Welcome back pinball nerds to episode 512 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert and on today's episode I've got just a little tiny bite-sized episode for you. Just a little tiny, little snacky. I was very tired. I was lying in bed. I've got to get up very early to go to a collectible show in Halifax at the Forum tomorrow. and I've been working very hard all this week to get all my... The easy and fun part of doing a collectible show is buying all of the comics and buying all of the sports cards. The harder part is pricing them all out and trying to get people to repurchase them, sometimes for more money, sometimes for less, but I've got that going on tomorrow. So I had already got ready for bed and was laying down and basically saw that the spooky reveal had happened. So, spooky pinball has just revealed Scooby-Dooby-Doo. And I'm going to talk about the five things I was surprised by while watching it, okay? Because a lot of it was as you would expect, but there were some surprises there. There were some things that I thought were pretty cool. One of the surprises could go either way. So that's why I didn't want to do five rad, one bad. I thought that these were five things that kind of surprised me about the game in comparison to the video, the very short, short video we'd seen before. Now we have 41 minutes. I've actually watched it twice now through just for you guys. Even though I was a little tired laying in bed. Sorry I'm low energy. I humbly apologize. I know you're used to me being all caffeinated and ready to go. But it's not that late here. It's about 10.30, but like I said, I was getting ready for bed. So anyways, let's just get into it. number one thing I was surprised by is how easy it is. And this is the one that might be slightly controversial of any of these. I wouldn't even say this is a hot take. This is a mildly warm hot pocket. Okay. This is just a little micro, you know, it, it, it seemed very easy. Um, so for instance, I know they were 15 minutes, I believe it's at 15 minutes and 40 seconds in And Bug actually says, come on, someone has to show off these outlanes. In that they were 15 minutes in. As far as Bug had remembered, as far as I had remembered, I hadn't seen anyone hit an outlane. And I believe that they were like 19 minutes in. And they had literally only, I think, Spooky Luke and Bug had each played one ball. Now, that being said, it was 19 minutes for the video. And I think, you know, Luke did a really good job of not talking for 10 minutes first. I think they only talked for, I think, or sorry, Bug only talked for like two minutes at the start before they started playing, two or three minutes. So let's say they're 15 minutes in it, and you know, not necessarily that either of them are great players, but I know they're obviously good players because they work at Spooky and they play all the time. And it could be an easy game. So let's go either way. If you're back at your house, you know, you probably have a real chance of getting to this wizard mode in comparison to, like, the average Stern or even, especially the average JJP, right? However, it's a very long player. So this could be a negative for tournament play. This could kind of be a negative for certain locations where they're trying to get people to use more coins. The good news is, now, I don't, if they did mention it, I apologize, Spooky. If you did mention it, Bug, Luke, everyone there, if you did mention it, I apologize. guys, but I don't know if they mentioned where the outlines were set up to. So they have easy, medium, and zoinks, which I think is hilarious for the outlines. And of course, zoinks would be the hardest setting with the post at the bottom. So the outlines are hungry and they're there to eat up your ball, right? So I think that maybe it could be just slightly too easy in that there's going to be very, very, very long ball times in that it's good and bad, because for newer players, for noobs, even people in the first few years, it's probably good. For people who are wanting to be able to put a loonie, as we call it here in Canada, or just a buck, 50 cents, whatever, into a pin in the States and play for a long time on location, it's good. For people wanting to have tournaments with it, or very, very skilled players, it could be kind of boring, because it's considered such long ball times. But I think overall it's good because to me, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle looks very hard, even though some people say once you figure out the shots, it's fine. But to me, that looks very hard. Rick and Morty looks very chaotic, especially with the pop bumper at the bottom. I think most likely this is going to be overall their easiest shooter. I mean, TNA is easy, but easy figuring out what shots you should go for next, that sort of thing. But it is brutal and it is fast and you got to be saving the ball and watching all the time I think this is their easiest shooter Of course maybe they just had it set up very well there and of course they know that machine well from playing it lots right So that's the first thing I was surprised by was the very, very, very long ball times. The next thing I was surprised