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PNP- 658 Top 5 MOST Rad Pins Of 2025 RANKED

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·59m 52s·held·Nov 25, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Top 5 rad pinball games of 2025: Portal, Winchester, Evil Dead ranked with design & code analysis.

Summary

Orville Elbert of Poor Man's A A Pinball Podcast presents his top five most rad pinball machines of 2025, featuring Portal (P3 Multimorphic), Winchester Mystery House (Barrels of Fun), Evil Dead (Spooky), and others. The episode discusses code maturity, artwork quality, and design philosophy across manufacturers, with particular attention to recent releases like Dune's weak launch and Stern's pricing increases. Orville also addresses community controversies including an IFPA situation involving a trans player and discusses broader industry topics like scalping and machine availability.

Key Claims

  • Portal (P3 Multimorphic) has great flow, excellent artwork by Brad Albright, and strong rules/code by Ian Harrower

    high confidence · Orville Elbert discussing Portal in his top 5 list

  • Dune had a weak launch with insufficient code, callouts, video, and LCD assets at release

    high confidence · Orville Elbert explaining why Dune didn't make top 5 despite being honorably mentioned

  • Winchester Mystery House was designed with the 'Carl Factor' — Python Anghelo reputation for good customer service and streaming content

    high confidence · Orville Elbert crediting Carl for Winchester and his influence on the industry

  • Stern pinball prices have increased so dramatically that owning LEs requires 'a pool of freaking gold to swim in'

    medium confidence · Orville Elbert stating this is his biggest Stern takedown in paywalled episode

  • Jeff Dodson (Dirtypool Pinball/Pyramid) did sound rework for Dune and Winchester

    high confidence · Orville Elbert crediting Dodson for sound engineering on both games

  • Brad Albright did artwork for both Portal and Winchester, potentially winning 'the year' for artwork

    medium confidence · Orville Elbert speculating about Brad's involvement in artwork for multiple top 5 games

  • Beetlejuice (Spooky show game) will become 25% more valuable than non-show versions within 2-3 years

    medium confidence · Orville Elbert predicting secondary market pricing based on rarity and FOMO

  • Evil Dead is the most beautiful pinball machine on the 2025 list

    high confidence · Orville Elbert ranking Evil Dead as number three

Notable Quotes

  • “I swear to the pinball gods themselves, I was about to record an episode for y'all yesterday. And I saw that Josh and Scott... had recorded a top five pinball machines of the year.”

    Orville Elbert @ Early in episode — Shows transparency about podcast coordination and community collaboration

  • “Once you get a big mouthful of a ciggy butt in your mouth, you might not ever try craft beer again... and just for the rest of your life, someone's like, oh, no, you got to try a craft beer.”

    Orville Elbert @ Mid-episode — Metaphor for first impressions ruining games (referencing Dune's weak launch)

  • “Portal, it seems like Portal's kind of put P3 Multimorphic on the map, so to speak, in a bigger way than they ever have been before.”

    Orville Elbert @ Discussing Portal — Market signal: Portal is significantly elevating P3 Multimorphic's profile

  • “Winchester was designed by... Carl has goodwill. The same way that Spooky has built up goodwill with doing incredible customer service and being very open and honest.”

    Orville Elbert @ Discussing Winchester — Identifies Carl D'Python Anghelo and Barrels of Fun reputation as key market factor

  • “Beetlejuice gets up to being worth, let's say, $16,000, I'd be shocked... but two to three years down the road, I would be shocked if they weren't worth 25% more.”

    Orville Elbert @ Discussing secondary market pricing — Prediction about LE pricing and FOMO-driven value appreciation

  • “Scalping can ruin hobbies... On the flip side of that, to use a pinball pun, it also can make the hobby more fun.”

    Orville Elbert @ Mid-episode commentary — Nuanced take on scalping dynamics in pinball and Pokemon cards market

  • “Python Anghelo... really modernizing it. And he even helped with lots of other things in Pinball.”

    Orville Elbert @ Discussing Carl's influence — Recognition of Carl's impact on tournament infrastructure and industry innovation

Entities

Orville ElbertpersonJoshpersonScottpersonPortalgameWinchester Mystery HousegameEvil DeadgameDunegameThe Walking Dead

Signals

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Portal praised for interesting shot directions and jump shots with extension kit making bottom third playable; Evil Dead noted as less flowful than its appearance suggests; Winchester code appears more mature than 25% assessment suggests

    high · Orville describes Portal's 'unique shots and shot paths' and 'jump shots'; discusses Evil Dead's lack of flow despite appearance; compares Winchester code maturity favorably to Dune

  • $

    market_signal: Stern LE prices have risen dramatically, with prediction that show games (like Beetlejuice) will command 25% premium over non-show versions within 2-3 years; FOMO-driven secondary market expectations

    high · Orville criticizes Stern LEs requiring 'pool of gold to swim in'; predicts Beetlejuice show games worth 25% more; discusses FOMO and scalping dynamics

  • ?

    product_concern: Dune launched with insufficient code, callouts, video assets, and LCD content — weak first impression comparable to 'cigarette butt in craft beer' that damages long-term perception

    high · Orville states 'if Dune had came out... if it was launched with more code, if it was launched with more call-outs, if it was launched with more video... it could have snuck into the top five'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Portal's extension kit innovation makes bottom playfield viable; Sandworm mech in Dune noted; P3 Multimorphic positioning as innovative alternative to Stern/Spooky/JJP

    high · Orville praises Portal's 'bottom one-third is actually playable now because they have that extension kit'; notes Dune's Sandworm as 'one cool mech'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.180

