who's ready for some new podcast goodness from your homie don it's time for the end of the week don's pinball podcast episode for you this is number 51 we're on the back half of 50 ladies and gentlemen and boy do i have a show coming up for you we're gonna talk about cgc production we're gonna talk about stern production we're gonna talk about haggis production is that a contradiction in terms maybe in australia who knows we got all that and more there's an exciting live stream coming up soon in just minutes away. Pausing for the drop as we do. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Friday Don's Pinball Podcast back in your ears. Episode number 51. Hopefully this week is going great for you. Hopefully y'all dug episode 50. That was fantastic. Put together that cool little intro. Really happy for all the shout outs that I got. And I'm sorry, Albert, I didn't dig through hours and hours of footage to get to you and i should have so mr albert algar from the uh the the coffee northwest northeast uh i'm gonna give him plenty of mentions because i don't want him feeling neglected because he is crucial to me albert agar sorry i messed up your name buddy anyway let's get into chicago gaming company i'm not gonna start western this time no no no the other company from chicago well the other other other company from chicago regardless cgc these guys make pinball machines eventually and i say that only because man imagine if you were early in on uh cactus canyon and you're still waiting and you haven't got your game yet and you've seen foo fighters come out and godfather's over there doing its thing and gtf is driving around and then whatever whatever they make games they make a rehash game so far from what we've been seeing but these are the guys uh factory and guys and gals that are going to be producing play mechanics pulp fiction that we are waiting for i'm waiting for now i'm in line for one now i'm in on an se just because i played it at interium finally got my hands on it and dang it i'm gonna play it man i love that sound the game makes when you get in that saucer that little i don't know i don't know what it is i don't know what it is but i want to do that like a lot so mr jason knapp our patron saint of news drops man he's been in overdrive lately so happy we are to have him uh he went out and gave us a production schedule for cgc so when is pulp fiction going into production well here is the well the rumor or the report from nap arcade is that october is the start date now i kind of we had been hearing q3 q4 and that is right at the beginning of q4 there october october november december yeah yeah yeah uh so we're gonna get q4 production and they're gonna start with uh dealers as the or dealers with location providers operators which they should you know get the game out there on location uh they'll be running the standard editions with the special coin door with the dollar bill acceptor not the cool chrome one that comes with the se and the le that i'm expecting but apparently they're going to be starting in october is what the schedule is reported to be and the operators will be able to get their operation machines around then following that there'll be some production with the ses and he seemed to characterize it that they'd sort of be taking their time with this first batch just to get everything you know worked out as far as a production that's fine so I may be getting it sometime in October November but then following that the LEs will go into production and they'll probably burn through all thousand of those before they head back into the SEs and you know the LEs did sell out so it'll be a thousand of them produced with that topper I wonder if that'll affect production any well anyway once they get the LEs done then the SEs will then go into production and that's probably when i'll get mine and i'm kind of optimistically thinking january is when i'll get this game a little after christmas present right something to play while i'm waiting through the after christmas sales so that's the pulp fiction update from cgc but it still begs the question like if they're running this game does that mean that all the cactus canyons will between now and then will be complete i don't know this is like this is the wonka company i don't hear any information out officially from them i don't see factory tours I don't have production updates like we get with Stern. We don't even get production videos like Jersey Jack puts out. They're kind of like a little bit more secretive than American Pinball is as far as like where the information is. So CGC, if you're out there and you want to reach out and get some exposure, just contact me, donspinballpodcasts at gmail.com. Let me know. I'm dying for some production updates or to see kind of lift the veil into the process at Chicago Gaming Company. Heck, I'm local. I'll even come down there to Chicago if that makes it easier. I just want to understand the process. And, you know, is this all one production facility? And you're going to shift between Cactus Canyons and the Pulp Fictions? Are there two assembly lines? Do we even know? Somebody give me some information because I'm dying to know and understand the process here. But, you know, that's what I'm thinking. Now, also rumored to be coming out, this Twilight Zone remake. This has been floating around forever. We still don't know who's making it. but there was an interesting take that I heard from somebody that owns a Twilight Zone. Because this game is so strongly rumored to be remade, and because, you know, it is somewhat desirable currently, if you've got a Twilight Zone, is it worthwhile to go ahead and list your Twilight Zone for sale now? Where it would command, you know, more of a higher price. I didn check Pinside before I jumped on to see where the market price is on Twilight Zone right now But the idea would be get your premium price by selling your game now And then if you really want it rebuy a brand new one cheaper later and then maybe make some money on kind of a short sale kind of kind of deal almost like a stock brokerage kind of thing right where you uh you know buy a stock do you think