by, number two on my list here, and for the most part they're pleasant surprises moving forward. That one could kind of go either way, like I said. But the animations were really, really rad. I think the animations were done very well. I've seen every episode probably two or three times over the years of the original Scooby-Dooby, I believe it's Hanna-Barber, whatever that is. I've seen it lots. The future iterations, by the time Scrappy-Doo was coming in and stuff, have I seen some of those episodes? Yes. But I no longer watched it religiously like I did back in the day, okay? so I think that the animations are probably the second best animations that have ever been done because of course as a massive Rick and Morty fan uh that being said it's very unfortunate uh what Justin Justin Roiland did to those people if even half of those allegations are true um Rick and Morty owners may not see the same return they would have seen on the show had Justin Justin Roiland gone conflict free for the rest of his life and you know of course he'll no longer be voicing Rick and Morty. For those of you who haven't heard, but there is several allegations about Justin Justin Roiland, one of the creators and the voice of Rick and Morty. Anyways, that's neither here nor there, but to any of the victims, I'm sorry that that happened to you, and to Justin. What the hell, dude? You had such an awesome show, man. I used to love you. Ah, heroes. You never know with heroes, right? You never know. I'm hoping it all comes out that they're all fake and yada Indiana, but it seems like there's been a lot of them so far. So, Justin, probably done fucked up. Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez, Rick. Oh, jeez. Anyways, I think the animations are great on Scooby. I think they're very well done. They're very, like, I was, like, almost, old episodes were almost coming back to me as I watched them. The start of the Mr. Machine multiball was really cool. That also had a really rad animation, but we might, or light show, but we might talk about that later. yeah I thought the animations were great I think that you know for a smaller type company that sometimes in the past has been ridiculed for their animations Rob Zombie was not wonderful let's just say it that way was that even LCD I don't even know they were not great and a couple of the other ones were not great but Rick and Morty was fantastic Halloween was it needs some work and Ultraman I thought the Ultraman animations were slightly better in my head, but I don't know. I honestly haven't seen a live stream of Alterman maybe ever, so since the original. Number three is the sound and the callouts. Okay, so I heard a good variety of callouts, maybe not the thousands they were talking about, but those would probably still need to get into code. The callouts were great. The sound effects were really good. My guess is I could have that for years and they would never bug me like there was nothing in there that I thought, oh, geez, that's not good, right? The music, I guess one of the songs, I think it's during the Mystery Machine Multiball, 19 minutes in, I believe they get Mystery Machine Multiball, and there's a song there that I think is like a custom song that they had by one of their voiceover guys that he sang and made up for them, and that was hilarious. And I thought all the songs that they played, or sorry, no, no, I'm correct. That's for Cutler's Multiball. The Mystery Machine Multiball is the original Scooby song, and it's awesome, and I'm glad that, like, I'm glad, unlike, say, Ninja Turtles, where you hear Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles maybe possibly too often when you're playing that machine, whereas this, you rarely, rarely ever hear the spooky song, and by the time you hear it, you're, like, you know, you're ready for it. Like, it seems like that Multiball takes a lot of shots to qualify it and you're not going to hear it too often. And honestly, they played that multiball very, very, very quickly. So, you know, the song might even end and you're like, I didn't even get through it once, I want to hear it again. It might encourage you just to get back into multiball, right? So, number four, and this one was kind of neat, the bookcase flipper. Now, we all knew watching the video that the bookcase flippers, this is the flipper in the upper playfield on the far left, we all knew that there was the opportunity that this particular flipper could do some neat and interesting things but I didn't think it could be this rad until I actually see it happen so that upper flipper from the bottom half of the upper flipper where you traditionally hit a ball there's one well there both orbit shots and then there the cutler shot the bash toy in the middle then there one more shot to the right of that Then there the far like looping orbit shot I believe So there like five shots right from there But then from that upper... The upper shot, sometimes the ball is kind of rolling up your flipper, and you can whip it from up there. And it looks like you can actually hit one or two shots. I think at least once I saw it bounce off that and go up to the Cutler. So there might be even more. What I'm getting at