0:00
Sous-titrage ST' 501 Pinball Nerds Podcast, coming to you from beautiful River Higgins, Nova Scotia.
0:43
Welcome back Pinball Nerds to episode 658 of your fifth favorite Pinball Podcast. My name's Orville Elbert and on today's show we have such a fun show. I'm going to be counting down the top five ranked most rad pinball machines of the year, the year of 2025. And wow, it was a competitive freaking year. Now, I swear to the pinball gods themselves, I was about to record an episode for y'all yesterday. And I saw that Josh and Scott, my buddies over there at the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, had recorded a top five pinball machines of the year. Now listen, I don't have exclusivity. Is that a word? Did I say that right? I don't think I did. I'm not the only one who can exclusively do top fives. Everyone's welcome to do top fives. And I hope it's not just myself and Josh and Scott over there. But I did want to listen to theirs first. I didn't want to imagine if my list was identically the same as Josh's or Scott's. They'd be like, hey, Orby, I liked your show, but it's kind of strange. So the good news is I'm not going to give, you know, if you haven't, I'm sure most of you have already listened to it. They're a much bigger show than me with a much larger audience. Make sure you go listen to that. I'm going to try to remember to drop a link for them right here in the comments. You can just scroll down and click on it if you haven't yet on YouTube. But that was most of what their show was talking about. And I was like, well, man, I want to listen to theirs first. And I had my son Hayden coming over for his birthday party and is also his goodbye party. He's moving away to Alberta this week. In fact, he's leaving on the 27th. I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go to the Ontario Open. Thank you to all my patrons for that. And I know if you're listening right now and you're thinking, but where the hell on earth is episode 657? What do you mean episode 658? Well, if y'all hadn't noticed, I've been kind of doing like almost every other show. You know me, I'm not woke, but I am half awake. I sleep with one eye open, my friends. Yes, that's where I am. I'm a kind of, I got one foot in the grave. Wait, no, that's not what that means. Hopefully I don't have one foot in the grave. I am 45. Hey, I'm closer to 50 than I am 40 now, so maybe I do. But I have been working a lot on my mental health and my physical health, so hopefully not. But the point is here in a long about way that I had a patron reach out to me and say, hey, how come you haven't talked about the situation with OBX, the trans woman getting kicked out of the women's bathroom and, you know, the women's advisory board and how the IFBA dealt with that? Why haven't you talked about that yet? And I said, well, first of all, I haven't done a show for a couple of days because I've been busy doing that since that happened. Second of all, I was a little bit burnt out. I did six interviews in six weeks or four weeks, five weeks, like three interviews within a week of Expo. And then I talked to Rachel Risto and Lauren Gray, of course, formerly of the or maybe currently still on hiatus Backbox Pinball podcast. So that was really awesome. That was fun. But I was a little bit burnt out because I did so many shows in such a short period of time. I got to talk to Enzo with the Top 5 Rad, of course, on my last show for The Walking Dead. Wow, people really hated that. People really, really, I can't, I'm shocked by how much people are hating on The Walking Dead. I'm like, fun shots, you know, fun shots made even better with the remastered. Ugly artwork made better. I don't care what anyone says, the artwork is better. It might not be the best. I think the artwork is incredible. I think the colors are not. I think the palette is like, ah, my eyes out, I'm burning, oh my god. It's like when they turned around and saw Sodom and Gomorrah and they froze. It's like, oh no, my retinas! Help my retinas! No, I'm just kidding. Zombie Eddie, I'm kidding. I love you. I know that Zombie Eddie did not do that artwork, nor was he even the art director when that artwork would have got approved. But from a palette perspective, not only is it very close to many other recent Sterns, it just doesn't fit the theme. And that has been the issue. Now, when we're going to be talking about the top five rad and the one bad, I am going to be doing it ranked, but I do have to give a runner-up and a shout-out. And I will tell you this, the one bad, the baddest machine of the year, or to me, the least rad, is not going to be The Walking Dead. But is it in the top five? You have to wait to see. But head over there to Patreon. I did record a not as fun as this show just this morning, episode 657, talking about maybe how the IFPA not only could have dealt with the situation better, but there was mistakes made, I think, on all sides. The tournament director, the person reporting to the IFPA, in the language they use, there could have been some more clarity. But it's a nice short 17-minute episode over there where I suggest many solutions and talk about how moving forward we need to do better and we need to make sure that we are listening properly, especially when an issue like this, when it should be maybe primarily decided upon with the Women's Advisory Board. But I don't want to get into all of that. Go over there and go over to the Kinet Assist and support Colin and go read all the different Slackline chats yourself and really come to a conclusion yourself whether or not Adam Becker was being logical or not. If you want my take, though, you're going to have to go behind the payroll. It's the best $1 a week that you'll spend. Not only are you going to get to hear my ravishing Rick Rude. I don't think it's ravish. I think that's the wrong word. Does anyone use ravish anymore? I don't think they do. Does anyone even use rad? Probably only me. Me and a couple other cool kids, as they call them. A couple other rad dudes. All right. But go over there, and you're not only going to get to hear my takedown of Stern Pinball from them increasing their prices way too fast, that you would need a pool of freaking gold to swim in to be able to own their LEs nowadays. Holy cow. So that is my biggest Stern takedown. You can go listen to that. That's paywalled. We've also got a couple other really cool fun shows that I've got behind the paywall there. I'm trying to add more and more. I had an episode that actually came out a week and a half ago and I wanted to make sure that episode only got, I call it the LE status. So before it had – that episode will never get 200 listens. It had 173 right here on the Poor Men's Pinball Network, and then it had another like 20-ish or so impressions over there. I can't see the actual number of listens but just impressions. So I'll have to make my best impression from those impressions. So it's got under 200 listens. But if you want to be one – if you did not get to – you weren't one of the lucky 173 that heard that really good episode, you can go over there. Again, a dollar a week, and they're just going to get – and I want to start doing live streams. I tried to put up a video to Patreon, but because I have my Behind the Paywall stuff at plus 18 content so I could hypothetically swear a little bit more or talk about drugs or alcohol a bit more, now it won't let me post videos. So for that reason and many more, I'm going to have to do the WTF happened in the last month with Drop Target Danielle as opposed to doing it with Cliff Albert, who I wanted to do it with, which I still may do that in the future. But I have to switch everything over from plus 18 and then moving forward. I'm sure there can be swear words in it. I'm just going to have to be careful what video that I publish on there. So that was a little strange. I think Patreon, that's a fail from their side. But you've listened too long. Let's just hop right into this. Let me pull up my list here. I wanted to give an honorable mention. Sorry, I'll never say that again. I wanted to give an honorable mention. That's right. To the one and the only Dune. That's right. The prettiest apron in all pinball. The music and sounds have been reworked and they are sounding gorgeous and luscious and vibrant by Mr. Jeff Dodson over there at what's the pyramid pinball? Dirty pool pinball. There you go. The pyramid. I was just going to call him pyramid pinball. Dude, if you ever need to change your name, you could just be pyramid pinball. So shoot the pyramid. All right. So Jeff did a great job with the sound. It sounds like, no pun intended, the rules are getting better. Now, when they first released Dune, the rules were very low. There was hardly any callouts in the machine, but the callouts are getting better. From a shots perspective, I always said you can go back and listen to the top five rad and one bad that I did. I always said the shots and the shot paths look really unique. I don't know if they'll flow as well as an Elwin, but they look as interesting as a Jack Danger with the directions they're going and the ball goes in here and comes out there. I do love the Sandworm mech. I'm glad there's one cool mech in it. I don't think there's a lot of other. I think there's maybe like two other smaller mechs that kind of interact with the ball. That's kind of the one main big butthole, if you will, that comes up and yummy ball.

  • “What Spooky is known for is now incredible. Some of the most incredible art packages, two in a row, they've knocked it...”

    Orville Elbert @ Discussing Evil Dead and Spooky's streak — Spooky's artistic reputation is at peak with consecutive strong releases

    • game
    Python Angheloperson
    Jeff Dodsonperson
    Brad Albrightperson
    Ian Harrowerperson
    Stephen Silverperson
    P3 Multimorphiccompany
    Barrels of Funcompany
    Spookycompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Rachel Ristoperson
    Lauren Grayperson
    Enzoperson
    Jack Dangerperson
    Ontario Openevent
    Maple Pinball Classicevent
    IFPAorganization

    content_signal: Multiple podcasts producing year-end top 5 lists (Loser Kid, Poor Man's, others); community coordination and collaboration between hosts; Orville publishing behind-paywall exclusive content including IFPA controversy analysis

    high · Orville checked Loser Kid's list before recording; mentioned Josh and Scott 'stand-up dudes'; paywalled episode 657 on IFPA situation; multiple podcast references throughout

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Carl D'Python Anghelo's 'Carl Factor' (reputation for good service, streaming, tournament innovation) becomes marketable brand asset for Barrels of Fun; Brad Albright's artwork commanding respect across multiple manufacturers

    high · Orville explicitly discusses 'Carl Factor' as major Winchester selling point; credits Carl for rig modernization; suggests Brad won the year for art

  • ?

    community_signal: IFPA women's advisory board controversy involving trans woman excluded from women's bathroom; tournament director communication issues; debate about IFPA handling; Orville dedicated paywalled episode to nuanced analysis suggesting mistakes on multiple sides

    high · Orville discusses patron question about 'OBX trans woman getting kicked out'; references episode 657 discussion; mentions 'mistakes made on all sides' and need for better communication

  • ?

    competitive_signal: The Walking Dead (both OG and remaster) identified as exceptional skill-building game; teaches dead bounces, drop passes, flipper precision for three targets and well walker shots; similar training value noted for Winchester and competitive depth games

    high · Orville states WD 'arguably... was the game that's fine tuned my game... taught me a shat ton about pinball really quickly... will sharpen you up'

  • ?

