not look back. Okay, well, good luck to those two, and let's hope that game comes back into production very soon and all the people who are waiting for their games get them. Right. One way or another. That's the one news. Yes. One news. Yeah.
    90:54
    We mentioned, I'm not sure whether we mentioned this last month, but Jaap has been undergoing a chemo treatment for his throat cancer and he has been declared cancer-free. So that was successful. He's still recovering. On a sad note, on top of recovering from his chemo, his father died.
    91:17
    Yeah, what a time. Yeah, so my condolences. They're all our condolences. Yeah, to Yavnaud, that's Pinball. And I don't know the circumstances on what happened, if his father was ill, or if he wasn't the youngest. But I have no idea. And still never a good situation to be in. So hopefully a quick recovery from Jaap.
    91:54
    And hopefully that's the end of any cancer scare for him. Right, yeah. And obviously this is a very sad period in his life, I can imagine. So all the best with that. and hoping for a brighter future. Absolutely. Talking of bright,
    92:16
    let's move on to a new pinball manufacturer who is working on a game. That's right. This one based in Florida, I believe. Is that right? Could be. Not completely sure, but I think so. Yes. Yeah, so we're talking about Suncoast Pinball, and they have revealed their game, their first title to be called Cosmic Carnival.
    92:41
    It's a pretty symmetrical layout, not too complicated. Right. It reminded me, if I may make a comparison, and I'm not even sure whether I'm accurate here, but when I looked at the white wood, it sort of got me thinking of truck stops.
    93:00
    Okay. I'll have to cut my way back to that playfield layout, because I haven't seen one of those for a long time. But it did seem very symmetrical and a very simple layout. Right. Well, okay. So even if it's not something like Treksoft, I think it would be safe to say that compare it to a Williams or a Belly 1989 game, and you're probably very safe with that. Yeah, I guess so, in the fact that it's got ramps. Right. Other than that, I think the playfield is very sort of electromechanical in its design, with the exception of those ramps. It seems to have quite a lot of unused space, shall we say.
    93:43
    Well, it doesn't have to be a bad thing. I mean, think about Attack from Mars or even Deadpool. No, well, not Deadpool, but Monsters comes to mind. That's still... I would just agree with that. I would say that looking at Cosmic Carnival, I don't think there were even any orbit shots to take the ball back up to the top of the playfield. The only way you can get into the upper rollover lanes was from the plunge on the shooter lane that runs all the way up the side of the playfield. Right. So there were a couple of ramps, a couple of other shots, a centre shot, a scoop that's guarded by a drop target. There didn't seem to be any big toys on the game. So it's kind of going back to taking the nuclear annihilation route back to a simpler, easier to understand, easier to play game. Right. Although we still don't know. The rules could still be very complex. All we've seen so far is the play field there. We haven't seen much in the way of art. Although speaking of art It was interesting to see that Suncoast have teamed up with Jesse Donnie To do the art on that First game A very impressive Sign up I'd say A surprising sign up I'd say Because obviously Jerry Donnie has been Doing artwork for Stern For three, four games I think, something like that And I'm surprised that Stern either let him go or allowed him to work for another company, because that's usually not something that Stern is likely to do. Absolutely not, no. But there it is. He's signed up for this game at least. I don't know if there's any longer-term deal to produce subsequent games, but Cosmic Carnival was revealed with some artwork on the cabinet and back box, I think, but I'm guessing that's provisional. Out of the window, let Dirty Donny do his thing. Yeah, exactly. But they are keeping the name Cosmic Carnival, so there's all sorts of things you can imagine, and then add Dirty Donny's artwork style, which is quite expressive. It's probably a good way to put it. It's pretty out there.
    96:09
    So, yeah, that could be interesting. What I'm really curious about, obviously Jolly Donny also has done these blacklight posters, or these posters with fluorescent paint. It would be interesting to see a pinball game utilizing those type of paints in the artwork.
    96:34
    Yeah, it's been done before. It's been done before, but it's been a long time since it's been done. It has been, yeah. And it hasn't been that successful when it was done before. It was, I mean, once a spring to mind, obviously, Viper Night Driving, which had black lights down the side of the playfield. And also, I think, didn't Predator, I think, try to use UV inks in the playfield, but it didn't really work out. Well, many things didn't really work out. Yeah, Big Bang Bar had a UV light fluorescent tube in there as well for when you're playing the wizard mode.