is it's not just like randomness. You've got to really, there could be some skill to this to just actually doing an upper dead flip, if that makes sense, where you don't actually flip your upper flipper on purpose to make it bounce off there to hit the Cutler. I don't know if that was just done on accident or on purpose, but there's just going to be, it's innovative, it's neat, it's interesting. It obviously doesn't cost much. It's not an expensive mech, or maybe it is, but as far as I know, it's just like, you know, it's probably more expensive than a regular flipper mech because all the R&D going into it and that sort of thing. But it's also a diverter. So, like, I know everyone's saying, or at least I was over watching Chris on Canada's Pinball Podcast, and, you know, someone was saying, well, what's the major mech? And there isn't really necessarily a major mech in this. I get that. But I think that that bookcase flipper's more fun than I thought it would be. I'm not going to call it a major mech. There's no way I'm going to call a flipper a major mech, but I think it's got some interesting stuff in it. There's obviously the Cutler mech up there. The two mechs that everyone was talking about that were not used at all, and again, this was in Chris's chat, that he did a quick live stream after it. I only caught about three minutes of it. I haven't read any pin side yet. I didn't read any of the messages in the live stream because I missed the live stream on YouTube. I don't know if they posted it as a live stream or just a video, but I missed it. and there isn't really I know what they're saying like there isn't really a main mech in it but I think that's still bang for buck because this isn't a $15,000 pin like Toy Story 4 this isn't a $20,000 pin like Elowen's Bond this isn't even you know I guess it is getting close to the price of an LE once you add the butter cab and everything else but if you just wanted the entry level one of this. I think you're going to get most of the fun stuff in it. I think the artwork's still great. I really think, almost like the TSN turning point, I guess, or in the United States you call it the ESPN turning point. That point in the game where everything kind of changes. And I think for Spooky, this is their big turning point. I think from this moment out, they're no longer boutique. They're the ugly Caterpillar shedding its shell and coming out as a beautiful monarch and flying away. Because for them to make a game this good with no help from Scott Dinesi, as far as I know, with no help from Bo and Karens, with no help from... Who's the gentleman I'm thinking of who's at work and I gave him a Ben Heck? With no help, you know, they don't have a Steve Ritchie. They don't have an Eric Minier. They don't have a Keith Elwin. You know, Bugs kind of helped design some pins before, but as far as I know, this is the first one he's fully, completely designed, right? Scott Danesi's designed their two best previous pins to this. I believe that they did actually, I could be wrong there, I believe that Bug and Spooky Luke did actually help with Halloween and Ultraman, but I would definitely not say that was their watershed moment for that last pin. If anything, that was their, like, their learning their lesson. They made some rookie mistakes that they didn't want to make again. The code is way further along than Halloween. The animations are way, way, way better. The sound is better, I think. Not that that was an issue really with the last one too much, but I think the sound is better. The callouts are better. The artwork is better. The light show is incredible. The bravery meter on the side is really neat. So again, would I buy this Scooby-Dooby product over a Jurassic Park Pro or over a Godzilla Pro? Me personally, no. But if I had a location like a cool little rock bar or like any bar where there was people that were going to be nostalgic between the ages of really probably I'm guessing people between the ages of mid-50s, maybe even up to 60, all the way down to like 30, of course I would have it there because you're going to go play it. I think you're going to have fun. You're going to love the callouts. You're going to love the music. You're going to love the multi-balls. It seems like getting your balls locked in that apron is going to be a huge challenge because this is the other thing that they were saying there in Chris's chat was that no one had actually used the ball locks in the bottom. So that part is at least going to be a challenge, it seems like. Maybe they did get used once and somehow I missed it, but I didn't see it happen in the video. And I know at the very end, Bug did say, you know, there's so much stuff we want to show you in this game, we didn't get to show you yet, but we want to show you. So obviously there's a lot more to be revealed. Let look here at Numero 5 Okay So yeah I mentioned that already Of course it also a diverter Oh, the paint mode. The paint mode. I forget how far through this was, but they were explaining it. It sounds really neat. So I believe you have to shoot one of the red shots to dip your ball in the paint or to dip your brush in the paint, and then you can shoot up to two white