Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, March 24th. It is episode 58. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And as Tony noted, we're doing it a day early. It's a Saturday. It's Friday. Party time. We got so much stuff going on. This was the easier day. Yeah. And we're recording in person because it was convenient. So that's what we're doing. And I haven't had to look at Tony's face since TPF. And that's what most of the episode is going to be. Though I have done some video gaming because I did have a few days off after Texas, which was quote-unquote recovery time, which gave me an opportunity to move more into Mad Max, which I know you're familiar with, Tony. So we will get to that eventually. The sum total of my video games since TPF? I'm going to play some Overwatch. Overwatch, yeah. I'm going to watch Overwatch League. That's it. But we know some people don't like to always hear about Overwatch, so we're very sensitive to that. But what they do like to hear about are introductions, as long as the introductions are very, very brief. So, Tony, what's been going on since episode 57? We went to TPF. Yep. It was fun. Yep. I had alcohol. Yep. I met cool people. Yeah. We had good food. We're going to talk about the vast majority of this. Yeah. I have no interest either. I mean, doesn't really want to sit down and enjoy a food or something. Sure, sure. I don't know if they care. If they're following us on social media, they already know about many of those items. So let's go right into pinball and go right into TPF, which we're going to constantly call it TPF. That means, of course, Texas Pinball Festival, held just outside of Dallas in Frisco, Texas. And I thought the first thing before really diving into the show is, as Tony noted, we got to talk with a lot of people. Some who listen to the show, most who don't. And also some of the people who we have interacted with in one capacity or another. So we got to speak with Steven Bowden from Fun with Bonus, who was a guest host. Yep. We got to speak with Nick, who was doing the North American EM Pinball Tour and is now of the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Virginia. And he was getting ready to wrap up his day in Texas. And then some of our peers, which I – what's the term from E3? Influencers. They call them influencers. I don't think we're very influential, but I guess we count in that grouping because we do a podcast, though. Yes, we influence, like, ourselves. Yes, yes. And we commentate, and then people can hear us, and then they can agree, or more often likely disagree, and that gives them fuel for enjoying their hobby, or so the theory goes. So we met with Jeff with the Pinball Podcast. Yes. And I know you got to play Kingpin with him. Yeah, me and Jeff played Kingpin. We're going to go into that. And then Ryan's T from Head to Head Pinball, all the way in from Australia. Yep. Zach, who's with Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show. They do a lot of video reviews, but it's also a podcast as well. I actually mostly listen to it, but it's actually better in video form. He's almost as funny as me, so I might not like him. I haven't decided. And then another Jeff. This is Jeff of This Week in Pinball, the main conglomeration of news at this point. Yeah. And his website just had a big facelift, actually. And as you and I both know, we rely on it greatly to stay up on the hobby because it's probably the biggest thing that's really hit in the last year for keeping up. Oh, definitely. It has changed the pinball hobby news type coverage. It mostly comes down to how comprehensive, Jeff. That would be my thought because there have been other sites that do some sort of gathering, collating of information like Pinball Supernova. but it seems less, everything else seems less comprehensive. Anyway, it was really cool to meet Jeff because we've interacted, he and I, a few times. And then I went and I spoke with Martin from Pinball News, which I when I write articles, I usually give them to Pinball News because they're probably the only place that wants to run my nerdy historic articles. So that was really cool as well. I'm deep diving the number three pinball from this machine and its entire how it was built, designed, made, came out, where it's set in storage for 12 years. I do try and keep them briefer than that, but I know what I am, and I'm not proud of it. And, in fact, I'll probably mention something, because I am actually working on another article already. But, that being said, and I know there were others there that we didn't get to interact with. We had past guest hosts, Bowen Kerins and Jack Danger. I only saw Bowen around a couple times. I know he was there the whole time. Every time I saw him, I tried to talk to Jack a couple times, but he was so busy, I didn't want to interrupt. Because he was always streaming, and he was full of people. I don't want to interfere when someone's working. I said hi to him on Twitch after. He still doesn't know which handle I am on Twitch. Sometimes I'll ask these things that are hints, and I can tell he doesn't know. And I'll probably play with that for a couple more years. It's quite enjoyable. So let's actually talk about the show itself. Oh, though I will note all those names I mentioned, I said they were all content creators of some form. There are links to all of them in the show notes, so if you don't know who any of them are, just follow the links. I got links for you. Follow them. Trust me. Trust my links. My links are good. So, TPF itself. I want to open with a miscellaneous item. Okay. That Atari, there was an Atari physical pong thing. Yeah. It's like a cocktail-sized table that can fold up and be a little coffee table, and it lets you, with the power of magnets, play thong. And styrofoam. Yes. So Tony and I played that. I know we had a little clip of video that someone took of us that I went ahead and put up on. Yeah, I see how you edited that clip down, because I know that I've seen the full clip, and it's longer, and there includes some nice back and forth, but somehow every shot that I successfully made against you has been removed from that clip. so all you see is me flailing around like an idiot. Good editing. It was. And I'll explain to you why the editing was so choice. People want to see winners. No one, what did Steve, when Steven Bowden was on with us, what did he say? Everyone has one of those stories, he had a term for it, the fail story, the bad break, the bad beat, a bad beat. No one wants to see your bad beat. They want to see my awesome win. That's all I did. That's all I did is I condensed it to the dramatic element where I used my own will force power and overcame the impossible opposition. Yeah. You like shaved what, like 12 years off your life? You siphoned so much energy. I burned my life force energy. You burned your life force energy off. Unfortunately, I did find out those things are three grand. So I will not be burning my life force money to buy one. Even though it was so fun and I took a wire. I heard that that was originally a Kickstarter project, and it was $600 to get in on the Kickstarter. But, of course, it wasn't enough money. Of course. I don't know if those people who backed it got it at that rate or what. But, anyway, the dollar amount has gone up over time. But for $3,000, you can get an awful lot of really nice pinball machines. Yeah. Used pinball machines. I mean, it was cool, and it was fun, and I wouldn't mind having one, but not $3,000. No, see, that's the thing. I mean, in my living room, I don't have a coffee table. I haven't owned a coffee table since college. So I have a very big open space in the living room that I have a couple end tables. So I thought, oh, that would be cool. It doesn't take up a ton of space. Some place people can put their drinks. And then you're just playing pong. Fizzy pong. Physical pong. But it was cool. So I was glad it was there. Tony, let's talk a little bit about what wasn't there. Or maybe more specifically, who wasn't there. Yeah. There were two major pinball manufacturers. Maybe I'm being generous saying major, but they're well known. Pinball did pinball walking. Yeah. So the first was Dutch. Dutch pinball normally has been at TPF. It was announced ahead of time that they were not going to TPF. There's not a new product to display, so I'm not necessarily surprised. Someone did bring a Big Lebowski. I still have never played it. Nope. there was a line for it anytime I would buy it, except for when it was down. Because the game was off at one point, so I assume it broke. Because it's always been broken at all the shows I've been to. For at least a period of time. It was all lonely in a corner, well, there were some other games by it, but it was like in the deepest, the dankest corner of the convention center. It was the same corner they vanished to last year, where Dutch was last year. Yeah, yeah. But it still had a lot of people in line for it. Tony, I want to know what you think about Dutch not being there. Do you think it was smart? Oh, I think it was pretty smart. There's no reason for them to open themselves up to the vitriol and the anger that they would have by showing up. There's just no point to it. There was absolutely no upside to them showing up. They could have done nothing but hurt their brand more. And their brand, quite frankly, can't take any more damage than it's already got. I think that you're probably right about that. I think that it was good that they didn't go because it just sort of begs the question about, well, you don't have enough money to refund us, but you start raising those issues of you have enough money to fly to the U.S. again for another show again. Get a move. Right, right, right. But on the flip side, they've already acknowledged, I believe publicly, definitely not privately to us, because anytime I've reached out, they've said they didn't want to come on, and that's fine. But the issue is that acknowledgement about not having the funds to get everyone who's already purchased a game. So if the idea really is that this Chinese letter-folding, stamping manufacturer can actually build these games, and last I heard they were saying they thought they might be able to start production in May. They have to sell more games to new, they have to find new people to sell games to. They have to do the highway thing, where they're selling new games in order to build old games to people they already have money from. Man, this sounds real familiar. This sounds like we talked about something very similar to this for over an hour, but on the board gaming side last episode. There are some similarities, though. Kickstarter is in no way involved this time. No, pre-ordering. Just pre-ordering. Pre-ordering. Just pre-ordering. And finding manufacturers and lies about timelines. Yeah, so as I said, I think you're right. I think it was good they weren't there. However, if the strategy is we're not actually going to try and sell more Lebowskis until we're producing more pins, okay. Can they find somebody who would actually, I mean, short of finding some hobbyist who's not that deep into it, like the people buying the Supreme Pinball level hobbyists, people who aren't in pinball but love Big Lebowski, are they going to find somebody who doesn't know anything about the situation and is willing to buy in at this point? Well, that would be their only hope if they need the money before it's ready to produce. So there is that. I'm assuming that they're angling for what Highway has been doing, which is you call up the distributor and you say, I'm interested in an alien. And they say, okay, you can pay me the distributor, the deposit. It'll be here in three weeks. And you will get the alien pen. Now, everyone who bought under the old ownership is still sitting there like, where's my game? I've been in for three years now. Yeah. And they have to wait. You as a three-week person get it first. Mm-hmm. But, so maybe that's it. But there's no, their communication, I mean, we're going to get to Highway right after this. But Dutch's communication is even worse. there's this expectation that seeing they reach this sort of parallel track where they would constantly be working behind the scenes, but they give a weekly update in their newsletter. They haven't done an update in five weeks. There was no update that I saw yesterday. And so people are concerned because even if there's nothing new to report, they understand that people want to hear we have nothing new to report. They express surprise. Dutch Express is surprised about the desire for that, but they want to just, people want to see that communication line open. That way you know it's still there. They still exist. It's not just gone. They still have the hope glowing ahead of them as something that might possibly happen. And there's still a lot of people, namely on Pennside, who defend this company pretty aggressively. and I do notice a lot of them live in the same country so I don't know if it's just they know them and they're friends and they feel like their friends are getting bullied but you know when you start the business side of stuff and you start failing to deliver I mean Dutch doesn't seem to have done anything right other than they shipped games initially that's about it there's always going to be somebody who's willing to defend something no matter how horrible it is till the bitter end I mean, there are people who still to this day defend J-Pop. There are people still to this day, I mean, it happens. There's always going to be something. Sure. And it's not, I can't say it's like aggressively vehement or anything. It's actually one of the more friendly threats to watch, despite how depressing it is. But anyway, so there was that. And then the other big no-show was Highway. Now, Highway has been building Alien pins, and they have been shipping containers out. So they have production going again. The new owners have found a degree of success in terms of some balance between sending out mostly new pins to new buyers, coupled with getting people who bought in the past their machines. There have been some of those that have gone out as well. I don't know the pattern. No one really knows, I believe, the mathematical formula they're using. like is it five new games per one old or whatever they're doing. There was not only a lack of a highway presence at TPF, though. There was not a single full throttle, and there was not a single alien pin that I saw anywhere. I didn't see any anywhere, not once. So let me ask you, was that smart or not? Because they have a machine they're trying to sell, but it's not at the premier pinball show in the world because, you know, death of Expo, this is it now. TPS is Expo. I don't know. I mean, there is a solid argument that can be made for them having a presence there. But at the same time, with the situation they're in, the way their ownership has switched over, how they don't really have that big driving force front man that they used to have. I don't think it really was, I don't think it would have hurt them like it would have hurt Dutch, but I don't think it would have helped them very much. I don't think they would have sold very many because I've played Aliens and I've played Full Throttle and they're okay at best. Yeah, I really don't care that Full Throttle wasn't there. That's sort of, that's outside the scope of this. Alien is the game. I agree, I don't think Highway needed to be there. I think Alien needed to be there. I think Cointaker should have, they're the main U.S. distributor for Highway. that should have been arranged by Highway to say, we're not going to be there, we're not going to fly out, we're not going to run a booth. They had already declared they weren't going to announce their next game that Barry Osler had designed for them, which was the original plan. They were going to do a game unveil, at least one, at TPF. And most people, myself included, thought that was dumb and that you pulled back on that was smart. Yes, I agree. But there's a bunch of people being surrounded by pinball, a lot of whom are going to be interested in buying things, and you don't have your premier game out there for anyone to try, that was, I mean, we'll get to it when we start talking the positive stuff, but there were total nuclear annihilations everywhere, everywhere. So I bet you Spooky sees a surge in those orders because a lot of people who didn't have a chance to try it finally got to because the game was there. Yeah. And that was true for pretty much every game. There was a line on every single one. There were lines. People like the new stuff. And while I don't care for how Aliens shoots, a lot of people claim to really like it. So I think it needed to be there so other people that that style of gameplay appeals to would have gotten a chance to play it. Without that, there are a lot of people who will not buy, and I agree with them. Don't buy a game unless you try it. You need to try it. so anyway so that was those were the two notables about not being there so let's start talking I didn't think you