hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the wedgehead pinball podcast my name is Alan, your host of this podcast. I'm joined in my house virtually in his house. It's my co-host Alex the Waterboy. We are separated because I am a little bit sick and I don't want to get Alex sick but how are you doing buddy? I'm doing great. What about you? You doing good besides being sick? I'm a little bit sick. I'm a little bit hopped up on fucking you know DayQuil trying to get the content out for everybody but we got to make sure that we plug our Ko-fi account at the top of this episode. Yeah, you know what would make you feel better is if people... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Money. Cold hard cash would make me feel better. Actually, not cash. Actually, I guess we bank transfers to our coffee account. For anybody that doesn't know, if you've not heard us plug it on any of our other episodes, we've got a little coffee account. It's ko-fi.com slash Wedgehead Podcasts in the show notes too. And we're raising money so we can go see more cool pinball locations across the country. we're heading out to Pintastic in Boston on the East Coast pretty soon here and we're not quite sure where we're going next but we know it'll be somewhere cool so if you want to help you know see more of these pinball spots that we love talking about go ahead and donate and starting just recently any donation to that Ko-fi account will get you an invite to our private discord channel where we kind of just sit around and bullshit about all the pinball stuff that we don't talk about on the podcast. Yeah, you can talk to us about all the things we said on the show, all the things we got wrong, instead of just giving me a million different reasons, just go into the Discord, talk with the other listeners of the show, supporters of the show. You can talk about the show and you can ask us or we can talk to each other about new games and rumors and all that kind of stuff that we never talk about on the show. It's all there in the Discord. If you want to chat with us, just join us in the Discord and you'll get a link automatically if you donate yeah believe it or not we do have opinions on new games we just don't think they're really podcast worthy but if you're interested in that you know that's where you can kind of find that that's the extra content you know and you get the link if you donate to the show but today's special episode what are we talking about this week alex talking about something very exciting it's the opposite of licensed themes original themes what are those original themes are that's like star wars like how george lucas came up with that by himself oh no games that aren't based on an existing property which used every pinball machine in the world and now is a rare thing to find it's an age-old pinball discussion about whether or not original or unlicensed themes belong in pinball anymore because of course back in the day all pinball machines were unlicensed and featured original or generic themes like space, western, poker, but new ideas were brewing in the late 70s and the pinball manufacturer Bally was the first to start experimenting with some licensed games to some great success. Bally never stopped making unlicensed games though and neither did the other manufacturers. A licensed machine was actually a novelty then. It wasn't the norm and it wouldn't become the norm until sometime in the 90s, even though the industry leader, Williams, never fully jumped all the way in. And they were still releasing some incredible original pinball themes right up until their end in 1999. But in many ways, the industry was undergoing an ideological war between what pinball was before and what it's been since. There's a lot of innovation that happened in pinball during the late 80s and especially into the 1990s, of which licensing is just one part of it. In fact, we did two long episodes specifically discussing the 1990s pinball renaissance with Roger Sharp, and you should go back in the archives and listen to those episodes, number 49 and 50, if you haven't already. But today we're going to focus specifically on the love and the hate for unlicensed pinball themes, discuss some of the history and some of the great unlicensed games from the 80s and 90s in particular, and discuss why we think that modern unlicensed games have been super underwhelming. Buckle up, because El Chico de Agua has some spicy thoughts about the modern-day original themes that you won't want to miss at the end of this episode. I promise you that. You feeling spicy, Waterboy? Oh, yeah. Now I have to. You know, you promised it. Well, this episode got started because it was just a text chain between you and I, and you were getting hot and heated about some of the new announcements of some of the new original themes and i was like dude we got to do this episode this episode has to happen yeah we'll get there though we'll get there but we're not starting there we're not jumping right into the modern stuff we're going to talk about first williams and then later bally williams who we would say are the kings of the unlicensed original theme yeah let's cut to the chase because the reason why some old heads in the hobby are still pining for that sweet embrace of an unlicensed pin is solely because of Williams. Williams Pinball was the only company that resisted the sirens call for licensed games during the 1970s. Bally pioneered it, and Gottlieb, Atari, and even the original Stern Electronics dipped their little toesies in it, but Williams always stayed above it. They stayed away from it. Yeah, they're too good for that. Until that mustachioed pinball god, Roger Sharp, eventually got them to lighten up and convince them to let him secure some sweet licenses upon his hiring as marketing director during the pinball renaissance period. Even still, the feeling from Williams' management when Roger first brought up the idea of License Game was, why would we do that? Look at where that got Bally. We just bought them. yeah it wasn't like looking at the list of people you're like what a lot of companies were doing big licensed themes right up to the day that they went out of business yeah you're like it wasn't a sure thing and that's like kind of the funny part is like now it's like well of course you got to do a licensed theme to make any money and you're like that's not necessarily the case back then it wasn't pat lawler also expressed that at the time that roger was hired and was pitching licenses to design teams there was a very strong aversion from the williams guys in particular because the williams design teams and artists took great pride in creating their own games from scratch and they looked at licensed games as unnecessary crutches i can get that especially from like coming from i guess from both sides of that everybody in like the creative side of things you're like yeah that's kind of their art form yeah and we're going to get into some of these games and like i said man the reason why old heads in the hobby myself included will be like dude i love these old unlicensed games is because they used to be fucking rad dude they used to make awesome shit and we're going to talk about not so much even like the em era or the you know like the beginning solid state we're going to kind of go into the later solid state era like the system 11 and we're just going to start with some like iconic williams characters and original ip and themes i just want to say off the top for all you fucking pedants out there save your little emails or bring them into the discord and tell us there so bring them into the discord because this is not a complete list i'm not saying it is so don't tell me you missed this one whatever this is our abridged list okay just want to say that off the top it's still pretty long then the first game that i want to talk about we've talked about on the show a lot it's high speed 1986 and this is where i think the kind of modern original theme game starts it's widely regarded as the first game to tell a story that story is based upon the real life story of Steve Ritchie running from the cops and his porsche it also spawned a sequel the getaway in 92 this game sold 17 000 units getaway sold over 13 000 units so unlicensed theme selling massive units of games right massive hit with no license great game that's like very innovative in a lot of respects but it really uses the theme as a big like storyteller and that's why this is like where we're starting because it really really is like a huge part of the game that you understand immediately it's conveyed you know efficiently and you're like okay i get it like i'm running from the cops you like lock the balls it starts the little like sequence the sounds lights everything it's very straightforward and it works really really well obviously 17 000 units so theme was a big part of that yeah dude and then the sequel they make six years later and sells another 13 000 units so it's like it just which is a monster seller for that era too dude just massive like again Steve Ritchie the king great game changed pinball on license theme it wouldn't have been better with a license you know what i mean like it's better as its own pinball ip yeah the next one is the pinbot trilogy you know pinbot was released in 1986 same year as high speed sold 12 000 units the machine bride of pinball was released in 91 sold another 8 000 units jackpot was released in 1995 and sold 2400 units so it spawned three games again if you're into pinball you know who pinball is you know who bride of pinball