it's going to go down in price you sell it right away you sit on that money and then when it drops you buy it back and then return it um a short sale that's a short sale right um you know uh the similar thing could be said though and this also occurred to me with stranger things Like if you're sitting on a stranger things right now, that thing's gold, right? You're guaranteed to get more money than you paid for that thing. Uh, there are premiums. There's not a lot that currently there's, I think two premiums on pin side, one popped up and sold, uh, and it was marked pending like, like today, uh, for $15,000 for a lightly modded stranger things home use. There's another stranger things that was posted, however, and it has those cool mods in the back. I don't know if it was medicinal or, or mezzel mods that made that, uh, that, that the catwalk covered with the, uh, the blood and like that portal in the back the one that zach many on flipping out really kind of went through on straight down the middle anyway it's got that the uv light kit the shooter rod the topper everything you would want listed for seventeen thousand five hundred dollars or best offer so if i was sitting on a machine like that i would be tempted to with the rumors of the the potential of start rerunning stranger things right so you know would you go ahead and sell that game now at this i just i the market is as high as it's ever been for stranger things so i've been following this because i still want one um so would you sell it now and then when stern does rerun this hopefully the next year if it does happen go ahead and buy yourself another one or you know just let it go now because for sure if stern starts churning out premiums off the line at ten thousand dollars similar to elvira house of horrors premium you know ten five even uh that market's going to drop for your home use only stranger things from the original runs that you're holding on to. So I guess that's the market speculation. Like what would you do? You know, how much do you really want to have this game versus having $16,000 at least in your pocket, right? There's one LE listed for sale right now for 19,005. So I mean, just absolutely top of the pay scale. Now, two years ago, that would seem absolutely astronomical, right? $19,000 for an LE, $17,500 for a heavily loaded topper shooter rod UV'd out Stranger Things. But if we're being honest, with a Godfather CE for $15,000, you're not that far off paying $17,500 for a premium Stranger Things that has a projector, that has theme integration, that has clips from the movie, that has a custom shooter rod that's better than a horse head, that has a topper that, okay, doesn't have the double knockers in it. But John Youssi what I mean? In today's market through today's lens looking at a $15,000 Toy Story 4 versus $17,000 for heavily modded loaded Stranger Things I mean I'm not that far off of it I think if I had a game to trade in plus eight grand cash I'd be tempted to even go on that and now that's how crazy the market is right now but then what do you do what do you do if Stern does rerun this you know there's like kind of 70% speculation that it could be happening and you know it's more than just me saying this so I don't know you know Nothing's for sure in this hobby, but I would like to speculate as that is kind of my thing that I do here. So what if Stern approached Stranger Things the way they approached Elvira or with Batman SLE and came out with an SLE version of Stranger Things? Given that these games on the used market, except as far as premium and LE tier, are going for like greater than $15,000 or greater. so an SLE release of Stranger Things premium right with like some super LE armor and maybe they come out and it's like the the season three and four you know maybe when they renew the contract they renew it for those seasons and this is like the season three or four SLE of Stranger Things are you getting excited I mean how cool would that be how much would that cost twenty twenty five thousand dollars we already know the answer to that would people go in on it how many would they make more than 90 or 80 that that batman sle had would they do a thousand run of sle's of stranger things if they could get twenty thousand dollars for it let's hmm i don't know what would they have to include they'd have to they'd have to fully mod the thing out um or you know would they then do like the premium run like they've been doing with elvira house of horrors where that premium uh runs for 10.5 it would have to come with a projector man i want a stranger things the projector. These are the kind of thoughts that have been going through my head. All right, let's talk about Stern since we're on Stern. So Stern, it's factory Friday. They had their video and what is on the line? Godzilla premium is on the line. Is that, that's it. They weren't running two games like they have in the last few weeks. And you know, I've got the topper now, uh, for Godzilla. I've had it for a few days. I've been playing the heck of that King of Monsters mode and I am enthralled with it. So I've had Godzilla now it's, it's gotta be a year. Um, you know, and I've been, I've played the heck out of it, man. It's got to have 800 plays on it. And so, you know, it's a game that I've kind of moved away from and I didn't play it as much, but now with the topper, that King of Monsters mode, I'm right back in it. And I'm as good as I've ever been with Godzilla, man. Um, I got down through that King of Monsters mode and got to the final shot before time ran out. Once I got, I got an 800 million points score. It's exhilarating. It's fun to jump in and it's like boss rush mode. Right. And then to complete that and then move on to the next thing. I love it. It's great. Even with 10 balls in the game, I'd never get to that wizard mode otherwise So having that top integration man I digging it Is it worth a thousand dollars on my live stream I just had I said no But at the same time if somebody offered me for my topper right now I wouldn't sell it to them. So I guess, I don't know. It is what it is, but having that mode, that's fun for me, and it's got me right back