    business_signal: Angry Alpaca Coffee Company (Orville's venture) facing closure due to supplier cost pressures; organic fair trade bean costs rising 30-50% ($68→$79→$84→$108); margins compressed to $2-3 per large bag; considering pivot to new distributor or January closure

    high · Orville: 'our prices... has gone up from like $68 to $79 to $84 to... $108... my margins is like $2 to $3 I'm making on a large bag... we might be closing our doors in January'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: The Walking Dead remaster receiving unexpectedly negative community reception; Orville defends artwork improvements but acknowledges palette criticism; community skepticism about design choices despite gameplay strength

    medium · Orville: 'People really hated that. People really, really, I can't, I'm shocked by how much people are hating on The Walking Dead'; defends artwork but concedes palette doesn't fit theme

  • ?

    collector_signal: Spooky show game scarcity driving FOMO; speculation that show game variants (e.g., Beetlejuice) will appreciate 25% above standard production over 2-3 years; community divided on ethical implications of limited variants

    medium · Orville discusses 999 non-show games vs 80 show games; predicts 25% value premium for show games; notes 'Beetlejuice is going to be... a touchstone' and 'brought back FOMO'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Discrepancy between claimed code completion and perceived maturity: Winchester designer claimed only 25% code done but perceived as more mature than Dune; suggests aggressive launch timelines or optimistic completion estimates

    medium · Orville: 'Carl D'Python Anghelo said that the code was only at like 25%... did the code in Winchester seem way, way further along than even Dune... probably like 10% or less'

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball community wrestling with scalping ethics; Orville proposes 2-3 machine limit per person as compromise between enthusiast access and commercial resale; draws parallels to Pokemon card scalping destroying collector accessibility

    medium · Orville dedicates segment to scalping 'good, bad, and ugly'; proposes per-person purchase limits; discusses Pokemon card scalping precedent; promises next episode deep dive on topic