    97:12
    But what I'm talking about here is more like cabinet artwork, like if the game would be in an environment where there would be outside UV blacklight coming in, the game would really pop up, not as part of so much as a mode in the game that it would light up in UV blacklight colors. but just more that the artwork would pop if, you know, using those type of paints. Well, also, I think these days it would be a lot easier to actually do that if you did use UV paint and UV light within the game, because you could use UV LEDs, which weren't things which were available before. You had to have an entire tube to illuminate the playfield. Now you can do a lot more with LED lighting. Right. Then again, this is all speculation and wishful thinking. because we have no idea what Dirty Donny has in mind for that game and if there is any budget for such type of artwork package, so to speak. Yeah, we don't know, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a sort of standout game from the artwork perspective, even if the play field is not that exciting at this stage. But there's a long way to go before it reaches production. but they are expecting to reveal it or show it to their current state at Texas Pinball Festival. Actually, I think they did show the game at the Houston Arcade Expo which was simultaneously with Pinball Expo last year. So I think they already showed the game then it was probably the white of which we've seen pictures. Right. Oh, okay. Yeah, well, hopefully they'll have more to show than that at Texas and planning to start producing it towards summer, I suppose, or end of May. End of May, yeah. So I'm kind of curious what kind of production they're aiming at. But hopefully we get to talk to these guys at the Texas Bimble show in March, and we hope to bring you more news on that. Yeah, we'll try and get an interview with them and see what their plans are for that game and for future titles. Right, but it will be exciting to see them bringing a new game to the Texas show, because for all that we know, there might not be that many game reveals as people might be hoping for. Well, not as many as were originally planned, but Suncoast are one company who are working on their first title. They're not the only one, of course. There are quite a few other companies out there now working on bringing new games to the market. Let's make that, thank you for that, Rich. Let's move on to Great Lakes Pinball.
    100:11
    They are working on a game called Expose, I think it's pronounced. I don't think I've seen any details of a play field yet, but they did reveal a character for their upcoming game called Leroy, and that sort of looked like a space type of character, something you would find in space. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's an alien or a human sort of astronaut, cosmonaut type character, but it seemed sort of quite cartoony and short and squat. so maybe give you an indication about the theme of that game but I should also mention as far as I'm aware feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this I've had a few people ask me Great Lakes Pinball anything to do with Great Lakes Modular the Tony Clark company who make replacement boards or circuit boards and designs and as far as I know they're nothing to do with them Is that your understanding as well? I haven't actually investigated that, to be completely honest. But there are more than one lake or multiple lakes in America. So I'm not sure whether there are more than one area that might be referred to as the Great Lake area. But even if so, if there is only one Great Lakes area, it might be covering a big area. And there are multiple companies in there with an interest in pinball.
    101:53
    Yeah, it's just interesting that there's another Great Lakes company, Great Lakes-named company, producing pinball. But as far as I'm aware, there's no association of Great Lakes Modular, and I don't think Tony is involved in that side of the business. Or maybe he's doing the board set and leaving the design work to others. That could be. But then again, well, who knows? If we can find out more, perhaps at the Texas Pinball Festival, who knows? Let's see if we can find out. I kind of gather from my previous discussions with Tony, it shows that he was kind of, for a second, a little jaded from the pinball scene and was looking for new avenues. He was certainly very much into modular synthesizers.
    102:33
    Can't blame him. Well, quite, yeah. It's another booming market and something in which he was quite well known. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's where he was concentrating his efforts. These days. Okay, so Great Lakes Pinball with the Expose game.
    102:51
    So no timescale on that as to when they're going to reveal anything, as far as I know. No. Okay. And the same could be said for Deep Root, of course, who were due to be revealing their games, or their first batch of games at the Texas show. Right. And postponed that for a while.
    103:11
    But we also have some other news from Robert, who is a bit of Deep Root. Right. And let me put that in the right context. I emailed Robert Mueller, that is the initiator of Deep Root Pinball, I think I may call him.
