Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. The Pinball Network is online. Launching, The Pinball Show. Episode 144 is here. It's Elwind. It's Jaws. And it's already a certified hit. Follow along as Dennis and I provide you our first impressions of Jaws Pinball. Game features. The market and sales response of Jaws on launch day. Information from Stern Pinball CEO Seth Davis on more to come with this title. As well as Stern Pinball production updates. Stern Pinball goals for 2024 and years to come. Changing courses on LE models. Bringing back what once was. And expanding pinball into the future. Oh yeah. And of course, Pinball Market Trends. And the Pinball Show Club members are going to enjoy some exclusive content discussion of the recent announcement of Valley Williams licensing being granted for another manufacturer and what that means. Spooky pinball revealing a Scooby-Doo topper, a princess bride tease, and the return of Pinberg. Papa? It's jam-packed because, well, it's the Pinball Show. Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for the Pinball Show. It's pinball with personality. Hey, Dennis, guess what? It's the Pinball Show. It's episode 144, and it is the Big Old Jaws episode. Is something smelling fishy in here to you, buddy, or is it just me? I haven't taken a shower all day because of sales. Sales day. Yeah, sales. Sales must be strong. Sales. Hey, ships have sales. Sailboat sales. Sales and sailboats. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm a little slap happy today. You may not be coming in hot. You may be coming in wet, wrung, worn out, tired, trying to make it to land. I don't know what's going on with you. I'm coming in hotter than a... That's how hot I'm coming in. He's like, I want to get me a gel. What? No, me? How could I? How could I? No. Happy New Year, by the way. Happy New Year to you, my friend. We put off recording on New Year's Eve like we normally would have because you were a little down in the dumps. I wasn't feeling it. You weren't. Not that I was hungover and drunk. I just, yeah. It was, I wasn't feeling it. and when you're not feeling it you can't do it no you can't and i knew something big was coming i wanted to get hooked but something big didn't come in 2023 oh see oh no like a great white crusting by amity island thought we could get through that go ahead no go ahead go ahead what no i'm just i'm just saying you only did like what six seven episodes saying that there was this huge hole in the December calendar. There had to be this big reveal. And little old Dennis, not a distributor, got no real good connections whatsoever, is just sitting there going, you know, I just think they're going to be turning out old product. I think they're going to wait until the new year to reveal the new game. Not going to make sense to reveal before Christmas in particular. And why would you reveal in the dead zone between Christmas and New Year? And you're like, I don't know there, Dennis. There's a pretty big gap there. And I was all like, no. Mistakes were made. your mistakes and you know what though here's here's what i think right how about that i was right but like george gomez you like that Keith Elwin no well here's what i think happened now it's it's difficult and i'm not a craig bobby i'm not you know i'm not disguised as mahogany or teak or anything like that through that bitch just like dennis creasel it's just look here's what i think happened i thought you were gonna look it's no no i'm not no i'm not doing a look Dennis here. That would have been had they actually done the reveal. Oh, I had a good one. Seth, Dennis here. Look. I had one. I had one. Oh, I had... Oh, it was going to be a roast to remember. You would have come out like a Peking Duck. Nice and crispy. Oh, I was ready for it. Anyone for Peking Duck? Here's the thing that I think happened, Zach. I think Stern actually, in reality, a lot of, at least elements of Stern, were planning to do the reveal in December. i i think that was i think that was what was happening i think elwynn intervened oh i think he walked in slapped the big red i imagine there are simply lines have that big red button to stop people from having like their hands severed and stuff yeah you know and he hit the big red button and yeah and like pr and everyone was like what are you doing and keith said i'm Keith Elwin I keep this company afloat. We're waiting until the start of 2024. I want a party on New Year's. Why? And he's like, Dennis needs this one. I don't think Keith knows who I am. But I just think at that moment, he just kind of felt it. And here's the closest thing I can give you to evidence for it, Zach. Victory laps here. So on the thread when the teaser dropped, it dropped on Nap Arcade and I made a comment. I saw it because you frowny faced it. And then I also did a very similar post over on the Stern announcement. Now, Stern's social media person or team or whoever it is replied to, like, every inane, stupid one-line statement in that thread, except my post, the most liked message, was ignored. They tend to do that. Which leads me to believe that there was a tension between elements within Stern, that there were the Keith Elwins who were fighting for the righteous, which would be me. And then there was like the media team, which wanted to get it all done with in 2023. Didn't want to have to work hard in January. Who remains very bitter. That's my theory. Not that it was Zach Sharp, right? I mean, I don't know who manages the Facebook. I don't know. I don't think Zach Sharp does. I think Zach Sharp is responsible for the person that does, but I don't know. I'm just saying, I noticed when someone's like, whoa, so cool. And you see Stern be like, yeah, you should get it. And then I'm like, thanks for waiting until 2024. And I, crickets. I forgot that we typically don't record in the evening. We record in the morning. I forgot you're perky in the evening. I'm snarky. I'm snarky in the evening. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. So you're right. You were correct in that Stern revealed Jaws. We will get to that. You had a good New Year's Eve. Did you stay up late? I stayed up to midnight. I'm not a child. Well, I tried to go to sleep. Why? My wife drug me into a friend's house. You didn't have any games to sell. Why? My God. We've been... Things are selling. We sold... This is like... Yes, New Year's Eve. Your phone was blowing up with orders. I promise you it was. For Space Hunt. I got orders on Christmas Day. Space Hunt. Spurs. Hunt. Hunt. Oh, my God. We don't have Craig Bobby this week. We don't have any. We don't? No. Oh, I guess reveals are too much work. My goal, this episode, listener, is to get through the entirety without making a stupid ass, we're going to need a bigger boat reference. That's my... I think you can do it. All of our chums out there listening to this episode are there with bated breaths. You know, I felt like someone wrote the script for him. But I don't care. He hit the big red button for me, and that's all that really mattered. It's not like Queen Anoia reading the cue cards, though. At least he didn't do that. That game has at least lots of plastic ramps, not like Jaws, full of habitrails. Stern Pinball. Production update-wise, right now they're making, I think, Godzilla premiums. Then they're going to move on to James Bond Premium, then Stranger Things Premium. Now, I don't know how this has to do with Jaws or how they're going to do Jaws, because they did tell us that Jaws is going to be on the line in two weeks, Jaws Pro. So I don't know if that means Godzilla Premium, James Bond Premium, and Stranger Things Premium. They're going to try to do those in the first couple weeks here. I could see them do it, honestly. I think that what's going to happen, Dennis and listeners, probably Godzilla premiums this week and next, and then bleeding into that James Bond premium for a couple days, and then a Stranger Things premium run that will probably overlap with Jaws Pro run on a different line. All right. So besides that, we'll give more of the updates when we talk about Jaws because there's some production timeline updates for that new Cornerstone title. but until then i want to talk about leading up to the release of joel's pinball by stern pinball they had a nasty little leak reported leak yeah from a shark nose punching its way through a chip we're gonna need a less leaky boat yeah it didn't last long uh yeah there were some pictures that came out in a video that came out and everybody was like is this really it i was confused cam Yeah. Yam cam, TM. I was confused as to whether or not it was actual, if it was truth, because they don't ever showcase an LE, and it was showcasing an LE in that leaked video. So that was strange to me. It was also strange that I saw speaker lights. I'm like, Stern doesn't do speaker lights. So a lot of weird stuff. So we didn't know if it was true or not. And then they did announce prior to this that it was going to be Joel. So we were ready for that. And then, what was it, Thursday, January 4th is when they revealed in its entirety the game, the launch videos, and all of that stuff. So before we go into that, let's talk about the meeting that dealers had prior to this release. All kinds of information besides just that of Jaws specifics came out during this meeting that was led by Seth Davis, CEO of Stern Pinball. Whoa. Yeah. Now, Mr. Davis, he gave a nice little rundown as to some of the goals of the team over last year, fulfilled goals. It was kind of recapping the year, which was nice, as well as presenting some of the goals and directions the company is looking to take this year as well as subsequent years. But with that, some really nice information such as this. He said confidently Stern Pinball will be returning, Dennis, back to three cornerstone released games this year, 2024. I don't think that's going to surprise very many people. He said the last couple of years they've been doing two. Yes, that's true. They're returning back to three. So that's exciting news. He said also a focus of Stern Pinball going forward in 2024 is extending the fun of their current games, which to them means more insider-connected content for the catalog of games out right now. Code updates, he said there was 94 code updates in 2023 alone. 