is instantly recognizable pinball character classic games iconic art the sound packages this is pinball you know like yeah these are things that we don't get with licensed themes we don't get this anymore yeah you don't get a new icon when you're just kind of like making game that fits within the molds of a universe somebody else already created and you don't get that ability to like tell your own story i think that's kind of the fun part you do get that in some like sometimes they do take some like creative liberty you get something like dungeons and dragons has its own unique story that the game is built around or whatever the the new dungeons and Dragons that is but um yeah most of the time it's like you're kind of like fitting into the confines of a movie which was not written intending to be a pinball machine yeah exactly versus these other games were built to tell stories as a pinball machine right what about Taxi dude released in 88 7300 units unofficially a prequel to Mark Ritchie's other service industry original themed game Diner which was released in 1990 and sold 3500 units I think Taxi is a funny one to have on here because it actually has pin bot in it as one of the characters which speaks to how iconic and widely recognized he was you know he's up there with like a marilyn monroe gorbachev uh dracula and pin bot equally recognizable yeah santa claus and pin bot again iconic pinball game a classic game beloved by true pinheads guess you could have made that taxi like the uh show the danny devito show or whatever right and you could still like you could slap a theme on there that's a licensed theme and like apply it and like but if that's not it wouldn't work as well because in taxi it's like they give you these five very instantly recognizable characters the point is to pick them up i think it's five and it's like it's a fast game with crisscrossing highway ramps and stuff it works very very well with its simple narrative it all is it's a very nice Python Anghelo art package and it kind of gives you the option to do all this creative stuff that you wouldn't have if you were trying to work again within the confines of an existing thing yeah dude i just believe like williams was so good at this they were so good nobody would even be thinking about this if williams hadn't proved that you could fucking do it williams was the company that was like we can make our own and we can make these characters we can make them iconic we can tell stories we can make them memorable us as pinball players we remember that shit we remember these games and how good williams wasn't doing it which is why we'll get how you know how spicy water boy is going to get at the end of this episode just warning everybody he's the pot is simmering on the stove right now well a good example of a modern a good example of a modern original theme even though it's not really original because it's The sequel would be the Black Knight trilogy. It started in 1980. Another Steve Ritchie, you know, brainchild. The original Black Knight sold well. First multi-level game, right? 30,000 units. The sequel, 2000, Black Knight 2000, was released in 89. Sold 5,700 units. Best original score, arguably, of all time. And then the final installment was made by Stern Pinball in 2019. It's called Sword of Rage. Black Knight Sword of Rage. Phenomenal game. Again, because you're within the, it's like a very simple, straightforward story about fighting the Black Knight and the various monsters in, you know, in the realm or whatever. It works really well. It doesn't do anything it doesn't need to do. It's not confusing. It just, it's a really, Sword of Rage is a really good example of how to execute an original theme or an unlicensed. again it is kind of licensed or kind of unoriginal because it's a sequel but it's not based off of a non-pinball property it's based on the characters that you know and the games and the ip that Steve Ritchie created when he was working at williams so it's it's licensed in the legal sense nowadays but it's still an unlicensed original theme original to pinball theme and man the black knight the black knight games are fucking rad Steve Ritchie's a goddamn legend again we're talking about him again but it's like you can't get away from him the dude's a legend dude black knight sword of rage best stern game by far best spike 2 game by far it's an original theme i'm on record i'll say that i don't care this is by far the best spike 2 game so good yeah i probably agree with that it's so good other iconic games we got dr dude we've talked about on the show we had greg freres on the show he actually had a chance to make teenage mutant Ninja Turtles and Greg was like nah Dennis and I kind of want to do this thing we cooked up called Dr. Dude our own game right fucking call Dr. Dude cool as hell and again iconic like the people are split as far as like how much people actually like it but the character and the art package of this game are iconic it was released in 90 sold 4,000 units the unofficial sequel party zone also the next year sold 4 000 units you know they're not considered maybe to be great machines but i included them to show that they still sold very well and that greg's art and character work is iconic dude if you're into pinball like you see this shit used on posters you know you see pinball shows and stuff they use these original characters you'll see the black knight you'll see pinball you'll see dr dude you know you'll see these characters because like we associate that as pinheads this is our culture you know we're like that exactly that's us like these characters are signifying that this is pinball when you see luke skywalker you're like that's star wars you're not like oh that's pinball luke skywalker you know what i mean like yeah dude it's not representative of like the hobby and it never will be and that's what's cool about these games next one i think uh is maybe the most iconic this is funhouse featuring the disturbing animatronic talking dummy head of rudy also released in 1990 sold 10 700 units the unofficial sequel featured two doll heads and red and ted's road show released in 94 and sold 6 200 units big selling everyone that's into pinball you know rudy dude you hate rudy like he's like i thought we were pals you were like we're not fucking pals rudy you know like yeah you could create a new character and immediately make the audience like dislike them and understand that's an antagonist and you want to beat them it's just the ability like what you can do with an original theme it's just like the doors are wide open that does create more work and we'll get into that with the modern stuff is that to do this well is absolutely not an easy way out no one was creating like funhouse because it was easier than doing it off of a established ventriloquist ip which i'm sure there's many of right well they could have done a great goosebumps like fucking what's that dummy's name slappy dude night of the living dummy and goosebumps and i guarantee there's listeners out there right now that are like oh it would be so much better if it was goosebumps i'm like no it wouldn't because we'd have someone like trying to do the goosebumps lines instead of like thinking up the like original shit for rudy and that's like the thing is it's like sure it would be cool if it was goosebumps i wouldn't argue against a goosebumps game but you're like it is what it is and they did excellent with it so we don't have to like wonder you know what if yet similarly again yeah whirlwind was released in 1990 did 7300 units it's the unofficial sequel we're seeing a lot of these if you if you haven't noticed two unofficial sequels that is to pat's other iconic unlicensed disaster themed game earthshaker which was released in 1989 and sold 5200 units two more strong sellers pat lawler loves doing original themes he loves doing family friendly stuff he seems to be drawn to natural disasters it's just insane because you're like nobody on paper would say that you're like yeah tornado chaser uh earthquakes in california like these are like brilliant themes but these games are iconic in pinball because they are great games the games are fun the rules are fun the sound is great the light shows are great they come with groundbreaking achievements and mechs in pinball design it's the rise of a superstar in pat lawler and he makes his name he cuts his teeth making these unlicensed games and i just feel like you see it come through. The reason why I'm nostalgic for this era, why some old pinball heads are nostalgic for this era, is because we know we're never going to see this shit again. We know it just not going to fucking happen And it not because some company won try they will but they won do it with intent they will not do it with the talent lightning in a fucking bottle and we just not gonna get this again yeah real quick do we want to just kind of rattle off some other you know big recognizable ones from this era for sure yeah i'll just kind of go down the list here quick so we can get moving. But yeah, next, another one we want to talk about, a game we both love, Fishtails, released in 92, did 13,500 units, monstrous seller. Huge. Whitewater, arguably the best DMD game of all time, released in 1993, sold over 7,000 units. Bangers, dude, absolute bangers. Both water themes, as I'm sure you appreciate. Yeah, exactly. theater of magic released in 95 very cool like magic you know it's like all the shit that you're like you couldn't really uh have like tied all of the toys that John Papadiuk wanted to put in there to another existing magic theme necessarily it worked better without it you get all these new original characters again iconic game 6600 units considered like one of the most desirable you know one of the most requested games to get a remake. Attack from Mars, a game that was remade, released in 95. Not that strong of a seller, surprisingly. 