    103:35
    And basically I expressed to him that with the Texas Pinball Festival coming up in March, you and I both are flying in a few days ahead. and we were wondering whether we could visit the Deepwood pinball facility in San Antonio. Yes. And Robert replied and he said that we could not because there might be too much stuff in plain sight that he doesn't want to get out there, leaked or whatever. He not allowing other parties like this We can pinball either So it not that these prejudices in the sense of those guys can come but you guys can
    104:24
    But he has some very happy news to share as well, because apparently he's getting married the week of the Texas Pinball Festival. Yes, that was interesting.
    104:38
    As that was the week when it was meant to be the five days of Deep Root. wasn't it? And that was only called off in what, November, December? Yeah, December-ish, let's call it December-ish So now that makes me wonder did he call off the five days of Deep Root because he's getting married?
    105:00
    I mean It's not the sort of thing you would choose a date for at the last minute, you know, oh we're now not doing this Let's go and get married. You know, it's a strange, strange timing. Yeah. Could also be that it's future wise said, I'm far more important than this pinball stuff. I want to get married that week. And if you don't like me or love me, then that's it. But no, that's not stretched that too far. Right. No, no, you know, So Robert did mention that he was getting married the week that we were available to come over. So as odd as it might seem, congratulations to Robert Mueller of Deepwood for his upcoming wedding. Absolutely, yeah. Congratulations to him and his future bride. Yeah. So do we know his bride? I'm not even sure. Is that still politically correct? Oh, yeah, that's a good point, yes. I mean... That was a huge assumption on my part, and not necessarily one that's got any valid reasoning. So that's... Let's just say congratulations to Robert Mueller and his future partner. Yes, absolutely, yeah. Just to be politically correct, because we don't want to step on anybody's toes. Quite right, yeah. Good. Right. I'll go along with that. Okay. So that's the deep root news from last month of January.
    106:49
    Now, what else have we got going on? You did quite an investigation on John Trudeau. Well, I wouldn't say investigation, but I've certainly been following the progress of the court cases in which he has been involved ever since he was arrested.
    107:09
    I kind of... It's not something I enjoy covering, but it's something I think needs to be covered somewhere. Okay, so you can read all the details on pinballnews.com. Let's move on. Yeah, there does seem to be a sort of reluctance to even mention anything about it, and I think people need closure, and we need to know. Otherwise, everybody's just going, well, what happened to John Tudor? He was designing all these great games, and then all of a sudden he's vanished. Well, he might still be designing games on the wall of his prison cell.
    107:48
    Well, let me know. Exactly. Well, he's probably got about another 14 months or so in which he'll come up with some killer designs, because he probably won't be out of prison. until... Right, so as much as you don't like covering it, I do have a question about it because there were two separate cases and he pleaded guilty in both.
    108:14
    For the first case, I understood he got three years minus the time already served. And in the other case, several charges were dropped but he pleaded guilty on another one and there was a ruling in that as well, but the sentence didn't go up any further? It was still just the three years that he already got? So, yeah, he was... John Trudeau was facing two charges in the first court case. It looks like it was a plea bargain there where he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in return for pleading guilty on the stipulation of facts, which means that he doesn't admit to guilt but accepts the truth of the prosecution's case. Now, normally that's only something which comes into play where there's any chance of a civil case, you know, any damages being claimed against him, which is not going to happen in this case, I don't think, given what the case is about. But anyway, it kind of gives him some kind of out, I suppose, in the future. and then the second case which took place the very next day, or the hearing took place the very next day, which the details only came out the following week, which he was facing five charges which are varying degrees of severity from Class 2, which is, I don't call any of them minor because I don't think any such a thing exists in that instance, but there were charges from a class 2 to a class 1 to a class X, which is the most serious, which potentially for the most serious cases could carry up to 30 years in prison. Right. But he apparently, it would seem, negotiated a plea bargain there and pleaded guilty to one of the more minor charges, the class 2 ones, which he also got three years imprisonment,
    110:23
    and the case, the charges, the other three, four charges, were not prosecuted. They were dropped, effectively.
    110:33
    He wasn't found not guilty on them, but the prosecution didn't continue on them. Does that mean there is not enough evidence?
    110:43
    No, there's no evidence of exactly why, or what evidence was available. It was just, it's not, there's a Latin term which basically means it's not going to be prosecuted, the case is not going to be prosecuted any further. Right. So that's the end of those cases.
    111:01
    Not being very familiar with the American court system, I'd say that it could also indicate that the charges were false.
    111:10
    Or that he was falsely accused. I don't think you can draw that conclusion. Okay. For the fact that... Pardon my ignorance on that.