94. And he said, look, okay, some of these were smaller updates, but nonetheless, their dedication to continued code updates and continuing the fun of current cataloged games is pretty high in their books. I like the little badge things they do for timed events. That's, I think, pretty clever. Did you get your Godzilla mic? I did. But, guys, don't be doing, like, $25 billion in 12 days on Godzilla. We're not all blueberry. We can't all. Look, well, we can because on the last day I was $10 billion to go, Zach, and I put my game to 10 ball. Dennis Creasel. I know. And then afterwards, because I didn't tell it not to record scores, I wiped all the scores out of my pinball machine. Good for you. Because I was like, no, that's fake. I can't have that. But you got your badge. I earned all the points, like get a number of points in the game on three ball. I just did the ten to grind out the total. You won that last badge. Yes. Okay. Love the badge. Yes. It needs to be, like they should send me a trophy. After they unpush the red button, they can manufacture me a trophy. You little badge. How are you? I'm glad you got it. I'm staying away from that for right now, the whole co-op. I will get addicted. You will. You'll fall down? See, that's good. I couldn't do the bond one because I was like, oh, gosh, can you imagine trying to do that on a route? All the operators must love those badges because it would be like, I'm trying to think. If I was to try and get $25 billion on a route, I would have easily dropped, especially because I would have been three ball. I would have spent at least $200. Yeah, and he was talking about that, how their dedication to Insider Connected and how it's going to continue expanding into this year. and into other years. Another point that I think everybody was kind of ready to hear, listener, was that Mr. Davis made it a point to say that they have realized and they have experimented with some of the special edition games that were limited in nature, like Elvira, Blood Red Kiss, and Jurassic Park 30th and stuff like that. He said he's here to announce that there will be no more limited edition games or versions after the launch of a Cornerstone game. Oh, that is interesting. Yeah. He said, look, while they may have been successful in their sales of that, the feedback that they have received from the community and from everyone, they've made the decision that they have no plans to do that in the future. Whenever a Cornerstone game comes out and if there's 1,000 LEs, that's it. They're not going back to the well for space. And that was super surprising to me because I know the sales, and the sales have been successful of those subsequent games. So I guess they're playing long ball here is all I can think, Dennis. I mean, given that you've indicated that in the meeting he stressed about sales success and strength, that that wasn't an issue, the only thing I can think of is they have to be absolutely mortified that they're going to lose Wales, who will not trust LEs being LEs anymore because when you keep running new versions of LEs, you think about Blood Red Kiss and then you have, if you remember, Elvira 40th coming out just before it, a much more expensive game, and to many collectors an uglier version. Or I should say Blood Red Kiss being a more attractive version would be more fair. No one actually thought 40th looked bad. But my point being that you play a dangerous game, I think, with people's trust. if they're, and it's your high dollar people who buy LEs. You brought that up, yeah. But I'm surprised because I've, like you indicated and what Seth indicated, my understanding was these games were moving, and if they're moving, then it sounded like the whales were all whale sounds and not actual action. But if they're really worried about burning that bridge. I think it's more of maybe a market analysis. They're looking at where they project the market to be going in the next five, ten years, and they don't want to press their luck. Well, I mean, we saw this with, in my view, we saw it with JJP and the jokes people would make, especially with Wizard of Oz, when it's like, oh, look, a new limited special edition. Black Arrow Edition Hobbit. Yeah, yeah. Yellow Brick Road. Yeah, it's just like, okay, when's that? Oh, it feels like they're playing games when they say, oh, well, we just gave it a new different name. It's got a different art package. And it's like, yeah, but I thought I was buying the best version already. and now you have a new maybe best version, that's not fair. I think this will go a long way with collectors, so I think it's a good move overall. But that means they've got to be pretty confident in what they are bringing or what they can bring in the future. Mr. Davis went on to say that any Spike 2 game refreshes then are going to be pro and premium level only with code to extend the gameplay experience. So he gave the example of, you know, don't count them out to have different art packages, kind of like the Star Wars comic edition. It wasn't a limited edition version. It was a pro. They did a pro premium version. So you get those differences there, but they're done with the whole LE thing. And they said the current generation of LEs, LCDs, are only going to be issued once. Buy with confidence. They're not going to do that again. Another goal was to expand pinball for everyone. Seth said they will be considering, as early as 2024 maybe, bringing back some high-demand pro and premium LCD titles. Those spike two games. He said if there is a high demand for any particular game, they're not going to shy away from it. He also said, and another big statement here, almost as big as that we're not going to do more LEs, is this. Seth Davis indicated that they have no problem and they're actually planning on remastering some older generation DMD titles. So remastering meaning taking them into LCD? He didn't say that. He said if it makes sense that there's a high demand DMD game, they will. He presented it almost as if they're fine doing DMD games again. Oh, OK. I'm just surprised that he didn't just say, we're okay going back to doing vaults. Yeah, that's true. I don't know what to make of it. He said the indication on whether or not a certain title would be remade. He didn't talk about classification of board systems or operating systems like White Star versus Sam. None of that. He just said, number one is like parts. Can we even get the parts to make some of these older games that we made? He said some of the parts you just can't make or can't get. And he said the other one is like the licensure interest. Is the licensor even interested in having a product like that again? So he said those are kind of the two big factors when considering remastering older generation DMD titles. He did say, though, that they have zero plans, zero, for DMD games to have Insider Connected in the future. I don't know what they would do, especially if it's a SAM board set. You'd have to have some sort of new board added, I would think, just to be able to interface. Yes, it would cost so much money, so much time. It would be very easy to, especially he said like the screen, it wouldn't display what you needed it to. Not that they couldn't do it, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense just focusing on the future instead of going back with Insider Connected. He did say that they were working on home leaderboards. He acknowledges everybody wants that. but he said there are some intricacies of doing that type of system that, frankly, are much more difficult than people would assume because of how many different setups you would have to do rather than one big location kind of thing. I don't know. It was early. It was early. But he said they're working on it, but that's a big task there. Another goal of theirs is to hold pricing and to improve delivery reliability. He's talking about supply reliability. is that it has improved, getting parts, those parts being reliable, but it's still not perfect. And another goal within that holding pricing is taming the substantial cost inflation that they've been seeing lately. Their goal is to do whatever they can to not have to increase prices, even if inflation affects parts. Well, then I'm assuming they're going to cut into profit margin because I don't know what Stern honestly can do to constrain inflation. Well, when you have clever designers, they can do a lot, I would argue. Oh, sure. They can lower the BOM or say your BOM doesn't go up, and you're going to just make more with less. And who knows if they haven't been doing that. Maybe they've been increasing. Increasing. I don't know. They've expanded tech services in 2023, and they're going to continue to build that department and that team. They're happy with the growth that they've had over the last year in tech services. And another goal is to increase the delivery lag on accessories and having even more product options than just the pinball machines themselves. He referenced the Stern Alley sign has been a big hit, and they really want to get some of those accessories out quicker than the lag. I mean, we still haven't seen Foo Fighters accessories. Oh, so he doesn't want to increase lag. He wants to decrease it. Yeah, sorry. He wants to get them closer to launch. Okay. That would be nice. most of these things i think collectors broadly would like yeah yeah i think it covers probably a lot of the basis of what collectors would in a survey or something what they'd say they'd like to see in the future so well and some of it's like the greatest hits of forum posting like yeah i mean i know a lot of especially long-time collectors who are who are totally put off by the current price point on pinball machines because they don't have to remember even 10 years ago where they were thousands less and uh then of course you know the desire to there haven't been any vaults since iron man so the desire for which what i don't know the sticker on the one oh by the way thank you very much for that iron man pinball machine the uh the sticker on it was a february 2020 build which i'm assuming is one of the last that they did yeah so i mean wow 20 see i i forget that it was that long ago i was like wow you had that in the box that long i I did. I did. Yeah, so maybe we see. You know, I was looking behind him, and in this dealer seminar, I guess it's okay to say what he had a couple playfields behind him, and I don't know if it was his office or what, but he had three games that I believe they still make, and then one DMD era Stern game play field behind him Any guesses as to what it was tron it was spider