3,400 unit. This is when the industry started to struggle, but it's been remade. It's one of the best games of all time. Way more of the remakes now than the originals. Probably. Maybe not way more, but I bet there's more. It's got to be approaching it. Amazing game. I think a lot of people, though, might think that this is Mars Attacks. the Tim Burton movies. So I think some people get a little bit confused. See, and you can kind of play into that in fun ways too. Yeah. To that kind of like flirt with existing licenses would be Tales of the Arabian Nights, which is kind of, what do you, what do you, the, I don't know what those are actually, the book that that's based on. Yeah. I can't remember the name of the book, but that was released in 96. Another John Papadiuk game sold just over 3,100 units. Very cool game. Again, kind of let John Papadiuk do what he wants and just kind of make up the story that fits that. medieval madness which was kind of a play on the monty python search for the holy grail that's what people tell me it doesn't feel like monty python at all to me personally and it wouldn't be say that it wouldn't be better as monty python i love monty python i love the holy grail brilliant movie brilliant but like this game and the way it works with the trolls popping up and the castle and the whole goal is like you know to like siege all these different castles that you couldn't do that as the plot of the movie so the game cartoonish like explosion the castle you can't yeah it doesn't make any sense so this game is better because it's unlicensed this is a great example of like this game came out better because it was unlicensed if this was monty python and the holy grail it would be worse it would be significantly worse i fully agree yeah we got circus voltaire released in 97 we got cactus canyon released in 98 this was actually the last traditional pinball machine that williams would ever make and they cut the run short of 900 units to move into the production of pinball 2000 although again it was so good and people wanted to play this game that chicago gaming released a remake and they finished the unfinished code just to get this game out to people and it's just goofy 90s western theme it's unlicensed but again it comes out good because it doesn't have to be based on one western movie or tv show it's just here's our western pinball world and so it's got some great mechs in it and it's got some great like the magic of this era is apparent in these games that we talked about i just want to talk about this like renaissance period this period that people look back on and when we talk about why can't original themes work you know like well during the renaissance period that we're talking about in the 90s here original late 80s and into the 90s original themes can sell units we prove that like they sold a shitload of units on these games original themes can be greater than the sum of their parts because many of these best games from this era are unlicensed games. People aren't stepping over themselves to be like, damn, dude, like, Kongo's way better than Medieval Madness, although I love Kongo. You know, like, Kongo's a rad game, and I love the IP or whatever, but, like, even, like, Terminator 2, massive license, great game, but people aren't like, yeah, dude, that's way better than Attack from Mars, you know, or, like, people aren't saying that. You know what I mean? like the best games of this era this 90s bally williams renaissance period are unlicensed games and i think that original themes they it's because they often have better theme integration and storytelling you can do more when you're not hamstrung by a license you can choose to make theater magic like the trunk's going to be the center mac here's how we're going to tell this story we don't have to be like ah does david coppenfield even use a trunk do people know that Exactly. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have to like slow down and second guess and try to build things based off of like your preconceived notions of what would fit the theme. You're like, no, you can make whatever you want and make the theme fit that. Yeah. Some of my big takeaways from this and just like reading this back is that a lot of these themes have aged better than their contemporary movies. Yes. A lot of these movies from the 90s, even if you're nostalgic for them, you probably don't have like that strong of a love for them. if they're you know unless it's like a big franchise or something particularly impactful for you but like nobody's really the shadow would be like an example yeah of a game tied to a movie that's kind of forgotten other than within the niche world of pinball and you're like no one's like oh i love the shadow i really wish they hadn't made i wish you know attack from mars was the shadow themed yeah like it's like there's a lot less risk for things to age poorly yeah i don't know that was kind of the my big takeaway is that it's just they've aged the original themes have done better most of the time there are some that did not age well but like we'll get to into a second we're totally talking about the good ones the whole point of that first section was just to be like man remember all these awesome original themes and then because what happens in today's marketplaces they go yeah but you have to be licensed it has to be licensed we're going to talk about the modern market and we're going to be sober about it because i'm not back then they were selling to operators for these games we put on route now they're selling to a home i understand that's a different market things are different but we're gonna get into what changed and and whatever but my big takeaway is like they used to fucking sell the biggest company at that time was making unlicensed themes and wiping the fucking floor with their competition with unlicensed games so people act like it couldn't be done dude data east was only doing licenses and they were getting whooped by williams right so i mean just like being realistic like gottlieb was getting banger licenses and getting whooped you know by williams so you can't be like hey dude this can't be done of course it can be done yeah so what happened right why are there only licenses now but i put a winston churchill quote that just says history's written by the victors and this is where i think change things. I think the quote applies very well to this topic because Williams' largest competitor during the Renaissance era was Data East Sega, and Joe Camacal and Gary Stern had gone to making only licensed games by 1989. They had some good success with these licensed games, although Williams was, again, like I said, regularly able to outsell Data East and Sega with their own licensed and unlicensed games. But once Williams' parent company, WMS, decided to close of the pinball division it left gary stern as the last man standing and like i said history is written by the victors so even though williams regularly bested data east and sega during this era when their parent company decided to leave the industry the future would now be shaped by gary stern alone so now everything's going to be a licensed game well i mean well not quite yeah not not everything and that's where we kind of get into the rise of boutique pinball manufacturers and the glorious return of original themes starting with an instant classic shortly after the closure of williams in 1999 a new little fledgling company called chicago gaming company decided they were going to make an original themed pinball machine it's called vacation america It came out in 2003. It was a Trudeau single-level design, featured Paul Faris artwork. It was meant to be a cheaper home machine. That's something that a lot of people have tried again and again, and it's never really worked. People really want home machines to be a thing. And they knew, I think at this time, that their only hope was selling games to people at home, but they cut costs in a way that isn't appreciated by the buyers. Yeah. And I think that's the crux of modern original themes. And you might have this written in the outline later, so sorry if I'm skipping ahead. This Vacation America, the first boutique original theme we see in the modern era, is really indicative of everything wrong with the mindset of original themes. Because they did this because it was cheap. They didn't do this because it fits the narrative of the game better. They didn't do it because they had some grand vision that they couldn't do in any other way. They did it because it was cheap. They were cutting costs, and so they did an original theme. And the game flopped. It didn't flop because of the original theme. I think Vacation America probably could be a successful game if someone made it. The artwork on that thing actually is pretty cool. It's actually got really nice Paul Faris artwork. Yeah, it's got some cool artwork. It's just the game is not good. It's just not good. That's the problem. The game's not good. There you go. You're like, well, you're like someone tried an original theme and it flopped, Alan. Right. So like original themes are no good. Since the 2010s, we've seen newcomers to the pinball industry and many of them have tried again after Vacation