    111:20
    Yeah, there is no inference to be drawn for the fact that they are not prosecuting that case. It could be for a number of reasons.
    111:29
    Most likely, I would say, is that it was just part of a deal to get the whole thing wrapped up and dealt with quickly, relatively quickly, and moving on. So it ended up with John Trudeau being sentenced for three years in prison, Minus time served of around about 250 days, which we'll see. If the normal state of affairs in the U.S. legal system prevails, which is that for good behavior you get 50% discount on your jail time, I reckon he'll be out in around about What I reckon May I think of next year Okay Yeah so that's Kind of the end of that So Hopefully yeah A few people have asked why are we even talking about John Trudeau he's not in the pinball business Anymore Well I think people would like to know Why he's not in the pinball business anymore And exactly what happened in that situation. As unfaithful as it may be. Okay, so, okay. Then, moving on.
    112:48
    There was some news that Zach Manning of the Straight Down the Middle podcast, I guess we can call him a fellow podcast, host, exactly, yes, he bought Flip and Out Pinball. And if I'm not mistaken, Flip and Out Pinball is that company that is making or selling that automatic stairs thing, where you can easily move pinball machines up and down the stairs with this.
    113:28
    Flip and Out Pinball, a staple of many pinball shows in the U.S., big resellers of the Escalera lifter that's what I mean yep one of those and always have two or three of those devices on demonstration at their shows and very effective products and impressive they are as well to watch them lift a pinball machine up upstairs I've got a few friends in the US who have them and it's a bit frightening the first time you strap a pinball to it and just press the button and watch it climb the stairs with your multi-thousand dollar piece of precious equipment being lifted upstairs. But it does a very good job of it. But I think that company was previously run by Larry Kitchen, who spent many years touring the wall shows, and I think more recently became a Stern reseller, I think. Yeah, I know, that's what I think too. So basically, Zach is now a stern distributor or reseller or whatever you want to call it. As well as Escalera, I guess that deal continues as well. Right. So good luck to Zach and the Flippin' Out Pinball business. Let's hope he can take it from strength to strength. Right. So actually, I found Larry Kitchen's business card. He was also a distributor for Jersey Jack Pinballs. Ah, okay. So it could be that Zach has become a distributor for both Stern and Jersey Jack now. And as well as the Escalera and other fun stuff it says on the business card. And obviously we wish Zach all the best of success with his new company. I'm sure he continues to be doing his podcast hosting as well. Of course, yes. Very, very entertaining guy, and good luck to him and the business. Right. So we're almost at the end. We're almost at the end. A few other items, I think. Well, the Texas Pinball Festival have been announcing quite a few special guests over the past couple of weeks. I'll give you a quick rundown.
    116:03
    From American Pinball, Josh Kugler and Joel Bolzer have been announced. Eric Marnier and Jack Guarnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball are coming to the show.
    116:19
    Jerry Stellenberg and his team from Multimorphic are again coming to the show. Stern is represented by John Borg, who designed the Monsters game, as well as Jerry Thompson, who did the sounds for that game, Dwight Sullivan, the programmer of that game, and Christopher Frenchy. The artist for that game. Yes, exactly, and other games as well. And I understood that there is a VIP monthservice package available for only a few spots left, I believe. Yeah, I'm not sure there are any of those left now. It's a rather than there aren't many left. Right. I think, actually, the last number I heard was under 10. So it could have been sold out by now. But anyway, it's fun to mention anyway. So there's a VIP treatment before the show starts where there's a meet and greet with the Stern design team as well as Butch, Patrick and Pat Priest, who featured on the original TV series. Yeah. And the package also includes a one-of-a-kind print from Christopher Frenchy of Monster's artwork, which will be signed by the entire design team and the actors from the TV show as well. Very nice. So, yeah. So, possibly only a few still available. So, if you're interested in that, then visit TexasPinball.com, and you can find all the details over there. Other VIPs that I recall that have been announced, Barry Osler and Dennis Dortman, both of Deep Root Pinball, and Steve and Mark Ritchie. and being also... It's going to be a good show.