oh well Spider would be one that would I mean there are plenty that I could imagine they could if they could get the parts would be desired Of course, Tron is one that was screamed for back when DMD was still the main thing they were making. But Spider-Man did really good for them. I wouldn't be too surprised on the licensing front just because it's usually easier. They bring back the band. So you're going to see ACDCs and Metallicas. God, it felt like they vaulted Metallica four times. But, hey, they're as deeply popular. They vaulted ACDC four or five times. They vaulted them both a lot. Ghostbusters would be huge if they could do that. Ghostbusters would be big. Spider-Man. Remember they came with the comic version of Spider-Man? And that was before. That was almost like a Stranger Things. Whenever they came out, people were like, I don't know if I want that. And then now looking back, the value of it has grown substantially, more so than the original movie film asset version of that game. So maybe something like that or Into the Spider-Verse. I can see all kinds of stuff there. Speaking of seeing something coming, Jaws pinball. What? It's been heavily rumored, right? It has? Yeah. At one point, I heard John Borg was working on a Jaws pinball. Designed and done so by the team of Keith Elwin. We haven't seen a Keith Elwin cornerstone in a couple years. Not since Godzilla. Wow. Artwork. People weren't expecting this. They thought we'd get a Randy Martinez. No, no, no. Michael Michael Barnard. From the Rush pinball machine. Yeah. It would have been funny, though, if it was Randy Martinez, because then the shark would have had a lightsaber. I was thinking of a whole bunch of mini lightsabers for his teeth. Yes. A mouthful of saber. And we have the code work by Rick Nagel and team. And then I think Jerry Thompson did some audio stuff along with, I don't know, John Williams. He's like 91. John Williams, licensed John Williams themed score. I've got it. They paid the big bucks. Whoa. That's right. That's not the only thing sound-wise they paid the big bucks for. That's right. They also paid for custom speech by the man himself, Richard Richard Dreyfuss. What about Bob? Or like, what about Richard Richard Dreyfuss? Wow. What about Bob? Wow. That is a throwback. I don't think we'll be seeing what about Bob pinball. But yeah, they paid for Richard Richard Dreyfuss to do some of the custom speech. along with some of the, they've got, I guess, audio stems from the film. They've got video stems from the film. They've got all of that stuff. All right, we'll talk about that. But first, we've got to talk, it was a normal Cornerstone, Dennis. We had a Pro, a Premium, and LE models. LE's limited to 1,000 units. No changes there. Speaking of no changes, no price changes, no increases in pricing, there were some speculation and rumor, maybe the Pro model was going to see a little bit of a bump in the northern region. Nope, all staying the same. A commitment to their goal in 2024 of holding pricing. Production-wise, we know that when Stern reveals a game, we get them quick. Pros are going to be online in two weeks, so we're going to see them start rolling out and into operators, arcades, etc., public, in the end of January to early February, the pros. So end of January, I think we'll start seeing them roll out. LEs then will follow in mid-February. And then the premiums are going to follow in late February into March. Now, I don't know. I think they indicated that unlike Venom, they were able to roll a lot of Venom out of the factory. This one, there are some parts, not delays, but difficulty getting some of the parts. So they're going to be, I think if they get enough sales, they will add another premium and pro run. between now and they're gauging June for the second run of pro and premiums. Okay. But if they get enough orders and it makes enough sense and parts are rolling in okay, then we could see additional runs in between January and June. But roughly, at minimum right now, they're looking at June for the subsequent secondary runs. All right. Let's look at this game, Dennis. Let's do our analysis like we do. this is a four flipper game if i'm correct uh this is a is wait a minute this is an upper play field i thought this was designed by Keith Elwin let me it was okay Keith Elwin generally doesn't do upper playfields or he hasn't yet but we know he's a jack of all trades so he's going with an upper play field on this game there are all types of features at first you look at this game listener and you don't see any ramps. And you think, did he just create a game with no ramps? And then you'd be wrong. There are multiple ramps. They're just hidden, sneaky little rampsies. Yes. They even call them like a wave ramp. One of them, yeah. One of them is a wave ramp. I think there's a Quint's Shack ramp. We've got horizontal spinners. We have outlaned physical saves. We've got a couple boats. One of the upper playfields is a boat. One of the smaller boats lifts up, and underneath it is a bash toy of Jaws himself or herself. Well, it's Bruce. I guess it's a boy. So Jaws that you hit, they've got a chum bucket that's swinging around. We've got barrels and a single pop bumper a la Godzilla. We've got paths everywhere, swirling very much like a Keith Elwin game. but again when you look at it may take you a while to find the l1 ask in it true or false agree disagree it'll depend on the player of course but i would say like the the lower well lower i should say the far right flipper that that alone makes me feel very l1 ask in that i think as in one of these shots looks like it's a figure eight style feed so that's going to be kind of Ellen Winesque from Bond 60th. The upper play field is going to be the part, I think, that maybe confuses people. And the other aspect might be the fact that it actually features a bash toy, which I don't normally think. I mean, there are obviously certain targets that need to be hit on certain games, but I don't normally think of him as being particularly bash toy oriented. The captive ball chum bucket toy seems more, though, something that I think you'd look at and go, Oh, yeah, well, it's kind of like the hidden captive ball thing that was in Godzilla. He had an exposed one in Iron Maiden. That was a big part of the gameplay. So that, I think, is very L1-esque. We have two here. I mean, one in the, what's it called, in the boat, too. Oh, yeah, one in the boat as well. The three-optic target kind of things. And then the artwork. Artwork is very different, too. This game strikes me, listener. My first impression of this game is I was pretty shocked because if you told me Jaws and you told me Keith Elwin, if my AI brain made something super creepy as AI often does, it wouldn't have made this. This shocked me. The looks of it shocked me because it stands out from your typical zombie yeti-like artwork. even with some of the compositional art choices, it's not crowded. It is not a crowded art space at all, whether it's on the cabinet, the back glass, even the play field. Everything is spread out like the open sea. So, and it just doesn't look like an L1 until you dive deeper. Okay, now I'm getting a little bit cliche. My first impressions were, oh, this sucker stands out. And upon further inspection, I add, this sucker stands out in a really good way. What were your first impressions when you saw the different iterations of this game? It does feel a lot different than a lot of other games that we've looked at, especially visually. Hallelujah. Yeah, in that regard. I mean, but part of that is obviously we have a different artist than what we, you know. Jeremy's been doing so many art packages for Stern. and I think you're going to always sort of abut into it feeling a little samey unless they go really – he went really different on Foo Fighters, but I know that was more polarizing. So, yeah, no, I thought the layout looks interesting to me. But because the way it's laid out feels to me less straightforward visually than what I'm used to for most games, especially Elwynn games, I can't tell yet if I'm going to like how this shoots more or less than – I don't know where it would rank in his catalog. Does that make sense? I think there – yes, because it always is tough looking in an Elwynn game and wondering, I wonder how that works or I wonder how that shoots. And I may be wrong on this, so I'll rely on you to correct me. But, of course, I'm also looking at the pro model. And Elwynn has – and I think this is true again. I always felt he does a really good job keeping a lot of the key elements in his pro models over from the premium LE. I mean, obviously it varies a lot. You expect to lose a lot of the toys, which is often the case, but a lot of the shot geometry often holds true. However, on this game, you do lose an entire flipper, which I don't know if he's ever lost a flipper going to his pro. That's a good point. I'll add to that and say that typically whenever we see Elwynn games, the pro Elwynn games sell really, really well because, as you've said, The shot patterns oftentimes still feel good. You still feel like you get a lot of the game, especially with Code and his shot layouts. In his pro versions, really, when we talk about Elwin premium LEs compared to the pros, Dennis, we get one feature that is more toy-like than it is path-like. So you get a cool T-Rex that grabs the ball in Jurassic Park, and you get the rising and lowering of a building in Godzilla. But you're still getting a great game with the pros, his pro version. Yeah. I know people who own the pro of Godzilla and love it. And the reason why I ended up going premium was the building, as cool as it was, it did change game state in terms of how it shot. Absolutely. So that was a compelling reason for me there. But whereas with Avengers, I've been perfectly fine going and playing a pro versus and giving up the subway. Because you still get the tower magnet. And the Godzilla Pro still gave you the cool magnet that flings it into the left orbit to set up the upper flipper shot, which I always thought was like it made sense why he preserved that in the Pro, because gameplay-wise, that's the thing you interact with the most is that magnet. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think there's any magnets in this game. Oh, interesting. I don't think any magnets. I love my magnets. That's okay. Well, there's an opto-spinner. You know what else is weird is as I'm looking at this game, So many physical ball locks on Keith Elwin games, right? Every one of them has got a physical ball lock. Do we have one here? Yes, we do. We do. And that's what I think is going to catch a lot of people. I think that's the Elwin feature that's going to be the winner to a lot of people. If they fall in love with this game, it's going to be because of this lock. That's my theory. Any explanation as to what this physical lock is? You can't just see it. No, no. I think people will look and they'll go, well, you know, I remember a feature like this from Big Buck Hunter. I remember a feature like this from the Bell and ACDC. I saw people already going and identifying toys that just look like new sculpts on top of stuff Stern's already done. But that far right middle flipper, the little flipper. Can we not call those baby flippers? Because they're small. All right, so the right baby flipper. So what do you mean the baby flipper is a physical? No, it's a flipper. It's not a physical ball. What do you mean? But it can be a ball lock. How? When it's flipped, it captures the little balls. Well, that's like saying my flipper down at the bottom when I hold it. It's a physical ball lock. But is the game ever going to auto-deploy it? Oh. Then you don't. The game doesn't hold your flipper up for you. I know. Unless you're playing Oktoberfest. I know Keith Elwin may or may not like action buttons, but I wonder if an action button controls anything. What? It's sitting down there all green and shiny. That does look like a nice. And green is the color of ball lock. Oh, that is true. And in these photos I'm looking at on multiple models, it's lit green. Oh, man. I like that. That's cool. So a physical ball lock that's a flipper. It's dual purpose. See, they're saving money already to keep the price contained. It can be a flipper, and it can be a ball lock. What I have said about this game is that a lot of people have looked at it and were like, where's the big jaws? I want the jaws coming up. It's going to eat the ball, and that's the only toy in the game. This game reminds me, listener, a lot like Elvira House of Horse. Because Elvira House of Horse, you look at it, and everybody's like, it's so open, and there's nothing. And Elvira's House of Horrors has maybe some of the most toys and mechs in any Stern pinball machine. It's just there's so many of them, and they're not a big, big modeling of what they are. Think about Elvira. You've got all kinds of physical wall locks. You have all kinds of interactive mechanical features. I think Jaws is the same way in that, sure, we don't have a big Bruce right in the middle of the play field and nothing else. I mean, let's talk about it. We've got the flipper there. You also have the chum line with the fin that goes back and forth, and it's not like making a stick that stays up there or the cue guy, mom jeans undialed in. It goes down. There's lights underneath the play field that light up. You have to hit it. Then to the left of that, there's a path. There's drop targets. I'm looking at the premium LE for reference here. An upper play field with a ramp on the upper play field, wire forms coming off that, a chum bucket that swings. You've got a boat that lifts up. You've got a bash toy that is Jaws. You have horizontal spinners, two of them. You've got three-dimensional buildings. You've got a pop bumper that's got a barrel in it. There's a lot of stuff in this game, but when you look down at it, you're like, it looks like the open ocean. Do any of those toys in particular very much interest you, and or do any of the features next toys worry you at all? In terms of, I mean, so many of them really add a lot to the theme immersion side of it. So I see value there. So I'm not an upper playfield fan as a general rule. So I'm skeptical about what I basically see as just two shots for so much space. However, I do like the sound integration of hitting and turning the wheel of the of the boat and it being the deck of the orca so visually that works really well on the premium le i would say toy wise the the pop-up shark yeah that's probably the most predictable thing but i it's a cool way to take use of that space and turn it from a bash toy to another bash toy but it's like and another way especially since in the boat form you've got like the opto thing with the three lights in the back and that ball is supposed to trigger this so i think that's a that's going to be an interesting fun challenge there um uh the toy i'm most concerned about would probably be the chum line simply because i can't help but wonder if the fin is gonna bend as you strike it with the ball so you know like mechanically to me it doesn't uh and i could be wrong it doesn't look like a drop target mechanism it looks like a stand-up target that is motorized right right i think it's probably bracketed and reinforced i'm just curious if it's gonna like i'm sure they've tested it, but the curiosity remains nonetheless. So that would be it. But visually, that's my, you know, saying aside the whole people look at and remember things like, I guess, maybe Big Buck Hunter or Mick or whatever, the use of the chum line and that, you know, watching the video and seeing that as you bash the chum bucket, that the lights start to glow more and more red in that spot as the blood's in the water. I thought that was a really cool, again, about theme immersion, but just a really cool way to take something relatively simple in concept and make it feel like the world of Jaws. Well, and we were talking about upper playfields. I'm with you. I'm not a big upper play field guy, but what I will say is that if you're going to give me an upper play field, I like how Foo Fighters did it with Jack Danger and the team over there, where you're hitting shots, flow shots, rather than stand-up targets like a freaking Aerosmith. or even drop targets sometimes can be a bit mundane, except for shadow. But for the most part, you don't want to be using a small flipper in a small area hitting targets. It's just not fun. But what Keith did here is two really nice-looking shots, one that whips around almost the shape of like a monster bash left ramp, but whipping around not only on a wire form, but one that takes a deep dive, pun intended, back up the play field into a looping thing. So that could visually look interesting and feel good, as well as, like you said, the steering wheel or the boat's wheel, that spinner. Again, a very appealing feeling shot whenever you can hit a spinner. So I think if they are going to have an upper play field, this one might feel really, really good. Separate from the toys, though, this reminded me as I looked at it, because I wanted to check and see what was on the pro also, and it is. But I guess this is the wave ramp. But does Stern just have a stockpile of 180 ramps? There's two of them. We have to have another 180 ramp. Up the center, there's one. Yeah. And the wave ramp is one. Okay. Yeah, there's two. I'm just like, okay, okay, yeah. I was looking at the one on the right because I see water on top of it, and I thought maybe that's the wave ramp. That is the wave ramp. Okay. The one right up the center in between the chum bucket and the boat, that's a 180 ramp that leads to Waterfall. Oh, I didn't notice it because of the little sign at first. Okay. So that is a 180, too. I guess we live in a world of 180s. I'm not much of a 180. Then again, give me that left orbit ramp on Godzilla all day long. That thing feels so good. And it doesn't feel 180-ish. It almost feels like Avengers Tower shot, but instead of going and sticking to a magnet, it flips up and goes onto a wire form through the building. But, yeah, I'm typically not a 180 ramp kind of guy. I forgot mechs in here on the Premium LE as well as the Pro. There are in-lane posts that pop up that you can control, have moments, have modements, whatever you want, triggered shots for that chum line. you can create a lot of things. Keith did that with Jurassic Park. That's a Keithism. He's double barreling it here. He has to make up for it because he didn't have one in Godzilla. Then you've got the Outlane post that you can physically bump back into like some of the old Solid State games. You can bump in or even... I like that. That was really nice. Nice little touch. Nice little low bomb but fun. There were some people saying that's going to be too easy for I don't think so. You can just take off the rubber if so. If he did it like, yeah, that whole post might actually be removable. If you needed to. Honestly, competitive folks would probably just pull the rubber and say, yeah, have fun trying. It's like trying to use the center post on Super Orbit without the rubber. Yeah, it can be done, but good luck without tilting. Absolutely. There are plenty of games that had that format that were still super brutal like Ed Krinsky, I think, had a whole pile of them back in the day. Yeah, yeah. Wasn't Ed the one? No. I'm thinking of Kirk. Kirk was the one that you could do the Kirk bounce, the center post. Oh, yeah, he was a big fan of the center post, but Ed had games like Jacks to Open and stuff where there would be abilities to save out of the outline. Now, as we're looking at this, what else interests me on this shot-wise, Dennis, is that real shot because I think it may be a figure eight type of shot that we've seen in James Bond's 60th. But, man, oh, man, that's going to be tight if it ramps around there. It's leading to that, I'm going to call it a mid-lane, mid-in lane to the right around that pop bumper. That's what it feels like it's going to try to do, a figure eight there. Yeah, I think so. It's going to make that cool little sound, but really fast. It's going to be cool. You know, this is a game that I think is going to be very particular about you being sure you have it level. Yes. That and the different slopes are going to matter. And it's going to be kind of like Iron Maiden where when you plunge, it's nice when it goes around that orbit to feed that upper flipper. But design-wise, it's not like a requirement. So, eh, we'll see. The right orbit ends up being a ramp that goes through the backboard and coming back. And then you've got all these waves. Very theme appropriate. There's wire forms everywhere on this game, Dennis. Look at all the wire forms. There's a lot of wire. I love the wire. What is the shot, though, of the little flipper to the right? It goes across the play field, but then I think it loops around. Oh, you