America. Obviously, listeners, you may have realized Chicago Game Company. They come back later in 2015, return to pinball. And they made all of these remakes of mostly unlicensed themes until they finally did, you know, Pulp Fiction last year. Yeah. Yeah, so they figured it out, but they went back to the Williams Well and just remade those instead of remaking. Yeah, they made good games. Again, proving you can sell unlicensed games if they're good. If they're good, which is what we're going to keep hammering. The difference between Vacation America and Attack from Mars is one of them is a good game that people want to buy. Yes. But everybody does this. Every little – every startup company, again, because they do it to save costs because licenses can be very expensive and it's a complicated thing. and you have to work within the confines of that, it adds a whole other layer of complication. So we keep seeing boutique companies start up with original themes. We're going to start with the most boutique of the boutiques, you know, fan favorite, Spooky Pinball, 2014. They come out with America's Most Haunted. It was their first machine. Alan, what's it look like? How would you describe it? Unbelievably ugly. It's really bad. It's really bad. Just being bad. Like, spooky now? Not a good-looking game. Great art. Like, they get great art now on their games? This horrible art. Again, because the game has simple rules. It has lots of 3D printed parts, and it is mechanically unreliable. You don't see them very often. They made a very small run of them. I think this game's actually kind of fun. It is kind of endearing because it's their first effort, and I do think it has some good call-outs. They actually did, like, the story fits well. They used the original theme well. I think it's just ugly, and the game has some other serious drawbacks, so it certainly doesn't win people over they made it as a homebrew they don't they didn't have the williams engineering machine behind them to make the game it feels like a homebrew and it's it's fine it is kind of fun but it's not gonna set the world on fire and it's not the game that's gonna bring back unlicensed themes in pinball it's just it's not good enough you know but you know what might a cool original theme from another new little startup hey highway hayway i never really actually have known how to pronounce x it's spelled differently than highway would be but highway pinball 2015 they made full throttle it's european motor motorcycle racing themed it was meant to be a modular platform it's a very odd cabinet that highway went with boutique companies love trying to redesign shit that they should not be wasting their time redesigning yep this game also fucking ugly uh also unreliable it has a code that was never finished from what i gather i've played a handful of times it has not won me over some people kind of like will hype this game up a little bit because it does kind of have some cool shots and stuff it's a unique layout and rare games are always fun to play a few times but it's uh not again it's not winning anybody over into the unlicensed theme camp yeah dude williams was making games like medieval madness attack for mars theater of magic uh tales of the arabian nights like we're and then we're getting like like here's full throttle and here's you know looking like america's most haunted and vacation america like what is this yeah i mean like this isn't the same shit looks like like if you go to like a fucking discount store like ross and you buy like eight-year-old bed sheets they kind of look like full throttle it's like cartoon motorcycle art yeah it's not like it's not like cool Isle of Man, like cool motorcycle art. It's just like, oh, these are what motorcycles look like. It's like generic motorcycle art. That's something that I'm going to keep coming back to is that it certainly doesn't look cool. Another game that doesn't look cool. What's the next one on the list? Okay, so this one's actually very interesting. This is Dialed In made by Jersey Jack Pinball. It was their third machine. They released it in 2017. It marked the return of pat lawler the king of unlicensed the king of unlicensed disaster themed games and it's another disaster theme i think this game was unique in the sense that i know a lot of people who hate jersey jack games and who would point to this game you know until elton john as the only jersey jack game that they actually enjoy he was widely considered amongst like real pinheads like players not collectors because of themes and whatever to be their best playing jersey jack game i still find it to be not great though and with ugly art i'm not sure what happened since it was john yauseon art but he had spent over a decade at this point making photo collages and photoshop type art and it's just not the same as like his hand illustration and his hair brushing from the 90s you know he did funhouse you know like he did whitewater like he he is that dude like he can he can nail this shit and then it's just like passage of time tools are different muscles haven't been exercised in the same way i don't know what pressures were on it jersey jack but the art came out interesting not in a way that i particularly like it it doesn't it's not as iconic as whirlwind or something to me like it doesn't hit the same but i will say that like this is the first time that we get an original theme by a manufacturer even though at this time jersey jack was still a small company they were still struggling at least there was like real resources put fully behind this this wasn't like a fly by night this is our first game this was like hey let's hire the guy that did this shit that knows how to do this shit let's bring him into the company and let's let him do his own original theme maybe he's got another one left in the tank i think they should be 100 like commended for like giving it a go like this i don't have super strong feelings undialed in one way or the other i don't love how it flips i always want to play more of it because I don't really understand what's going on, but you don't see it too often. I do want to point out that it sold very comparable to The Hobbit from what I've tried to check. Anyway, it's hard to get good numbers on these, but it's about as successful as The Hobbit. Now, granted, it's Pat Lawler instead of Joe Balster. So that name should have done more numbers, but The Hobbit's a monster license. And so you got to realize, like even dialed in, you might think is kind of a flop and like, oh, they didn't sell anything compared to like Guns and Roses, but at the time for JJP, it really didn't do that bad. And so, like, even here, and I'm kind of, I just, it doesn't grab me like I wish it would. It definitely doesn't feel like older Pat Lawler games to me. I think that's more of my personal feelings on Jersey Jack games and just how their hardware flips and their rule sets and their RGB and just everything about them. They just kind of feel different to me, and I think it's more of a reflection of that. It's hard to get everything right. You know what I mean? like that's what we're realizing is like you have to get everything right when you're doing an unlicensed theme everything has to be people will look past so much like buyers will look past so much on a game so many compromises because they like the theme i mean i've got a game in the house i don't need to name names but i've got a game in the house that might set my fucking house on fire but i still have it here because i like the theme yes totally it's known to explode boards in spectacular fashion but i like the theme so it's still in the basement and hopefully it won't fucking bring me to a fiery death in the middle of the night when i forget to turn it off some dude there's a new beta out dude it's gonna be all good that means you can't like if that game was an original i wouldn't have bought it in the first place because i would have waited to see if i liked how it flipped yes and if it was threatening uh you know the life of me and my family, I probably would have sold it by now. That's the thing, though, is like you can hide and sell a bad game if you attach a license to it. And that's what modern manufacturers have realized, is that when you're selling to a home market you can attach a game that not the game doesn have to be great If the license is interesting to enough people it will sell based on that and that alone So it gives you a leg up No one getting FOMO No one's getting like hyped for an original game because the game has to sell itself on its own merits. And people don't like doing that because that means their games have to be really good. Yes. This is a good segue because this is total nuclear annihilation. Fucking good game. And this is like proof of your like, this is why original themes kick ass. It was completely designed, engineered program and soundtrack by Scott Danesi. Guest of the show just had him on. It's a throwback street level play field, but with the high quality, incredible light show, art package, sound package, easy to understand rule set. It's a unicorn game. Most pinheads love it. And Spooky had no problem selling them. it's the best unlicensed theme in this century no doubt absolutely and it's a perfect example of why or why original themes can work so well because it's like otherwise scott wouldn't have been able to do i mean he did do some of the soundtrack for rick and morty but the music of tna kicks the shit out of the music and rick and morty because rick and morty who's you know it sticks to the confines of like