played Silver Slugger before you bought it I did not play Silver Slugger before I bought it but I did try it before I bought it did you? I mean when I got there so if I hated it you could have walked away so I guess technically I did I hadn't played it before I went out there to acquire one what I did in that instance is I watched a lot of gameplay video to know how it shot. Yeah. And that's sort of why on our Discord channel, Don, formerly of the Link Cable Podcast and Pinball Podcast, asked about when we vote for things where, instead of saying when we haven't tried both games. And that's an interesting exception that I will take. If I've seen gameplay footage, I don't want this to sound overly arrogant, but I'm a good enough player to know if I like the game or not. I'm not stupid. So I can tell if a game has flow or not by watching a player with a decent level of skill actually shoot the game instead of me shooting the game. I can tell. I can tell if it's a brick fest or not because I'll see the bricks. It doesn't matter if I'm flipping the button or not. That makes sense. But I do. So, yes. If Bowen can do it, I can do it. Sure, sure. Well, I mean, yeah, we told when we had Bowen on as a guest, he hadn't played TNA yet. We told him he would like it. Were we wrong? No. No. We were not wrong. Because it's, guys and gals, this is science. It's science. This is how it works. So, yes, there's an exception that proves the rule, and that is if you see enough of the footage, or the game is cheap enough. Now, see, that's where you could have gotten me. Did I play scoreboard before I bought it? No. And I didn't like it. It was cheap. Yeah, it was cheap. Well, and it was broken, so I couldn't. It was too rare. There are exceptions to everything. Let me just say, if you go above a certain dollar threshold, I think you want to try something. Or you go and drop seven grand on something. Sure, sure. But Silver Squad was not an expensive game. As it shouldn't be. No, I guess it shouldn't be, though. I really do like it. Let's talk about another game I really like that I don't own, and that would be Total Nuclear Annihilation. We were at TPF last year. We played the Lightwood. for both of us it was the highlight of the show and I know you voted it a game of the year for last year I did not because even though I thought it was the most surprising thing of the show I still thought Dialed In was a better overall game so I voted Dialed In but TNA was my number two so that's not to say anything negative about Total Micro Annihilation we both really really like it this was the first opportunity we both had to actually play the production model What were your thoughts Tony? I know it didn't like turn you against it No It felt faster Than the Whitewood I still love it I just I love It's got a soundtrack that is amazing Yeah It's got just a simple Feel and flow And bit of joy It is the game It is the only game at TPF this year that when I finished it, I kind of wanted to ignore the people in line behind me and hit the start button again. I didn't do that, but I wanted to. I could have played that game twice, three times as much as I've actually played it and been a perfectly happy man. Because that game is just, it's a joy to play. Maybe after I've got hundreds and hundreds of games on it, it won't be the same simple, pure joy to play. But the thing is, the joy I get walking up to an AFM and firing up AFM and playing it, it's just simple and fun. I know everything. It's the same kind of feeling I get with TNA. I mean, I don't know everything, but I walk up and I fire it up and I play and it's simple and fun. And I have no qualms about hitting the button again and starting again. Right. Well, and I think that that makes sense. I mean, yeah, some of it's going to be a honeymoon period on a new game or a game you don't get to play as much as other games. But nonetheless, yes, it remains fun. I mean, what's the biggest negative that can be said about TNA? I don't, that my phone had trouble photographing the digit displays because they're so bright. Yeah, I don't know. I'm reaching for stuff here. You know, it's, I mean, from a gameplay perspective, it's just, I've seen others describe it as a breath of fresh air. Now, if that's what only, if it was only like one level games coming out from all manufacturers, would we get sick of it? Probably. But, you know, as a one-off, it works. I would like to see more games in this vein, but we don't need a lot of them. Right. So, it's just. And they need to be as polished. They can't be a quick kick out. I mean, TNA is a polished game that had a lot of time and love put into it and everything. Yeah, no. If it's going to be single level, you have to stand out on something else. You're not going to – people don't generally look at TNA and say, oh, that's the most beautiful play field or it looks like the most interesting play field. Now, if they're familiar with single level, maybe they can look and go, it looks like it plays well. Hopefully, if they couldn't see it initially, they'll see it when they play it. But, you know, it doesn't have – and we'll talk about Alice Cooper. It doesn't have, like, these toys or anything. The sound, though, is one of those things that Scott Denisey, the designer, did that helps draw you in because you don't have all these toys to put you into the world. Instead of having ramps, you've got things like a scoop that kicks out really, really fast. It keeps you on your toes, and it makes up for that. You're not going to have time to be looking for toys on TNA because that ball is wild practically any time it's off a flipper. So, yeah, I like the production model. I really wish budgetarily it was in the cards for me because it's a really fun game. Yeah, I wish the same. It is without – it's on my short list of games that if I have the money to get, I would get right away. It's on my short list. Yeah. Yep. Anyway, really good, and I'm glad that Spooky didn't put a limit on this one. It was smart for them. It was. let's move to another game that we finally got first-hand knowledge of, and that's Jersey Jack Pinball's Pirates of the Caribbean. So we got to play that finally. Obviously, it's still in prototype mode. We both have experience with the Stern version of it. Oh, yes, because it's been on location in several locations here on the campus. I enjoy Stern's version. I do, too. And so did you enjoy Jersey Jack's version? It was fine. It didn't blow me away. It wasn't great. It had things I really liked about it. It had things that I wasn't as happy about. It was pretty much on par with how I think of most Jersey Jack games. I'll just rank it for Jersey Jack. It is not as good as Dialed In, but it's better than anything else they've put out. But I think Dialed In is just a more enjoyable game than all. I liked the little triple spinner thing there in the middle. That was a lot of fun. I somehow managed to not get on the upper play field, so I don't know how well the upper play field worked. The giant mass of characters to choose through kind of annoyed me, but there were other UI things that I kind of liked, and it has like that little LCD right above the drain that points at stuff. I liked that. I liked... It was a good game. It's not my favorite game of the show, but it was a good game and it didn't annoy me. I didn't come out of it like I came out when we first played Hobbit where I was just like I don't like it. I'm perfectly fine with this game. It's okay. I have no qualms going to play it again. It doesn't annoy me like Hobbit did. So I'd say all in all it's a win for Jersey Jack compared to some of their stuff in the past but I don't think it's as good as Dialed In. But Dialed In is kind of a sweet, real sweet spot game. Yeah, I actually I would rank it just behind Dialed In, and Dialed In being Jersey Jack's best game to date. So we're in agreement on that. It's been such a long time since I've played Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz has always felt clunky to me, but I like it better than Hobbit. And in the case of Pirates, aside again from Dialed In, it's their fastest game, Or maybe a better way to say it is, it's the fastest wide body. The shots are, overall, I thought they felt pretty good. It doesn't feel clunky to me. And this is another new designer, Eric Meunier. Mounier? Mounier? Mounier. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe like that. I don't know. I could be completely wrong. I've heard it properly before. I think it's Moon Yang. Anyway, so as a first design, really good. But, yeah, there are some negatives. Let me cover the rest of the positives. So, okay, it moves at a decent clip for a wide body. The triple concentric spinning discs, I really liked that. That was cool. I didn't use the compass, but I like the idea of the compass. So I'm glad that's in there. And, as I mentioned, the stops don't feel overly tight or like it's a brick fest or anything. So those are the things I really like. Things I don't really like. Upper playfield. That I thought was too easy. I don't generally like upper playfields very much. This one kind of reminded me of a rocking version of the Game of Thrones upper playfield. It didn't help, and maybe it was beginner's luck, but on my first ball, my first shot put me up there, and I was able to load the cannon because I could just stay up there and do what I wanted. and I, at my skill level, shouldn't get to do what I want. The game, because we were playing a three-player game, you saw how long I was on that game. Oh, yeah. The game plays way too long. It's not Hobbit long because of those discs, but it's still like we're a wide body, so we don't have outlanes. Let's put the train wheels on. We don't have outlanes. We're just going to have like 20,000 inlanes and then two teeny little outlanes all the way out on the side. So the game seems designed to play long. I don't like that. Well, almost all Jersey Jack games feel like they're designed to play long. Well, half of them are. I don't think Diode in plays long, and I don't think Wizard of Oz plays long. So now we've got two that play long. Now, that may be their angle because they're targeting the home market, and they put a good sectillion combos of modes. You're the depth. Yes, I agree with you. The 22 characters, that's way too many. This is... There needs to be a speed where you hit a button that just randomly chooses something. Well, here's the thing on it and, hey, Keeper's a great programmer. He can more than willingly prove me wrong, but here's my problem with this many characters. They are either going to be benefits that they confer are so minimal as to be nothing and you could just randomize it or there will ultimately be some that are better than others. People are going to come up with a list because you get locked in, which I do like, that you lock people out of being able to take the same character. I like that idea because it affects the desire and tournament to pick an order. It's a new variable that I actually agree with. It's all going to be, well, you don't want to hit the action button, so you take the guy who one button and it gets all the gold, or you're going to take the one that gets you into the multiball easier, because that's more valuable even than losing the points that that decreases your multiball mode by or something. You know, it's going to be like that. It's one or the other. It's not, those 20 whatever characters are not going to be balanced. No. So they're either trash benefits that don't really matter much, or there will be some that are just great. And people will figure out the list and be like, here's the order you take, or here are the top six based off of your play style. So I was not impressed by that. Plus, it doesn't help when everyone's standing in line and everyone's reading all the characters to try and decide which one to start with. That's a show complaint. Yeah, that's a show complaint. Some other benefits, though, that are positives. I definitely see why people who favor Jersey Jack do so from a, like, bling perspective. Holy cow, do those games look loaded. They do. This looks loaded. And if that's not enough, the collector's edition table, because they had a collector's edition table there. It wasn't playable. They just had the machine itself, the cab, was amazing. It was probably the nicest cab for a collector's edition anytap scene because all the railing they'd had had barnacles and stuff on it, so it looked like it was covered in barnacles and coral and this and that. and the topper was awesome, and I was really, really impressed by that. In the looks department, they definitely are top-notch in the looks department. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, actually, it was fun to shoot around. I wouldn't mind playing it on location if it ends up on location, but I don't know if I like it in tournaments because I think it's a long player, and I don't like long-playing games for competitive. In general, I just, I mean, I could see myself owning one long-playing game, like Lord of the Rings, for example. But I don't like lots of them. Yes. Jersey Jack and their, like, we're going to be giving 45-minute games style that they seem to almost be favoring with what I call their regular releases because I think Diode is a standard body width because Pat Lawler insisted. That's my theory. Because they seem to be all about packing in toys, and that's why you go wide is to throw in crap. I'm kind of scared for what the ball times of the launch party are going to be considering how the Hobbit launch party was where I'm pretty certain several of us took naps during at least one of the one of the playthroughs of the Hobbit yeah it was um there were issues with that but overall I did like the game uh I didn't love it uh let's go ahead and talk about Spooky's new reveal and this was the only real reveal at the show and that was Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. So we did get to play it. Thoughts? Because that's what people want to know. What our thoughts are. It looks good. The castle looks really cool. Yep. For being what could only be considered very beta or beta code, what little I played of it wasn't bad at all. When we played it, it was set on two ball speed mode. So it's not like we got a lot of play time on it. I don't hate it. I'm not willing to... I don't love it, but I'm not willing to put anything real specific on it yet until I see some more code and get some more actual play time on it. But it looks nice. But looking nice isn't a problem Spooky's really had. I mean, Rob Zombie looked amazing. It's just too bad it was a total clunker of a game. This looks nice and I can say right now, I liked it. I thought the shots and everything felt way better than anything a Rob Zombie ever felt. Yeah, I agree. The art's great for people who care about the art. Unlike Rob Zombie, I thought this actually had a nice-looking play field as well. Maybe not quite as nice as a cab, but, you know, this is all very, very, very subjective and not affecting the gameplay. So let's talk the gameplay a bit. The shots felt okay. there seemed to be some a decent mix of possibly tight versus not tight shots which I like the layout seemed a little more traditional Rob Zombie's layout was very very odd and I think that's part of the reason why it plays so bad because Rob Zombie plays bad I'm not going to nope not going to cover it it's terrible yeah it's just it's anyway we're not talking about Rob Zombie so I wasn't sure what I was doing because the software wasn't giving me very much guidance I've looked up more since then so I have a better understanding I like the idea of where they're going with the software on this so I think of the pure spooky titles which I guess this is game number three because they had America's Most Haunted then Rob Zombie and now this I think this will be their best one I'm pretty confident going ahead and saying that now I agree with you I have no problem say about it. But, you know, it's a very interesting thing, but because they're both built by Spooky, I can't help but compare it to Total Nuclear Annihilation. And here's the thing. I know it's not fair, but you know what? Life isn't fair. Life and pinball aren't fair. Total Nuclear Annihilation is about $500 less than Alice Cooper, and it's got a fully fleshed out rule set and with Alice Cooper they did the false scarcity thing again and they capped it at 500. So you have to basically run, I mean, they weren't taking the orders yet, so we got the opportunity to try the game. But it's the same issue that some have had with Stern about, well, where's the code? I'm not going to have an opportunity to try the game with complete code. But I, in the case of Total Nuclear Annihilation, we have been able to. So, you know, you're right. It's totally not fair. But I can't help it. They're making both. They can't really run two lines at a time, so you have a long wait for either. And they're at the stage where I don't like that Spooky is still relying on the false scarcity angle to sell their games. Yeah. I've always felt, and