    • 9:40
    But so Dune gets a little honorable mention. Let's keep moving forward, though. Now, if Dune, I will be honest, if Dune had came out, if it had a better launch, if it didn't have a failure to launch, so to speak, if it was launched with more code, if it was launched with more call-outs, if it was launched with more video and more assets on the LCD, yeah, it could have snuck into the top five. But it's that first impression. Once you, you know, if you go to your very first time trying to have a buddy's craft beer at a party or something like that, and some moron put out their cigarette or their joint or something in your beer, and you got a big mouthful of a ciggy butt in your mouth, you might not ever try craft beer again. You'd be like, oh, girl, oh, what is that? Disgusting. And just for the rest of your life, someone's like, oh, no, you got to try a craft beer. And they go, no, I don't want to try a craft beer because one time when I tried it, I got a cigarette butt in my mouth. So F you, I just have a bad, you know, one time once when I was 17 or 18 years old, I was at a party in Minecraft because, you know, you're not supposed to drink till 19 here in Canada. Thank you, Escher, for letting me know that that doesn't actually count just by saying in Minecraft. But anyways, I digress.
    10:49
    I was cut off of a drinking game. So I said, well, screw you guys, I'm going to leave. And I took the rest of my 26er of white rum. There's probably like half of it left from what I understand or maybe slightly less. And I said, I'm just going to play on my own. And I literally bottomsed up and I chugged the whole rest of the 26er of white rum. And then I uked for about 36 hours, like literally 36 hours after I stopped drinking. I probably should have gone to the hospital. I 100% had alcohol poisoning. That was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. But still to this day, even last night, my son who's moving across Canada doesn't want to take any of his extra liquor bottles and any of his extra. Don't worry, he's 20. He's allowed to legally drink. But he doesn't have room for it in his car when he's moving his stuff across Canada. He doesn't want to worry about bottles exploding or just temperatures. You know, he's driving through. We were looking at the temperatures when he's going through Regina and Saskatchewan and Thunder Bay or Tunder Bay, as they'd say in Quebec. And it's going to be like minus 27. That's Celsius, not even Fahrenheit, guys. That's even for me. I like it cold. I just even went outside with the dogs this morning. It was minus 8. I just had on a t-shirt and a light sweater, half unzipped. You know what I mean? Like if I was going out for hours, I would put on a toque or a hat, as you call it in America, or I'd put on some middies, put some middies on my biddies and get little tiny yellow polka dotted bikinis.
    12:11
    Yeah, let's back up the train though. Let's get into number five on the list. That's right. It's P3 Multimorphics Darling, their most sought-after pinball machine to date, the one that everyone's talking about.
    12:28
    Weird Al, I think it looks great. It looks like a cool shooter. It's got some interesting stuff. I've heard the codes like, you know, like a little hit or miss. That's just what I've heard, okay? I haven't played all of these pinball machines. That's just what I've heard. But from what I understand, the Princess Bride, shout-out to a tribe member here as well, Stephen Silber. Silver, Silver, Steven Silver. Hi, Steven Silver. Steven Silver, shout out to him. He did a great job designing the Princess Bride. It sounds like that was now their best designed machine. Final Destination, Final Resistance by Scott Denisi. That was, of course, designed by him, so it wasn't by one of their in-house designers, but that would be right up there. It depends on who you ask. Some people like Final Resistance better. Other people like the Princess Bride better, but most people agree that's their two best pins. And then Boomshakalaka from downtown. He's on fire. That's what people are saying about Portal. I love the jump shots. You know, I like that you can actually, the bottom one-third of the game is actually playable now because they have that extension kit. Portal, it seems like Portal's kind of put P3 Multimorphic on the map, so to speak, in a bigger way than they ever have been before. And it was interesting to hear, and I'm not going to say which one, but Josh or Scott may have had Portal in their top five. I don't want to give it away. Over there on Loserkid, Josh did write me back this morning and say, dude, go ahead and do a top five. We don't care. I knew he wouldn't. I knew they wouldn't. But I just wanted to reach out and say, just to let you know, I was about to record a top five and then yours came out. So thank you so much for writing back, Josh. Josh and Scott, two stand-up dudes, two stand-up dudes. I love the Loser Kid Pinball podcast. I'm probably like – I'm not their biggest fan. I'm probably their fifth biggest fan though, I'd say, because they are my fifth favorite pinball podcast. No, they're in my top five. They're in my – they're probably top three to be honest, probably top three. And if freaking Ian and Drew could just come back, they'd be number – they're still number one in my heart. But we got to hear from – if you guys talk to Ian and Drew, just give them a little nudge, A little nudge within the shoulder there and be like, hey, guys, guys should record again. It'd be cool to hear a year-end wrap-up right here on the Poor Man's Pinball Network from Ian and Drew, the original godfathers, so to speak, of the Poor Man's Pinball Network. It'd be great to hear from them. But I digress. Portal, Brad Albright, the artwork looks perfect. It literally looks like I can imagine anyone could have done better artwork for Portal I sorry I sorry to Yeti I sorry to Franchi I think that Brad Albright was the right person for that machine I think that P3 Multimorphic was the right system for it It just all makes sense It looks like it has great flow We know it got great rules and code We got also tribe member Ian Hare were there working on the rules and the code and helping with the designing And he is a world class like I believe he is at one point been a top 100 if not even maybe higher Definitely top 250 player in the world Would be higher up if he traveled even more. I may get to see Ian. I don't know if Ian's going to be at the Maple Pinball Classic I'm leaving tomorrow morning for. Not sure. It'd be nice to see Ian. It'd be really nice to maybe even get to play Portal if he has one by now. I'm not sure. So who knows, guys? I may have played Portal by the next time we talk about this. But let's just get into number four. We don't have all day. Come on. Number four is Winchester. No. Hold on. Hold on. Switch that and reverse it. Let's get Doc. Let's get the Deloress. Let's reverse that. Winchester Mystery House. You must say it like that. If you're a pinball podcaster, my voice almost cracked there. If you're a pinball podcaster and you're listening right now or you're a YouTube sensation content creator, whatever you want to call it, maybe you make shorts, who knows? Maybe you're over there on Snapchat or Slackline, who knows? But if you're over there creating awesome content, just please say it with me. Winchester Mystery House. You've got to say it in that 1980s, 1990s. You know if that was a movie that came out then, that's how the movie trailer guy would say it. It's more fun. Can we just have more fun in content creation? Come on. Winchester. So Winchester, I never would have thought in a million years would have made this list, especially in a year where we had a brand new Star Wars come out. We had The Walking Dead, which arguably was the game that's fine tuned my game. Arguably early in my pinball career was the game that taught me a shat ton about pinball really quickly. If you ever wanted to speed run your still skill set, it doesn't have to be the remastered. You can go get the OG Walking Dead. But wow, that will sharpen you up. You will become a better player. You will learn how important it is to do a dead bounce and a drop pass. You will learn how or a drop catch. You will learn how important it is to be able to use the very ends of your flippers to hit those three targets on the left, I believe for bloodbath, not horde, right? That's bloodbath on the left. To be able to get that sneaky extra ball shot on the right up through the pops that goes up back to the shooter lane there in that area.
    17:30
    You really will have to be... And then, wow, getting the well walker, if you hit anywhere near the middle of that well walker, all other bash toys in pinball, you want to aim for the middle of the bash toy so you don't miss it and hit a stand-up target on the left or hit a post on the right or something. Na na na yeah as the Aussies would say okay. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi.
    17:53
    Shout out to all the Aussie listeners there as well though because I do have three or four Aussie dudes that I get to talk to on the regular which really makes me, I think I maybe talk to more Aussie pinball nerds on the regular than I do even Canadian or American ones combined. So shout out to the Aussie contingent there down under. And I would be remiss if I didn't give a special shout out to my boy Enzo over there because he is the top paying Patreon over on Patreon. So I really, really, really do appreciate that. And by the way, if you're listening right now and you're a premium Patreon person, you have till December 1st. I've mentioned it multiple times before. You have till December 1st to send me your address. Yes, I'm talking to you, Jack Danger, and everybody else in the premium level who I don't have your address. And it's fine, Jack, if you want me to send it to Stern. If I can just address it, can I just put Jack Danger and then put Stern's address? That's fine. I think I can do that. I'll reach out to you individually, Jack. You're probably so hella busy, I wouldn't imagine that you have time to listen to like 30 different pinball podcasts and 50 different YouTube channels talking about it all the time. But to everybody else, please, for the love of God, if you've joined at the premium level, Enzo is the only one who sent me his address. I want to get you your coffee sent out. That's right. I'm sending you out coffee. And knowing that my angry alpaca coffee company might be going under, speaking of going under and down under, we might be closing our doors in January because we might have to pivot. We might look for a new distributor. The chances of finding a coffee company that sells us organic fair trade beans at that price is probably zero to none, especially being local. However, however, I haven't lost all hope. As many of you know from my last show, our prices for many of our beans for six pounds or 2.2 kilograms has gone up from like $68 to $79 to $84 to one of our coffees is now $108. So my margins is like $2 to $3 I'm making on a large bag and maybe 75 cents to $1 on a small