into Godzilla mode. And like everybody else, I've been enthralled with Foo Fighters as well, because it's a fantastic game. and you know I was like man is this actually better than Godzilla right which is just the best kind of compliment you give that game to even like consider in the same space with Godzilla's earth shattering as it is but man Godzilla's the goat now that I'm back on there now that I got that topper I'm watching the plume explode I'm playing king of monsters mode it's it's it's the goat for me man I gotta give the nod to Godzilla but no knock against Foo Fighters that Foo Fighter code is early though I mean you know Godzilla's game complete it's got its topper it's got its accessories. I mean, it's here. We might see a few more things, some bug fixes come out, but I'm not anticipating a huge leap in code like we have with Foo Fighters that we're expecting. Foo Fighters isn't at the 1.0 level yet, so there's a lot of room for Foo Fighters to grow. There's a lot more call-outs for the cities that I'm expecting to get. So, you know, right now, I'd say for sure, Godzilla Goat, Foo Fighters, fantastic. But Foo Fighters has a lot of room to grow and improve. Godzilla kind of is where it is. So what an exciting time to be in pinball, right? Speaking of which, there's been some other openings in the Stern production schedule. I think I hit this before on some live streams, but not on official episodes. So let's talk about that right now. There's been this hole in the schedule all year, right? We knew there was that hole for what became Foo Fighters production back in March, and we knew there was another hole in the production schedule for September, kind of September going into October, and that was going to be for the next Cornerstone that we were expecting, right? Stern has been producing at least two a year, and so that would be the second one. Venom has been the long-standing rumor since like last year Foo Fighters I thought that was going to be Venom I thought it was going to be Venom when it was Bond so you know this is that Venom spot we'll call it who knows what games actually even come out there um but that's the Venom spot but another production hole opened in December recently um you know from the the distributors that have been willing to share the Stern production schedules and so um they were scheduled to run uh like Star Wars Premium and I think Deadpool's or something in December which would make sense leading up into Christmas, right? Because, you know, the perennial titles would be great for Christmas presents. So for them to open up that space, got to be for something. Now, so the idea was, you know, okay, Venom will be coming next and then there'll be a Tron Vault or whatever it is in December. But what if, and this is all kind of spurring from that crazy Reddit post that showed up the other day that the next game wasn't Venom, but this guy wasn't going to say what it is, whatever. So maybe Venom will be in December, and there'll be some other game coming up in that window. Who knows? This is all speculation. I know that we're going to see, in three weeks' time, a San Diego comic competition, comic convention, and there's going to be something from Stern there. So this might be the rumored 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park with all the movie clips. There's wild rumors running rampant, and that just speaks to the level of excitement that is in this industry for now surrounding Stern Pinball. Do I have anything else to talk about Stern? A little bit. Marco's Specialties, provider of fine pinball accoutrement to everybody, does a podcast with one of their Pintechs, right? And they just did one. Moto was on there, but so was Jack Danger, and he was showcasing Foo Fighters. And it was just going through a lot of, like, the development process of it, showing the CAD files, kind of showing, like, some innovations, how they solve some problems, how the stand-up targets that are on the upper play field of the premium NLE are actually inverted and come down from the top in order to give space underneath the upper play field, whatever. Fascinating stuff. What was also fascinating is they did some giveaways. They gave away a hat, they gave away a banner, and they gave away a tool bag. And guess which tool bag won the tool bag? It was me. Amato spun the wheel, and she got it on me. And so I'm getting a Marco Specialty tool bag. How fantastic is that? I decided right then that I was going to go ahead and return the favor. So in just a few minutes after I upload this episode, I'm doing a live stream tonight. And I'm going to give away one of my random t-shirts to somebody that commented in the 50th episode thread on Facebook. So what a great time to be following Don's Pinball Podcast on Facebook and leaving your comments and your feedback. Because I want to make this kind of a regular thing. I'll find stuff to give away. I have an old microwave I'm not using. Someone could use that, right? Yuck, right? No, I'll stick with t-shirts and stickers and things, but this is going to be fun. I'm going to do a live stream in a little bit. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about my tool bag, man. I'm going to switch over all my nut drivers and my new screwdrivers. I'm going to put them in this Marco bag as soon as that shows up. So thank you, Marco specialties, uh, for, you know, indulging us and giving us stuff, man. Who doesn't like free stuff? I know I like free stuff. What else do I like? I like pinball. What else do I kind of like Australia? I guess. How are those connected? Home pin? No, we're not going to talk about that. home because nobody cares let's talk about haggis pinball these guys these guys down under they released a little teaser trailer for their next game it was like a little splash animation of their logo uh followed by some sounds okay there were pinball or not pinball billiards sounds right like pool balls knocking around i think there was some voices in the background and then there was like some motorcycles so it got everybody speculating now so the these guys are supposed to be doing a series of five games and you could put down