I know I've expressed it on the show before, that they need to move past this at this stage. that they not they may be boutique but they not startup anymore They shouldn need to rely on that That will that I think with this game and how it looks will probably still help them sell games rapidly I don't know, a lot of people felt they got burned on Rob Zombie. As they should. I mean, the reason why, and I know we, I don't know if we talked about it on air, but we've talked about it off air before. The reason why there is no total nuclear annihilation on location or on order for being on location in Kansas City is because of what Rob Zombie did on location. Yeah. It did poorly, and it broke all the time, and there were a lot of complaints. And so there's just a lack of trust there, which is very unfortunate, because I think Total Nuclear Annihilation would kill on location. I do, too. So anyway, yeah, it's like Alice Cooper, I liked it. I thought it was a step up from Rob Zombie in from what quality I could see to the concept, to the layout. So in terms of seeing incremental improvement out of Spooky, I think they've continued to do so. I was impressed. Yeah, incremental improvement. I would never be in the market for it as long as they're making total nuclear annihilations. The thing is, even if they weren't making total nuclear annihilations, I wouldn't be in the market for it. Spooky's kind of got this whole shock, rock, horror motif thing going. And while it makes for some cool art and some cool cabs, I mean, I listen to the music. it's still not something that is so integral to me that I'd be really interested in grabbing it unless the game is simply amazing. Right. For me, it would come down to what the final rules package looked like. Right. But by then, they will be sold out. Exactly. So, they would be getting one used. Which, if it's like zombie, not too difficult with 300 floating around. Yeah. I think at 500, it probably won't be too difficult either. And home use only would be played seldom enough that you probably would have too many things to... It wouldn't be broke down too often. No, no, no. And the clear coat process of Spooky on their playfields is probably seen... I view it as the best in the industry. So, the barware has not been a big problem for them. No. It's just other maintenance things. So, let's talk about another kind of reveal. The company Circus Maximus revealed their Kingpin remake. And I call it a kind of reveal because Kingpin is a known game. Yes. I had never played it before. There are only two prototypes that exist from Capcom, so that would be wise. Yeah. And I think two. Maybe I'm only remembering Pinball Circus, which I know is two also, or maybe that's the deal. Doesn't matter. It's not that we choose. It's very limited. So you played it with Jeff from the Pinball Podcast. Yeah. I got in line solo when we all split apart doing stuff and got in some time on it. So what were your thoughts on this? Because this is a 90s game. And it felt like a 90s game. And that's not a bad thing. I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. It had some code issues that I know they're going to fix because the code issues popped up a couple of times. but at the same time it's a code issue that I probably wouldn't see because it's got this thing going where when you hit the wizard mode afterwards you have a power build up for the flippers that reduces so you keep flipping after your last ball you can keep playing some to gather some last second points and as the power fades your flippers get weaker and weaker and weaker and unfortunately when me and Jeff were playing and I know it was because he was afraid for how badly I was going to destroy him even though I was, you know, not even a quarter of his score going into ball three. He hit the wizard mode and he got it. And when it came to my turn, the flippers were still depowered. And they wouldn't power up. That's a clever way to stop. I couldn't play my ball three at all because they wouldn't power up. And that's a bug that was noticed at the show because, well, there were a lot of people there who were really, really good players like Jeff. and hit the wizard mode and had it happen. So other than that bug, which is a glaring bug, but it's obviously something that has to be fixed, I liked the shots. The shots were fun. The game was fun. It was outdated, the dots and everything, but it's a 90s game. It felt like a 90s game. It's just weird to see, ah, it's 2018, and it looks like it's, you know, 95. but maybe that's just partially from being spoiled because of like what they did with AFMR where you get the new really high quality stuff with AFMR. So even though we, I mean, it's AFM, but with the new dot set up and everything, it looks really nice with the nicer versions of it, but it played well. It was fun. The shots were enjoyable. The kind of story that it goes through as you build towards the wizard mode is enjoyable. I liked it. It was, hmm it was definitely one of the games that I enjoyed the most out of TPF I thought it was fun I did have my weak flippers on my last, it gave me a little bonus thing at the end, so I got to try that, I think I read that, the reason why you can see the full LCD panel and then you just have a little strip on the dots is the full screen is planned to be taken advantage of by their new rules software. Yeah. And then they'll give you the option to play the original rules, which I think is smart. Yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun. I thought the theme worked. The callouts were great. The game is, it definitely does need the continuation software. The game is too easy. Yes. It is like scared stiff easy. I think I would be able to get the wizard mode in the first day alone. I'm quite confident that I, seeing as how far I got the first time I ever touched it, I think I, which is really impressive, could probably hit wizard mode without too much work on it eventually. All the ramps were real easy to hit. The layout was great. I've heard some people compare it to I think it's because of how the ramp layout is towards the center. Compare it to Fishtails. I hate Fishtails. This game is so much better than Fishtails. I don't hate Fishtails. Fishtails is not a good game. I won't say it's not a good game. It's not one of my favorite games, but I don't complain when I have to play Fishtails. I do. I don't like fish tails. I don't like a stupid boat ramp. I don't think the lock shot feels good. But we're not here to complain about fish tails. We should be, but we're not. My point is, when I stepped up to it, I didn't feel like it was like fish tails. I did not think of that. I've just seen others say that's what it reminds. Part of the shots remind them of fish tails. I didn't get that. But if you don't like fish tails, don't be scared off of kingpin because of people making that claim. Because, no, this is so much better. So much better than the first one. It is. It's a good game. It really is. It was quite enjoyable. And honestly, I was able to sit there and watch Jeff Powell through and go through and do the full wizard mode and everything. So I actually saw the whole story and everything in that game, and it was solid. It was not bad at all. I really enjoyed it. The last sort of reveal that I had down for us to talk about that we played was Multimorphic's P3 game, the Cosmic Cart Racing. That's been talked about for years now. Yeah. being the next big game to come out. So it was revealed. We'll hit the seminars here in a bit. I wasn't at that seminar where it was more walkthrough. I've looked back afterwards, though, to learn more about what's behind the engineering of the module for it, because there are a lot of elements in some of the other mini-games that we've seen before, like rocks and the head-to-head thing, that are incorporated within Cosmic Kart Racing. But we did get time on it. What did you think, Tony? I like the module. I like the ramps. I like the lighting on the ramps. The magnetic, the big magnetic loops on the one ramp that can cast the ball, speed the ball up, slow the ball down, launch the ball, use for the ball. I like all of that. And I can't wait until there's a good game out there that uses that. Because I didn't really enjoy it at all. The shots were fine, but it was like a timed game. unless there was something I completely missed, and I know the code is like 60% or something like that. I don't remember. About half, I think, you indicated. I know the code's not all the way there, but I felt like I was racing not just against the other player, other racers, which you are, of course, but then there's like a fuel gauge running down, and I just didn't really enjoy it. I thought the ramps were cool. I thought some of the shots were cool. When I made them, they were cool. The magnetic ramp catch multiball lock-up thing and the way it'll speed up or slow down balls and catch balls, that's awesome. I really like that. The game itself, meh. I didn't enjoy it at all. I mean, at this point, I'm kind of down on P3 overall. They don't have anything out there that wows me. They don't have anything out there that makes me want to drop that kind of money. especially it's like okay I'm going to drop 10,000 for P3 now if I want that game I need to drop 500 if I want that game I need to drop another 1,000 right and I believe this module's sticker is 2,500 right I mean I can't I just could not see myself dropping that kind of money for this machine yeah the I was disappointed by the game. I was confused by the game. I guess there's a spot, and I've seen it since then, about where the racers are that you can see, like, a little mini-map progress thing, but I didn't notice it while I was playing or watching other people play. I've only seen it since in video. I wasn't, and I think it's because the software wasn't as far along as it ultimately will be, but I didn't know what, like, what was I supposed to shoot? I assumed green stuff, but I guess some shots are better than other shots. But I didn't understand it. Fundamentally, I didn't feel like I was racing with my car. No. I just, I didn't. I saw that I had speed gauge, and I saw I was running out of fuel. I guess you can actually win the race before you run out of fuel. I guess that's the goal. But I never felt like my ball was the race car. The engineering behind the module, I think, is incredibly impressive. I think everything about P3's engineering is impressive. I like their engineering. I like everything I've seen from them as a proof of concept, as a prototype, this and that. But there is nothing in the world that would make me go buy a P3 and the Cosmic Kart Racing module and all that stuff when I could go out and buy two brand-new-in-box Stern Pros. Right. There's no reason. There is no game out there that makes me go, wait a minute, this is worth it. The whole thing, everything up to this point looks like it's a beautifully done, well thought out, well made proof of concept that is just waiting for the thing that will make it really work. At this point, I like their hardware. I like the module designs they've done so far. I like their stuff. They have a software problem. They need an app. They need a game. They need something to make it worthwhile. The killer app argument that programmers would make. Right. That, you know, launch any platform, a console, any sort of device, the whatever, the thing that's like, that's the one thing that makes me willing to pay this amount. Right. The way, like, someone may go, Mario Odyssey or Zelda Breath of the Wild will be the one reason. You're basically buying a $300 video game at that point because it alone, though, drove you to make the acquisition. And then all the added benefits are just like, that serves like you made a good decision. Be calm. Be at peace sort of thing. I agree with you. They don't have that. They don't have that now. And Cosmic Kart Racing, for as long as it's been talked about, I expected so much more. Yeah. And I was disappointed that this was years of effort, that all these other mini-games were basically tech demos, and then it felt like, but all I got was a new tech demo with really, really cool hardware, ball lock, acceleration, cool-looking space thing. But the game doesn't exploit it in a way that made me want to push start again. Right. I was confused and I watched more of it because, and I know we have listeners who are really big onto P3 and they want us to cover it and we should be covering it. It's definitely pinball. I think, I disagree with Robert Mueller from Deep Root when he said he didn't think P3 was innovative. I think it's incredibly innovative. But there's just, I don't, I'm still, I don't know what the market is. I'm getting confused. If the goal is to try and get some traditional pinball people to want to buy it, we need more traditional pinball games on it. And it's only been Lexi. And Lexi's not enough. And everything else is just, I mean, everything else is just a proof of concept thing. It's all, I mean, rocks is, okay. Yeah, I enjoy shooting rocks. But, I mean, it's like, I would never, even if I owned the thing, I wouldn't pay $500 more for it. No. So, it's like, it's too, because if it doesn't require a new module, that one's priced too high. I mean, maybe you get it as part of a package deal. No problem. I'd play it. Yeah. I like it. Why not? Because I like that first. It was my first Atari game. Right. Which was my first video game. But come on. At this point, you could go buy an Atari cabinet. Or you could build an Atari cabinet. Sure. For way less. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I loved this new module. So I think that definitely was probably worth the hype. Oh, the module is awesome. But there's nothing else using the module. So it almost uses the module. Now, are they going to develop something that uses the module again? Are they going to rely on a third-party group? Because they allow third-party development. But I think the only third-party game that I'm aware of, and listeners can correct me if I'm wrong, is the Pitch and Bat. The Pitch and Bat was third-party developed. I'm not aware of anything else being third-party developed, And I don't know how many third parties will be interested until you meet some sort of minimum threshold of P3 units out there. You know, over a hundred of them, I would assume, to make it worth their time. But I can't recommend anyone consider getting this yet because I don't think the games are fun enough to warrant the money. to me it's still basically a bunch of minigames and Lexi for 10 grand I like the idea of the head to head play for example with cosmic kart racing but let's say you and I had P3's and I went into kart race so I bought the module you need to go buy the module now also but you'll be all like no Dennis no and I'll be sad and that's how it will play out but yeah that's the thing I mean, to get everything for P3, yes, it's $10,000. $2,500 for the next module. $500 for one of the other modules. And, I mean, you're looking at, you could seriously go buy a brand new AFMR and a Pro machine by the time you start talking $1,200, $1,300, $1,400 into a P3. And I can guarantee you, you're going to have a lot more fun with those other machines. And I don't believe it's just us, is the thing. And my case in point is we had to stand in line for every Total Nuclear Annihilation game. We had to stand in line to try Pirates. We had to stand in a big line for Kingpin. We had to stand in line for Alice Cooper. I didn't wait in line to play this. And I saw nobody at their booth constantly. Every time we walked by, half the machines would be open. and I mean Lexi was open most of the time Cosmic Heart Racing it wasn't unusual to see nobody there or just one person there I mean all their stuff was pretty much constantly open and they have a big floor footprint but it's important for people to remember that most of their cabinets are running different games so it's not like they brought 8 total nuclear annihilations it's like they brought 8 cabs and then 2 have one game 2 have another game and then there's like 1 off of each of the rest or whatnot. So, yeah, it's like, I don't know. I was disappointed. Well, that was all the reveals I had down in terms of game reveals. So I thought we should probably hit on Texas's major announcements that sort of came out of the seminars. And they were definitely several very major announcements. Yes. Like announcements that you would normally expect to see out of Expo. but not anymore because Texas is king of the roost. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just how it's going to be. So first I want to note, well, this one did not have a major announcement out of it. I want to note that Steve Ritchie's talk, first time I actually went to his talk, and this was actually the only seminar I sat in on. I have since listened to audio out of a number of other seminars, but just when we were there, I went to play games. This is how it is There's so many I don't get through We didn't enter the tournament Oh, separately Congratulations to Kerry Wayne Winning area Kansas City Pinball Champion Winning the women's tournament Yeah Not surprising though I should have told her that Awesome trophy, I don't know if you've seen the photo I saw the photo, it was a really cool trophy We don't play in that tournament But that's not because we don't like competitive pinball And what Tony and I did is we went down with my brother-in-law, and that was TPF. We went around playing three-person competitive games all weekend. Non-stop. From the moment we walked in. We split up like twice. We split up both times. It was like, okay, it's 11 o'clock at night. I'm going to go this way. I'm going to go this way. I'm going back to the hotel. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so I did take a break, and I went to Steve Ritchie's seminar, and he did a Q&A. Tony, what was the best question asked during his Q&A? It's okay It's okay, Tony You can say it No, I'm just waiting for the 20 So I can say your question My blog is on the counter There were a lot of good questions I did like your question Because it was a very In-depth Question compared to It was less about the future And more about The realities of the past Yeah Yeah, there were, and Tony's not just being kind to everyone else. There were a lot of really interesting questions that were asked by a lot of people. The reason I want to note this is I asked him about Atari because I don't think it gets asked very much, and that's fine. The reason why I'm noting it here, and I do have a link to the audio from Pinball News in the show notes if anyone wants to hear his talk, But I have been toying with writing about Atari's pinball division failure for a while now. And so my problem is that there's a great historical article on Atari that already exists. It's a pain to read because it's huge if you want to just learn about the pinball stuff. But with it being the only primary source I had, I didn't want to write an article that basically was just cribbing out of that one. I now have enough other pieces that I've found around, including the explanations at Steve Ritchie Game, that I think I can leave my own. Very brief piece. More like a primer. Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the thing. Atari was in the pinball game for about five years. I think probably 75 is when they opened the division to 79 when they closed it. And they made seven games that got produced. compare that to when I did that article based off of our podcast episode about the Street Level series from Premiere, which was six games in one year. Yeah. So, Atari was not doing it pinball. So, there's just not a lot. Even though there's a lot of years, there's not a lot of meat on that to really pick apart. So, there's not necessarily much of a primer. It would probably just be, here's the entire history in under a thousand words. That sort of thing. But I would like it sort of codified somewhere, and I was checking, and I didn't really see a lot. Because most people don't encounter those games. I've never seen an Atari pinball machine at TPF. Nope. And I've gone for the last three years. But anyway. You'll have to take Superman next time. Oh, gosh. Superman. Wouldn't want to. It would be. I might have to, like, get a trailer or something, that huge beast of a game. But if you're lucky, you wouldn't have to take it back. That's true. I could sell it. So anyway. Let's talk a little bit more about the actual major stuff. First thing I want to quickly throw in is Barry Osler did have a talk. One of our players we know from the Columbia area, Eugene, I was listening to the audio, Tony. He praised Popeye to Barry's face. And I was like, man, why you got to lie like that? So anyway, Eugene probably doesn't listen. But Eugene loves Popeye, so I'm not in any way surprised. I thought it was funny because I was listening to the audio and I was like, I know that voice. And then I heard the Popeye thing and I'm like, I definitely know who to send and now I know why Eugene wanted me to go to that seminar, it's because he wanted probably to see my reaction when he was like I love Popeye we were in the middle of a bunch of conversation with people at that time we were talking with Jeff from This Week in Pinball and Zach from Straight Down the Middle when Eugene came by so too sorry Eugene, but I did hear it in spirit and I am raging and actually I already sent him a message But Barry mentioned that he was asked about what thing he would like to do, and he mentioned that he really wished he could do the Beatles, but that Stern already has the license. So it had been known that Beatles was a license that was taken, but not by whom. So I guess Stern is the one that controls that property in the rival pinball at this time. So that was a cool side. There are two other big announcements that happened. One was Spooky Pinball announcing that Bo and Terrence, who probably had the most popular seminar I heard. Oh, yeah. It was like the only from what I saw. His live tutorial on total nuclear annihilation. They have announced that he is now hired by them to be their rules guy. I know he has not got any experience in doing pinball rules, but I think this is a very big deal. I think so. He's such a high-level player. and the best rules guys generally are agreed upon as being the best, being high-level players. So that's Lyman Sheets at Stern, who's a high-level player, and he's a programmer for them, and then Kiefer, or Keith P. Johnson, over at Jersey Jack Pinball, who's a high-level player and a rules guy slash programmer for Jersey Jack. Now, Bowen isn't a programmer, but he can come up with the rules and have someone else do the programming. I imagine they're not going to have him. I don't think he's working there full-time or anything. But if he's going to be working on the Alice Cooper roles... It could be amazing. It could. Because I can't imagine he's going to work on Total Nuclear Annihilation because it's essentially done. I wouldn't say perfect. It's essentially done. But the thing is, anytime anyone finds a flaw with it, Scott Dinesky fixes it. Scott Dinesky has full control over that project. He does not need Bowen's help with it. No. I'm sure Bowen would agree with that. Bowen loves Scott's games. That does not need to be touched. Scott knows what he's doing. But Scott isn't an employee of Spooky. He's taking care of his game. Yeah. And Charlie may be able to poison his mind into being a spooky designer and get him on board at some stage. But if Scott's happy being at Pinball Life, then that's what he'll want to do instead because he gets to do engineering there. I don't know. We've never had Scott on, I'm harassed. But the – so that was big news. And then the other piece of big news came out of Stern's seminar. They did a live Stern of the Union, and George Gomez announced that Brian A., who was a programmer for years with Williams, but is probably better known broadly for doing the playfield designs of The Shadow, Medieval Magnus, and Attack from Mars, will now be working for Stern as a senior designer for pinball machines. So, those are some pretty big announcements. I guess I just I ran through them real quick because I thought we could sort of loosely talk about them broadly we don't need to carve them out but Brian it's amazing it was out of left field for me anyway I don't follow everything maybe somebody else had hints of it but his return to Pinball I mean Attack of Mars is my favorite game of all time Medieval Madness and The Shadow are on my short list because I enjoy them both so much. I mean, the show is such a terrible, terrible, terrible movie, but the pinball machine is great. It has one of my, one of my, if not my favorite upper play field in any pinball machine ever. I want to see what he does. I am so excited. This was, without a doubt, my favorite announcement coming out of TPF. Because it gives me so much hope for the next round of Stern Games. Yeah, I agree. Online reaction has been very positive. Some people have, and I don't think this is surprising, groused that they wished that Jersey Jack had gotten in instead because the fear is that Stern will limit him too much on the bill of materials and so he won't be able to be as creative as he was with Bally Williams. And, you know, I do understand the concern. I think, but remember, his two best rated games, Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars, were done when Williams was on the decline. They didn't make very many of the units. I don't think they had excessive BOMs, especially Attack from Mars. You know, I wouldn't worry so. I like to think that talent can work around a contained bill of materials. And I think he's got the talent. Right. And seeing here, the thing is, is at this point, Stern has my two favorite designers on staff. Yeah. I mean, that's big. I mean, that's huge. Now we just have to see what comes out of them. Yeah, we will. And we've already talked about Spooky and how cool I think it is for Bowen to be working on rules. Yep. I don't care about the Beatles as a license, so I don't care who has it. No. If it plays well, then great. But I don't, otherwise I don't care. When it comes to music pens, I don't really care that much. I mean, I like music well enough. Some of the music pens are fun. I am not a huge thing. I'm not so big of a Beatles fan that I care that much about it. I would like to see like the Off-Room or Queen would be a personal favorite. but that's right the highway went down I don't want it from them but they're the ones who supposedly almost assuredly have it I know you know aliens one of my favorite I know but see that's highway's job is to take the things you like and they destroy it yeah well now we're going to live with it so that's okay I think our final piece to sort of go over regarding TPF is the Texas Pinball Festival 2018 Critics' Choice Awards. And I was like, what is this? We are not familiar with the Critics' Choice Awards. That's because it's not highly promoted like the Twippies. Yeah. But we got a note before TPF from Jeff with the pinball podcast. He seemed to organize a system of categories for quote-unquote critics. So it wasn't just podcasters, but bloggers and such. Whoever the link went out to, we were allowed to send the link out to others. it was all pretty loose and every individual got their own vote, so it wasn't like Tony and I had to agree on things. Right, because that would have never happened. Well, on a few things. Because you're wrong. I bring a different angle. I bring that angle that is about being a player, you know, a real one. And I bring the angle that's about being twice as full. Okay, maybe. So I thought this would be a really good framework because it's going to be shared by any of the groups that announced the results. I tallied up the results. There was someone who voted late. I went back and checked to see if it changed anything. I don't believe it did. But if it did, I made an update. But I'm pretty sure it didn't. So I thought this would be a great framework for us to sort of summarize TPF around, which I'm glad Jeff did it because it made my life easier. So best reveal or announcement. The Critics' Choice Award was the announcement of Brian Eddy. You voted Brian Eddy on that. Yeah. I voted Bowen Carrots. Because you're wrong. You could argue that. Apparently, I'm wrong as far as the award is concerned. The reason that I thought about it that way is we're not going to see a game from Eddy until 2019. He'll maybe have one game a year at that, which is good. You don't want him rushed. You don't want a complete premiere thing going on. But I just thought the biggest thing that I've had, I like Stern games already, a number of them. I really like what, generally speaking, what Steve Ritchie does. I generally like what John Borg does. And they already have a good programmer in Lyman Sheets. And even there are games that are coded by Dwight and Lonnie that I like as well. That's kind of you. It's true. It's true. I mean, I know some of them get more credit. alright, so Dwight Sullivan likes to blind you with flashers, but I like the rules on a lot of games he's come up with. Yeah, they're enjoyable. Sure, so, and Aerosmith, for example, was a Lonnie D. Ropp game, and I think the code right out of the gate was really good. It did. It's probably been Stern's best code out of the gate. Better than playing it. I think it was Stern's best working code at launch that they've had in a while. Yeah, I'd say that and Ghostbusters was pretty far along when it released. Other than that, they seem to have struggled, which is why they've been hiring so many programmers, I believe. Yeah. They recognize that. But my big problem with Spooky, and we have to set aside Total Nuclear Annihilation because it's essentially an import concept with a person who did the design and the code himself. I don't consider Spooky, or I don't consider TNA a Spooky game. No, just like Pesadiv isn't and Domino's isn't. They make it on contract, but it's not their game. Right, it's not. Their programming I have not been impressed with. and that, I mean, I know a lot of people were upset that Ben Heck left. I wouldn't worry after bringing in Bowen. The reason why you were upset about Ben wasn't his playfield design concepts, but his software stuff. I like some of Ben's concepts on that. I think Bowen will balance better because of his premier skill at playing pinball. Yeah. I just think he knows what, And the thing I like about Bowen, and when we had him on, he really emphasized it because we talked league, a whole bunch about league. What I like about Bowen isn't just that he's a really great pinball player that's fun to watch. He really, really cares about getting people who don't know how to play pinball into playing pinball. Some people who are really good at pinball don't. They seem to only be in it for helping the top 100 people get more money. and that's fine, but that's not what I care about. I want more people to play pinball so pinball can thrive. I think Bowen advances that agenda better than some other people that, it's just a difference of opinion. Yeah, that's why I would see that. And Lyman, when I've heard interviews with Lyman, that is his angle. He's trying to think about things like, okay, you're playing Walking Dead. Look, here's a big well walker. You can attack that You get stuff to happen, and it will help your score, and it makes sense, and it's straightforward and easy to do. And then here is this intricate multiplier shot thing where this feeds, and then you can stack Riot with Horde and do all that. And that's for the top 100 people. He gets that. He wants the game to be fun for beginners, intermediates, and advanced players, and I think Bowen's rules will reflect that as well. I hope you're right. I hope so. I don't think you're wrong. But that's why I voted for that being best for you. Yeah. I can understand that. I said, it's obvious. I've already talked about Brian Eddy and why I voted for him. Oh, yeah. No. It's just, as far as I'm concerned, he's one of the golden gods of pinball design who's been gone and has now returned. Yeah. No, I understand why you all voted for him. I get it. Next category, best custom game. Wizard Blocks is what won. In fact, I don't think anyone voted against Wizard Blocks, but you and I did not vote for this. Every time I went by Wizard Blocks, it was turned off. Yep, same. I wanted to try it, but it was always off. Yep. So I didn't feel comfortable voting because of that. Right. Well, and I didn't have another game in mind, so that's why I didn't. Yeah. So anyway, so that was that. The best presentation, talk, or seminar, Bowen's TNA tutorial won that Critics' Choice Award. We didn't vote in this category. I'm assuming for the same reason. Same reason. We only sat in on one talk. Yeah. Yeah, we probably should have gone to more seminars, but we just... I want to play games. We want to play games. Sorry. Sorry. You said I was a player. All right. Best restoration. This was a tie. The Critics' Choice Award had an equal number of people voting for Jurassic Park, which is that nice... That was a really... The one that won Best in Show for the whole thing. It was a really nice Jurassic Park. I liked it because my brother-in-law saw it on the last... Over at it on the last day as we were walking by it, because I have a Jurassic Park, and He goes, hey, that one looks pretty good, Dennis. Like, oh, yeah. Like, I took it as only just a little bit better than mine. I thought, yeah, they just threw some red, you know, put some red trim, red legs on it. There you go. I got the same game. I just need to do it in red. It's like, yeah, mine is a player's grade. I mean, Playbill's in pretty good shape, but this thing was really nice. And then the joust, which I didn't know that I saw. Yeah. You did not vote for a best restoration. No, I didn't. vote. I played so many, and I know there were some I played that were restorations that I wasn't, I didn't even know they were restorations until the thing popped up. I couldn't make a decision and I just decided it would be better just to leave it blank. I did