Don's Pinball Podcast Sunday Livestream 8/24/25

Don's Pinball Podcast Live Streams (YouTube)·video·1h 37m·analyzed·Aug 25, 2025

Analysis

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TL;DR

Don discusses Star Trek TNG repairs, lifting equipment, and speculates on pinball game builds and licensing.

Summary

Don broadcasts his Sunday livestream from the road in Ohio, discussing his current road game (Star Trek: The Next Generation), troubleshooting technical issues with fuses and connectors, and exploring various pinball equipment and game ideas. The conversation covers game restoration, lifting equipment options, Multimorphic Portal availability and design philosophy, Pinball Brothers manufacturing concerns, and speculative projects like custom Star Wars cabinet builds and potential Minions pinball.

Key Claims

Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of the most temperamental games of the Bally Williams series, along with Twilight Zone.
medium confidence · Don states this based on information from people who know the game, during his discussion of troubleshooting TNG issues.
Multimorphic Portal has had zero units delivered to consumers between March and August, despite scheduled August end-of-month shipping.
medium confidence · Don claims 'since March, there has been not one Portal that has made it to a consumer and we're in August and supposed to ship by the end of August.'
Evil Dead sold approximately 70% of its production units at Texas Pinball Festival, then experienced slower sales afterward.
medium confidence · Don states he was watching sales patterns during TPF because he was invested in one unit he wanted to sell out.
Pinball Brothers games are manufactured by Euro Pinball Corp. in Milan, Italy, not by Pinball Brothers themselves.
high confidence · Don clarifies the manufacturing relationship during discussion of Pinball Brothers quality concerns.
The Star Wars Home Edition playfield is full-scale but the cabinet dimensions are reduced.
high confidence · Don discusses the specifications of the Star Wars Home Edition sold at Costco, noting full-scale playfield with downsized cabinet.
Predator (Padretti game) has only 150 units left in production and has not yet appeared at major shows.
medium confidence · Don speculates on low Predator availability and sales based on the production cap and lack of show appearances.
Heavy Metal pinball machines are extremely rare, with only about 100 units existing.
low confidence · Don mentions this during discussion of alternative classic games but provides no source verification.
Simpsons Pinball Party remake is not happening due to licensing issues with voice actors and Disney/Fox contracts.
medium confidence · Don speculates that licensing costs would be prohibitively expensive for manufacturers like Spooky.

Notable Quotes

“The community is why this game works. If it was just me, I'd be sitting here with a game and like an old electrical manual that I couldn't read.”
Don@ 8:02 — Emphasizes the collaborative nature of the pinball community in problem-solving and knowledge-sharing.
“Jaws is number one. Elwin, I mean, can we just put that to bed? Godzilla's great. Kong shoots great, but when you really consider everything that's in there, the theme integration, the modes, come on.”
Don@ 3:30 — Personal opinion ranking Keith Elwin's games; shows reverence for Jaws as Keith's best work.
“You can't create the FOMO until people just want to play the game first, right?”
Don@ 19:25 — Key insight on Predator's marketing strategy and why limited production announcements fail without demo access.
“What if Okay, this is Don thinking I take all the components and everything out of that cabinet, toss the cabinet, I go buy a full-size cabinet...and then just move all the components over, put better speakers in there, a bigger screen, redo a translite, and make myself my own custom Star Wars home edition.”
Don@ 23:08 — Creative DIY cabinet modification idea showing custom build philosophy.
“There's nothing stopping me from grabbing a cabinet, throwing in there...Why not just buy the commercial Star Wars? Because I have the commercial Star Wars and I am a crazy person.”
Don@ 24:50 — Self-aware humor about motivations for elaborate custom projects driven by passion rather than logic.
“I would love a heavy metal. I think only a hundred of them exist.”

Entities

Donperson Star Trek: The Next GenerationgameJeff (Jeffpinball.com)personBrad JenzpersonJenga (Retro Jeno)personMichael BernardpersonKeith Elwinperson Multimorphiccompany

