Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Pinball Show, episode 177, that we're calling Dennis, Trot Jam 2025, phase 3. It's Harry Potter Pinball and Predator Pinball. What's with my air horns? I don't have a good air horn. I thought that was for Predator. But don't worry, this is the last phase. This is the end of trot jamming. Everything else for the rest of the year is pretty much predicted to be crap. No, actually, no, it's not. But if you want to hear about that, go to patreon.com. Swag the pinballs. I'm joking. But I'm not. Like, we say shit we shouldn't there. The October remaster will be. How are you, my friend? I'm good. Yeah? Are you? It's been a month. We're recording on Father's Day. They're listening on post-Father's Day. Yeah. So they're done. Dad's got their neckties that they've politely thrown away. What can you get a dad, you know? We want peace. That's what we want. I'm not even convinced my kids like me at this point in life. So it's almost like I don't want to see on their face that of disappointment when they hear that their Sunday has to be used to focus on me. That's a killer, man. And that does not feel great. But they're kids, so I get it. So I'm like, for Father's Day, what I want is just for you to be happy. Do what you want. And in return, I'll do what I want. Now, my real question, and I'm sure the listeners are just dying to hear. How many children do you have out in the world? I don't have any kids, Zach. You know that. I know. I don't know. I don't know that. You don't. You know that I've told you that. We talk about this every year. And I still think there are probably some little pre-sales out there that maybe you don't know about. That's all I'm saying. Don't know that you can prove that. I just want one day. You just want one. Father, I am told my DNA matches you. It's like a plot to some strange Al Pacino comedy. Is that the scent of a woman? No, he didn't have any kids. It's the scent of a woman. Okay. I'm thinking you've got three kids out there somewhere. One of them is in his 20s, and he looks just like you. And he hangs around the Syracuse area. I don't know. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. One day. One day. Can we jump into the news? We've got a lot of it to cover. No, we can't. Let's keep talking about stuff people don't care about. We didn't do it that long, though. Stern Pinball in the news. Here's your production updates that we've become accustomed to here at the Pinball Show. So this past week, they've been building, past couple weeks, King Kong Premiums, now in stock a lot of places, Jaws Premiums, thank God, we've been waiting for those for quite some time. June and July, the rest of June into July, we have Jurassic Park Pros, Jurassic Park Premiums, and Godzilla Premiums. And then also, June and July, there may be a little blood in the water. That is the rumor that we've been discussing over the last couple of months here. Do you think it happens? Yes, but I don't think anyone will care. Why? What do you mean? Nobody care? One of Stern's best sellers of all time getting another edition? I think the oxygen has been sucked out of the ocean. It's H2O. There's no way to suck oxygen. You got Joss Premiums already being built this last week, and now there's a wizard. There's a wizarding world. People don't have money for black and white editions. A wizard underwater? No. Make sure to eat your gillyweed. To even know that reference. I don't remember which one it was, but yes. Yeah, okay. I have seen them. Okay. Some of them only one time, but I have seen them all. That's fair. August comes along, and they're going to make some more D&D, Dungeons & Dragons Pro, and Premium Models. 2.4 is Stranger Things, Premium, Uncanny, X-Men Pro, and then TBD is all the other stuff. There was a bit of a change for dealers and retailers in pinball that they changed the pricing of Avengers and Iron Maiden, both the Pro and Premium Models. Did you hear about that, Tim? I didn't know they were still making Iron Maiden. Well, they're not making them. They have them in stock. And dealers have them in stock. So of what is left out in the retail space, they are now call for price. I don't know what any of that means, and I don't care. Instead of $96.99, you can advertise them as low as $94.99 typically. Now you can take off that $94.99, and as retailers, you can advertise them as call for price. Remember when they did the Led Zeppelin Pro and they did the Turtles where it was like, eh, whatever you can get out of it. It kind of feels like that. This is how markets are supposed to work. Actually, I'm glad you brought this one up. I like this. I love that they've done this. Meeting with Stern. What was that? Did you? Not Gary. You make it sound like you were in their mahogany conference room. I don't know. Conference room. What did they call that conference room? Is it conference room striker extreme? What do they call it? Do they name their conference rooms for games? I've never been there. Pyrola Casino. Isn't that a game? Yeah. Okay. I've not been there. Yeah, it was a Jon Norris game. We should take a tour. But yeah, these are called for pricing, which I think means you can get them cheaper. I think you've taken a tour before. Not of the new place, no. Really? No. No. Yeah, I had a meeting with them like a month ago. and I was asked about the whole call for pricing or reducing price. Oh, was that the context? I thought maybe they were asking so they could invest in your pin pod. I don't even know that they know who I am, to be quite frank. No, surely they do. No random text messages about this? Am I going to cut that now? Man, that's the deep Patreon content right there. Okay, maybe that's the screaming goat. Maybe they'll get that kind of info. New code. New code out for Dungeons & Dragons V.91, where they added the legendary glass bow of Allshot. Oh, wow. The legendary glass armor of immortality. And the legendary, it's more glass, it's a glass shield of endurance. Yeah, I don't, the latter two, I question the practicality of these. Well, who doesn't want their armor to be of that immortality? Yes, but it's also glass. Well, strong, strong