mean if shot above the drops? Yeah, because that's the path that shows it. Right, it does show the path. Yeah, so that's tricksy. I think it's made to do a little whippy, too. I don't know. The Pro Edition, you lose the upper play field. There's no kinetic boat that's holding the ball. There no 3D quench shack in the back right which looks superb by the way No drop targets You only use stand targets And the shark toy is a static toy that is not you don bash it You're just sitting there bursting through like a wood or something, a boat or something like that. Yeah, he's bursting through the cage from the first movie. Oh, that's right. Thank you. The cage. He's bursting through the cage. But you still have the fin chum line in the play field. And we used to have all the different wiry, flippy shots and all of that. So we had the horizontal spinner. Is that like an upside-down post that you hit for the horizontal spinner? That is the layout. That's the toys of the mechs. What about the looks of this game? We'll bring in art a little bit. Do you like the looks of this game? For me, it's a big, big attempt, and I think successfully so, of the world under glass that we all bring up, cliche-wise or other. Yeah. Overall, I like it. I don't love it. But what I think is that it does a really good job of telling that story or putting you in that world rather than what in a lot of these style of things where I kind of feel like you get the more homage stuff where it's just sort of like, here's your spectrum of character. Of course, we didn't completely get away from that in the dead center of the play field with Quint and Richard Dreyfuss. But overall, especially with the toys and stuff factored in and it being so open, it doesn't feel like they've contained the inserts in logical. There's a lot of wood. There's just a lot of wood. So, yeah, I mean, in some ways, I think it's served by the fact that it's Jaws. So they just need it to be a lot of water. and so that's what they're able to do. A lot of water it is. Instead of a lot of like Marvel explosions and just purples raining into reds and then here's 50 villains in the back corners or Godzilla, for example, where every shot is kind of like themed around a particular kaiju and it's not even like the ones that are tied to the rules. They're just like kind of shots that just have a monster and it's kind of like the way they decided to, you know, you're trying to incorporate as much fan service as possible. Well, this is three dudes on a boat against a shark, So there's not a whole lot they have to really work in. Yeah. But, yeah, I think it looks – it's a really – I'd say a really clean execution. It does look clean. If we're looking at the art packages, listener, I would direct you to go to Pinball News or This Week in Pinball or NAPARC. Look at all the different art packages. It looks as if the premium art package is the one that has the different type of art on the Translight back glass compared to that of the LE Pro. The LE Pro have similar. It's like the Jaws movie poster, whereas the LE is actually a mirrored example of it. And then on the side cabinets on the LE, you get that metallic with two different art images on each side of the cabinet, whereas I think the Pro and the Premium, the cabinet are duplicated on each side. It looks like Brody fighting off the shark on the Premium and then on the Pro. the pro is a really pretty looking art package it's of jules attacking the cage uh when drive is down down there to fit with the toy they had to use on the pro for me i'm going to give Michael Barnard a hell of a lot of credit here because we were tough on him on rush and totally redeemed himself here because this art package for me especially the back glass and the cabinet fucking works in spades it is beautiful just the simplicity of that le back glass for me i love it i cannot wait to see that in person it needs to be simple to me because it was the 70s and that's what the movie poster was they couldn't have thought of a better one in my opinion now if you ask around the the collective a lot of people dennis are really digging this premium art package specifically that first person artwork of the back glass that perspective rather yeah i don't like it something about it was disconcerting to me and i couldn't place what it was and now you you've said it and so finally it's because i'm too tired it's it's because it's the first person perspective and it just yeah it's just doesn't work for me i like i liked all i like all the other art packages i like the side of the premium cabinet a lot but but no that back glass just it bought It bugs me. It's too disconcerting. It's actually too scary. I would rather have the simplicity of the poster because it's so iconic. It's so iconic. I think I don't – Well, you get it on the side of the head of the premium, I guess. You do. Give me the – I don't want that killer shark glaring at me while I've got my Friday the 13th machete in my hand. I don't – I love the pro cabinet the best. That's so cool. No, the Pro Cabinet is my favorite also. But I do like the Premium a lot. The LE Cabinet Art is actually my least favorite. I think in person, it'll be a spectacle with the metallic foil on it. It's just, again, we never saw a scene in the movie where the swimmers were there and the shark is showing his teeth. It's a little too creative for me. When you're dealing with an icon, I prefer it to be a little more true to form. And at least on the other side, it's better because you've got the close-up of the shark biting the cage. But I prefer the more distant stuff. So I actually really like the premium sides of the cab a lot with the part where the ship's sinking and he's climbing out with the stick. Maybe that's because it's one of the few instances where you actually get to see any of Roy Schneider. Oh, we'll get to that. The artwork on the play field, I'm good with it. I love that there is so much water. for me it freaking works it works because not i'm not saying it works a beauty contest i'm saying it works because it's different for once it's i mean it's full-blown water worldish we've got a lot of water but they're different shades of water it's still showing different paths uh the wood in the middle take or leave it but give me more water i gotta have more water but uh even the jaws down in the center, the center of the flippers. Love it. I love the light coming in. I love that you can see the horizon of land and the sky, and then we're back to water. I love that. Water. And can I not give props to whoever came up with these art blades for the LE? Just bravo. It's so theme appropriate. We don't have all these characters and stuff. No, they're bringing the world under glass truly in because you see more water. And then you see like the beach scene with the lifeguard stuff. It's almost the perspective itself when you're playing. It almost looks disorienting. So perfectly done. It makes sense that the code name, I think, was the code name for this game Vertigo? I think it might be. All right, so we haven't heard it yet. We haven't played it to know what the code is. per se, but we have more information about it, including Seth Davis telling us that they do have film clips from not just Jaws, but all of the Jaws films. I don't know if anybody's talking about that yet, Dennis. I mean, I heard it explained in somewhere. I don't remember what anymore today. And I am a little concerned about that. I think they're probably freebies. I mean, I'm sure they just gave them the other three with it is what happened, because there's absolutely no reason to turn to any of those other films. And as a child, Jaws 2 was the one I liked, but I was pretty stupid as a kid. Well, it's because I just like the part about them lashing all the boats together. I don't know if I've ever seen any of the other Jaws. Well, they each get progressively worse. so yeah definitely don't use any clips from jaws the revenge so does friday the 13th but we still love it no friday the 13th doesn't even find its stride till after the third one oh that's that's for the patreon members for us to discuss okay uh you are in the game you're quint the bounty hunter yeah that surprised me and then later on set davis said you can flip the script and play as the great white coming soon dot dot dot he teased it we do know that there's a custom speech by Richard Dreyfuss licensed john williams theme score uh when asked about brody i think one of the dealers was like okay well let's deal with brody do we get brody do we not get brody i don't know what the actor's name is i'm sorry roy schneider thank you do we get roy schneider uh seth davis said quote We have everyone in the film clips. But he then said, talked about the challenges of licensing and what likeness means and how there are differences if a person is still living versus deceased, the complexities that arise with all of that. I thought someone said that if it was prior to like 1985, then you can do anything you want. Well, it's easier. But I think once they pass away, maybe it gets the family involved. I don't know. But he did say we've got everyone in the film clubs. Until we see it, we just don't know. I mean, I did hear in the trailer the bigger boat line. That sounded like it was his voice. But I noticed the thing that is, and this is where I don't agree with a decision made for the play field art. I think it looks too glaring when you have Quint and Richard Dreyfuss' character, Hooper, there in the center of the playfield and not Roy Schneider's three dudes on a boat. And when you decide to prominently display two of them, it calls attention to his missing. You know what? I completely agree. So I just wouldn't have. I'd have still put their faces in, but they could have been ramp shots or something. Just put them somewhere else. Instead, it's like, hey, look, here's the collage of characters that Stern loves to do on their playfields. And it's like, you know, the movie was about three. And, in fact, Roy Schneider is the main one. Especially like they did the Nedry figure in Jurassic Park. They kind of put him over here. They could have done that singly. Yeah, just doing that off to the side. And then somebody else. I'm not saying spend anything. They already spent a lot. You have the Williams score and you've got Richard Dreyfuss doing college. They spent enough. I'm not saying they needed to get him to do this. I'm just saying, don't call attention to