the existing universe and that music's just not nearly as good as what scott did himself for TNA. It's got this very simple storyline in like a high speed kind of manner. And we know he was heavily inspired by high speed and all things. But it's got a very simple storyline of like, you're trying to are you trying to explode the reactors or disable the reactors? Yeah, you're trying to destroy the reactors. You're trying to overheat them and then destroy each one. Yeah. Yeah, as you do. And it's like it's a very straightforward objectives that work really well it's not trying to be like oh you gotta go to the fucking like it's not trying to work around some convoluted storyline that never was intended to be in a pinball machine it's like no it's fast it's simple it doesn't need more than this it's set to an awesome soundtrack it looks gorgeous fucking perfect little game it just goes to show that like it still can be done and it still can be accepted this is another piece of pinball culture that we get because of scott and ec and making such a fucking great game this had everything going against it dude it had no ramps dude has no modes you know like has no like it doesn't have stacks of wizard modes no name designer small company with not a stellar reputation at the time not a horrible reputation but nobody was buying a spooky because they loved spooky so much at least not very many people yeah everything against it like you said and it's a fucking awesome success and then we have Multimorphic, which is a modular pinball system released in 2017. Almost all of these are unlicensed game modules, although they have dipped their toes into some licenses. Yeah, they've got Weird Al and Princess Bride now. Yeah, but the launch title was Lexi Lightspeed. This is just one of those things where it's like some of these games, again, like third game is Final Resistance, but the problem is you need the platform and it's expensive and it's weird. It's weird and it's expensive so it's gonna there's a lot of like a hard sells there to people and i think if you had a fucking absolutely kick-ass game in final resistance might be that i haven't played it that's the other thing though i guess that we need to address is to sell original themed games they have to be good and people have to play them so they know they're good so you have to get those games in front of people yes that's the biggest problem with multimorphic right now i love pinball I go out of my way. I'd make trips to play pinball. I've still played one P3 in my life. It was a weird owl module. It was very poorly maintained. I have no official opinion on Multimorphic as a result of that. I will never buy one until I can actually flip it and see if I love it. Again, that's like the pros and the cons. As a consumer, you're like, well, you shouldn't be buying anything that you haven't played anyway. You shouldn't be buying any of these fucking expensive toys unless you love them. I've bought things blind and I've been burned and it's just something that it's like you should really only buy games if you actually enjoy playing them which you don't know until you play them but again these manufacturers small manufacturers they're not they don't they don't want you to play them they want you to just sell to buy a game based on hype because they just need to get that original money they don't really care what the resale is it's in their best interest to keep resale value high but they don't really care as long as they keep selling the next game so as long as they can convince you the next one's like bigger and better they don't really give a shit the games just have to sell they don't have to be good then we got some uh other games that here's another game i found mafia which was released by another flash in the pan company calling themselves team pinball in 2018 this is another throwback street level layout maybe to try to be like a tna type of thing they were supposed to make 100 units but i doubt they ever made that many i think the art is at least interesting and stylized kind of looks cool like cartoon mafia yeah it's very like dark i think that that's pretty cool because it's like a little bit of like it gave me that feeling of like oh this is a little bit of the 90s where it's like okay the art is like interesting and stylized and kind of cool the layout feels uninspired and i got to play one one time i was not impressed and i like simple games you know it's not i'm not turned off by like a simple game but damn this is this was not it you know uh and then we have oktoberfest which was the second game released by american pinball although their first game houdini the year before could be considered a license original you know it had gone into the public domain already so it was technically unlicensed but i think both of these games are terrible personal opinion just saying that out loud not trying to throw shade on people that like them my problem with oktoberfest is that it's a fucking incredibly off-putting art package with like cartoon it's like it's got like realistic you know uh conventionally attractive women on drawn on there and then like these grotesque cartoon men it's a really really really creepy weird art package a combination of art styles that i would be hard-pressed to fucking like it would just be a tough one that game could be fucking phenomenal and i would be like i don't want that in my house it's weird they both shoot bad like that's the brittany and octoberfest shoot poorly no one's no one's like oh this is the fucking like they might be like at best it's like this is like an underrated like sleeper hit this is like a die on this hill level kind of game for us none of these are like games that you're like this is a fucking like masterpiece and if you're gonna give me an art package like octoberfest it better be a fucking masterpiece dude and it could have been it could have been there's nothing to say that like some of the games and some of the themes that they were making in the 90s like is fish tales like is lying about the fish that you caught inherently a better theme choice than oktoberfest no it's execution but it's an awesome game it's all about execution the art is so cool on fish tales it makes fishing seem cool it's all about execution with this shit and then what we're seeing is in the modern era We're not getting the execution. The other game I have right here is Cosmic Carnival. Again, another flash-in-the-pan manufacturer named Suncoast in 2019. I played this at TPF in 2019. This actually features, you know, good art by Dirty Donnie. It's art by a professional artist that has done other pinball art, which is unusual for these boutique companies. Yeah. It suffers from a horrible layout and design, completely absent code. It's essentially a box of lights with set values for every switch you hit and one multiball programmed in, I think. More stuck ball traps than I've ever fucking seen. They had this on the weekend, or they had this at Next Level for one weekend. And I went out there and played it specifically. I was like, oh, I got to go out there. Well, Cosmic Carnival's on the floor for this one weekend. And I tried to play two games. and of those i think i got four balls stuck yeah in two games and i had just getting it into the second time i didn't know the text out there at the time because it was when i was new and i was like okay man i'm done and he's like yeah he's like this is why we don't have it on the floor and i was like yeah this thing's a piece of shit it's basically a prototype that they were trying to sell it's a completely symmetrical layout so i think even if they finish this game this game would have sucked you know like that's just the problem with it dude is like yeah they got one piece of the puzzle there the art it's like a cool interesting theme it's like dark space carnival yeah but then it's like yeah the rest of it's dog shit next original theme another short-lived fucking boutique manufacturer here you're gonna catch a fucking you've probably noticed a trend yeah most of the companies we're talking about aren't in business anymore this is kelts from haggis pinball in australia it's released in 2021 i don't know how many they got out the door not a lot they ended up pivoting and they tried to change the business model into doing remakes of solid states like fathom they got a handful of those out the door too kelts is uh it kind of actually i kind of like the looks of this layout it's kind of got an interesting you know it's celtic themed uh the art is like serviceable i don't think it's bad but it's not great this is the problem it's not art has to be great dude it has to be great if you're gonna sell an unlicensed theme as an unknown manufacturer and it's not you know that's the fucking problem cool from there we go on to legends of valhalla it's uh released by american pinball in 2021 i think it was actually trying to be run by a different boutique manufacturer in europe and they picked up the rights to produce it i can't remember the full story but it wasn't an american original it was like purchased as a contract thing the art's not bad uh there's a center ramp which we joke about is always a bad sign on the show there's kind of a goofy like ball lock mech on there some people actually really like this thing it kind of like the coating feels clunky it does like the sound the art like there's just kind of a little polish that i feel like was needed on it but i know people do really like love this game it's kind of an interesting one i would say this is kind of you're like