    118:31
    It's definitely going to be a good show. And it's going to be interesting. Usually we don't speculate, but Steve Ritchie is sort of like expected. Well, obviously he's working on a game, and he might be next in line from Stern. With months of being revealed Early January Who knows Maybe At the Texas show You never know Then again Stern is also notorious For releasing a game two days after a big show Yes Yeah In some circumstances Yeah It certainly looks like The Texas Pinball Festival I should say, is going to be heavily promoted or heavily pushing the monsters as a theme with all the guest stars and the design team there. So it would be strange if they then went ahead and announced a completely different game at that show. Sure. On the other hand, it's a good way to launch a game.
    119:45
    But then again, it's up to certain marketing, and I would not be surprised if they would announce if the game would be, if it would be like an April type of game, because every,
    119:59
    Stern is expected to release more games this year than they have done in previous years. At least that's the rumor.
    120:09
    Obviously, they have more design teams working now, so it makes sense that the number of games being released might go up. so then technically March, April would seem like a logical period to launch the next game keeping in mind that there are more games to follow later in the year and you want to spread those out evenly I guess all speculation but still I would not be surprised if there would not be a game at the TPS show and who knows maybe they wait with that game until the Mid-West Gaming Classic, which is three weeks later.
    120:52
    And... Yeah, they're going to start out with Jersey Jacks when they're going to announce their game. Right. So there's that very narrow window for the first half of the year at big shows or big events. I should also mention there's one other special guest for the Texas Pinball Festival we didn't mention so far. Yes. It's John Rhys-Davies. Right. the well-known actor and a very well-known voice in games such as Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings, for instance. Right. So he will be there as well, signing autographs, and you no doubt you will hear him across the other side of the hall. He's not the quietest of speakers, so once he gets going, He will no doubt bring Plenty of entertainment To Frisco in March Okay Well I look forward to that I always enjoyed How his Voice work on Indiana Jones is Absolutely great I would say I think so, he really makes that game I think It's not a good game to start with But yeah There's some voice call-outs in various games which are, shall we say, I wouldn't say lackluster, but maybe not the most exciting, whereas the exact opposite is true. Anything that John Rhys-Davies gets involved in, he really does give it his all. Right, and it could be interesting having John Rhys-Davies doing voice work for Indiana Jones, sort of being reunited with Mark Ritchie, the designer of that game. And in Pinball Magazine No. 4, which features the career of Mark Ritchie, he spoke very kind words about working with John Rhys-Davies. So I'm sure these two will probably get along and get a drink in a bar, or maybe two, or I don't know.
    122:58
    But I can see that they would, from what I understood from Mark, when I interviewed him. John Rhys-Davies was a pleasure to work with, and I'm pretty sure that Mark will be delighted to see him again. Yeah, I think you're right. He definitely fully got into the role of call-outs, or announcing call-outs for the game. Right. And then the two most important special guests at the Texas Pimple Festival show we haven't announced yet, although they have been announced, but we didn't mention them. Yeah, well, modesty forbids and all that, but yes, so basically you and I will be there. Ta-da!
    123:40
    Yes, doing our tried and tested and popular So You Think You Know Pinball quiz, and kicking off the whole seminar session, I think. We're doing the first slot, I think, aren't we? Yes, that's basically our traditional slot, I would say. opening sort of the show and I think this will be the third time that we'll it will be the fourth time that we're doing this at the Texas Film Festival but it will be the third time that we're doing this during happy hour in the bar so plenty of people already there and we're just asking questions and handing out prizes to those who get the most answers right so yeah I mean how hard can it be just turn up have a free drink, join in the quiz, answer a few questions. We give you some cool stuff. Yeah, with usually heavily sponsored by many of the pinball companies present at the show, such as CERN Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, Spooky Pinball is always very kind to us, American Pinball, and possibly lots of us. We still have to ask if they want to participate, but so far they have always been very collaborative in that effort.
    124:56
    Absolutely. The entire thing couldn't happen without the support of the sponsors from the show and other pinball companies as well who give us stuff to give away. Yeah, it's always nice to give away stuff that people give you to give away. It is. Maybe one day we'll get something. I don't know.
    125:19
    Sometimes I regret giving stuff away because I really would like to give them. Every time I regret giving stuff away. It's like all these cool trans lights and posters and T-shirts and everything, and like that. Yeah. So, oh, well, maybe we should make a better deal this year.