Signals

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product_concern: Star Trek TNG exhibits multiple technical failures (failed boot, blown fuses, coil firing issues) requiring extensive troubleshooting and remote technical support.
high · Don spent a full day diagnosing TNG issues, required multimeter purchase, blown 3-amp fuses, ribbon cable connection problem. Confirmed as notoriously difficult machine by community.
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design_innovation: Community member (G Money) built custom rotatable arcade cabinet with 55-inch 4K screen capable of playing both vertical pinball and horizontal multicade formats with Star Wars theming.
high · Don extensively discussed custom cabinet design, praised functionality and aesthetic appeal, requested more details and photos for sharing.
$
market_signal: Multimorphic Portal experiencing zero consumer deliveries over 5-month window despite August ship-date commitments, suggesting severe production bottlenecks or design changes.
high · Don states 'since March, there has been not one Portal that has made it to a consumer and we're in August and supposed to ship by the end of August.'
?
rumor_hype: Community interest in Simpsons Treehouse of Horror as potential Spooky Pinball game concept, but licensing barriers prevent execution.
medium · Don discusses licensing complexity with voice actors, Disney, Fox contracts making $5M license cost prohibitive for manufacturers like Spooky.
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competitive_signal: Evil Dead achieved 70% unit sales at Texas Pinball Festival with continued slow trickle post-show; establishes FOMO-first-play pattern for new game adoption.

Transcript

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0:21

Welcome everybody. Hey, it's Sunday. Hey, it's Sunday and we're here. Microphone check. Make sure audio is still good. It looks great on my end from here on the road. Everybody's already in chat, man. We start the fivem minutee buffer. I think I have time to like run out to the car or something, but like there's no way everybody's already here.