go ahead, I voted for Skyrocket, which maybe it helped that Nick of the Roanoke Pinball Museum who did that restoration was there beside me and explained to me how to play the game. But just the light show it gave, the sounds, how well, the cleared playfield play, I just, I really, really liked it. I've played Joust before, I don't like Joust, I don't, I know some people just love it, because you get that head-to-head play, I don't think Joust is very fun, so I'm kind of biased against it and yeah the Joust for the Park you know eh eh it had red it had red lights It had red lights Yeah so anyway I was really impressed with the and I know what the efforts Nick did with Skyrocket He did similar with an old Chicago game It wasn even in the right cabinet so I couldn support that I couldn't support that. The light show and the changes to the lighting on Skyrocket made Skyrocket look beautiful. Yes, very much so. The next Great Choice Award is for the best in show overall. The winner was Total Nuclear Annihilation, which is what you voted for. Yeah. I'm in no way surprised. It was my favorite game. Let me get my hand out from in front of my mouth so I talk. It was my favorite game of the show, again, for the second year running. Before, we had the Whitewood. Now, there were like seven of them on the floor, and I could have played it dozens more times than I did and been a perfectly happy man. I can't go into how much I enjoyed that game enough. Yeah. I voted for the Kingpin remake, and the reason is I already knew how good Total Nuclear Annihilation was, so while it was nice to finally play the production model, and I still like it, I was surprised at how much I liked a game that Capcom didn't end up putting out. Yeah. I was really surprised. Valid arguments. It's a valid choice. So that's why I thought, if Circus Maximus is actually able to execute, and I believe they were just on, I've not heard it yet because I'm so far behind on my podcast, but I believe this Flippin' Podcast's latest episode has the Circus Maximus guys on to talk about what their plans are. I only know about them from Pinball Circus, which doesn't seem to have really gone anywhere, and it's been years. But if they're able to actually do this and have new software with it in particular, you know what? I think it's pretty exciting. I don't normally get excited about remakes. So anyway, that's why I picked Best in the Show, but TNA would have been my number two. Biggest surprise of the show, the Critic Choice Award winner is Brian Eddy. You and I both also supported that decision. I think you've already expressed why. The reason why it's not Bowen for me, which I did have as the best reveal, is Bowen has been involved in pinball for so long, I can't say it's surprising. It was just cool that Bowen announced to be even more involved in pinball. The only thing that's surprising is that somebody hasn't picked him up to do that before now. Right. Whereas the pinball resurgence has been going on for years at this point. I would have assumed that if Brian Eddy had wanted back in, he would have been back in before now. Yep. So that he's coming in now I thought truly was a surprise. The thing that everyone will be talking about for the rest of 2018, that is the name of the award category. The winner was, it was a weird, I don't want to sort of phrase it differently. But it was all the same thing. Yeah, mostly, yeah, pretty much. It was manufacturer options slash choices. That's the winner of it, which you voted for. I did, yeah. So what are your thoughts on that? Because I didn't vote that way exactly. I think that the changes in staff at Stern and the additions at Spooky and the games that are coming out and the way JJP has kind of shaped up their thing, I think everything that we're going to see this year, everything is going to be the way the manufacturers are positioning themselves. I know Stern seems to me to have finally really gotten to the point where they're not just acting like, whatever, we're the king. We'll do whatever we want. We ignore everybody else. They seem to actually be doing things now that are reacting to having an actual non-monopoly now. Now that there are other people in the market, they have competitors at this point. They seem to be reacting and making changes in response. And I think between stuff like that, JGP moving forward, Spooky's big launches this year, the way they're going and things, I think everything we're going to see this year that's going to be big is going to be how the manufacturers move forward through this year and branch into next year. Okay. It makes sense. and it was also kind of a cop out because it was very much this is what we're going to be talking about these guys, I can't pick one of them because we're going to be talking about all of them because everyone is having so many major things going on I will own up to the fact that it's like I couldn't pick one so I'm just I'm going with the group well the reason why I didn't go and most of the votes, well obviously it won but like the vast majority of the critic votes as I read them in the spreadsheet were in this category I didn't pick it for a couple reasons. One, that's what everyone says every year, so I'm tired of it. That's so pedestrian. I'm tired of this. Ever since Jersey Jack has come out on the scene, it's been, oh, well, it's so great now. We finally have choices. We finally have choices. Yes! Okay, it's great. Okay, we have choices. So that always gets talked about, even if nothing happened. If no manufacturer had a new game in a year, we'd still say that. So I'm pushing that aside. I thought I need to drill down and think and say, what is the thing, the big thing, not the mix of things that people are going to pick? And I had to reach beyond, even though this was about TPF, as in terms of the TPF Critics' Choice Awards, this did say for the rest of 2018, what's the thing? And I think the thing that gets the most talk will be Stern. and the reason is very much in line with what you said and that is it's like Stern doesn't think they have a monopoly anymore or a way I probably summarized it in my notes when we were doing the award voting was to pull from Star Wars not to imply evaluty to things but it's like I think this is the year where the empire strikes back that's how I see it I think Stern is like enough of this enough of this. We're tired of being on the defensive about the clear coat issues and cabinets that are falling apart and our coat isn't done and all we do is cookie cutter layouts. I think there's like, you know what? Pinball's resurgence has benefited us. We're in position now. We have the new factory fully running. It's time to crush stuff. It's time for the Death Star to roll on out because we should be leading in a lot more categories than just being the most affordable option. Does that make Brian Eddy strong? We can only hope. We can only hope. But there is more than that. So that's why I have to reach outside of TPS. Their recent announcement of bringing on three more programmers, one of which is a high-level player, Tim Sexton. Yep. That's a big deal. It's a huge deal because code is their problem for the last several years. And the big thing that's been stressed is once the code's done, by and large, it's not been like this game's code is awful when it's finished. Even, no matter who the programmer is, most people are like, the games are pretty good. Like, better than 90s games. But you have to get there. And it looked like they were doing it with the Ghostbusters embarrassment, and then it looked like they're not. And maybe that's because of things like Trudeau and you have to dump his game and all this stuff. And games like Batman 66 having to be moved up on the schedule. But it doesn't matter. It looks bad. So them bringing on more staff to address that sends a very clear message. But I think the actions will follow, and that will also send a clear message. You mentioned Arthron, Brian Eddy. That is a huge announcement. huge, especially because there's a lot of thought that we're going to see a retirement coming soon. Yes. And Brian Eddy, even though he's old school in the sense that he was a Bally Williams designer, he was one of the younger ones, like J-Pop was. So, you can get a lot of, we can squeeze Thrawn for a lot of years and get a lot of games out of him. And, I mean, of all the top, like top 10 on Pinside, top 10 on IPDB, solid state games, his percentage is hard to argue with. I mean, other than outside of J-Pop, he's higher, averaged as higher than J-Pop. Yeah. J-Pop is the other big one that hadn't been, he's now with Deep Root. So those have been the two that hadn't been snatched up into a pinball company. Stern doing that, pretty big deal, especially because it plays to what I think they've always sort of tried to imply. We're the Ballywilliams legacy. We may not be the successor company, but we have Steve Ritchie. We have George Gomez. Another thing, Keith Elwin. His game is supposed to come out this year. That's really exciting. The best player in the world. Might not be ranked it right now, but I think it's fair to say that he's the best player pinball has ever had. And people got to see when he was doing his home design game of Archer, how interesting and fun that layout was. People got to play that. So there's a lot of excitement that that addresses the cookie-cutter concern. Because some people may have this concern that Brian Eddy is going to do more Attack from Mars games. And there's nothing wrong with that. But for some people, it's like, well, there is, because you can get an Attack from Mars remake. So there's no reason to have another version of Attack from Mars. There's enough of that. I think that's a little unfair to say that. But you know what? He made the most successful fan layout games. because that's my, I don't think medieval menace, Tucker Mars are the same game, but they're both fan layups. Yeah. There's that. But I think Keith Elwin helps address some of those sort of concerns. Plus we know, as we heard in the seminar with Steve Ritchie, he really got passionate when he was talking about not having to deal with the struggles of a license. You know, that could be very, a lot of people are saying it's going to be Black Knight 3000. So a return of an upper play field, a pretty unique upper play field, concept that Stern hasn't been doing. The Black Knight games are solid. So, I'm kind of, you know, I'm rambling on on it, but that's why I chose Stern. I just think they're like, it's time to put the boot on the throat of all of these upstarts. Because all these other companies, well, they're all targeting the same, everyone else is targeting the same thing. The high-end collector market, and they're putting out a game a year. That's what everyone else is doing. And it's still Deep Root arrives on the scene and does a multiple game release, if we're understanding based off our interview with Robert, then there's a good window here for Stern to be like, you know what, you want uniqueness, you want fun, you want deep code, we have all of that for you. Oh yeah, and we're not $9,000. So, that's why I voted the way I did. I think that's a solid reasoning. Best vendor. The winner there was Double Danger Pinball. They're always good. They are. You didn't vote. I didn't buy anything. No. I thought you bought something for your kids. Yeah, I don't even remember what vendor it was from. I bought some stuffed animals for my kids. Some stuffed Pac-Man stuff. No. So, I don't even remember which the vendor was. There were some vendors there that were really cool. The one with the shed. There was one there that was Retrocade or something like that. I don't remember. I've got the card at home, but they have, like, shadow boxes designed off of pinball machines. Yeah, you kept looking at those. I kept looking at those, but I'm also going to drop $100 on a shadow box. Yeah, everything in pinball is so expensive. It's very frustrating. I did buy a keychain for my work keys, actually, from Double Danger. So I did buy from them. I voted in these little mods. I bought a mod from them as well. And I just like they don't take a huge space. I always think they're really transparent about even like if you want to know what the costs are going into what they get to make the mods they seem really open they give their thoughts about what might look best they don't try and sell you every single thing for the game they'll sell it to you if you want to buy it and they've always been really friendly so I bought from them last year and I thought well I saw something else I was like oh that's really neat and it was even cheaper than the last mod and I was just like you know what I don't feel and I don't feel like I'm being gouged by them. Right. Whereas some of the other, like there were these really cool pop bumper lights. They're so awesome, but I'm not paying $100 a pop cap. I mean, that might be fair, but it's just too much. But I can see with like a TNA, a one pop machine, I can see doing something like that. I can see. I can make me a lot of exceptions on a lot of things. It's just, you know, it's just the way I work with money and how I value it. Yeah. I couldn't pull the trigger to throw out a three-pop can. Yeah, no, I can understand that. I mean, there weren't a lot. We looked at pretty much every vendor. Several times. Yeah. So that was pretty interesting. Best exhibitor. The winner of the Critics' Choice Award was Stern, which I did vote for. I've already given my thoughts. Well, I'll go into the exhibition separate here in a bit. I just want to note that you voted for History of Pinball. I like History of Pinball. I mean, it's just, it's the roots of pinball, and it's seen where it was 75 years ago, more than that now, 85 years ago. Seen the games from the 20s and the 30s, and the ones they're still lovingly worked on, and some of them are still playable, and this and that. It's just, I've enjoyed seeing it every time it's been there. Yeah, it's neat. I went and I played I only played one game unfortunately it was one that probably shouldn't have been listed as playable because you could barely get the ball to plunge it's being a new spring but yeah no it's a cool exhibit I guess I just I only played one game and went to that section once was the issue and maybe I just don't love history enough I don't know it is maybe all those pinball articles I've written on the history of pinball would maybe say something different, but hey, anything's possible. Well, you don't go that old. That's too old for you. To be fair, that is an excellent point. I don't think much of flipperless pinball, and I don't really respect bingos. I don't. That's an interesting thing. And maybe it's because I don't really have any experience with them, but my problem is I don't like the idea, probably because of the damage it did to pinball of the gambling device side. Oh, I can see that. That's a valid point. Even though I listened to Nick Obaldridge's show on EM pingos and pinballs. That stuff's interesting. But I do not have a love for the gambling style devices. And I think it's probably a bias that stems from that they are who screwed up pinball in my view. Yep. And it took just a long time for pinball to recover from the damage of that. and anytime I hear about them it just reminds me of claw machines today and kiddie gambling and redemption in tickets and that's that vein. It's not for the fun of it. It's for that gambling itch and I just don't respect it as much. So that's where that comes from. That's perfectly valid. The reason why, but that's not why I feel I voted again, I didn't vote for history of pinball in this instance. I voted for the Stern setup which was with the Marco section. Yeah, it always is because Stern's never there a fifth. Yeah. It's real weird. I mean, they have some seminar stuff, but they don't have a booth. Right. They don't have a booth. They're always part of the Marco booth. They've got people there, but... But the reason... That was the best laid out... It was wonderful. It was... I will not disagree. It was so cool. They put their... Like their little flower petals, the little hubs, little circles and veins. So it felt like you could... Because you could move around in between them. It didn't feel... It wasn't all linear and packed, and there were plenty of games, and the lines weren't bad. It just, it was, I get it to him for layout alone. Yeah. The layout was just, it was really inviting. It's kind of like the layout right when you first walk in the doors, and they've got the couple sections where they've got four machines back-to-back, so they're forming crosses, little patterns, this and that. So when people are playing, you get up there and you get right beside the machine and actually see what people are doing, not just everything crammed in the minimal amount of space, it gives it a much more flowy feel. And they did a good job. It was good, too. And that's a good comparison to how they set it up right at the entrance of TPF. My only problem is I don't like the entrance of TPF because it's at the entrance, and