yeah this is for me this is like middle of the road you'd have to really love it to do it but it's kind of like kelts where i'm like it's not like i'm not gonna like rag on it too hard yeah but dude if bally williams made a legends of all holiday game it could have been rad and what we get now not rad watered down and then we get one here galactic tank force released in 2023 by american this one hurts me man because this is another example like dialed in where they have like an a team of people that i really respect the work of they're doing like a theme that sounds theoretically cool to me and it's just like it's problem art by Christopher Franchi mix of live action actors portraying campy b-movie characters designed by dennis nordman this game feels like the most like a true attempt at an unlicensed theme that would rival the 90s games that williams made it's got a weird theme it's got campy it's got humor in it humor and like it's high production value like they put effort into it it's got like tons of unique animations that are like one-offs it's got like you said a cast of actors that are like actually going for it they're fucking like selling this shit it's got a very like well done art package it's just it's plagued by software issues it's unreliable the mechs are very unremarkable particularly the 3d printed center tank mech it's just like this one got close kind of like dialed in got close like these two games got close and they feel like they just missed somehow they like just missed it yeah galactic tank force for me if gtf it sucks it's like i hate there's like really bad music in there there's really animations that are just cringeworthy there's a lot of shit that i'm like this is bad i'm like they really mixed it up a little bit too much i think it's like okay it's like retro space adventure themed also cows and ice cream and i get that dennis nordman's a madman and he thinks this shit's funny and sometimes it hits and sometimes it kind of goes askew like this and i can respect that but the problem is it fucking breaks all the time and so again these games have to be good you have to prove that they're good by letting me play them If every time I go play a galactic tank force, I get like a blue screen or I get fucking ball locks that won't release or the things just permanently powered down. You're like, that's not selling me on the game. It sucks because it's like I love like I really like the idea of like a campy kind of like 50s retro future tanks in space is a funny concept of its own. Dude, it's just I like the mystery science theater of it all. It just the game worked. I like my own one. I've just had such negative experiences trying to play it. It's frustrating. We got Berrio's Barbecue, dude. Released by American. So we're seeing the theme here. This was meant to be an homage to the late, great pinball designer Barry Ousler, but it's been a massive flop. The game has bad art and weird stock footage of food being grilled. The layout features a bunch of shots taken from other Barry games, but it features no real interesting mech. I mean, it shoots okay, but this game's just not going to move the needle man because the package isn't there like it's not all there it's not winning anybody over like the back glass is like well done and then it's a completely i don't know if it's a different artist for it was just done in a completely different style and time frame than the rest of the game the rest is not well executed like you said the playfield is not a particularly fresh or exciting like this playfield could have done well if it was wrapped up in a theme that people were passionate about because i think it's like a serviceable playfield. Again, it's still an American game, so it's still like lucky if you see it and you can actually play it. Lucky if you can actually play through a whole game. I mean, fuck, you're lucky to see these things at all because they sold so few of them. This one's a bummer. I really like Barry Osler. I think it was a mistake to do a game themed after him. I think that's just kind of a bummer because it's like I genuinely I think Barry Osler is like very, very underrated designer and he's done some of the best games of all time, including some really good original themes during like back in the day and this one is just like what the fuck man why are we like watching like meat get slapped onto a barbecue as an animation like what the fuck are we doing here yeah dude it's not even animation bro it's just stock which is kind of funny like don't get me wrong like it is kind of funny and like if you were like a barbecue joint i would 100 have one of these there because even if it was broken half the time it's funny the weird thing is is like now people will be like isn't this so dumb or whatever the 90s games williams made these games and then fucking outsold data east and sega doing shit like this that's the shit they were doing and they beat their ass like we're going fishing we're going whitewater rafting i don't care that you got fucking batman you know what i mean like they didn't fuck it like oh yeah how many how many units to data east move of batman you're like we're doing gangbusters here with like fucking garbage we're doing fun house dude he's a talking dummy at an amusement park like i just had to drive the other companies insane i bet it did dude i bet it did because you're like what's the recipe and you're like well shit the only way we can compete is by paying for licenses because certainly we can't make games that good exactly like fuck that's depressing they used to compete on marriage Yeah. No, not anymore. Well, there's two more games we're going to talk about real quickly here. There's Ninja Eclipse by Turner Pinball. Apparently a guy named Brad Duke designed it, did the art for it. And then the owner of the company, Chris Turner, did the engineering. He also gets the concept credit. I am on record, Waterboy and I are split on this. But like, I think the art on this looks fantastic. And so do the animations. I think the layout's a little strange, but I think it's way better than most spooky games. And they sold out. conventional which i guarantee we'd be more immediately drawn to and it sold out quickly of their hundred game allotment and expo uh doesn't have any like super interesting mech but i'm like damn this is this is getting close a little like propelling it's got that little the qc thing it does with the scoops have you seen that it spits the balls back like click click click click up the play field or whatever scoop to scoop to scoop it's kind of cool i do think the art looks really like well done it's not particularly like my style i'm not like drawn to it i'm it's you know it's it's it is really well done and the animations are fucking phenomenal quality for being like first effort from a boutique company they're like pro level animations that could exist in anything like outside like if they were like mobile game animations at a company making 100 million dollars a year i'd be like those are good animations like they're legitimately good they look very like natural really well polished and very impressed by ninja eclipse actually but i'd love to play this one to throw a bucket of cold water on this water boy we got a new entrant it's not released yet but the game is called road trip i mean we didn't we already talk about road trip that wasn't that vacation america oh that was vacation america which is road trip themed this one is road trip but it's actually ramps themed and it's from the new company ramps pinball and it has not good art man it's got a lot it's got a lot of ramps so this was the game that kind of set things off because this this game came in right it came out or was announced fairly recently and everyone's like oh wow it's so great to see an original theme like oh this is so cool it's a fun what a fun looking game and i felt like fucking uh will ferrell in um you were magatu in zoolander you're like am i taking fucking crazy pills fucking crazy pills you're like i'm like you guys can i mean maybe it shoots well maybe it plays good but like this is it looks horrible it looks like fucking like it's not good it's not a good it's not a good theme it's not creative it's it it just it looks miserable and it's not cool that's the biggest problem and that's the problem with almost all of these original themes even the ones that are really good but so close is that none of them are cool and if you want me to buy something that isn't tied to a movie that is cool or funny you better deliver something that is cool or funny and that's completely missed on all of these fucking people that want to like play dumb and be like well a few more original themes go by road trip from ramps and you're like fuck off i want good original themes all original themes are not the same that's like saying all licensed games are the same be like if you're sitting there asking for fucking evil dead and someone makes teletubbies instead and i'm like well what you said you wanted a licensed game this is a licensed game don't give your fucking teletubby shit you're like no fuck off it's not the same i want a good original I want high speed I want fun house I want fishtails I want attack from Mars That what I want I want cool shit I want shit that makes me feel good to have it in the house or feel good to play it on location in like if you playing like if you putting out little kitty shit it's not like this isn't winning me over and I'm sorry I know that like some people that's a target audience some people do have little kids if