0:44

Please tell me you guys can hear me. And then we'll get into it. I've been burnt before with this stuff. All right. We good? We good? Give me thumbs up. Give me some cheese. Give me some grease. Give me some silver pinballs. Yes, dude. Yes. All right, let's get into it. Look at this behind me. I got my road game. We're out here on the road traveling from work currently from the great state of the Midwest, Ohio, the other other Keystone State. And I figure perfect loud and clear. Love it. So, my road game for this trip is Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not what I left the house with. I left the house with a wipeout and I came back with a stunner. A stunner courtesy of Jeffpinball.com. Their logo is right down right down here. Get yourself a game. Use the code. Get yourself some shirts. We got new WOB shirts coming out. By the way, I got the uh the logos coming in. The shirts are in. If you like 8bit nostalgia and arguably the greatest runand gun 8-bit game ever, freaking Contra, the origin of the Konami code. We took a riff on that and did a logo and it's blown me away. Michael Bernard did an awesome job. I hired him. He's an artist. He's worked with Stern. You know him from such games such as Rush, right? He did all the versions of Rush. Did all the versions of Jaws, Elwin's arguably greatest game as far as I'm concerned. Absolutely. So, I was consider I'm here for four days. So, I'm like, I could probably leave this game under a tarp in the back of the truck. And then I'm like, nah, nah. We're g I'm g I'm gonna figure out how to get it in. Getting it in was no problem. Getting it back in the truck solo is the only thing that this guy's concerned about. So, I'll tell you a little bit about my experience here. You know, game is temperamental. I'm learning, right? As soon as I floated the idea of like, dang, should I get myself a Star Trek the Next Generation? People are like, get ready to work on that game. It's got some like engineering flaws there. This is the fourth road game I've had. The first road game was uh Big Labowski, which I set up solo. Holy crap, what a heavy game. Uh and then I've had a Monsters Premium. I've had a Tales from the Crypt and now Star Trek TNG, The Super Pin, and back the backlash is autographed by Steve Richie and Greg Ferris who did the art. Super cool, man. Uh Roger Sharp signed it, too. So, shout out to that. Uh, Jeff at Mad didn't even tell me that broken pinball machine sucks. Jaw is number one. Lwin, I mean, can we can we just put that to bed? Godzilla's great. Kong shoots great, but when you when you really consider everything that's in there, the theme integration, the modes, come on. Kong ain't got no 1980s I'm going to kill shark with 3D glasses on my face mode, right? Brad's got tails and it's going good. That's fantastic. So, this game right, uh, Jeff had played it and it was working fine. So, they boxed it up, got it out to me. I set it up, turn it on, it's getting power, but the game doesn't boot. And I'm like, "What the hell?" So, I go through, it took me a whole day. We got it working. I receated every connection. That wasn't it. There was a ribbon cable that wasn't quite attached. So, I put that in. That allowed the game to boot. But, the only coils that were firing were the flippers, right? none of the vucks, uh, none of the other diverters, none of that was working. So, I knew there was something major wrong. Turned out to just be two fuses, two 3 amp fuses from the power driver board, but like this is my first game with fuses, right? So, and I didn't bring my tool bag with me. My tool bag is sitting right next to my extra mic cable that I left at home like a stupid butt. Uh, so I had to go and grab a multimeter for Harbor Freight, talk to Jenga on the phone, and dude, Jenga, right? If you need a tech by the telephone, Jenga, Retro Jeno, he's done so many of these damn games. He hooked it up. He walked me through what to do. So, I went through and tested every fuse and sure enough, two fuses responsible for like the bulk of the solenoids in the game were both blown. And uh went to a couple hardware stores in town. Um hard the auto parts store has some of these old fuses, but I found like this ancient hardware store that still had 3 amp fuses, the slow blows that I needed. Popped them in. Game is playing now. So, I don't know what happened, but you know, these things are freaking temperamental. I'm not This is not going to be a rental game for me. This isn't a game I'm going to go throw in someone's house and expect it to just work all month. I think I'm going to bring this home and like get it working perfectly and I ain't going to breathe on it. I'm just going to play it. Like, that's it. Oh my goodness. But I'll tell you what, this reportedly from people that know this is one of the most temperamental games of the Ballet Williams series like to work on this and Twilight Zone. So if I can learn this dude, I'mma be like B Williams tech, man. Right. What what am I going to fear once I can figure this out? Shane, thank you, sir. Rocking the old style. I got the Don Pinball podcast hats in, by the way. They're in the car. I'm gonna order another set. Shane, was somebody. Yeah. So, this is how I figured out that like Chicago was a thing. You go around with this old style hat, even in Florida, and any kind of Chicago people just like become friends with you right away. So, I love this as a theme. I think this absolutely would work as a not a rethe, but like like revisit this theme, make a modern pin, a modern widebody pin TNG. Can you imagine? Yeah. Yeah. So, apparently this and Twilight Zone are the two like big bastards to work on. And like I don't know, games of this era now. Like this was built in 1993. Um, which was 20, 30 years ago. Um, so you open up the back box and it smells like an old closet inside. Like it smells like old wood. It smells like an old trailer. And I'm like, my god, full of dust. All the Mullex connectors are 30 years old. You know, these freaking things. So yeah, um, I want to learn. And so this is how I'm going to learn. And the game play is super fun, man. It's like I guess one of the first times that there was actually like primitive modes in a game. Um, you know, Tales from the Crypt had modes, but they're really like here's 30 seconds, hit some stuff. This one's kind of the same. Here's 30 seconds, hit all the Q shots, but you know, keeps track of everything there. And then I'm assuming there's wizard modes and stuff. What's up, Drewiski? Hey, man's here. How you doing? I got Star Trek working. So, um, I came up with a way. I got to put this in the truck by myself, um, in a couple of days. And so, lifting this thing, like deadlifting it and getting it into the truck will prove to be difficult, but I came up with a solution. Here's what I decided to do. Smells like old style. Yeah, for sure. Um, so I'm going to park my truck up against a curb, right? So, the game will be already about six inches higher than the level ground. I've got two pallets, so and I got a dolly. So, I'm going to take my dolly. I'm going to put the game up on two pallets on top of the curb. And that should bring it up like a whole foot, I think, al together. And then I'll be able to lift it and tip it in a little easier. I can show you to repin connectors. The community is why this game works. If it was just me, I'd be sitting here with a game and like an old electrical manual that I couldn't read and I'd be trying to like figure out how to get this thing working. But because I got people like Brad Jenz, Jeff at Mad, the pinball studio, I think I think I'll be fine, man. And how cool would it be to get this thing like totally like everything is working 100%. Redo the the armor. Put rad cows on the damn thing. It's got some cabinet wear and dings because of course it does. Bondo those. Sand them down. Dude, make this thing cherry, bro. All right. Andrew says to buy a lift table and he is absolutely damn right. All right. So, I am on a list for one of those Escalera tilt tables. I know they're $3,200, which is why I haven't gotten one so far. I got one. Harbor Freight has a new scissor lift table that's different from the one where you use the handle to jack. I just picked that up and at home that makes it super easy. Um, and it was like $240. Um, so so check that out if you haven't seen it. It needs to have casters on all four wheels, so I'll probably have to modify it. Um, but you can lay the game down on this uh on this lift cart and then lift it up and that that works really good. But I want the tilt table because it just looks like the ultimate in getting a game set up, wheeling it around wherever you want. So, I'm putting some uh I'm putting some money aside. I'm on a list with uh Flipping Out because he seems to be the only Escalera dealer. Is Simpsons Pinball Party remake ever coming out? No. I wish I would. It's a fun game. I would love I would buy this as a remake if CGC did it. If Padretti did it, I don't think I would because I don't want predator targets in my Star Trek. I think um I mean it's just licensing, right? But then again, it is just the Simpsons and I would think that if it was easily possible to remake Simpsons Pinball Party, it would be easily possible to make Simpsons Treehouse of Horror freaking machine because everybody's been asking for that. Spooky knows. Okay, I would mention that to them all. Everybody does. like, "Did you guys should do Simpsons Tree House of Horror?" Yes. Even if you were to like just do a rethe layout as Pinball Party, you know, just to say, you know, maybe improve upon some of the shots, make the couch a little more of a moment. Um, but uh do that as uh Treehouse of Horror with the screen and all those modes, right? Well, here's one for Pretty. If they can tackle that and come up with a Simpsons 2.0 kit that is Treehouse of Horror, I would get that one. I would get that one. But no, I think modern times require modern solutions. A widebody pin full of fun mechanisms, treehouse of horror, perfect spooky theme. And these guys aren't stupid. I know they've thought of this probably 10 years ago. And there's got to be some licensing hiccup of why you can't do that. One thing I wish I had was larger wheels. It's great for indoor use, not so much outside with the standard wheels. So, are you talking about Escalera the um stair climbing dolly or the Escalera tilt table or are you talking about both? Um I've got a pin crawler which is half the price of an Escalera and they're even cheaper now on Amazon. The Chinese knockoffs are out there. Um and I like its tank treads for going up and down stairs. Um so, but it doesn't help me set up a game and my god my back is going to give out at some point if I keep this up. So, the tilt table though functions as a dolly and then I would chiefly use it for um setting games up. The tilt table. Okay. So, like yeah, I don't know if I would use the tilt table wouldn't be my perfect my first choice for like taking a game from the loading dock into the house. Um but when it comes to Okay, the legs are on the game. It's unboxed. That's when I want the tilt table so I can tilt it, stand it up. John Tombberllin's here. You're not late, buddy. We were just getting started. I want to buy all your Star Trek the Next Generation mods when you make them. I got some ideas, man. Chiefly, um the the double scoop or double vuck ejection thing on the left to the wire forms that definitely needs to have a board cube on it. Like definitely.