it like this. Yeah, I can agree on that. I would have thought that they would have argued that you're going to play as the perspective of the cop, of Roy's character. Because, you know, the whole argument that we used to hear when, oh, there's no Sigourney Weaver in Aliens because you're playing as her. Or there's no Jennifer Connelly in The Labyrinth. Yeah, because you are in The Labyrinth. We have replaced Brody. We are the Brody. We are Brody. Brody, do you even play Pimple? I am Brodicus. That's right. That was a really old reference. I'm sorry for that one. Take my tiny hand. Okay. When they do Scary Movie 2, they better get his tiny hand. They best be getting Chris Elliott. I think it's Chris Elliott. Additional future features. Check this out, y'all. Seth Davis said additional features coming to this title include a career ranking system. that'd be fun yeah a special in-game mode unlocking oh coming soon he said you play as the bounty hunter and you actually you collect shark teeth that's a task in the game he did go on to say that collecting shark teeth was a carryover feature so people asked like are we going to get venom kind of stuff where we're building and he said there are some of that in this game with Insider Connected, one of them being collecting shark teeth that will carry over. Get enough shark teeth and do I become a mutant symbiote shark? You get 25 billion shark teeth and you get your sharky badge. And then it's messed up like the one with the topper and it's like, have you ever turned the game off while your progress is lost? Was that with The Mandalorian? Oh, with the Olympia. Yeah. Shit. Since been fixed. So that's got also digital content is coming, such as a video mode. On an LCD screen, a video mode. It's going to be making a CES debut. So be on the lookout for that. Jaws 3D. The other digital content coming, you can play as the shark. And they're also going to have some wizard mode reveals. So, yeah, we don't know what the code is, the instruction cards. It's Keith Elwin. Always trust in the Nagel. I will say we jumped over it, but can we not praise Stern for not pulling a Jurassic Park on this, for actually getting video assets and clips from the film? Okay, Roy Schneider. But still, we actually can look up when playing this game, listener, and we can see the film that we all love. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I want. yes yes yes that's what I want I want that in all of my games I'm missing it in Jurassic Park because I don't have that code that pulls the videos in I promise but that's what I'm wanting and this guy and they like I'm not big on the whole paying the celebrity to do custom call outs I'm going to let you in on a secret here listener I honestly don't give a shit for me personally like that's money that's whatever it's not special to me give me more video assets but i appreciate them getting it because i know people do care about that but video assets are huge for me give me video assets over any likeness art assets all day long and they got them in here i would be remiss if i stopped talking about jaws without bringing up some of the le features dennis oh baby this this great white powder coat i mean when a pun fits beautiful white powder coat i think works i think white works on this game uh white and red really signifies lifeguard kind of stuff and then the uh the predominant blue around makes sense that's a that's a perfect color palette there Michael Barnard if you're the one that picked the powder coat color The shark bite, I think, is funny. It's cute more than anything. What about the shooter rod? I don't know about the shooter rod. The barrel shooter rod. I mean, it doesn't look painful to use. I don't know about that. But can we talk about mirror back glass share? We've already talked about it. Shaker motor share, non-reflective glass share. That's fine. All of this is awesome. But a first for Stern Pinball is what they're calling. Seth Davis said they are calling expression speaker lighting. Everybody wants to know where expression lighting is. They only put it on music pins. Well, they're pulling it up to the speaker panel. And interacting with the game are now the speaker lights. Hallelujah. I love this feature. This is like, I don't know, and here's another little tidbit you're going to hear on the pinball show. when asked, is this going to be a feature that you can buy as an accessory for the Pro Premium? TBD. We may not see it. I don't even know what the install would be like on something like that. But I love that they now have speaker lighting like some other manufacturers that interacts with the code and gameplay of that title. Seth Davis talked about blood in the water. You're going to see blood effects on that lighting. They talked about water effects, splashing and stuff. You're going to see that in the speaker lighting. And then they've got the cutout of the Jaws figure in there, too. Oh, that's fantastic. Can't wait for my LA. So those are some cool, cool features. Oh, I was looking at the speaker things, and I didn't realize those were the shark. You thought it was a Star Trek, right? I did. I liked them quite a bit when I was like, the Federation's going to – there'll be whales aboard, Coppin. There'll be whales. Oh, I'm wrong, Coppin. It's a great white. I think Quint's going to sing his little song. Yeah. His shanty. Probably have to start at one of the multiballs. His shanty. Okay, so here's the timeline of events for the Jaws release. Not the one on social media that is confusing. No. January 7th, we have the CES unveiling and the press event. So be on the lookout for that. A gameplay premiere video with live game team chat on Stern's YouTube channel is happening Sunday, January 7th at 8 p.m. Central. Did Fennum have that? A pre-recorded gameplay premiere video. I don't know if they had pre-recorded. I thought they did something with gameplay on their YouTube. Yeah, this is what I've been preaching forever. A pre-recorded, edited, nicely produced video showing gameplay. Jersey Jack's been doing that. I think Spooky recently did that. A lot of people are switching to that. I think it's very smart. And then you still have the Stern creators and the game team live in the chat, which I think is great. Focusing over to YouTube. My God, Stern, you're making it happen. I love it. January 8th then is the CES Pepcom press event. January 9th through 12th is CES trade show. And then January 16th through 18th is the EAG trade show. So we're going to be seeing some gameplay coming very, very soon. 1,000 LEs, $12,999. Does it sell out? How does this game sell? Do the pros outsell the premiums, or is it the other way around? Is this a hard-to-find title, or is this one that's going to be sitting on dealers' shelves for 20,000 leagues? How do you think this thing sells? It's an L1. It sells fine. You're right. You're right. and by selling fine, you're actually wrong. It's selling great. Better or worse than Foo Fighters? Ooh, it's better than Benham, better than James Bond. Well, at this point, the pacing based on where we're at, we're recording not even 24 hours upon release, not even 12 hours, nine hours. We're recording at nine hours post-launch. At nine hours post-launch, we have sold significantly more than we did Foo Fighters. L.N. effect or just that it's a stronger theme or why not? I think it's both because this thing, what this doesn't have that Foo Fighters does is timing. Foo Fighters release was timed perfectly for people to open their wallets. That was like the last breath of that huge-ass market that we've seen during pandemic. That was the last hurrah. That's true. It had a lot of current behind the wave, if you will. Sure. And then Jaws here, I think, is fighting against the current in a lot of respects. And even it is surpassing all of those crashes and those waves that people have told me. I don't know how many times in social media this last week, Dennis, people have reiterated that the sky is, in fact, falling. anytime I post a used game for sale there's always one just genuinely clever individual fucking like stand up comedians that they tell me how the market is crashing and I'll be lucky to get half of that and yeah but for some reason yeah this game is selling very very well I think this is a theme that is stronger than Godzilla and I think that the leak initially hurt the sales from a collector perspective. I really do. Because it got a narrative behind it too and just had to deal with all that shit. I think this is a game that is so hidden in its brilliance. I'm super stoked about this game. So much so that I'm easily, without a doubt, getting an LE for myself. I even... Oh, I'm such a nerd, Dennis. Jaws, I love the Jaws theme. It's not like a Dream Dream theme, but I think it belongs in any blockbuster like i just love blockbuster films this is it um and i love the film too but i'm such a nerd that i i did the specialized number thing and i don't ever do that like it was the first time i've ever done that for a stern it's so stupid so dumb lucky number 14 so yeah i am i am stoked about this game uh and let's hope that let's hope that code is good and all of that It's selling great, and I'm excited for it. All right, we will be talking next episode, 145, as well as on social media and streams. We're going to be talking about Jaws for a long time, right? Yeah, most likely. So we'll break from that right now. And there's a lot we need to talk about, including, I don't know, Pedretti Gaming securing the licensing for Bally Williams Games in collaboration with Planetary Pimple. What? Come on. How's that going to work? What's that going to look like? have I talked to CGC about Pulps being on the line or Cactus Canyon being remade or if they're going to maybe what about Princess Bride little sneaky peeky about Princess Bride is that a good thing for pinball when's it coming who's it coming from spooky pinball launching a Scooby Doo topper accessory and a wonderful launch video that had a nice little pinball show Easter egg at the end I don't know if you called that did you watch that no I don't watch topper videos I don't watch topper videos i edited in a pinball show easter egg at the end so you were oh you worked on it wow i had no idea You weren being really heavy with the suggestions of its greatness Is Pemburg back I think so We need to talk about that. Speaking of heavy-handed and sponsorship of Pemburg. Baby's smallest Pemburg ever. It's still