you're buying seven thousand dollar toys for your fucking eight-year-old like what are you doing man give them an iPad they will prefer don't buy them dialed in don't be fooled even though it has an iPad in it they're still not gonna like it it's frustrating because everyone lumps all original themes in together in going through this list you see how different they are if you think like kelts is the same as tna you have to be a fucking moron like there's other they're completely incomparable games and those two actually have a lot in common but you're like one of these has celtic like chanting as the soundtrack and one of them has something that's like actually worth listening to outside of the pinball machine that's the difference the difference is also that one of them has a rad art package one of them has a kick-ass rule set a really sick layout it has fucking creative features that people hadn't done before that's all the stuff that you get with the original theme the original theme's part of it the original theme has to be executed well but that's not the whole thing and it's just been frustrating to see it all get wrapped up i love the heel turn the water boy el chico de agua it's frustrating because it's like i like some of my absolute favorite games including my favorite modern games are original themes tna and sword of rage yes those are like i mean those are like genuinely two of the best modern games of all time in my opinion both original themes so if you dare fucking lump in full throttle with those two you can go fuck yourself i agree it's not the same it's not the same and we're in this episode it's gotten long because we're trying to cover a lot here but um we got to go on the final discussion of like the viability of original themes in this modern era because we got to be fair we understand why they do this right yeah because you can move shitty games if you put a license on them that people like they say that you won't sell units without a license because licenses are necessary when selling to the home collectors you need FOMO do you agree with that oh 100% so that's why we do it you need it if your game's not that good yeah you can sell games without FOMO at a slower rate that's a big thing though is that you're never going to sell them all you're never going to get that huge rush of orders right at the beginning unless your game has been hyped up because it's actually good and there's a lot of really good I think many many many many modern games would sell on their own merits it's just people are scared that they won't nobody besides Stern has enough talent and resources to make original themes really work and they only make licensed games what do you think about that partially true i think scott denisi almost killed himself doing every piece of tna but he basically single-handedly created an original theme game that kicks ass so i think anybody can do it the problem is you have to like put in the work and i understand that other people can't do that like it might not be a viable business model because if you had to pay someone as many hours as Scott worked on that thing it might not work out well and he did like a proof of concept like he made the game and then Spooky's like yeah we'll make this it is a unique thing because it's like it was a homebrew that was able to build hype as a homebrew and then it started selling so it's like people did get that taste for it so there was a little bit of hype for it what about unlicensed games are going to draw more scrutiny from buyers and players because licensed games hide design sins. What do you think about that? I think that's true. I think you can put some stupid shit. People get so obsessed with checking the boxes when something's a theme. They're like, Jaws is going to be bad because the shark doesn't eat the ball or whatever because they had it on their fucking bingo card, shark must eat ball. And it's like, if that thing had ate the ball, everyone would be like, this is the best game of all time. No, they ended up liking it anyway because people like how Keith Ellin games shoot and stuff. You know, it's a good game. it's just i do think that people hold them to different expectations again that's the big recurring theme of this episode is that like original themes have to actually be good they have to actually be a good game and sell on their own merits that can be a lot harder to do than to just kind of like satisfy some of the basic requirements i mean you got people like you know big podcasters that will just look at a game before they've ever played it and run down the list and decide if this is like a success or a failure based off of like shit that they can't even like you know tactically feel and you're like this is it's just it's become such like a disconnect from the actual experience of playing pinball the people that are buying them i think i think that is a big reason to do licensed games it's just easier to satisfy that stuff yeah because then people are like because then everyone's arguing like is jaws a good license for pinball or not they're not you know it's it's not just like is there enough in this game is there a real mech in this game is there you know like versus if it's unlicensed shark attack pinball everyone's like i don't know man it's like it's easier for people to be like teared apart if it was unlicensed shark attack multiball the fucking the shark better eat the ball then exactly that's what i mean but i think this is the whole thing is like right like nobody just blanket wants unlicensed games that's the whole thing it's like people always go don't you guys want this you're like no we want good unlicensed games this is very hard to do this is only williams was really able to do it very well regularly the early unlicensed data east games and the unlicensed gotley games from the same era aren't well regarded nobody is clamoring for remakes of secret service or cactus jacks like we want more games like whitewater or fishtails not barrio's barbecue or road trip you know what i'm saying 100 and i think that's like the whole crux of this is that it's like these aren't all equals it's very obvious that even coming from the same even if you remove the manufacturer differences they're not all equals because it's like something like robocop is an objectively better game than torpedo alley you know and so it's like if if robocop was torpedo alley themed it would probably i'd still love that game because i don't really particularly care about RoboCop. And so, like you said, we want good unlicensed. We just want good games. And I think there's more opportunity to create good games when they're unlicensed than a lot of people recognize. Yeah. Too many of these original themes just feel like glorified home brews and they're not fully fleshed out games. So sometimes it's a little bit unfair to even compare them because we're not getting the manufacturers taking the risk, which I understand They're not going to take the risk. But I want to talk about this, like the fake cheerleaders online, because I know you have a take on this and we want to hear it. It's like they just like to hype up the new companies, but they actually aren't going to buy any of these games. And they should probably, I think, according to you, just shut the hell up. Like, what do you what do you have to say about that, Waterboy? You want to put that on the air? Yeah, I would say if you're saying like if you're defending the game by saying you'll put a couple quarters into it on location, that doesn't mean shit. That is the bar at literally ground level. The bar is in the fucking basement. That's like, of course, you'll put 50 cents into a game to play it. You have to be insane to be into this hobby and refuse to play a game because you're so off put by the theme that you won't put 50 cents into it. So that is not a vote of confidence in the thing. If you're not buying the game and you're not like thrilled about the game, your opinion is not really worth very much, which I don't like saying because it's like I don't want to only satisfy the people that go out and immediately buy games. because I think we talk about it a lot. The most important part of this hobby is location players. Without location players, the hobby will just die out very quickly within our lifetimes or whatever. The hobby would be just gone within 20 years if there was no more location player or whatever because the people that are into pinball would all die. So it's important to make games that appeal to location players, not just home buyers. But to appeal to location players, these games need to be good enough to actually live on location. And that's also a huge part of that. Not get played once. not grill i'll put a dollar into it be like i'm gonna come back every week and put dollars into it over and over and over again and that's the problem with if you're not gonna go play ramps road trip like 500 times it doesn't fucking matter that's the thing because it's like you'll go play like medieval madness 500 times yeah they're both original themes and so that's why it's like the like like you said the cheerleaders online that are just like oh it's so good to see these minimal machines and you're like dude it would be better if they made good games like we can't i don't think i just really don't think that it's good to just see companies come out and go under like go out of business in a couple years that's not good that's not really particularly fun i don't like seeing middle-aged men ruin their entire fucking lives and that's like running through