bag, depending on which one you order, of course. But wow. So we might be closing our doors. So this is your last chance. If you're listening right now, get in there by December 1st, join at the premium level and send me your address so I can send you out some stuff. Now, if you don't send me your address, I will just hold back and send you some more stuff, you know, two months from now when we do the next one. However, I'd like to be able to send out as much coffee as possible and I'm going to be labeling it as a gift so Americans do not have to pay, shouldn't have to pay any tariffs, taxes or duties. So because it is well under $50, I'm only going to be sending out like enough for you to brew a pot. It's just one of our small sample bags. If I'm sending out a big bag, it costs me like 30 bucks for shipping and I would lose money on every possible Patreon. But anyways, Enzo, I might send you a couple because for you, it's not going to increase the price much going to Australia. And I happen to know with Enzo if the value is over 50 that he won't have to pay any tariffs. So anyways, shout out to everyone listening right now. Let's get back into this list. Winchester was designed by, and I call it the Carl Factor, TM Pinball Nerds podcast, okay? I call it the Carl Factor, but Carl has goodwill. The same way that Spooky has built up goodwill with doing incredible customer service and being very open and honest. Other than the show games thing, still a little minor, you know, I'm still a little sore about that one. And I'm sure that if you're one of the 999 people that got a non-show game and you had no clue there was 80 show games coming, you would have wished maybe you could have asked your distro, hey, would it be cool if I grab a show game, right? I mean, that's probably the way that it will go. And despite what I did here, Don, I believe it was Don. It might not, you know what? It might have been someone else. Don, if it wasn't you. I think it might have actually been someone else. There was another pinball podcaster at some point that said that there's no shot that the show games are going to be more expensive. Of course they are. They're going to be far more rare. Of course they are. They just, of course they are. The question is, are they only going to be worth like a thousand more or like I think are they going to be worth 25% more? So if Beetlejuice gets up to being worth, let's say, $16,000, I'd be shocked. If not maybe six months from now or a year from now, but two to three years down the road, I would be shocked if they weren't worth 25% more. And long run, hells yes. With knowing how much of a touchstone Beetlejuice is going to be and how successful it's been and how honestly I think a lot of people, when you're writing the books or the future of Pinball, we're going to talk about how successful Beetlejuice was and how it brought back FOMO. And that's another topic I do want to talk about, which is, womp womp, some people don't like it, but scalping. And I'm going to come at it from a brand new angle. I'm going to talk about the good and the bad and the ugly of scalping because there is lots of good. It creates FOMO, it gets people talking. There is some bad and there is some that is really ugly because I've seen scalping absolutely destroy one of my other favorite hobbies, one of my other favorite interests. Most definitely in the collectibles category, probably even more so than Pinball machines, would be Pokemon cards. And the scalpers who are going in there and they're going to Walmart right here, even in my town of Amherst, every time Walmart gets new cards, even my wife, when she goes to buy a new set when it comes out, she'll go there at lunch when she has some time off at lunch. And they're all gone. They're all sold out. And the guy will say, yeah, the same guy came again. And we told him, no, no, there's a limit of four. And he just kept buying four. And then he got his wife to come in, then his sister. And then he came back later and said, yeah, it's only four for visit. And he just, he always like by the time we've been open half an hour, he's figured out a way to buy them all out again. And that seems to happen all the way across the field. So on the same hand, it does create FOMO and make it fun. But what about every single, like both of my kids who wanted to just open a couple of those packs for fun and be able to play the game and be able to collect the cards who aren't able to get them because some dude has to go sell them at double on eBay and on Facebook Marketplace. So it can get ugly. And I will tell you this, scalping can ruin hobbies. On the flip side of that, to use a pinball pun, it also can make the hobby more fun. So I'm just going to mildly suggest right now a limit of two or say three per person. That way, because you're saying, oh, I'm buying one for my brother. I'm buying one for my coworker. I'm getting one for my home arcade and one for the cottage. I'm getting one for the bar that I operate in. I'm getting one for at home. Sure, two or three. I think we can all agree. Getting five? No. Getting 10, 20, 30, 50? No. I think we could all agree. Can one rich dude just come in and say, yeah, I want to buy 100 of the next Spooky, Sight, Unsound, and buy them and then just flip them at double the price? Nobody wants that. That's only good for that one millionaire. It's not good for everyone else. So there is good, bad, and ugly of scalping, and we're going to get into it. I'm going to break that down on my next show. But for now, let's finish talking about Winchester. Winchester has that Carl Factor. Carl Factor has built up very, very good reputation between running in-disc really well, between being such an awesome, fun streamer and sharing all his information. Literally, when you're watching everybody, maybe other than Jack Danger, who kind of did his own thing for a long time, but I'm sure he even learned certain things from Carl. But like Fox Cities Pinball and all these other tournaments when you're seeing like the rig move around, that is thanks to the one and only Carl D'Angelo for coming up with how to do that and really modernizing it. And he even helped with lots of other things in Pinball. But I'm so happy for Carl. I'm so happy for Barrels of Fun. The artwork is incredible. I don't love the cab artwork as much as some other people. I think it's the left-hand side that looks a little barren in one area. It's still really, really good. Is that also Brad Albright? If it is, wow, Brad Albright, you won the year. You got two of the top five artworks on there. But no, I love the back glass. I love the sound engineering that Jeff Dodson did. I love the call-outs are really interesting and really fun. The code is much further along. Even though, this is the funny part, even though Carl D'Angelo said that the code was only at like 25%, is it just me or did the code in Winchester seem way, way further along than even Dune was a couple months ago or even maybe now? So, geez, if that's only 25%, it means Dune was released with even way less than that, probably like 10% or less. So I think that that does show Dune probably would be higher on this list had it been released with more code. But Winchester looks great. I can't wait to shoot it. I got to give it number four on my list. Number three on my list, no shock to everybody here, probably perhaps the most beautiful pinball machine on this list is Evil Dead. Now, I used to love wide bodies more than anything else. I thought, well, you can pack in more shots. You get more left to right action. Sure, they're a little bit floaty, but as a new pinball player, I wasn't very good with the speed of the ball. So I used to love wide bodies. I think I even did a, what's the Queen song? Big Bottom Girls Make the Rockin' World Go Round. Fat bottom girls, you make the rockin' world go round. Okay, I'm not calling any girls fat. I had to quote the song, how it sang. I'm sorry. Don't get offended. Don't worry. You can go ahead and call me Fat Albert. I won't be offended. Not just because the cartoon was awesome. Not the creator of the cartoon. He wasn't awesome. Let's not, you know. But I mean, the character Fat Albert was awesome. But also, because I've gained about 10 or 15 pounds. Man, I was doing so well. And just the last couple months, I've fallen off a little. But you know what? We all fail from time to time. We all fall short of the glory of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man with the most beautiful pectoralis on planet Earth. Not to be mistaken for Eric Menyer, who has the nicest calves on planet Earth. All right. So I can't wait to play Winchester.
    27:23
    But Evil Dead is number three on my list. And Evil Dead has so... I'm not going to lie. It doesn't have as much flow as several other on the list. It definitely, even though it looks to be the flowiest so far, so far, which isn't saying much because there's, you know, Spooky Games were not known to have very much flow. I think that Halloween has the least flow of any pinball machine ever other than Ultraman. Ultraman has even less flow. We all know that. It's not like they're identical to shoot. Come on. No, coding-wise could change that a little. I don't know which one has more or less flow, but that's just not what Spooky is known for. What Spooky is known for is now incredible. Some of the most incredible art packages, two in a row, they've knocked it out of the park. We know Franchi loves a baseball and sports idioms. I think it's called something like that. But the mechanisms, that's what really sets it apart. All those really cool mechanisms that interact with the ball, the interesting ball paths, you know, they did take some risks with putting that strange flipper inside of that, the kicker there. I don't know if that, I don't know if that's a winner or loss yet, but I am really, really stoked. And I think by far got to give flowers where flowers are due. OK, chef's kiss until we saw until we saw Beetlejuice. Evil Dead was is without a doubt the best machine. I know some people say it's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and they could be right. OK, I hear you. I hear you over there, Pat's Arcade. I know he was pretty, pretty vocal about that in the Patreon, which, you know, I don't mind people disagreeing with me. You're not going to get banned from my chat. Walt Wood, you can come on over here, buddy. What was up with that? Walt Wood completely quit YouTube. I did that whole show about him. I felt so bad. And he came back the next day with shirts for sale and is considering a Patreon. I was like, what? You can't quit and come back. I quit and came back like nine months later. You can't quit and come back the next day, Walt. Give us like a week to like miss you or something, dude. But anyways, looks like he's selling shirts now in Silver Ball Swag. They're really cool shirts. He did say some of the proceeds were going to go to charity for it. So that seems good. And Walt, don't be afraid to take some of that money for yourself. You're allowed to profit a little bit from all your hard work as well.
    29:33