Pemburg. It's the motion in the ocean. Pemburg-ito. Why is that Burke? No. So we've got a lot to talk about, but they can only hear it if they are an exclusive club member of the pinball show. And you can sign up today by going to patreon.com slash the pinball show. If you missed that, it's patreon p a t r e o n.com slash the pinball show. If it doesn't come up, you're doing a backslash. It's a regular slash. I get confused too. It's not a biggie. So go sign up now. listen to that exclusive content because we've got a lot to talk about. We also need to thank some people, Dennis. Yes, we must. We've got to thank the... I was going to say the beaver. I just spit all over my microphone. What does a beaver sound like? I don't know what a beaver sounds like, but it's not a bobcat. Who do you think would win a fight between a bobcat and a beaver? bobcat because it'll attack anyone's wife attack attack a beaver wife oh shoot that fucker thank you rodney appreciate uh and congratulations on your new game what about jabs the jablonski the bumblebee would a bumblebee beat a bobcat stings them in the bumble eye it might i'm gonna stick with the bobcat here Thank you, Steve. And thank you, Rob. The Panther. Snarl. Now we're messing with somebody. The Panther and a Bobcat. Got to go Panther on that one. Yeah, 60% of the time it would work every time. Now, if we're talking about cocaine Bobcat, give me cocaine Bobcat. Well, that's the performance enhancing. And Benzo Panther. I'm good, man. Benzo. the zany panther all right tabbed out panther what about the kinetosis well it depends if it's been low dosing ketamine or not Special K-Kineticist. That's perfect. You couldn't have said it better. Special K-Kineticist. Wow. I can see a doped up freaking wizard. Oh, man. Okay. Thank you, Colin, for the support. What about the falcon? An alcoholic falcon. I can see a swooping, swerving alcoholic falcon. Falcons are not to be messed with. I think a falcon, if big enough, can probably tear up a panther. I think the falcon might be the toughest. At least a... What's a baby panther called? A cub? A kit? Dead meat if it's against the falcons. Just like a Yorkie. Or that terrier? Yes. What was it? It was a Yorkshire Terrier or something. A toy Schnauzer. What about Dave? Thanks, Dave, the shaker motor. That shaker motor ain't going to beat up anybody. It's got that protective plastic shell. You know what? Pain in the ass to put that shell on sometimes. It is. Ridiculous. Instead of making expression shooter rods or whatever your next dumb light thing is, Stern, And figure out how to make a better case for that. Figure it out. Yeah. What about the fox? Joe Fox, thank you. The fox get tore up. I'm sorry. Fox get tore up. Unless it's got rabies. Well, a rabid fox. Got that froth power. Charlie, thank you, Charlie. Your bell ain't doing shit, buddy. It's not doing it. Even the Liberty Bell couldn't hold up. It's already cracked. Is that too soon? And the highest one of them all, William. You ruined the Dependence Day with your joke on the pinball show. That's it. I'm unsubscribing. We'll get messages from Phillip. No, we will. William, the dude. This is what happens, Larry. That wasn't her toe, dude. Dude ain't going to tear up nobody. Yeah, just going to abide. The dude abides. I can see the dude riding a screaming eagle, though. Man, I can see that happening. Dude's no commie. He's a nihilist. Is he a nihilist? No, he's not a nihilist. No, he's not a nihilist. Oh, thank you all. Man. Oh, Dennis, that last live hangout, happy hour that we had, that was some good stuff, wasn't it? Oh, they were passionate. There was a lot of passion in those waters. It was like there was chum. Dun, dun. Like we chummed up the waters for them there. As a reminder, at the end of this month, we'll be doing another one of those. All you got to do is go to patreon.com slash the pinball show and sign up for the Nordman level. It's $25 a month. You can enter in at the entry level of $10 a month and get all that extra content that you want, as well as a private Discord chat with everybody. But the $25 level, you'll get that live happy hour hangout with Dennis and I. And then at the Screaming Go Club members, you just heard, you get your own intoxicated nickname, as well as private conversations with Dennis and I about the juiciest of juice. So sign up today. Support us. Love us forever, and we'll love you back. This is time. The end? The market is ebbing and flowing. What market? The market's dead. Like some wonderful... Except for Jaws. Don't you dare fucking say Jaws is trending up. Trending up this week in pinball! Market trends is stirring pinballs, Jaws! And the pop can of techno, Lord! I like your style, dude. The numbers don't lie. The profanity even leaked out of me. I'm just like, absolutely not. What do I do? Report the... No one cares. Report the what? The market's like used ones. We don't care about new ones. Look, when there's a blip in the market, I simply report it. Don't kill the master, Dennis. I'm just a conduit of information. That's all I am. I'm like the CNN, Fox News, a pinball. See what I did there? Yes. What's even more... Walk that line. The BBC, MSNBC, where am I? The BBC and Reuters pinball. What's the boring news? Reuters. Okay, we'll take that. Turning up is Jaws because it is. Sales are phenomenal. You're thinking about buying one if you haven't already, listener. I know you are. Buy, buy, buy! And I also have to trend up Stern Pinball. I always trend up Stern Pinball. And it's not because I'm a shill. Even if I was a shill, this is not why I'm doing it here. I'm doing it here because they talked about all types of cool ass goals that we want to see in the next year or so. and I don't know, not continuing, coming out with different LE variations is a good trend in my opinion. And as well as talking about coming up, bringing back some DMZ titles, not that I'm wanting them back, but I think a lot of people do. So that's another reason to trend up as well. Nicely done, Stern Pinball. And of course, this one's out of left field, but numbers don't lie. Just reports the sales. And trending up this week is Pinball Brothers Alien, the Ripley edition. for whatever reason the last two weeks we have simply sold out of our entire inventory of these ripley edition machines sure i've still got a couple lvs sitting there at three thousand dollars more but everybody for whatever reason it's like the hot topic right now the hot the hot trending topic that's right all gothed up and it's and it's sigourney weaver and it's can't wait for I'm going to release the black lipstick. Annoying ass cat and weird witty t-shirts. Yeah, Bob Jonesi. God. Joel was playing that the other night. I'm like, all right, get through this mode. I'm going to shoot a cat. Who cares if the cat dies? Ripley edition sold out with us. We're waiting for more. But at $79.95, I guess I understand why. But alas, trending down this week, we're going to do something a little bit different. This week, I want to do some trending downs as a retailer of pinball machines, as a seller, a distributor, a dealer. The man that sells you pinball machines, buys pinball machines from you, trades pinball machines. I'm going to give you some of my most trending down pet peeves when it comes to buying, selling, and trading. Keep in mind, I may illustrate these pet peeves for entertainment purposes or, hell, maybe this is exactly how I feel. Our trending down this week is this one's not too bad. But when you buy a machine from a distributor and we're shipping it to your house, we're shipping it to your door, and we get it shipped to you, and then like the day before it's supposed to get to your house, you change your plans and you want to pick it up at a terminal. Now, again, not a huge deal, but keep in mind that to do so, there's more paperwork that's got to be done. and it's much cheaper if I were just to ship it to a terminal and the first place for you to pick up. Honestly, I want to save you some money. Mention that to me beforehand. I might be able to save you some money if you're wanting to pick it up at a terminal rather than bringing it to your door. The reason being, not to nerd out too much here, but the reason being, when it comes to your house, it's a residential property, and oftentimes you don't have a Ford truck or you don't have a dock, so you're going to need a lift gate on that truck to ship it to the dock. take it out, put it into a different truck, a smaller truck typically, and bring it out on a lift gate, they charge more money. Sometimes $100, sometimes $200 more. So ultimately, when you call and say, hey, I want to pick this thing up at the terminal now, I'm like, damn, it's more work for me, and I could have saved some money. I could have saved you some money. You know, that's a small little trending down. Another trending down of buying and selling pinball machines. One of my favorite things in pinball is talking about pinball, interacting with my friends, my customers, about the newest releases, what I think about the games. Candidly, too, what I like, what I don't like about games. It's one of my favorite things. I love doing that because I freaking love this damn hobby. I bleed pimple, y'all. But what is trending down is on launch day. You guys got to get this in perspective. For me, as a dealer, as a distributor, launch day is like a holiday for me. Not like a good holiday. It's like Christmas. So, well, it's like, honestly, it's like game day. It's not even like a holiday because I'm not chilling out. I am sweating. I am working my ass off. It's like Grand Central Station here. It is like the Super Bowl. I'm doing my stretches beforehand. It is freaking game day, and I'm about to run out of that tunnel, and I am about to perform because I'm going to be answering text messages, emails, Facebook. I've got Pennside. People are asking questions. They're wanting to. it is a nuts-a-thon around here but i love it it's my super bowl it's my heiress tour if you will for all you swifty fans out there so i was born for game title launch day but trimming down are a couple of you guys that find it appropriate on launch day to message me in the thick of things just to tell me how crappy you think a certain product is that launched that day man you see the rant that sucks and the sales are gonna suck on this thing what were they thinking here look i'm just so tired of the pricing you can tell manufacturer has to go kick rocks like