I think it bottlenecks so bad because people are trying to stand in line. Right, and the tournament area is right there with all the seating for the tournament area right there, so it reduces that even more, and there's the line. Yeah. Yeah, and I know the tournament director likes having that. Actually, I'd probably throw the tournament out of that hall at this point and just broadcast it in to free up more space because that room is packed. It is. Actually, if there's another room big enough to throw it in without being too scrammed in there, I could see throwing the tournament to another room. But I heard the tournament director on another episode, another podcast, mention that he really doesn't want to do that because he wants to give the tournament exposure and have people watch it and all that. So I understand the motivation. Yeah, I understand that. That's not as in the way. That's just a question of better using the space for me to play more games. And it's all about me. And then the final category was which manufacturer, quote-unquote, won TPF in 2018? Every single person said Spooky. They did. You had to. There were, I mean, nobody, there was, yeah, there were big announcements. I mean, my favorite announcement was Brian Eddy out of Stern. JJP had Pirates there. I mean, there was all sorts of stuff, but it didn't matter. Spooky did more of everything. Yeah, no, it was, I mean, in a way, I don't want to downplay, because Spooky really did, they really did a lot. You had the Alice Cooper reveal. You had a ton of Total Nuclear Annihilations all over the floor. you had the announcement that Bowen Kerins is going to be working with them on rules Bowen's TNA game demo so there was so much that they did right that being said no one else really put up a fight so when it comes to which manufacturer Stern didn't have a reveal, JJP didn't have a reveal, Highway didn't have a reveal, Dutch didn't have a reveal Deep Root didn't have a reveal well Well, we're going to talk about them, but they have a game reveal. Okay. That's what we're, that's all I'm going to talk about game reveals. Because Stern has a reveal of Brian Eggman. Right. They're going to have a reveal. They're going to have a game reveal. The only other quote-unquote reveals were Circus Maximus having the Kingpin remake reveal and the Cosmic Cart Racing reveal. Yeah. And Kingpin was awesome, but the presence was very minimal. There was only one game, so they didn't execute well on letting a lot of people try it. the lines are very long because the game plays long because it's so easy and you have people blowing it up like Jeff did and Steve did earlier on the first night and then as we already noted we weren't really left with a good impression on Cosmic Kart Racing as a game so it's just so I think a lot of people just looking at on the reveal angle Spooky Auto wins but they just have so many other things that went their way. Right. So, I mean. Somebody could have put up a fight. Nobody did. Yes. Yep. All right, and the last couple things on TPF is like I started to say, there was information from Deep Root Pinball. Yeah. And other than the fact that they apparently have a ball gag for a logo that I can't unsee now, thanks, Jack Danger. and no one sees it now they had signs they're not signs they're like tapestries or something they had banners up they had banners up and a part of the banner was announcing that the fifth day of Deep Root will be at TPF 2019 yes so now we have a timeline we know when the final part of Deep Root is coming and when we get our first real look will be next year and I think that's going to be a pretty big thing for next year. Yeah. I mean, I just wanted to make sure it was out there that, I mean, it was there so people know. I mean, because that's been a question since day one is what is this five days of Deep Root? When are we going to see the five days of Deep Root? Why does your logo look like a ball gag? I mean, they never know the answer to the last. They may want to keep that as a trade secret. But, yeah, that was a good point. Another thing, I know we noted on a prior episode, but Chicago Gaming, they had pulled back. They were going to announce their third remake at TPF. They announced maybe a week and a half before, two weeks before, that the game wasn't ready, so they weren't going to do it. There were remake games there, but obviously not a new one, so they were off the table. Yeah. And the last thing, so our Instagram followers don't think that I completely forgot about something that I said we were going to do. American Pinball and Houdini. We actually got a chance to play Houdini this year. We did. Which we didn't last year. It was our first, one of our first reveal games or matter games, production games of the list of things. Like we hadn't done a production model TNA or anything. Right. Houdini was our first one. so with American Pinball's Houdini we've been hard on American Pinball we were hard on American Pinball when the announcements first came we were hard on American Pinball last year at TPF sure we've never been hard on the design of the game because we didn't try it right now that we've tried it the truth can be known it's not bad at all I kind of enjoyed it the shots are tight like stupid tight I bricked a lot of stuff because I'm not that great of a player. But it was still fun. And it had a lot of nice toys and items to it. I was really impressed overall. I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did. And I enjoyed it enough to the point that I am, I would say that I am actively interested in Game 2 from American Pinball. Okay. And supposedly, the talk is that it is indeed Oktoberfest, which we all know is a mistake, but we've already talked about that. Right. Yeah, no, I did like, overall, yeah, I liked the game. I'm trying to think, where would I rank, like, did I rank it more than Pirates or not? The things I like about Houdini, standard body, lots of shots, though. They have a lot of shots in it. I think it looks good. I really like how it explained verbally what you needed to do yes so I appreciated that, the screen was clear as well so the animations were a little janky I did not like the animations at all I thought the animations were bad I thought the animations were bad but that's okay they're not all hung up on art the the shots are too tight in my view a game should have a mix of reasonable shots and some tight shots. Yeah. Like a couple tight shots. Like for example Star Trek most of those shots are not tight. No. Except the scoop can be tight on the left. Yep. And or getting back in the shooter lane on the right and the warp ramp. That's the but all the other ramps in the orbits are easy. Yeah. I like most, I like games to have a mix. It doesn't necessarily have to be that easy of a mix, but it should have a mix. Pardon me? No problem. So, in the case of Houdini, it just felt like everything was tight. It did. So, my thinking is, and Pirates of the Caribbean didn't have that problem. Pirates of the Caribbean had a few tight shots. Most of the shots were pretty easy, though, I thought. So, it's like, where do I just fill that down? It seems to me that Houdini is very much oriented towards, much like what you'd expect of Pirates, at least with Pirates of the Price Point, being a home-owned game where you can master and dial in on those shots. I don't think Houdini does well on location because I think people feel like they get ripped off for how much, you know, they put a dollar in and then they're done in 45 seconds. Right. That's my concern. so if I had it in my home I think I'd appreciate it more but I thought it was awfully brutal for what it I want to watch a drunk person play with flipped inverted flippers yeah I tried to do it sober and it didn't work out well yeah the modes and the programming clever and it looks really impressive when you consider the price point which is I believe seven grand So, yeah. Overall, I think Jill Balser did a good job. I think for a first-time entry into, for a company into the pinball scene, it's really good. Yeah. I mean, if you want to compare it that way against, like, Waz or America's Most Haunted, I think it's better than Waz or America's Most Haunted. It is better than America's Most Haunted. I think I liked it better than Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz has a lot going on. I don't enjoy how a lot of it plays. I haven't played a lot of Woz. Right, that's the challenge there. Where would you rank it compared to Full Throttle? Oh, it's definitely better than Full Throttle. Yeah. Full Throttle, I really liked it when we played it at TPF, our first TPF. All this far, it's better than anything Highways put out. Yes. Alien has tight shots too I just It has too many other issues Right Even if you make the shots With Alien I think You're waiting forever For the ball Houdini was better about that Houdini though Is a stop and go game It's not a flow game At all And I do I flavor I favor I favor the flavor I favor the flavor Of flow ball As some people call it I do I just I like flow ball best That's my favorite type Wouldn't want all my games To be flow ball But Anyway airs there anything else that we didn't cover not pinball air related that is important that I can think of I do want to thank everybody who talked to us we've seen several people now that we've met in past years at TPF and they still talk and yet somehow they still talk to us when they see us we met a whole lot of new people we talked to a lot of people this year And I want to thank everybody who stopped to talk to us, everybody who told us that they enjoyed the podcast. Yeah, that was very nice of people. I think most of them spoke with you. I want to say thank you to everyone who didn't talk to me and let me just play games. They were really nice to me. I can't help it. I'm a big, squishy teddy bear. Everybody likes to talk to me. Everyone does like to talk to me. It's very frustrating. So, okay, well, we're done with TVF, but we're not quite done with pinball because you have finally executed. Your master stroke. We've talked about it on here. We ran a Facebook poll, I don't know, a month and a half ago? Yes. Two months ago like that? A long, long time ago. Talking, seeing if people had any interest in the negativity poll. And the answer was, yeah, people like being negative. So we're doing a negativity poll. I put this together, this bit of insanity. We're going huge. We're opening up with It's a 64 game Single elimination Poll So those of you who think that We do an awful lot of polls That take forever to complete Yep, that's our thing Yep, buckle in, you're in for a ride, boyo And this is massive, we have not I have only ever run a 64 Once, the first one And it burned me so bad We didn't do another poll for a long time after that. And they've all been smaller because I can only handle so much. But you have taken it and you have gone. So what's our range here? Our range? I went with the terribly named worst of the fall because as we all know the late 90s was when pinballs declined and we dropped. And the hobby almost completely went away. But in that same time some of the greatest games and pinball came out during that time period. Indeed. Are we going to be picking those greatest games? No. This poll is not about those greatest games. We are picking the worst game between 1994 and 1999. That's the whole layout. So, AFM's in there. That better not make it past round one. If it does, I hate you all. So, how did you do the seeding? I did a straight random seed. Okay. I thought about going through, and I initially started after I compiled my list. I pulled up the rankings on PennSite, and I started looking at it, and then I went, oh, God, no, I can't do this. So I just went with a straight random seed. So everything, there's no ranking. The rankings are a pure random seed, and it's going to be interesting. The important thing to remember, as I had already had a hard time remembering as I wrote everything down and looked at it, we don't want the good game. We want the bad game. We want to know what the bad game is because I want to know what is the worst game. What is the game that we can blame everything on as pinball went into its big decline? Okay. And I had to catch myself because I was making my notes on how I'm going to vote. They stopped with this and I was like, oh, no, I wrote down the good one. I remember. So I guess we'll be walking through these matchups, and we'll give our opinions on which one of these, each one of these is the worst of the worst. Yeah. So, round one matchups. Number one, Revenge from Mars, Bally 1999, versus Popeye Saves the Earth, Bally 94. Dennis? Easy, Popeye. Terrible. It's wide-body trash. At least Revenge from Mars was clever, and it unveiled the potential of the pinball 2000 system and was a pretty good seller for the company. Popeye went along with a price increase, followed Star Trek The Next Generation, was a trash theme that meant nothing in Europe and wasn't fresh anymore in America and resulted in William, Valerie Williams having to drop their conditions on making distributors buy a certain number of units because people were so pissed. It is indeed trash. I'm not going to disagree. Popeye is, I mean... He can't see the ball for like 20% of the time. We played this at TPS. We did play this at TPS. We actually tried to play everything that we did not yet know. Yeah, we couldn't do all of them because they weren't all there. No. But we did a bunch of them. But yeah, no, it's definitely Popeye is the worst of these two games. Okay. Round two. Now, round two, or not round two, but matchup number two. Yeah. Roadshow versus World Cup Soccer okay Roadshow easy you know why? just like Popeye it's more white body trash so don't play well the music's annoying the shots are annoying it actually makes more sense to not use anything but the bottom two flippers on that game all the upper stuff just puts you in risk and World Cup Soccer is John Papadu's best game ever. Maybe that's because half the company came in and helped save it. But it actually shoots well. I mean, other than the stupid MagnaSave on World Cup Soccer, everything else about it is fun. Goal! Yeah. I don't love World Cup Soccer, but I hate me some Roadshow. It might be Lawler's worst game. Wow. That's... Next year, Robocast is back in, of course. Oh, okay. Okay. There we go. Sorry. That's a hard competition. There was a second. We can win in a second. Yeah. This was actually a tough one for me because I enjoy road show. I know you do. And I enjoy World Cup soccer. I did not know you enjoyed that one. Yeah. I enjoy World Cup soccer. It's not a favorite. It's not even my favorite J-pop game. It's my second favorite J-pop game. but I will say that I am going to go with World Cup Soccer is the worst of these two games because of I have a nonsensical love for Roadshow well some people I don't have your inherent wide body anti wide body bias all wide bodies are not basically awful but a wide body can never be an A to your game it's impossible it's geometrically impossible and I could explain why but that's not this segment So, what are you going to do? Your deep dive article, right, about the mathematics of why white body blows? I don't know. I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll collaborate on that one with someone else who knows math and science. I'm excited. All right, number three, Guns N' Roses versus Medieval Madness. I mean, Dennis, do you have to? No, and you know what? This is one of those. Have I played a Guns N' Roses? I think I have once. It's actually a pretty well-respected Dada East game, but it's not Medieval Madness. Right. I have not played Guns N' Roses, and for that reason, I would normally after, like we said in discussions on the Discord, I would abstain, but I have backed away from that for one simple reason. Medieval Madness is the top five pinball one of the top five pinball machines ever made, and If Guns N' Roses was better than it, I would have freaking played it by now somewhere. You know what? I think that's actually a fair point. Number four, Monster Bash versus Pinball Magic from Capcom. Yeah. I have to vote Pinball Magic here. I actually don't love Monster Bash. And Pinball Magic might very well be Capcom's best game. I have played them both, obviously. but Monster Bash is better gameplay and I think the main thing is some of the stuff about the layout of Monster Bash I don't like as much as the other major fan layout games like Me, Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars but it has great rules it does have great rules so software alone carries Monster Bash over Pinball Magic which I think is I don't really like Theater of Magic from J-Pop but I think even with its flaws its software package is better than Pinball Magic's. I think this is a no-brainer also. Pinball Magic is definitely the worst game. So, yay Pinball Magic! You're getting my vote to go on. Excellent. Godzilla, Sega 98 versus X-Files, Sega 97. X-Files is inferior. Really? I think Godzilla's actually sort of fun to play. X-Files, I think, is