shots after that before you have to go back, and the white shots would no longer qualify or register, just like Travis Merian in disc, trying not to qualify his thing, right? The shots just wouldn't count. You'd have to go back in there and you'd have to actually, excuse me, hit a red shot and go back in and do it all over again. And here's the thing. That just seems really fun. Because sometimes modes are like, you know, they're all similar, like shoot these five shots or something. And this is a little bit different, where you specifically have to repeat doing certain shots and then go back and go for other shots until the entire mode is done. So I want to say hats off to the good old spooky pinball. I think that you guys have done very well. You're no longer boutique, though. We're going to start holding you up to, like, you guys, I don't know. I know people say CGC's in the top three there. At this point, I think that they might be giving them a run for money for how many pins they'll be making or selling per year. Now, CGC hasn't released in a long time, so I don't know. People say the CGC quality is through the frickin' roof. It's like Charlie Brown shooting out the frickin' glass elevator every time they make one. So I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe they are not bigger or better, but I think they're more innovative, at least so far, because we've only really seen, you know, we've only really seen remakes come out of CGC recently. So I would say as far as I know, you know, unless they're doing, there's rumors, but you know me, I don't like to talk about rumors often, that it'll be something else. But anyways, Pinball Nerds, that's all I've got for you today. I just wanted to be a little bite-sized episode. The last one was way too long. I'm sorry. I'm going to try not to go to two hours again. I do want to give a small apology to Eric Stone. I probably went off the top due to like personal issues that I have with the church and stuff on the last one. If you didn't listen to the last episode, don't go back and listen to it. I got a little overheated near the end. I had been drama-free all the way from episode 493. I had been drama-free all the way to episode 511. And, you know, I messed up a little bit there. Probably could have been more chill about it. But I got a little too heated. I was also stoked for In Disc. And, you know, probably the opposite of this episode. There's probably people who listened to this episode and said, you should be more amped up like you were on the last one. I'm sure on the last one people were like, you should be more mellow and just chill, man, when you're talking about pinball. It's supposed to be fun, dude. I get it. I totally get it. Anyways, that's going to be it for today's show. I'm exhausted. I'm going to go to bed. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. And I think that if I was someone who was strongly considered getting the game, that there's nothing I would have seen this with that would make me think, nah, I don't want to get it. If anything, if I was a fence sitter, if I was just sitting there hurting my butt on the fence, this particular livestream that they did from Spooky, the gameplay reveal, whatever it is, this would make me honestly consider maybe getting one. I don't know if I would have to get the one with the colored habit trails. They look better than I thought they would. I will admit it. The light show looked way better than I thought I would. The bravery meter turned out to be really cool and intuitive just to see what level it was at. So good for them. Good for them. I mean, I haven't shot it yet. Neither has anyone else unless they actually work at Spooky. So this is just a first impressions. This isn't my hardcore review. After I play it, I will update my grading scale that I use. Of course, I think it got an 80.5. and I stand by that so far. I think this is maybe their first overall pure A machine. I think it's even better than Rick and Morty overall, to be honest. So I don't know. I don't know if it's going to end up being better than TNA. I've got to play it, but I think it's right up there. It's definitely in the top three, put it that way. I don't know. TNA might be slightly better just for its gameplay and how fun it is and that music and everything else, but this has a lot going in it. I think if I only had one game in my basement from Spooky, it would be a good old Scooby-Dooby-Doo. Where are you? I'll see you later, Scooby-Dooby-Doo. Also wanted to mention, I'm going to have Rachel Risto, of course, of the Poor Men's Pinball Network right here. She's got a couple different shows. She did a really rad PSA about women's tournaments. You should go listen to that if you haven't. It's also over on the Pinball Network. And it's pretty cool. She got that up on both channels. Really, really provocative. Really good. really makes you think, go listen to that. I'm going to have her on the show for Women's History Month, and we're going to talk all things pinball at that point, especially about how to get women more into pinball. Until next time, pinball nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Scooby-dooby-doo pinball. We're scrappy!