this list of original themed games there's a theme there you're like all of these guys are like destroying their lives to make companies with bad original themed games that guys in like the comment section are saying like oh i put 50 cents into that looks fun and you're like no man it's frustrating we'll end this episode by just a quick statement of like a question is it possible to make a good enough game to be successful as an unlicensed theme today and what would it take to do so now i have my answer here which i think it's possible in theory we've seen enough by now to say that it's extremely unlikely that we'll see it in the future i think that you can choose to compete on price but stern will always have you beat there you can compete on gameplay through the layout and software and with what the current market wants i think you don't really have much of a chance to compete there either because stern or jersey jack like they're just gonna beat you with their programming like they're just going to throw programmers out of there they have way more resources they have way more resources so you're not going to beat them on like the deep expansive like rule sets because you're going to have one guy or your buddy who's going to code it so it's got it like you're not going to beat them there so i think most companies choose to compete on licenses because you can pair a good license with a good art package and you can carve out a small niche to sell your games but to make an unlicensed game sell it has to be great in all aspects like first and foremost it has to shoot well most boutique games just fucking don't this should be fixable like you can fix this but then you have to give it a well thought out rule set complete with a nice sound package and light show again most boutiques just don't have the resources to compete here it's just one or two guys just way over their heads doing their best you know and stern has a whole team of people programming every game jersey jack has teams too and they have the industrial knowledge this is gonna be hard to meet the baseline that these other companies have established and what the modern buyers and players expect good art is not cheap cheap art is not good again we have seen boutique manufacturers make some very good looking games so it shows that they can at least get that part right sometimes the way i would do it would be like looking at theater of magic medieval madness and games like that and i if i were to create a game i would start by trying to find a way to design and build a showstopper mech as the anchor like so many of the modern games just don't have anything even close to as interesting as to what was being done in the 90s. They build the game around the mech, or the mechs, build the theme to incorporate that mech around the storytelling like they did back then with the castle, or with the trunk, and if a boutique company made a game like Attack for Mars today, pretending that that game hadn't existed before. Like, Attack for Mars had never existed, but that game came out, the aliens jiggled the ship, right? Like, it's got the art, It's got the sound call outs and the music, right? People would fucking buy it. People would buy it. If it was that good, they would buy it. I'm not saying it's easy to make that game on your own. Probably impossible. That's the whole thing. It would sell, though. It would sell. Theoretically, I get what you're saying. I agree. I think that's kind of like what it would take. You'd have to make like a Bally Williams level game. I think for it to really be like an effective, like to ever truly compete in this marketplace, sell as many copies as like any average stern or whatever it would have to be something to that level i don't think anyone could really get there because i don't think they have the resources personally and that's kind of the bummer yeah i think we saw american really kind of try with galactic tank force and they just barely dropped the ball that one is so frustrating to me because it really feels like you're like it was really close and i it it just sucks because it's like that was probably as close as we're gonna see for a while as far as if i think this like if it's like a viable option to make an original themed game in 2025. Option A is something that we've talked about in the past. I think we've brought it up on the show and that's that these smaller companies should quit trying to compete with Stern and making like Stern like games and they should fill the niche of creating more games like that feel like classics much like TNA did or like these throwback games that we talked about in a different episode that we wish we'd see more boutique companies make those because there's a lot I mean there's the main reason is that you don't need to worry about so much mechanical engineering, which leads to, you know, failures on location, reliability concerns. And you also don't need to worry about having as deep of rule sets. So that saves like a massive amount of complication in the coding. I imagine I don't actually do this stuff, but I imagine that having significantly less like modes and wizard modes and like all that stuff would make it take less resources to code. You focus on having like that doesn't explode control boards i would say you would have to have a slow production model if you're doing original themes and you have to get those games in front of people as fast as you can and start selling them just at a night like you just have to realistically it's like you can't expect to just ramp up that's one thing spooky did really well was they just they naturally built their demand up or they built their facilities up to match demand yep and that's like best thing they did they didn't just shoot for the moon right for the right off the go they just did small runs they kind of worked their way up as they were able to secure bigger licenses i really respect spooky for doing that and building organically i think that's kind of the only way you could do this even if you were an established company um like if chicago was like we're gonna do a brand new original themed game because they have the resources to do it now at this point working with the raw thrills guys that did pulp fiction they could do this they could realistically make an original bally williams quality level machine but i think they would have to go into it knowing that sales are going to be slow off the bat because it really it's going to come down to the game's reputation so building around that chicago would be the one to do it because they have a whole other side of the business that actually makes money because it's not pinball building around the fact that it's going to be slow i think would be necessary um something that's just integral so obvious is that art is incredibly important it's what people will judge an original i mean people are going to be even more critical of our on an original theme and you're putting so much freedom into the artist's hands get a good artist don't fuck it up that's not even a good artist get an incredible artist get a showstopper of an artist somebody that is passionate about this that has an idea that knows what you want and what they want to do don't get to me that's just like that i mean it's easy to say get good artists but like and i'm sure it's harder to do but it's like we've spoken to a lot of good artists that have done good art packages like why does sean irby's homebrew have a more compelling art package and theme than like the vast majority of the games we talked about from modern manufacturers today you're like because sean knows what's cool he built around like a reasonable thing. Johnny crap, dude. It's just fucking aliens playing pool. And then he hired a real goddamn artist that had experience working in pinball and he just let him do it. And it looks fucking like a professional game that I would buy and put in my house, which is insane because that's just a one off. And you're like, how is that fucking better? That's so frustrating. There's a roller coaster ride episode of the history of unlicensed themes, man the the highs and the lows and the future unlicensed teams everyone's like well yeah and it's like why we like some why we don't like others yeah dude it's the modern era man i don't think we're gonna get any more for better or for worse you know a lot of these games in the modern era that aren't unlicensed are not good so if we don't get any more of those so what yeah i don't really care it is a shame if we're not gonna see any more truly great unlicensed games in the history of pinball i don't think we won't i think maybe every 10 15 years we might get like a tna like i think there will be somebody that will be the next scott denisi that will give us that but we want to thank the listener for listening to another episode of the wedgehead pinball podcast it's like such a somber ending but really this is a very positive episode we talked about a lot of games that we love so go out find one of the many many many phenomenal original themed games there's infinite options from the 90s of very cool original themes there's a handful of options in modern production of original good games go out find them play these games and compare the storytelling compare the way they make you feel to another game and then realize you're like damn you really it doesn't really need to be star wars to be good yeah it can just be stars it could just these stars. Leon, I thank you all for listening once again to another episode, and until next time, good luck. Don't suck. Thank you.