    125:38
    So, oh, well, we'll see. But that means, obviously, we look forward to seeing you at the Texas Pimple Festival in March. If you haven't booked your tickets to go there, you better hurry. Well, I'm not sure whether they will ever sell out, but trust me, if you want to be there, it's the biggest show of the year. Yeah, and you need to stay either in the hotel or very close to the hotel. Well, close to the hotel is not a problem because there's plenty of hotels in walking distance. I don't know how they're filling up at the moment with all the advance publicity and all the special guests that keep being announced. may be the choice or selection. And indeed the prices may become a little challenging once all these hotels realize there's such a big event taking place. But I don't think there's any chance much these days of getting into the hotel itself, the Embassy Suites, because I think that sells out. Well, that sold out basically a year ago. Sometimes people cancel, and who knows? Maybe there was a convention nearby and they decided to cancel that. I don't know.
    126:48
    But give it a try. I'll pick one of the other hotels nearby. Absolutely. As you said, there are plenty of other hotels in the area and lots of good restaurants and other eateries and shops and stores and bars and everything. Yeah. Anyway, so it'll be a good time for Chris to go towards the end of March, and we will both be there and we will both be reporting as well as presenting our seminar. Right. And we might even be doing some interviews at the show.
    127:19
    Absolutely. For our future podcast. Yeah. Probably the end of March. We will come back with some interesting recordings and some exclusive news as well. So will you be recording any of the seminars at the show?
    127:34
    I normally don't for that show because normally they do record them. But I will get in touch with Ed and find out what the situation is because it's been a little, how shall I say, unpredictable from year to year because there have been people who have recorded them and said they'll be online straight away, and then a couple of weeks later they aren't online. I was kind of wishing I had recorded them. So I'll see what the deal is this year. Every year their coverage does get better, But maybe this year I want to find out what the situation is this year And if they're not going to record it or put it online Then I will But I'm hoping that that doesn't That's not a requirement But I'll still be there in the audience for everyone anyway So maybe I'll just record them anyway And see what happens Right There is some other news regarding The organizational team of the Texas Pinball Festival because Ann and Kim, who are the main organizers of the show, also opened the Texas Pinball Museum in Midlothian, Texas, which is about an hour's drive from Frisco, I would say.
    128:54
    And I'm not sure whether the museum will be open during the show, but if you're heading to Texas, and in case it is, it's easy to find out because the museum is on Facebook, so you can easily find out whether they are open or not that weekend. If you're not heading to the festival itself, or maybe not on Saturday, then that might be interesting to pay a visit.
    129:19
    Yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure exactly how many machines they've got there. I think like 20-ish. So it's not... If you have to choose, I'd probably go to the Texas Pinball Festival, with like close to 400 games. But if you're like, oh, I can't make it, but still like the place of pinball, or maybe not that weekend, but do check out. I think they're currently only open on Saturdays. But I think it's a good cause. It's always fun to see locations like that open up. And if you're in Texas, go on, visit them, and drop a few quarters or whatever the arrangement is. I have no idea. I think it's a single. It's $10, I think, to play all day. Oh, thank you. I'm very good at it. Is there a fine for not playing all day?
    130:11
    Ten dollars for the ability to play all day, shall I say. Ah, okay. I'm not sure it's compulsory, but, you know. You didn't play all day. Nice selection of machines there. So, yeah, get on down there before the show and after the show, maybe. Right. On the other hand, I'm not sure. I haven't checked this with Ed, and maybe I should, And we can get back on this in our next podcast. It could also be that all the games from the museum are being moved to the Texas show and then moved back once the show is over. So that might be the case. I'm not sure. It could be. But anyway, there is a Texas Pinball Museum. And if you're in the neighborhood, do check it out. And I'm sure we will be reporting on that during our reportage of the Texas Pinball Festival. So we'll be visiting the museum. Well, we're not visiting Deep Root now, so we've got a day to spare, I guess.
    131:11
    Yeah, absolutely. So anybody else wants to invite us to come and visit, just let us know, and we'll certainly try and fit it into our very busy schedule. Speaking of which, any suggestions?