a boring game to shoot. I don't hate it. I don't hate it. I don't love Godzilla. It been a long time since I played Godzilla but I just think Godzilla a little more interesting I went the other way I think X is a little more interesting I can see that Here the thing Almost every game that came out in the 90s would have probably beaten these two But since they're against each other... I can't fault your pick. This was close for me. I mean, there are a couple things on X-Files that I like. And part of this could be the fanboy in me. A, I love Godzilla. The real Godzilla. not Zilla. And that's what Godzilla is. So just the art package and its pure existence alone makes me loathe that game. And I've loved X-Files since day one. That it came out. So the fanboy part of me is going to automatically give more weight to X-Files being a better game. That's fair enough. Godzilla goes in the trash. Godzilla goes on. We'll see what the public thinks. We'll see what the public thinks. I think both of them shoot about the same amount of fun to me. Though I do like the little FBI scoop pop-up thing on X-Files. Okay. Freddy and Nightmare on Elm Street. Which I've played one time. And Junkyard. I'm abstaining on this one. I don't remember ever playing Freddy. So it hasn't sat with me. And I don't really like Junkyard. So I don't know which is worse. I know. I have played Freddy one time, and that was it. And I can't make a decision either because I don't feel one gameplay. I mean, if Junkyard was like Medieval Madness, one of the greatest games ever, of course it's like, oh, I'll make this one, but I can't on this one. I'm abstaining as well. Rescue 911 versus Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I'm learning to vote Frankenstein on this. I actually had not played it until this latest TPS It bored me It was so repetitive The calls were repetitive I thought it was way too easy The call outs got to the point where I wanted to turn the volume off And so I I think Rescue 911 Is a little bit better of a game Because I think it's a little more difficult To successfully shoot That's probably arguable But I think Frankenstein plays way too easy And as annoying as it is Yeah. I don't know. I don't have a ton of time on Rescue 911. It's pretty much all virtual. Yeah. But, hey, at least I've played it multiple times. I'm abstaining. I've not played 911 at all. Okay. So, easy. I'll stay out of that one. All right. Twister versus Stargate. Twister. Yeah, Twister. Yeah. Stargate. I enjoy Stargate. Stargate's not on my short list, but I would not mind having a Stargate in a collection. Yeah, I don't love Stargate from what I've played of it. The brands are so steep. I think properly tuned is probably... It's got a lot of depth. I've played a Stargate that was well-tuned, and it was... I wasn't having too many problems over that. I don't hate Twister, but I don't think it's anything special. Yeah. Now this one, the next one could be a little rough. Shack Attack versus Starship Troopers? I'm abstaining. I don't believe I've ever played Shaq. I've actually heard it's got some cleverness to its code. I, you know, I've played Starship Troopers though. I kind of like it. But, yeah, I'm going to abstain on it. I don't feel strongly enough about Starship Troopers to overweigh the fact that I just don't know Shaq. I'm the same. I've never touched the Shaq. I've never even seen this track except for pictures online. So, I'm just going to abstain on that one. Let's see. Dirty Harry and Flipper Football? Abstaining. I've never heard of Flipper Football. Yeah, there wasn't a whole lot made from what I recall when I looked it up. I had to look at it multiple times to decide if it was even going to go into the poll. Yeah. But I've not played either. Dirty Harry's fun. Is it? Yeah. I've not played either, so I'm staying out of that one. Batman Forever, Sega 95 and Strikes and Spares, Gottlieb 95 I'm saying I've not played either of them yeah, I've not played either so at first I thought I had until I got a good look at the cabinet on Batman and it's like nope the Batman I played wasn't that one so Demolition Man vs. Big Hurt I'm saying I've never played Big Hurt either Demolition Man is a wide body that I actually like Yeah, Demolition Man is a solid game. I really enjoy Demolition Man. I can explain to you why it works as a white body, too, but that's not the same. Barbed Wire versus No Fear Dangerous Sports. Barbed Wire. Barbed Wire might win this whole thing. The Barbed Wire we played was so terribly tuned. Yeah. But that said. Yeah. it might be the worst pinball machine I've played in my entire life. There was a barbed wire at TPF. It was the first opportunity I had to play it. And it, the way that game works, and I already hate this feature, is you plunge and a scoop will fire out your initial feed. And that scoop was aimed straight down the middle. You had to nudge. You had to aggressively nudge to get the ball on a clipper. So that's what I did. Because, hey, you know what? I'm playing pinball. I'm going to work around that. Setting that aside, because I know that, there's no way the game was meant to do that. That was wrong. No. That a retailer was trying to sell the game for over $3,000 was a disgrace. That was terrible. But that was another topic. That's another discussion. The issue is, even when I got control of the ball and started shooting, nothing about that game felt fun. The shots fell off. It was just like things would happen. It was... I see when I play Barbed Wire why so many people hate Gottlieb. That's what I always thought. No Fear is a fun game. No Fear is a fun game. Barbed Wire felt like everybody's boiled up hate was just condensed into a pinball machine and then they sold it. I think my brother-in-law, after we played Barbed Wire, expressed it as a paraphrase that after playing that game, it's probably good that Gottlieb went out of business. You know, that game could have easily made me hate Gottlieb if I didn't know they were already dead. Yeah. Easy pick there. Apollo 13 versus Johnny Numata. Apollo 13. It doesn't shoot well. It's got that cool gimmick which I never get to activate because it's designed to be earned over multiple games. Right. Johnny is pretty good. Johnny's claw sucks, but it's got good layout. It's a pretty fast game. There are things I like about Apollo 13, but it's not better than Johnny in any way, shape, or form. So, definitely Apollo 13 wins that one. Mario Andretti vs. Independence Day. I'm abstaining. I haven't played this. I'm abstaining because I haven't played Mario Andretti. Was there an Independence Day TPL? Two years ago. Okay. I don't think I played it. I did. I played it like two or three times. Okay. It's not bad. It's very, it felt generic. So, NBA Fastbreak versus Safecracker. Safecracker. Really? Yes, yes. I actually, I think both of these are good games. So, I'm not going to disagree on that. I think they are both good games. But I think Safecracker is, I think it's overly restrictive. From a gameplay angle, I think it's very limiting. Obviously, it's a very small play field comparatively, and so that presents certain challenges. But I just think that the gameplay angle on NBA Fastbreak is better. It's better integrated. I like how you score the baskets. I think it's really clever. Safecracker is clever as well. I just think when there's long segments where the ball isn't getting – they're both good, and I just think NBA plays better. And as you could probably tell from my really, I think NBA is the worst game. Not by a lot. I enjoyed both of them. I think they're both fun. I think the gimmicks and interesting little things in Safecracker that make Safecracker what it is makes it the better game. Sure. No, I can see that. I know a lot of people love it. Yep. I enjoy it. And I know people who have spent incredible amounts of time playing Safecracker. I haven't spent nearly as much as a lot of people, but I still think it's better. Not by a lot. I'm not saying it's a blowout here, but it is definitely, NBA is definitely continuing on in my vote. Okay. 17, Break Shot versus Lost in Space. Lost in Space. Danger, Will Robinson. Danger. Holy crap. This was boring. This is boring. All it is is multiball city. multiball after multiball, a boring sequence of multi-balls. Breakshot's actually pretty fun and hard. Yeah. I've never, until this TPM, I've never played Breakshot. All I knew was it was, a lot of people sort of viewed it as Capcom's street-level game. Yeah. That they, it's a single-level DMD game. That's one of the few DMD games, I think, that still regularly can be had for under $2,000 in this, like it and Maverick, really. Yeah. And Sharkies, but are seen as good players. after playing it, I was like, yeah, actually I see why this is so addictive. Lost in Space? No. Worse than the movie? I want to tell you my Lost in Space story. Okay. You weave me a yarn. I didn't see Lost in Space unless it was in theaters. But it had Joey from Friends. I know it had Joey from Friends. When Lost in Space came out, I rented the movie from, I don't remember where it was from. Blockbuster. It wasn't Blockbuster. It was like haste. You wouldn't support them. But I rented that movie. And I sat down and I watched that entire movie. And it ended. And I stared at the TV. And I was like, that couldn't have just been real. And I hit the rewind button because it was a bloody VCR. And once it was done rewinding, I re-watched the movie because I couldn't believe that they had so much good talent in that movie that could put out such a crap fest. I actually watched this movie twice in a row. It had moments. Not very many of them. Gary Oldman. And every single moment was Gary Oldman moment. Yeah. But the pinball machine had no moments. I even did the thing where you trigger all of the multi-balls. Yeah. God, that game was so bad. So congratulations, Lost in Space. You continue on. Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Who can really dispute it? We did a solid state billiards games, Paul, and break shot fared very well in it, so I think it'll be okay here. Yeah, no, break shots are okay to be eliminated. Yeah, break shots are... I know, it's so hard to remember. I remember B negative. B negative, we want the worst game. We don't want the best game. You did show a lot of hate there. Yeah, there was some hate. Next one. Royal Rumble WWF versus Cactus Canyon. Dennis. Yes. Okay. I'm going to go Cactus Canyon. I did not play Royal Rumble until this TPF. And you should be extra impressed because that is a wide body. Mm-hmm. But I thought it shot really well. And I thought that it was fun. The modes were fun. It felt like there was a lot to do, and Cactus Canyon is a fan layout game, but it has no software. And this is when Cactus Canyon continued. So, there's just, there's no, there's nothing to Cactus Canyon. It's just like, it's the last traditional pinball game Williams made, and it has potential, but they didn't really exploit the potential. It's like, I mean, I'm not a wrestling fan or anything, but it's just like, no. I'm sorry, I'm voting Cactus Canyon. I think it's worse. I think it's a worse game. I really, really, really enjoy Cactus Canyon. Continued. Cactus Canyon, normal. I still enjoy. But not as much as Royal Rumble. Which surprised me. Part of it is nostalgia, because I'm like you. I played it. When we played it at TPF, it was the first time I ever played it. That game is bloody fun. And then the nostalgia of going, I remember these wrestlers from when I was a kid, was also a lot of fun. Because we were sitting there looking over your shoulder trying to remember. I remember that guy, but I can't remember his name. But then when I actually got up and started shooting it, that game is a lot of fun. Like, way more fun than a wrestling game has been. After being burned by WWE, which is just like a heart stab of terribleness, this game is awesome. Yeah. It's one of those, again, it's one of those games where I've heard some people say it's Daddy East's best. There's certain, like, the Daddy East round to go into it, you know, obviously everything's very subjective. and there's some people that say something like Jurassic Park, but most of the ones I hear are Tommy, Royal Rumble, and Guns N' Roses. And I had never played this before, and so I was just like, actually, wow, they used the space really well, and it's shot still strong enough. So you see, there are exceptions in wide bodies. Yep. Especially for me to go against something that is so flowy as Cactus Canyon. I know. It's amazing. But, yep, Cactus Canyon is the worst game in this choice. Yeah, and you're all there. Make sure you vote for it to go on. Yeah. South Park versus the Flintstones. South Park. That's actually easy, but I don't like either of these games. South Park is annoying, though. South Park is so annoying that... I don't like how Flintstones shoots. Yeah. Flintstones isn't a great game, but it doesn't make me actively hate it. South Park got to the point where when my local breakfast, my local bar and grill where I go to for breakfast had a South Park, and it was always in call-out mode, and it was setting there, this and that, and attract mode, and yada, yada. I started setting on the opposite side of the building just so I wouldn't have to listen to it. And even then it annoyed me. So, yeah, no, South Park is definitely the worst game out of that combo. Yeah, easy. Theater of Magic versus The Who's Tommy you know I just mentioned Tommy and how unexpected it is so for me this is easy I'm going to vote theater I think it's too easy to exploit doing the left orbit I think the modes are meaningless and are easily timed out I think it's a basic fan layout and fan layouts have been better executed by better designers Tommy arguably being DE's best best game. I think it's fun to shoot. I think it's a lot harder game to play. And even though it's just based on the musical and not actually on the movie, I don't care. I just think it plays pretty well. I agree with you completely. Theater magic all the way. Because not only was Tommy had some fun shots and this and that, but when you were playing and I was just watching, there was some fun stuff going on on the DMD in Tommy as well. So yeah, it's definitely the better game. So theater's going on. Yeah, definitely Star Wars Trilogy vs. Congo Star Wars, oh god, this Star Wars sucks, it's hard and Congo's fun There would have been a pretty rough game up against Star Wars for Star Wars to not win that huge hole in there for the Starluck pit and you're like what is this, a Gottlieb? Why does it have these massive huge holes that don't line up properly I mean like how Super Mario does But anyway, yeah, no, easy. Yeah, no, this was real easy. Star Wars is definitely the worst game. Okay, Goldeneye versus Maverick. This one was hard for me because I like both of these games. I'm voting Maverick, I think, for a couple reasons. One, I think Goldeneye is a bit more clever and fun to shoot. I really like loading the ball into the satellite. I think it's a fun shot. Maverick, I think, is a little bit clunky, and I hate that Steamboat ball lock. It's so slow. That is my least favorite thing about Maverick. You think the game's lost your ball because you're sitting there waiting for the thing. But overall, both are good games. But no, I got to vote. I enjoy both. I'm actually going to disagree with you on this one. I enjoy Maverick a little bit more than Goldeneye. most of it comes less from a pinball perspective and once again like I'm willing to be bent by the art and by everything else but the simple fact that seeing the Mavericks at TPF this year had me singing that bloody song like all weekend than actually sitting down and playing it it was enjoyable I enjoy both games I just think I would rather play a Maverick so So, GoldenEye's going on the list. Okay. Let's see what the peoples decide there. Attack from Mars and Space Jam. Yeah. Actually, I've never played Space Jam. I've only ever seen footage of it. I don't care. I'm voting for it. I'm exactly the same as you. I'm not allowing Attack from Mars to move on on this. Nope. Yep. It doesn't matter. I mean, there is not a pinball game in the world that could be put up against Attack from Mars and not win in this round. because Attack from Mars is the best pinball machine ever, in my opinion. Tales of the Arabian Nights, Jackpot. I'm actually going to vote Jackpot on this. I like both of these games. Both of them have rules problems that I take issue with. There's some of the gambling-esque stuff that Jackpot does that I don't like competitively, and Tales is not a good competitive game. No. but that being said I think Tails has some creative shots a good theme integration and look to it and Jackbot is just a pinbot clone pinbot's better so I'm not supporting it I'm going to vote for Jackbot to move on I vote for Jackbot to move on because I think Totem is J-Pop's best game I don't think it's a great game but I think it's J-Pop's best game I used to think it was his best game and I mean Jackbot, yeah I would rather play Bri than Jackbot. I would