    One good thing about Walt is he is, if nothing else, entertaining and unhinged. And he's telling it like it is, and he seems pretty truthful.
    29:43
    There's more than one good thing about Walt. He is an incredible player. So when Walt is talking about the shot paths in a game or he talking about the code or the rules I 100 listen because I totally respect that A couple times a couple times well don come at me but a couple times he was a little bit harsh to a couple of my friends about a few different situations So it's hard for me to, you know, completely not be critical at all of his stuff. But I want to start recording. I'm going to start recording videos and doing like maybe one in three shows I will have on Patreon. One in three shows will be right here on the Pornance Pinball Network. And one in three shows once I return from Ontario in nine to ten days, hopefully with all my money from winning all the, no, let's be honest, I'm hoping to get middle of the ground. With the top players from across Canada and many even from the States, I'll be very happy to finish middle of the road at those tournaments. That's what I did last year. I'm just so excited to see Mike Dimas and Sean Russell and Julie Dorser, my favorite TD of all time, of course.
    30:41
    Mike Dimas, you guys would know from Pinball Shenanigans. I'll get to hang out with Jeff Teolis. I'll get to see my best friend in the world, Matthew Megaphone. There's going to be just so many people there. Joe Cervino, the dote himself that I haven't seen in a long time. Ian Harewer, fellow Tribes members. So there's so many people that I think are going to be there that I'm excited to hang out with and get to see that will be really nice. And I can't wait to play Evil Dead, but even more so than Evil Dead, that's right. Don't get mad at me, Franchi. I'm sorry I put it at number three. Don't get mad. Artwork, you're number one, Franchi. And in my heart, you'll always be number one, buddy. All right. Number two on the list is Harry Potter. Slytherin. If I listen to the Sorting Hat, I can usually do it very well. So, um, Hufflepuff, Harry Potter. Anyways, let's, you know, I'm not there right now. I haven't watched Harry Potter in so long. I'd have to hear or see a little bit of it to kind of, to reminisce and really be able to get me to do it. But thank you and a shout out to everybody who has let me know, many of you have, that Harry Potter is your favorite game of the year. And it looks to me like between the number of ball paths, the number of mechs, that crazy twisting staircase mech, just how many callouts they got, how the sound works. The light show is the only thing that I'm like, is it too much? Is it too much of a good thing? Because it looks really cool, but it also looks like there's a lot happening all at once. And you know when you've been at like a discotheque, or maybe you're not a raver like me and you didn't go out to a lot of raves back in the day? But I'm sure you went out to like a nightclub and you'd been at the nightclub for seven or eight hours and there's strobing lights and the loud bass in the background and people yelling and screaming and someone's trying to say to you like, hey, I'm going to go ask that girl for her phone number. And you're like, what? And they're like, I'm going to go ask that girl for her phone number. And you're like, I can't hear you. And you're like, I'm going to go ask that girl for her phone number.
    32:48
    And the song just ended and then everyone looks at you. No, but you know when you've been at like anything, whether it's a wedding or any type of celebration for just too many hours of work party and it's just loud and you're overstimulated and you're like, I just got to get the hell out of here. I think maybe Harry Potter could have that for me. Like I could play three or four games in a row, but I think eventually with all the different sound and the different call outs and the different lights and so many different inserts going at once, I do think I could be overstimulated by it. That's just what I'll say. And that's what I had to say to my wife last night. Hey, whoa, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're trying to keep this PG here, guys. All right. So Harry Potter, shout out to you. Here's your flowers. Chef's Kiss, Mr. Eric Menger, the entire team who worked on it over there because remember, it takes a village. Of course, Eric was leading it up. But I am so excited. And from an art perspective, oh my God, I don't want to get Franchi Moore mad at me. But the – especially – I'll say this, Franchi. I'll put a little asterisk. The cabinet, especially on the MinaLima, MiraLima, MinaLima, whatever it is on the CE is to me perhaps the most gorgeous cabinet in all pinball. I just – I find that just so incredibly beautiful. I don't necessarily love the playfield on Harry Potter. I like it, but I don't love it, right? I like the back glass. I don't like the topper. If there was a better topper, could this maybe have gotten first possibly? But I'll tell you what number one has that I don't even think Harry Potter has, that Harry Potter's done pretty well.
    34:26
    Number one on the list is the flowiest flow beast, my favorite shooting pinball machine by far of all time. Keith Elwin's masterpiece, by far his best pinball machine. Everybody knows it. King Kong. Oh my God. I literally, and this is me, usually nowadays when people say literally, they're not being literal. I literally wake up dreaming about this thing multiple days a week. I can't stop shooting it. The last time I was at Dylan's Arcade Flippin's in Fredericton, I would play one game of Kong, then go play a different game. Then come back and play a game of Kong, then go play a different game. And sometimes I was waiting in the line two, three, four, five minutes to wait to play Kong. I didn't care. Like I – just the way that the river – in the river, in the river, the way that the river works or whatever that thing on the left with the log jam, okay, not the upper-decker type of log jam. This is a different type of log jam. Get your minds out of the gutters. Stop thinking about my most excellent podcast over there behind the Patreon where I take Stern down for absorbent high prices on their LEs. We're not all made of money. What are you going to get a swimming pool full of gold like Scrooge McDuck? Come on. All right. No, this is not a ranty podcast. This is a celebrating the best pinball machines of the year. And I don't care what people say. Put Kong artwork next to The Walking Dead, The OG Walking Dead or The New Walking Dead. Are you telling me like I I have no clue why people are beefing about the artwork on King Kong. I understand maybe it doesn't fit the theme aesthetic of like the retro movies, but it certainly is a lot closer to what we've known the new King Kong propers to be. And me personally, for having a whole of how I know King Kong is from all the modern comics and the colors in that pinball machine very closely resemble how he's depicted in all those modern comics. So it's not the same as the Walking Dead thing saying, oh, it's not all black and white. You can't just come out with every machine being black and white anyways, guys, come on. But Kong has by far the best flow. To shoot that left orbit, to have that ball go into that river area, then you shoot it back around, I guess it would again be the back orbit, over to that right flipper shot that goes up through the biplane ramp. And then it goes back to your right flipper and then you shoot it up through the orbit thing again and then it goes down through the river if you press the button on time. And then you use the mini flipper to shoot it back over to the upper right flipper and then you loop the biplane ramp again. If you can do that three or four times in a row, you feel like just like it doesn't even matter if you're not getting points. I know that they have dwarfed it so you're not getting many points when you just keep doing that. There are certain modes you have to hit that middle ramp and then do that. But there is just – like the first machine I would buy, not just from this year, the first machine. When Danielle and I sell the house, we're looking forward to selling the house in either 2026 or either summer of 2026 or spring of 2027, probably closer to spring of 2027 by we fix everything. The first pinball machine I'm going to buy is a Kong Pro. And, yeah, I might try to get like a home use only. I don't want it with like 20,000 plays. I'm probably not going to afford, you know, be able to afford a new in box one. My hope is by then the prices have came down a little, even on the pros. Maybe I could get a used pro for like 7,000 to 9,000 Canadian, Canadian, you know, depending on the number of plays and mods and all that junk. But wow, I think as the code matures like a fine frickin' wine, okay, you're going to see Kong rise up through the ranks. Not just because it's an Elwin, not just because the shots are incredible, but the code is getting better and better and better. And one thing that makes an incredible game go from A tier to S tier is, and I know people don't want to hear about tournaments, too bad, you're going to have to listen to it for a second. When I watched tournament players play this game, even Zmack, the way that he was playing, was different than the other top pros. When a game is so good that even the top 10 and top 5 players in the world play it completely different methods depending on their playing style or depending on how they think in that particular game, the points required to get to that. When you have so many different people playing it differently, similar to Godzilla, the top, and we've seen this with Godzilla, the top tournament players on planet Earth, almost everyone agrees upon how to play Jurassic Park or Iron Maiden. And I love both of those games. You can play them different ways. But there's quite a few top, the top 10, top even 100 tournament players all play those games similarly, how they get points for the most part. But when you're looking at like Foo Fighters or when you're looking at, well, X-Men would be a good example of how everyone's kind of unfortunately playing the same. And that's why that code needs a lot of work. But when you look at Foo Fighters, there's many different ways to play. When you look at Godzilla, there's tons of different ways to play it. And there's multiple top players that play it different ways and do incredibly well in their own right. But it's not just that the code is coming along and getting better.
    39:37