Don@ 26:20 — Expresses desire for rare classic machine; states scarcity claim.

“Every day there was one or two being sold. I was watching it because I was in on one and I wanted I wanted to sell out.”

Don@ 19:39 — Shows community members actively track game sales data and FOMO dynamics.

“Everybody comes up to us and they ask us can we just get this as a standalone table and they're like no but we've already done some things like you know moved more of the mechanisms and ramps down closer to the flippers.”

Don (quoting Multimorphic interview)@ 15:03 — Reveals community demand for Portal standalone cabinet and Multimorphic's design philosophy shifts.

Euro Pinball Corp.company

Chicago Gaming Company (CGC)company

Spooky Pinballcompany

We Are Pinballorganization

high · Don tracked Evil Dead sales during TPF, observed pattern of 90% committed buyers completing purchases after playing the game at show.

manufacturing_signal: Pinball Brothers (Swedish design studio) outsources manufacturing to Euro Pinball Corp. (Milan, Italy) under white-label arrangement, creating quality control questions.

high · Don clarifies manufacturing relationship: 'Pinball Brothers I see as a design studio in Sweden, and then I see Euro Pinball Corp. as a white label manufacturer.'

business_signal: Predator game announced with only 150 units remaining in production, before any public play opportunities, suggesting possible demand concerns or manufacturer pivot to new titles.

medium · Don speculates Predator sales underperforming or Padretti wanting to shift production to new game; notes unusual pre-release production cap.

community_signal: Pinball community demonstrates strong mutual aid through remote technical support, knowledge-sharing, and parts sourcing assistance across geographic distances.

high · Jenga provided remote diagnostics, Brad Jenz assisted, Jeff at Mad Pinball Studio coordinated shipment and support.

product_strategy: Multimorphic listening to community feedback but balancing against P3 customer base; moving mechanisms closer to flippers in Portal to mimic traditional pinball more closely.

medium · Don quotes Multimorphic designers: 'every time they they make their machine more like a traditional machine, people seem to like it more.'

venue_signal: Predator (Padretti game) has not appeared at major European shows (UK Pinfest, European Pinball Championships) and not expected to show until Pinball Expo in October.

high · Don tracks Predator absence at multiple shows and expects only 4 units at Pinball Expo if any, delaying community play access.

collector_signal: Heavy Metal machines extremely rare (estimated ~100 units), creating secondary market scarcity and high desirability among collectors.

low · Don states 'I would love a heavy metal. I think only a hundred of them exist' as rationale for pursuing cheaper Star Wars Home Edition conversion.

licensing_signal: Simpsons IP licensing for pinball remakes prohibitively expensive due to voice actor contracts, Disney/Fox ownership, and multi-party rights negotiations.

medium · Don explains licensing costs would consume manufacturer profits: 'you'd probably have to pay off each voice actor and Disney and Fox...all your profits are going to be gone.'