definitely rather play Penbot than Jackbot. So, yeah. Okay. There we go. The Lost World Jurassic Park and Champion Pub. I'm going to abstain on this. I've actually never gotten a chance to play Lost World Jurassic Park. Was there one two years ago? I don't recall playing it. I don't remember playing it. So I'm going to abstain because I hear some people hate it. Layout is very clearly trying to steal Attack from Mars' layout, so that you'd think would be a positive. I know it has a super slow ball lock, though, which would annoy me, much like how Mavericks does. Matt said, I despise Champion Club. It is like the clunkiest piece of crap I have ever played. But I'm going to abstain because it is possible for a Lost World to be worse. Yeah. I've actually played Lost World, but I think I've only played it like one time. But unlike you, I actually really enjoy Champion Pub. I think Champion Pub is a very interesting take on pinball that tries to do something very different, and I enjoyed it. And, yeah, so I'm going to go with Lost World on this one. Okay. Airborne and Viper Night Drive. Oh, staying on it, I don't know Airborne. I've never played Airborne. I'm hard-pressed to see something being much worse than Viper Knight driving, but there are worse games out there than Viper Knight driving, so I'm going to abstain. I will abstain. Star Wars Episode I and Baywatch. Star Wars again. Another Star Wars to bite the dust. I think it's bland, especially when you compare it to the first Pinball 2000 game, Revenge from Mars. Baywatch is awesome. You'd almost think it was a white body with as many shots as it has. It's got tons of shots, so that's why I'm voting Baywatch. I think they're both bad games. Baywatch may be a corny game, but I think it shoots pretty well. I'm going to agree with you. Star Wars Episode I is the worst game. But I'm not going to say they're both... I'm not going to say that Baywatch is awesome. I'm not going to say that Baywatch is awesome. I'm telling you, man. If you were a player, you'd agree. The shark fin flipper. You've got to get you to the shark. The nonsensical... A good challenging shot. Yeah, no. Shoot for the tower, man. Episode one is the worst game. I will agree with you on that. I'm telling you, we probably won't have people write in, but if they do, they're going to be saying that I am right, Baywatch is actually awesome. Not just good, not just okay, awesome. But you're entitled to be wrong. That's fine. And now for another one that most people would consider hard because it's between two relatively popular games, Indy 500 and The Shadow. Please. Indy 500 is easily worse. Oh, yeah, I know. Indy 500 is a crap game. I've gone on the ranch how many times right now. Everybody knew I was going to vote for this. Shadow is Shadow. Shadow is all sorts of awesome. It is. How can you not like Shadow? Indy might be the worst racing game there is. I know. I'm not sure. There are some bad ones. There's something like Mario Andretti I haven't tried. Right. No, no, Indy's definitely the worst game here. Scar, here's Scar. Scared Stiff and Harley Davidson. Harley. Boring. Holy cow. Yeah. Boring. Oh, yeah. Scared Stiff, I think, is a very easy game to, quote, unquote, win, but it's fun. No, Scared Stiff is fun. I enjoy Scared Stiff. So, Harley's definitely the winner here. Corvette versus Cirque Voltaire. I'm going to insert Voltaire on this. And the reason is I don't really like Corvette very much, I have to admit. But Circus, I hate it. It's stupid. It's a weird layout with super steep ramps that the flippers, those Williams flippers can't often make. It's annoying. It's got plastic crap all over the place. You have those balloons and all that. Oh, look, a pop-up pop bumper. How clever. Pop that pop. Yeah, it's just unfun. It's unfun. It's theme integration and art are awesome, but that game is lame. The art is the only thing Sir Voltaire has going for it. I hate the game. I despise the game. Congratulations, Sir Voltaire. You get to continue on, in my estimation. Corvette does have a couple. I like the Revit, when you're revving the ball up in the thing, building towards it. It's all right. It's all right. I don't care for it. It's not a great game, but it's better than Sir Voltaire. No Good Gophers versus Waterworld Waterworld I actually would argue this isn't necessarily super easy I think Waterworld has a claim to having a better geometry than Gophers which aside from Railroad Tycoon and Roadshow is Pat Lawler's worst design Pat Lawler's got a lot of worse designs but that said I think with the rules, which aren't even great on Gophers, it's still, it's just more enjoyable than Waterworld was. I don't have a ton of time on Waterworld. I just, I don't hate Waterworld like barbed wire, but, you know, I mean, and competitively, I don't mind drawing Gophers. It's actually one of my better games because I find it overly easy to shoot. That, yeah, so it's actually closer than it sounds, but no, Waterworld should go on. It's just not, it's just not a good, it's just not a good game. I'm going to agree with you. Waterworld's not a good game. I mean, no good gophers is at least fun. It's not wonderful, but I don't mind playing it. It's, yeah. You know, we've agreed a lot this time compared to some of these polls. We've had a lot of agreements this time around. Yeah, I think I'm, I mean, these are objectively right answers in this case. This one's going to get harder trying to figure out which is the worst game. As we go along, we'll probably see more splits. Now for the last one. The final part. World Challenge Soccer versus Whodunit. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and abstain because I have not played World Challenge Soccer. I'm abstaining. I haven't played either. I've not played Whodunit in person. I've played it virtually. Here's where this one gets interesting. World Challenge Soccer is on my list to buy. I've been watching for one throw long. You haven't played it. I know. But it's a Gottlieb. It will be cheap enough that I can put it on the list and not have to play it. Here's the thing. World Challenge Soccer is the game that is the car hop layout from the Street Level series. They tacked on the ramp and it was a two-week turnaround for Jon Norris and went into production. I've watched video of it, several videos of it. And I think it, because it shoots like Connor Hop, which had a few things I didn't like. Connor Hop would be like my number three on street level games. Yeah. Next to Hoops and Silver Slugger. But in terms of the rule set, I think this rule set looks interesting. But I've heard some people say World Challenge Soccer is terrible. So I don't know. Whodunit, I don't like the rules at all. But anyway, so that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I haven't played either at all, so it's a full-on abstention from me. Okay, well, there'll be a link, and people will be able to go and make their votes. Yeah. And then we'll move on. And there'll be half as many next time. Yes, we'll be able to go through it much faster. Just remember, and it's the hardest part to remember, don't vote for the game you like. Vote for the game you hate. Yes, it's about hate. This is about hate. Let the hate flow. Well, we're almost done, but this would be our video game segment, and I do want to briefly talk about Mad Max. Yes. Because I finally started it. I finished up South Park for the last episode, and then back from TPF I stuck in Mad Max, and I thought we could maybe discuss just really, really briefly, because I know you've played it. Interesting. There are parts about it I like, and there are parts about it I don't. What parts do you like, and why is it harpooning a guy standing in the back of the truck? dragging them behind you? I actually have not done a lot of that. I've done a lot of harpooning, but I've been mostly harpooning people and then just flinging them off of roofs or whatever. That's a good one, too. So, yeah. What I like is doing the car stuff in a lot of ways. Yeah. At first, I was a little concerned because the car handles so poorly, but they've done that on purpose so that as you get the upgrades, the handling gets better and better. Yep. So that's really, really neat. It feels like the Mad Max world So that's really nice from the sandbox perspective The combat's fine It reminds me of the Arkham games Where you're doing a lot of melee combat And that plays to the motif Of the post-apocalypse There's not ammo everywhere sort of thing So those elements I like I don't like how repetitive All the side stuff is It's very collectible heavy And I don't think they masked it as well as some other sandbox games do and the Hunchback guys starting to annoy me. It seems that a lot of those open world style games have that repetitive thing. Even like the Saints Row games get that way. I just think Saints Row hides it better because their little repetitive things are still super fun. Having to change vehicles to get to the buggy with the dog in the back and zip out the mind. They've added a few things that are a little tedious. And there are a lot of collectibles around But they made everything pretty reliant on scrap So it's like you want to upgrade your character It's scrap, you want to upgrade the base It's scrap, and you want to upgrade the car It's scrap, and it's just like okay It's okay, it's actually pretty No, no, I enjoy it It's got some fun missions It's got some fun stuff I love any of the convoy stuff Where you run up and it's so much fun So exciting trying to pick through your escorts And take out tankers and stuff There's all sorts of stuff I love about that game But yeah, all those open world games have, not all of them, but most of them have to get to a point where they're repetitive on that type of stuff. So anyway, if y'all are looking for a sandbox game, this one's pretty inexpensive at this point. So it's definitely one to consider. Yeah. It's got a lot going on to it. So we made it. We're at the end. Yep. Unless you want to talk about Brigitte. Oh, a little Overwatch talk. Yeah. Let's go and slip her in real quick. Let's slip her in here at the end. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard her name pronounced so many ways. Brigitta, Brigitta, Brigitta. Brigitta, which is not right. No, I'm pretty sure it's Brigitta. Brigitta. Anyway, Brigitta is the newest. This is an Overwatch Talk, people, so go ahead and turn it off if you're done with it. Yeah, if you're done, you'll know the rest of our normal crew. Let me get to that real quick. They finally, they added a new character, and she's live now. She's not in competitive yet. Not until season 10. But she's a new support character. Her name's Brigitta. and supports are usually healers and that is one of her, it's basically her passive. She has to do melee damage to emanate an AoE heal. She also has the ability to put armor on people and does a heal slash armor ultimate ability. She's like a blend of Lucio and Dixie Reinhardt. She has her own shield that's not big. It's just a personal shield. You ain't gonna be protecting anybody behind you, that's for sure. Yeah, but it does protect you really, really well. Yes. So, it's an interesting blend. I'm wondering if they're going to start doing more of these what I consider hybrid characters. Yeah. Everything I've seen, and from the videos I've seen, and from what little bit I've played of her, I think she is more in a position to be treated as an off-tank than as a pure support. Yeah, I did some No Limits with her. Teams that were really heavy with her. Yeah, it's odd. I don't... You know, it's... I don't love her mechanics yet. No, but mechanics are perfect at work. Well, I mean, I had a lot more fun with Moira than I had with Rosita so far. Her functionality, it's very much... I think Lucy has a good comparison here because she needs to be in the thick of it Or she's not going to be any use. Right. She can't be out flanking. She needs to be with the tanks or else. I mean, there was a point where I was playing a tank and we had four Brigittas and they wouldn't stay with me, so I had no healing. And I was getting really tilted. Yeah, I can see that. So, and the other team, they would. They stay clumped. She's a support who can take care of herself, which is something a lot of the supports have an issue with. So, I think we'll start seeing her in the mix at the lower levels a lot. I don't see her being used in the pros team. I don't think so. This is very, I'm being very productive, but I just, she just doesn't stop the dive. No, and I think she was kind of designed with some anti-dive stuff built into it. Yes, maybe she will, maybe she will have some functionality. See, my thought is... The ultimate doesn't seem as good as the other supports, either. Right, it doesn't. Her stun abilities, her shield bash, and the big old rocket flail launch out thing are nice. they have some decent uses for stopping dive and for just repositioning people and stunning people she's got a lot of kit that I would think would make her a good stay with the or help protect the supports but that's totally not the place she should be, she's got to be a front line fighter she's got to be in the front and almost any self respecting team would never run more than two supports anyway so what's she going to do hang out with then, or she's got to be up doing damage or she's not healing. Right. So she's got to be in the front. I don't see where, I mean, she doesn't have a spot in the dive. She doesn't have the mobility to have a spot in the dive. Does she have a spot in a triple tank composition replacing one of the off tanks? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Or I could even see if you were going to do like what they call the death ball style on a combat. I think death ball is a requirement. And, well, I don't know. Because Because you basically... Corina Moira? Corina Moira that you're giving up the Lucio for it. And that's what I don't know how the pros will evaluate it. Do you give up speed? Do you give up the speed boost and an AoE heal that works even if you're not doing damage? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Because of the armor. I mean, she throws armor packs pretty quick. But I don't think you give up a third tank, so I think you have to give up Lucio. Because Moira is just too good of a healer to give up in a clump. Yeah. But you can't give up Moira. I do think we'll see some teams experiment with it. I think we will. I think we'll definitely see some stuff. Now, I did, the other day on the rotating arcade, Mayhem was up. Which is, you know, everybody's got like double health. Right, right. I hate that mode. And I played it. Because it can be fun, but you get tilted real quick. Holy crap. She is broken in that mode. She can stunlock anybody. Shield bash recharges so fast, you don't come off the stun before she's shield bashing you again. Yeah. So, that sucked. Yeah. But again, that's just a fun thing. None of the trailers are balanced for that mode. Right, nothing's balanced for that mode. That's why I don't play it. I had an overtime that lasted almost 15 minutes once. It was just awful. Yeah, I mean, I've had several of those in that mode. I do like there has been some rumors and talk going around about creating a quick play or arcade mode or like a modification to Mystery Heroes mode that uses competitive rules for map play in Mystery Heroes or quick play. I like the concept because I prefer the map rules and, you know, both teams play both sides, yada, yada. I prefer that, that you get out of competitive. But some days I don't want to play competitive. I would rather play, you know, a quick play. Or, of course, I play a ton of Mystery Heroes because I think it's hilarious. I would like to see that option. And I know that there's rumors of that coming out of Blizzard now. Okay. Interesting. Jeff has at least made comments about doing a competitive Mystery Heroes. Okay. I wasn't aware of that. That's interesting. Yeah, it was in a tweet a week or two ago. So, because I really like the competitive rules. I like the way the competitive rules work. It makes the games longer, obviously, because you're playing twice as long. But it is something I would like a lot more. So. Okay. All right. Well, if you guys want to reach out to us, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com, or you can always follow us on Facebook, facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitter and Instagram at eclectic underscore gamers. We have a lot of stuff there that we threw onto the Instagram while we were at TPF. It's, of course, going to go not dormant, but it will definitely go less. Most of what you're going to be getting for a while is just stuff from local tournaments and pictures and videos of my mug. I'm so sorry. It's just a way of things. I know today is supposed to be when Stern announces something about their next game, and it was not known when we started recording. and looking now, it's still apparently not known. So I guess that will be the big news next time when we are back in two weeks. Until then, see y'all. See ya.