    131:24
    Okay, we're in the Dallas area, and we're looking for interesting pinball locations or anything pinball that's interesting and worth visiting. So if you have any suggestions, please do drop us an email. Either me or Martin. Our email addresses are on our respected websites, which are pinballnews.com or pinball-magazine.com. Yes, last year I think we went to Sidecade and discovered that place. So we went to a few other arcades around the area. And we went to Fun, which was the... Yeah, it was Fun. Absolutely, yeah. And we were there when they were clearing out their warehouse because they had this huge sale at the... What do you call it? The flea market on Saturday morning. Yeah, the swap meet. Yeah, exactly. That was the word I was looking for. Yeah, on Saturday morning, swap meet. Yeah, the vans turned up And they were just full of Assorted pinball games And cabinets and playfields They were Seriously, it was Almost painful to watch Because I would have liked to take a few Project games, but it's Since I'm in Europe And the games were over there That would not make any sense Yeah, what can you do? But hopefully some buyers there got some good deals and Fun managed to make some space in their storage area in their warehouse, which was absolutely rammed full of machines when we went to visit. Yeah, so either they filled it up again or they have a bit more space. That's always a chance. Yeah, so we're looking forward to visiting other cool pinball-related places this year as well. So if you know anything, do let us know. Yep. Okay. Cool. Okay. So I think that kind of wraps up the events from January. Do you think there's anything else? No. I think this is it. One last note. We haven't mentioned ColorDMD that much in our podcast lately, but I do want to mention them because they obviously still do great work. And they just announced a new game For which Color D&D Graphics are available And that's Stern Elvis Yes, absolutely The usual little teaser Guess the name of the game on Facebook And somebody or other I can't imagine who it was Actually guessed it correctly Fairly early on from the clues given And yeah, I was surprised To see that Elvis wasn't actually One that they'd done before but it wasn't, and it's now available. But should we now be in black and white?
    134:26
    I don't think so. I mean, okay, I'm kidding. You can always have it in black and white with a colour DMD anyway, can't you? Yeah, you can. That's true as well. It's a monochrome option. But yeah, it's nice to see that game getting a bit of love and attention because I think it's quite a fun game and quite underrated. Yeah, and speaking of ColorDMD, I'd like to make a plug for their color-led displays, I think they're called.
    135:00
    They do have the LCD screens, of which the intensity of the artwork is not the same as you have on a dot matrix display. But now with these color LED displays, or whatever they are called, man, those images look good. Well, certainly very bright, that's for sure. And I think LED is definitely the way they will be going for future products, because I think the supply of the LCD panels that they were using is kind of coming to an end. They were kind of laptop panels, I think. so moving to custom made LED displays it's very good very intense colours as you said very vivid very bright yeah maybe too bright in some cases maybe too some people say that they find them a little wearing on the eyes because unlike the LCD panels the actual these are emissive displays so they actually produce light rather than block light which is what the LCD does but the actual point where the light is generated can be quite small in comparison to an LCD dot.
    136:13
    So it's, but in the right circumstances and, you know, it's in a very dark room, you probably want to turn it down a bit, but it's in daylight, you know, nothing beats having an LED display because those images really do pop on the display. Right, yeah, absolutely. And it was last year, I think, at the Texas Pimple Festival, if I'm not mistaken, that they introduced the larger LED display for games like Baywatch and Maverick and that kind of stuff. I was very impressed with the images, how cool the images of Baywatch looked on that big LED display. Well, yes, it was the year before they actually introduced LEDs in the first place with Circus Voltaire. which is always a problematic display because it's on the playfield, and having one of the larger LCD panels, it wouldn't fit on the playfield for Circus Voltaire, so producing a custom-sized LED was ideal. Right. So that looked wonderful, and of course, Circus Voltaire is just full of colour, that game. But moving on to your point, yes, it's great to see that now you can get replacement displays for those 192x64 high-resolution large displays for those Sega games like Frankenstein and Baywatch and Maverick and so on. Which were much needed, I have to say as well, because I sadly recall selling a Baywatch game for way too cheap because the display was still kind of okay on that game, but the rest of the game was very creatively handled by an Italian technician, which is never a good thing.
    138:07
    But seeing that color display really made me regret selling that game. Yeah, so there you go. A new lease of life for games which might have otherwise not been viable to restore, or economically viable to restore. Right. So good news there. Right. Well, I guess that we're at the end of this podcast. Thank you all for listening, tuning in, and we'll be back by the end of next month, early March. It's going to be the end of February, March. We'll be back on the 28 days of February in the wonderful world of pinball. Right. So thank you for listening, and bye for now. Yes, goodbye. See you next time.