    It's not just that I love the mech with like the train and the fact. I like the fact, okay? I like things that surprise you. Sometimes the balls go everywhere. Sometimes it just comes straight down. I love that shot to the right that fires the ball back really quickly, like faster than even an orbit could. Okay, so I just love so much about Kong. And yes, I've even grown to love the stupid dong shot that I hated originally on the Pro. Obviously, you know, it's much easier. But with the premium and the LE, like it's or maybe the Pro that I played on, they had it set up different. I don't know. But either I've got better at shooting it. I've got used to the shot. I haven't had nearly as many rejections. The first time I played it, like I felt like I hit three clean shots to it. None of them like actually dinged the dong again. Maybe that was a newer pin and like, well, it was right because that was right when it came out. But I love Kong and I would be shocked. I would be shocked. And I'm not trying to be rude or mean to like Evil Dead or to Dune or to Portal or even Harry Potter. But Harry Potter might be the one I could be wrong about. But five years from now, I would be shocked if any of these pins are ranked higher on the pin side top 100 than Kong. It's going to be it's going to have a long tail. Again, I don't know if it's going to have as long of a tail as Harry Potter, because from a theme perspective, Harry Potter's got that going. And from like a newer player perspective, I can see that Harry Potter is a little bit more welcoming.
    40:58
    Even Enzo, even my boy Enzo, shout out to him. He really got Kong and just couldn't fall in love with it. I know he's like, he's not a newer player. He's been playing for a very long time and he's a good player, but he's not like a super deep, like he's, basically he doesn't, I don't know. He liked Ninja Turtles and I thought that one was a hurt shooter. So I don't know. Anyways, shout out to Enzo. Shout out to everyone who loves Kong like me. Am I the only one? Let me know. And for everybody listening, have yourself a rad weekend. We've got the holidays coming up. Don't worry, I won't use the C word until after December 3rd. I've been warned by my son. He doesn't even listen to the shows, but my son Hayden's birthday is December 3rd and he'll be traveling across Canada. Honestly, as a dad, it's such a proud moment. He went from being a part-time casual with Canada Post to now getting a full-time position up in Grand Prairie. So he's going to be up there. Man, imagine delivering mail outside at like minus 30 and three feet of snow all the time. Like that's a tough job. But this dude's a tough kid. He grew up doing, you know, like quarter marathons, if you want to call them that, but like 10 kilometer, eight mile runs, five kilometers, which is like 3.1. I think he used kilometers for runs in the States, but he's done lots of like he's worked here on the farm and helped me cut down trees. And he's he's fine. He'll do fine at it, but he's going to a tough place where it gets very cold and it's very dark for most of the year. It's even further north than here. It's in Alberta, but there's more jobs there and he can make more money as being a young man. He's prioritizing that. He's moving out there with his buddy.
    42:29
    I did want to also quickly thank – oh, and I am going to name the worst of the year, but I did want to quickly thank Darren Walker, I believe, or Darren W. Thank you so much for donating some money to me through PayPal. He said that he doesn't really like reoccurring payments and doesn't want to use Patreon, but he does want to support my show. So every couple of months, he's going to toss me over some money. He gave me 30 bucks. Wow. Thank you so much, Darren. I really, really appreciate that. And if you are one of the listeners listening right now, maybe you don't want to have another reoccurring payment or a Patreon. I get it. You are going to get lots of awesome content over there, but if you're not at all interested in any of that content, who knows? Maybe you got to hear my Epic Stern rant when it originally came out two years ago. I don't know. But if you would like to support the show, I'm going to give half the money that I get donated over the next week to my son Hayden for his move out west. And I'm going to keep half the money for myself for my trip to Ontario so I can spoil some of my friends there and family and even myself a little so I don't have to have happy meals. And if you already support me on Patreon, for the love of God, please don't worry about sending any extra. But to all of you listening right now, if you'd like to help out, you can fire off a donation to my PayPal at AngryAlpacaTea, not tee like golf tee, like T-E-E, but tee, T-E-A at gmail.com. That's my Patreon. I'm going to link it there, and I'm also going to put a link to the top five rad of the year or the best pinball machines of the year to Loser Kid Pinball Podcast because they did a really good job counting down their top five. And mine were completely different, which was awesome. I was happy to hear Kong was on one of their lists fairly high up. So someone over there at the Loser Kid at least agrees with me on Kong, which is nice to hear. But what was the worst of the year? I'll let you go ahead and think about it. Let me have a little sip of my coffee. In your head, I want you to play, if you're able to, unlike Hayden, but in your head, I want you to play the Jeopardy song. We'll have a sip of my coffee and we'll talk about the worst of the year.
    44:27
    Okay, it got a little cold. I talked for too long. Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking. Most of you are thinking, okay, the worst of the year by far was The Walking Dead because they screwed up the color palette. It hurt your eyes. It caused your retinas to bleed. It made it so that you were more blind and okay we not going to go See once in a while I can filter myself I was going to go down a Helen Keller route there but let not make fun of Helen Keller She's already had to go through the Holocaust. It seems like that might have been enough for her. All right. So let's just end this by saying it's not The Walking Dead because The Walking Dead takes incredible code and it sounds like it makes it even slightly better. They take incredible shots and they make them slightly better. They take incredible mechs like Bicycle Girl and make them slightly better. They make the Well Walker, so he goes jiggle, jiggle, jiggle on his belly. He goes jiggle, jiggle, jilly with that smelly. He got the big buns, huns, that brings him to the yard with the milkshake. All right, I'm just not allowed to sing on this show. I should be banned.
    45:36
    I'm going to blame it on y'all. I have not had a new Patreon since my buddy Alex a couple weeks ago, so it's y'all's fault. I'm singing only because I haven't got a new Patreon in a while. But that's all right. I get people don't love Patreon. I'm down to 23 Patreon members. I'm just blown away that even anyone joins. So thank you all the patrons out there. But it's not The Walking Dead. I think The Walking Dead is definitely not my top five. A, because it's a remastered, and B, because that color palette. You had that exact same artwork and you did like a bold black, white, and red, it could work. You did like a blue, like just blue and light yellows, it could maybe work. But that much orange, that much yellow, that much red altogether, it's just too much. It's too vibrant. It's too much of a good thing. We all need water to survive, right? But like, do you guys remember that contest for who can drink, who can not go wee for a wee? That's where you had to drink, I don't know, one, two, three gallons or liters of water, probably one gallon or two liters of water. And you had to not pee for a full hour after chugging all that water. And the hour didn't start until you finish the water. Where this one girl who wanted to win a free Nintendo Wii did it, but by the time she peed, she was in excruciating pain. And when she went home, she ended up dying of water overload. So you can get too much of a good thing. So is it fair to say that that artwork is great and even those colors are great, but we've used them too much, Stern? Like we've got to like tone that down a bit. Like it's been too many in a row that's that vibrant. It's been too many in a row that's using too much yellow and red. You know what I mean? And I think that's fair to say. So for that reason and many others, The Walking Dead is not in my top five list for the year. And I'm sorry to even Ray Day. I know a lot of people would think that maybe Star Wars would make it in the top five. And to be fair, I haven't shot it yet. Maybe the Death Star shot's not as hard as everyone's saying. But Star Wars, it's not my top five I'm most excited for the year. First of all, the world already has multiple Star Wars pins. And second of all, you know, I don't know. It doesn't have a list. I don't love two flipper games. I'm more of a 3-4-5 flipper dude. Okay, 5's pushing it a little bit too much of a good thing. But I'm excited for the code from Raid A. I'm really, really excited for it. It looks like it's a fine shooter. It's probably the fanniest fan we've seen in a long time. Other than those two pop bumpers on the bottom, I think we can all agree there's nothing revolutionary or really that interesting. I think there's only the one mech that interacts with the ball, and it's the Death Star. Shoot the Death Star! And that Death Star, it seems like it's a little bit too small. Hopefully they're working on code to fix that. Hopefully they're going to make the opening a little bit bigger. I have faith in Stern they're going to try to fix it, but can they fix it at this point? I just don't know. So it wasn't that. But has anyone figured out what my least favorite pinball machine is? That's right. It's Pinball Adventures Elements. No, no, it's not. I'm not even including that on the list. That's how bad I don't want to ever play a Pinball Adventures machine. Hashtag in Minecraft. I'm sorry. Please don't sue me. No, my least favorite game of the year. And I'm sorry to say this because I think everyone over there are good dudes and I think they're working hard, but it would be Merlin's Arcade. And I'm really sorry to Turner and Chris Turner. Chris Turner, I think you're a really nice gentleman. And the sad part is I think that Chris has implemented more. I think there's more innovation in Chris Turner's machines than there is in even Star Wars. I really do. Maybe not from a coding perspective. Okay. I, first of all, let's be honest here. I don't love the artwork. I heard Josh from Loser Kids say, I believe that it's very Great Wolf Lodge-esque and I've never been able to forget that. Just looking at it, it does feel like something you'd see like in a kind of a kiddie arcade. So, you know, who's your target market? If your target market is like eight-year-olds to 12-year-olds, who's going to be buying this? You know what I mean? And we don't have, it's the same thing with Spooky's reliability until Evil Dead. I'll say until Evil Dead, Spooky was known to have definitely more reliability issues than, say, Stern Pro or most Jersey Jacks or even definitely a CGC machine. We can all agree with that, right? So Evil Dead, it sounds like they've got their shats together and it's way more reliable, which is great. And we did hear from Bug when I specifically asked him if we could expect the reliability to be, you know, they're only hitting one for 15 being reliable. So what are the chances the next one's reliable? I would like to think they've learned