trending down is that i'm open to that feedback and hell i'll agree with some of it too but there's a time and place and on launch day is not the time nor the place so if it takes me a little extra time or days to respond to you during launch day to crap all over a product my apologies and our last little trending down sub-segment of buying and selling pinball machines. This one's not too bad either, but just a little quirk I've seen pop up every now and then. When you go to sell a game or trade in a game, try not to ask to change the terms of the deal without adjusting the value of said trade or sale deal. Like, for example, I've had a couple of these lately where terms are met upon here's what the trade-in's worth, we'll do this, you get this new game, you're giving me this game, I get to resell, blah, blah, blah. right but then uh everything's packed up we're ready to go you're coming tomorrow or i'm delivering it shipping it tomorrow and you say hey i had a shaker motor in my old game is it okay if i pull that because i'm wanting to put that in my new game now sure if you want to take a hundred dollars off the deal that's fine but you can't expect me to just be like yeah keep that extra hundred dollars increase the value of your new game is that bad for me to set like i'm just keeping it real here hey come on if it's in your game you made the deal it's in the game if you want to take it out it's a hundred dollars same with like PinStadiums or something like that if you're advertising something for sale with PinStadiums in there it's a couple hundred bucks you pulling them willy-nilly affects the deal it changes the terms and of course like something egregious like a topper yes people are going to speak up but it's like the little thing sometimes i'm like Come on now. That was part of it there. I guess it goes down to this. If you send pictures of the item for sale or for trade and terms are agreed upon, damn it, everything in those pictures better still be in there. Maybe my trending down segment here is because it was a long day. I hope you enjoyed it, though, because it is very much a part of the marketplace when moving within your collection pinball machines. Do you all agree with me? Do you disagree? submit your very own pet peeve for maybe a future pinball market trends trending up or down submit it to the pinball show at gmail.com i'd love to hear do you guys agree with me do you disagree with me and for anyone who is guilty of those of those trending uh down topics i assure you i still love you i'm just busting balls and speaking the truth pinball bounty this week still radical still looking for a congo i'm really hot and heavy for a lord of the rings y'all there are some i get it there are some on the marketplace they're just not clean enough or if they are clean enough they're not priced accordingly keep looking for me guys it's out there and as always i'm just here to report the facts because numbers don't lie neither do i on pinball joel's trends dennis let's shut her down where can people reach you they can always email me eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com okay and you can reach us at the pinball show at gmail.com as Well, I heard that there used to be another pinball show that covered fake pinball, but they're not around anymore. And I don't know. Maybe they just want to warehouse that neon sign instead of selling it to us. Yeah, where's the neon sign? Zen Pinball, if that really is your name. I think their name is bankrupt now. Allegedly. That's right. Even if you say rumored, it doesn't matter. Okay. What about straight down the middle? Go follow, like, and subscribe to that. Watch yourself a topper video. Oh, that was turning up too. Oh, well. Follow, like, subscribe to the Pinball Show on Facebook. Jump on our Discord with paid membership. And our sponsor. We can't forget our sponsor, Flip N Out Pinball. When I buy my pinball shit, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. From toppers, hard plays, rameons, I've got it figured out. Flip N Out Pinball. Figured out. When I take a pinball, I think Flip N Out Pinball. Flip N Out Pinball. Figured out. Figured out. It's when I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. Buy, buy, buy. Ding. Product showcase this week. Wow. What do you know? It's just like the trend itself. It's Jaws. It's got to be Jaws. Order yours today. Do you know that Flip N Out Pinball offers free shipping on all brand new sterns? I didn't know. Yeah. LEs? Free shipping. I forgot. Premiums? Free shipping. Pros? Free shipping, even though the margins aren't as high as they are. Free shipping. And look, you've seen them out there. You've seen them catch on to my sly marketing and other people now offering free shipping. Read the fine details, my friend, because that free shipping may be to another city where you have to drive and go pick it up. No, no, no, no. At Flip N Out Pinball, we ship it free to your door. Maybe we can save you some money if you want to go pick it up at the terminal, but that's besides the fact. It's free shipping to your door. I can't guarantee if FedEx Freight is going to call you. They didn't call me. See? Well, they did schedule the original, although I have a little story for you on that. Oh, really? Oh, it's real quick. Show worthy? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Why not? Yeah. There are already people posting on Pinside. That was not show worthy. I didn't hear that. Yeah. Yeah. So, no. So FedEx, we set a scheduled time. They came 15 minutes at the end of the scheduled period. So it was within the scheduled period. Within the window. Okay. Yes, it was. It was the last thing on the truck. I went out there. They're lowering it down. I'm explaining. and I've got a space cleared out in the garage for them to put the pallet. And she's like, am I going to have enough room to turn the device around? I'm like, yes, yes, yes. I've got it all set up. And she goes and she wheels it in, and she sees I've got a couple others in the older games in the garage. And she goes, oh, yeah, you've got it. Yeah, no, Sinbad's in the lineup because it's good. No, Buck Rogers is now in the garage. Oh, man. And the Victory I'm still working on. Anyway, so she's going and she's wheeling it in, and she sees them, and she goes, oh, yeah, you've got a couple other of these already. I go, yeah, I work on them. And she goes, oh, yeah, no, that's right. I remember you. What? And I go, what? And she goes, I delivered you a game before. But here's the thing. She didn't deliver Deadpool. A guy did because he fell on my car. I remember, yeah, getting pinned up. She delivered Godzilla years ago and remembered me. Really? Because who orders pinball? Yeah, but do we stick out that bad? The market's dead. Do we stick out that bad? Did she say so with like a scowl on her face? No, it was me mentioning that I work on them that I guess was the trigger, where she's like, oh, yeah, this is the guy who has the games in the garage that he's always working on and apparently never finishes. Would it be fair to say that you triggered her? Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. No. I think by definition, yeah. Was there a little smile, a flip of the hair possibly? I don't know. There could have been flips, but she was like, Now I've got to go pick up a game all the way up in the Northland. I'm running behind schedule. Bye. Well, that was interesting. And the game itself arrived, and at least it's there. Have you got to do or die multiple? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know me and Carl. Every day, right? We basically just race for that stuff. So order your pinball machine today from Flip N Out Pinball. Get free shipping to your door and the industry-leading customer service. That's included. Come on. we've got all kinds of games in stock I think pretty much every game I think pretty much every game in stock right now email us at ZachZACH at flip the letter N out to pinball.com or just visit our website at flippingoutpinball.com if you guys want to see the used inventory that we have it's gone so quick and priced so appropriately that I only have time to put it on the website so we just put it on Facebook boom up to date list of what's for sale there and those go pretty quick so follow us there on Facebook and Instagram and buy a GTF while you're at it. I got a couple. That'd be well and let go. And for all of you who want to know when Joel's accessories are coming, I don't know. Sooner than later, but I don't know. We're taking lists as always. Flipping out with friends. Check them out. Joel's streaming. He's chatting. He's doing it all. He's flipping out Joel. Tune in. I think he's been doing alien streams next week. Yeah, that's the last one I saw. I think another Alien stream this coming week. He's going to have a Jaws Pro here in a couple weeks as well. That'll be fun. TPN last week. Oh, well, the last couple weeks. It's been a while. We've had a few things. Yeah, we had episode 46 of Triple Drain where they did the crossover episode with Loser Kids Pinball Podcast. Oh, it was a good one, yeah. And then Jerry Stallenberg from Multimorphic was on Pinball Innovators and Makers Podcast. Very nice. and then silver ball chronicles this part one of their capcom series oh i love that one why does capcom uh interest me so because they have the most powerful flippers to have ever flipped do you hear them when you're holding them up you know i i don't know if they have the that buzz or not that's a physical ball lock i've heard look i'm holding four uh four ball It's a good lock. TPN this week, all kinds of good stuff. So tune in, follow the pinball show and the pinball network. Teach these people something. Well, I'm going to teach the manufacturers. Manufacturers. Oh, no. Guys, when there's a leak, it's going to squeak. You're a poet. And always practice safe pinball and keep your cocaine bobcats out of shark-infested waters. Because they'll kill a shark. Bruce ain't shit. Especially if you drop a bunch of binnies in that shark. Who's the panther? The panther. The Benzo panther. Oh, man. Show me the way to go home. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago and I got right to my head. Your phone is bothersome. for some tuning in to WPST, where you get PTSD listening to me. I took one poop and one shower and one meal. I feel like I'm in prison. Okay, here we go. Wherever I may roam, on land or sea or home, you can always hear me singing.