a deposit for their next five games right now if like you know you hate money or something But when they're finished with Fathom, they're going to have another game is the gist here. And it's long been rumored to be Centaur, right? That half monster, half motorcycle. There's some blades. There's a girl. It's got this black and white kind of color spectrum, old 70s game. Kind of fun to play and visually quite striking, I must say. So this would be right up the alley with Haggis. This is what everybody thinks is coming next. But it didn't explain the billiard sound. So what the heck is with that? Are they doing 8-Ball Deluxe? Maybe. I would much rather do Sharky Shootout. That doesn't seem to be in their wheelhouse, though. So who knows? That's about all I have with Haggis. Now, are they coming up to being done with their fathoms? I don't know. I don't know how much they're still left waiting out there. I know it's been slow going for these guys. And they haven't been very transparent. So it's one thing to be slow going. you know chicago gaming company also slow going um you know but they at least are churning out their games i don't know if they're really speaking with customers though haggis for sure isn't very transparent and i think that's been a problem so take your time if you're going to you know if you're going to make sure you have a good product but communicate with the the customers please let us know what's going on you know do a weekly live stream be like you know what you know we're strapped for this one part you know or this handful of parts is holding us up this is what we're doing to make them here's all of our games that we have mostly built we're just waiting for this and then you know they'll be going out or we have a shipment of 50 games that are going to united states we're just waiting for the shipping container to be full and then we'll ship the whole thing out if you want to get it early we can air freight it to you or something give us something here you know do a live stream like marco's specialties and give us a t-shirt haggis well because you know the thing you know if we're just left to stew amongst ourselves and think about this uh you know it could be that maybe they're hurting for money and so they have to take pre-order deposits for their next game to fund completion of their first game and that would be a really terrible place to be into for us just find out about or even be speculating about so haggis email don's pinball podcast at gmail.com and let's coordinate come on let's talk about pinball and production and what you guys are doing you know we just want everybody to succeed here you make a beautiful product i mean i've played the fathom revisited at expo the thing is striking um you know it's not really you know for my play style so i don't put one in here but i know people love this aesthetic enough to get these games so you know and centaur is a beautiful ass game i mean if i went to someone's house and they had it you know i i'd commend them for it it brightens up anybody's game room i would think so what are we going to see from them when are they going to reveal it who the heck knows um what else do we have oh mr jason knapp right again today dropped another theme rumor. There's a huge, like Battleship Colossus huge movie theme from Universal Pictures, or from the Universal cadre of licenses, that apparently has been licensed for pinball. And it's Fast and Furious. And it's one that Don's Pinball Podcast has been mentioning as a great theme. You know, what I do, I look around and see where themes tend to work in the themed entertainment space. And since I frequent theme parks, it's a great place to do it. walk around a universal park and you'll see all kinds of themes that would be perfect or have already been made into successful pinball franchises from jurassic park to transformers you can turn around there's mummy there's minions nintendo is down there that's been games before any of these would make good themes jaws is a universal theme josh still exists at a couple of the universal parks in osaka and also in hollywood so you know they're there fast and furious is right there in front of you i mean you know this isn't a theme that i personally love i don't think i haven't seen any of the films but i've seen enough of them to kind of get the gist it's all about family that you know the voice of groot talking about family and wearing wife beaters well you know also dwayne the rock johnson sprinkled in there just because so um there are already uh theme park attractions based on fast and furious and they're popular even though they're so kooky and weird there's a brand new roller coaster still rumored but there's details being released about this multiple launch fast and furious roller coaster going to university studios hollywood so i think this is a theme that's ripe for it and i think a pinball machine based on fast and furious would sell fast and furious i mean crickets all right so you know whether it's hobs and shot whether rocks involved or not this thing would sell this is a a game that any operator would love to have in their arcade because it's a theme that's instantly recognizable Cars are a great theme to get people excited. People love cars and racing. There's been a lot of car racing pinball machines. It fits the fast and furious activity of pinball. The only thing is, can we get Steve Ritchie in on this thing to make a really fast-playing, fun game with a lot of ramps and maybe magnetic launch loops and things. So that's what came out today. Confirmation. And I think it's a great choice. Who's building it? Who the heck knows? but we're going to find out all that and more. And now regarding home pin, I'm just going to skip it. Don's Pinball Podcast is in effect. I'm having a great time having interaction with everybody. I'll be giving away a t-shirt coming up soon. There'll be a live stream. Be sure to check it out. Otherwise, have yourselves a great evening. Get yourself a slice of pizza, maybe some pasta. Watch some TV. Go play some pinball, y'all. The Godzilla Topper, certified fresh from Don's Pinball Podcast. Later, everybody. Hit it!