lessons and moving forward, they're going to be more reliable. But we don't know. We've never seen a pinball machine with a really that that sandworm mech that you're seeing or the sand, whatever it is. There's too many sandworms in the Beetlejuice, that mech. We've never seen a mech like that. You know, and we just don't we don't know. We don't know until they make the first non prototype commercial ones and they get on location at like the Electric Bat or one of these other places until they're on location for even not even a week or two, but a few months. We just won't know how reliable they are. Are these Beetlejuice machines going to be as reliable as Evil Dead? We don't know. We just don't know. But I would say that what we do know from Merlin's Arcade is that it's got that, you know, kind of neat, innovative, like the flipper pop across chat shot that I can do. I don't need that extra button, but some people need. No, I can't do it on modern pins. And it's got like, you know, it's got some neat ideas. But like from a coding perspective, no one's getting exciting about it. From an art perspective, no one's getting excited about it. If you're a kid and you happen to love that old timey, it kind of reminds me of that Disney movie, like the sword and the stone or whatever. And the kid has to pull out the sword. Like if you're I guess if you're nostalgic for that one movie from the early 80s, possibly. But like, I just don't feel like anyone's really they need a theme. They need a better theme than Ninja Gaiden and Ninja whatever. They need a better theme. They need more adult artwork. They need something that doesn't look Great Wolf Lodge-esque. And honestly, I think they need to really try to bring in a coder and an animator. I do. I'm sorry. And at the very least, and I've said this about Spooky as well, it would really help to bring in a top tournament player. They got Phil Grimaldi over there as well. Didn't Bowen help with the freaking rules? You know, they've got Ian Harewer, who's a top player over at P3 Multimorphic. They've got Josh Sharp over there at CGC, who's a top player, and even Tim Sexton now. They've got Ray Day, Jack Danger, Keefe Elwin, Tanya Kleiss, also an incredible player. Like they've got all these – there's so many players over there who – Waysen is an incredible player. I'm trying to think of the game tester I interviewed at Pinnberg like seven or eight years ago. He's an incredible player as well.
    52:22
    Both of the girls from Hot Nudge, I know the one girl works there, and she's like – I'm trying to remember where she works. But she was at Pinball Expo speaking with the women up there, and she's extremely knowledgeable. But not only that, she's an incredible player. I think she won the Pinball Machine in the Heads Up Challenge there a couple years ago. So she's like just such all three of the women who play for Hot Nudge are just like incredible, incredible pinball players and would smoke me and 90% of the people out there listening to the show score wise. Right. So Stern's got a lot of really good players, but Spooky, I'm sorry, Spooky Luke, and I'm sorry, Bug, you guys are both decent players, but you're not like top tier tournament players. So like it's really hard for you to do top tier coding. It just is. It is. It's going to be a challenge. And if there's going to be one thing that I think that, you know, people could agree, they're getting better and better and better at coding the machines. But like from a coding standpoint, no one's like, wow, the best code and the best rules, they're in Spookies. No one says that. Maybe they will in the future. And who knows? It looks like to date, Beetlejuice has their best rules and their best code. But Merlin's Arcade, you're not going to say the same thing for. And I'm sorry, Chris Turner, in a world where like pinball machines were so sought after, like when the first Ninja one came out, it made sense. But now I think that Turner is going to be it's going to be challenging for Turner to stay afloat and really make a big profit and really make a big splash. No matter how innovative their products are below the glass and like with all the other like how the the the glass goes in and out is really neat and how beautiful it looks underneath the pinball machine. Some stuff they're doing down there is really innovative and creative, but they're missing the forest through the trees. The bigger picture is you need a better theme that speaks to people of the right age and the right demographic, and Merlin's Arcade just ain't going to cut it. Jump around and Ninja Gaiden just ain't going to cut it. You're going to need a better theme. And who knows? I could be wrong because Winchester, I wouldn't have thought that would have done well, but they have the Carl Factor. Again, a top-ranked player who you're going to guarantee that a top-ranked tournament player is going to guarantee that your code has a lot of – your machine has a lot of flow and is going to make sure that your machine has good code and good rules, right? Or at least good rules, if not code, because it doesn't mean you're a coder just because you're there. But anyways, I digress. Merlin, I'm sorry you got the worst machine of the year. I'm not trying to be rude. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm trying to say this in a constructive criticism way. I don't think it was a day-one sellout. In fact, I'd be shocked if they ever sell out of Merlins. Probably will be the year 2030. I'll be like, welcome back, Pinball Nerds, episode 1111, your fifth favorite pinball podcast. This is my final show, Orbi signing off. And yes, to let you know, there is still a few, as your distro would tell you, or one last Merlins Arcade for sale, new in box, heavily discounted. And I want there to be more pinball machines. I want there to be more pinball companies. I want there to be more successful Pinball machines. Who wouldn't? And that's why I talk the way that I do when I'm being open and honest. And also just because that's the type of dude I am. But hey, we've gone a little long in the tooth. I'm 55 minutes in. Would you guys like to hear me do a show about how Stern can get its groove back? I think we can all agree the last few launches have been kind of whop whop. And not only that, The Walking Dead, oh my God, we still haven't seen a live stream of it. Like what is WTF, man? Okay, Stern, I'll say the same thing to you. Are you listening? Stern, I'll say the same thing to you that I said to Barrels of Fun. Don't launch a machine until you're 100% ready. And 100% ready means you could do a live stream within a few days of it being released. Nobody wants to wait months to see a live stream for a machine. So again, I love Stern. I love Barrels of Fun. But when they F up with these launches, me being in marketing and I think Danielle and I have now launched somewhere around 140 products. I have launched 140 products into the world with my wife. 60 or 70 of those were with Hummingbird Homestead. All the rest have been with Angry Alpaca. Some of them have been very successful and some of them have just totally bombed. I made a hair pomade that didn't sell once. I had it on my table for like two and a half, three years. I finally gave up. I think I gave away one to one of my friends once and that was it. And then for the next six years, I just had my own Dapper Dan version of, I watched Oh Brother, We're Out Thou. Love that movie, by the way. Awesome soundtrack. I don't really love country, but that's as close to country as I can get for loving it. Anyways, I've talked way too long. Please come join me over on Patreon. If you'd like to support my trip back to Ontario and give me a couple extra bucks for my pocket to grab some craft beer or to go have a nice meal out, I would absolutely appreciate anything. No amount too small. Five bucks, 10 bucks, 15 bucks, 20 bucks. No one donate 100. That's too crazy. That would be no one's going to do that. That's nuts. Come on. But it is Angry Alpaca Tea, angry spelled just like angry, alpaca spelled just like an alpaca, and then the word tea at gmail.com. That is my PayPal. Half the money given between now and Hayden's birthday on December 3rd will go directly to Hayden to help support his trip across Canada. As a dad, I was only able to pass him $250. I gave him, we did get him a roadside assistance plan for his birthday and a couple other things because I was just worried about his car break. He's got to drive over the frickin' mountains. What's over there? Or at least part of it. He's got to drive maybe not over the top of the mountains, but part of that mountain range, the Rockies. He's moving to the Rockies, guys. He'll be able to see frickin' mountains from where he lives. It's crazy. So anyways, if you guys would like to support me on my awesome trip back to London, Ontario, I won't have a show for about nine days just to apologize, maybe 10 with my voice recovering when I come back, but I am excited to do that show when I come back. And I really want to do a show all about how Stern could get their groove back, you know, in the way that how Stella got her groove back, but more for Stern, how Stern got her groove back. Come on, girl, we can get your groove back. We're going to get you going, Stern. Aaron, we're going to tone down the colors a little bit, bring down the pricing a bit, make it a little more exclusive, stop doing so many remastered. All right, I'll save that for later. But if you'd like to support Hayden and his move or support me on my trip and you're not currently a Patreon member, please feel free to fire me off a small donation to Patreon. And everybody, get out there. And if you're low on income, please don't do that. But if you have the means to do so, I would appreciate it probably more than you guys could ever know. It just that even that $30 that came in last week, that was just so heartwarming of Darren. So thank you guys so much. And thank you to all my patrons who currently support me. And if you're considering doing it now would be the best time to do it, because for me to hand over even an extra 50 or 100 bucks to my son over the next week would just mean so much to me that I said, hey, your dad might not have like a full time job like most people and make a lot of money. But that money that I do have, I share with my sons. And this would be a great opportunity to hand him over just a little bit extra money because he's going for like two weeks with no job while he gets settled. And he was making very, very part time hours here. So it's going to be at least another month till he has his first full time paycheck coming up, getting close to Christmas. And it'd just be nice to give him a couple extra dollars for his pocket. That way you're supporting me. You're supporting my family. You're supporting the show. You're supporting my family for all the time I take away from. You're supporting my poor dog sitting here going, Dad, when are we going to go outside for a nice hike? All right, pinball nerds, until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. King Kong Pinball, game of the year, baby!