glass made from dragon tooth. It's tempered, huh? Just don't drop it. Just don't set it down on cement floor. It won't slice you, but boy. Have you ever had that happen? Did you ever have? I've had it happen once. Playfield glass, yeah. Just going to drink your hands. I have not. I've had it inside a pinball machine. Oh, God. Oh, that sucks. I sell it at that point. Well, you have to. It's paperweight at that point. But, yeah, I had to vacuum it all out. Also in this new update, a bunch of rules enhancements, call-outs, lighting effects, and more. I found this interesting, Dennis. I think you'll like this one being of a gamer type yourself. Stern Pinball shares a Nintendo Wire video here recently with the quote, The team at NintendoWire.com put together a great video on what it means to bring pinball to your home. And I'll say this. Getting them to share anything is somewhat of a feat at Stern Pinball. So, what do you make of them sharing a NintendoWire video about pinball? Coincidence? Uh, maybe. Or foreshadowing? Ooh. Yeah, let's go with some shadows. Shadows and dust, Maximus. What do you think it means? Do you think that they want to show off their partnership? Pokemon. Gotta catch them all. Could be. I don't know the song. Could be. Is that close? I don't know. I just know that Digimon. I always watched the bootleg version of Pokemon when I was a kid. Digimon? Yeah, Digital Monsters. The GoBots of Pokemon. Yeah, that's what I watched. Digimon. Digital Monsters or something. No, I get it. Digimon. It's the same song. than a minor for it. That's right. Minority. Digimon are champions or something like that. I don't know. That's what I watch. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. It's curious. It's curious. I don't know what... I don't know the site Nintendo Wire, so I don't know if they normally cover other things. I'm more interested in why they were maybe doing a video about pinball than the start sharing. You know, one has accused me of having a lot of domains that could be future pinball machines. You do have a lot, but you're not the only one I know in this hobby that just collects domains. Okay. Well, you know, got burned before, so I don't want that to happen again. So I'm just very business-oriented, and I jump out in front of these things. It doesn't mean I know things are going to happen, as, you know, quote-unquote news has reported upon me with narratives of harm. It's because, I don't know, I think this pinball machine would make sense. So I get it just in case, just like we did HarryPotterPinball.com back in five years ago. or whatever. But I tried to get a couple, and there are some that just are not available. Of course Pokemon Pinball is not available because there's like a video game, right? Right, yes. They secured that a long time ago. But you know what else wasn't available? This could be Pokemon. It could. It could be. Mario Pinball. Not available. You know who has that? Tricky. No. Oh, the listener's ears would percolate if I said, Stirring Pinball. No, it's not that. It's not that juicy. But Nintendo owns that. Okay. I just don't... I mean, Mario was a doctor at one point. He could be a pinball wizard eventually. Yeah. Okay. But I don't know of any Mario pinball. I'm sure there are. Because it's like Sonic. They try to make anything they can out of it. But... There's a Sonic pinball. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And will there be? Oh, yeah. So maybe it's Pokemon I feel like Pokemon is kind of separate From Nintendo in some ways Sort of I mean it's not like a first party thing Yeah it's like Pokemon group We've talked about the weird ownership stuff That they've got to manage Pokemon So I don't know I think that if you get Pokemon And you're dealing with Nintendo as the licensor For it One of the licensors Then I think by default you're probably pretty close To getting Super Mario 2 I don't know. We'll see where this comes up in the future. I think they should get Legend of Zelda. That's what I want. That'll come. That'll come, too. But it won't be before all this other stuff, I wouldn't think. I mean, they launched the Switch, right, with one of those Zelda games, not a Mario game. The first Switch. The second Switch they launched with Mario Kart. Yeah, they launched... Which, apparently, everyone now plays this cow in Mario Kart. Is that the thing? I don't know. I guess there was a new character, and it's a cow, and people love it. No. My kid's playing it, and I'm like, so what's the new Mario game? It's like Mario Kart, and I'm like, no, that's not a new Mario game. Like, what's the new, you know, 3D Mario game? It's like, there isn't one. What in the hell? And I just slapped the Switch 2 out of his hands. They basically launched it with you. He slapped it. And it was a larger thing. No fun as they get for you. So I was like, what's different about this? And he was like, it's bigger. I'm like, what do you mean? It is bigger. Jeez. Jersey Jack Pinball launches. Maybe the biggest release in pinball in the last decade. Gasp. Yes. You are a pinball wizard, Harry. Harry Potter gets launched and announced in teams forever. But now we've finally seen it. Was it a week ago? Yeah, about. Okay, let's run through the... Just over a week ago. Let's run through the stats of this. Of our listeners, you know how many people just listening have already pre-ordered this thing? Probably a lot. Because it's Harry Potter. I would even venture to say that there are some people listening right now that have one in route to them. We'll talk about all of that. But first, let's talk about how this kind of rolled out. We had Jack thing back in 2PS. This thing has kind of trickled ever since. A weird, long release and tease of this game. Save your money. which arguably worked. I reviewed that back in the day. We knew what the launch date was. Remember that? And then that day came. But the first way that people seen this was through a game teaser attract mode. Remember that? Yes. And people are like, you think that was on purpose? Do you think that was an accident? What do you think, Vince? I'm going to say it was on purpose. They did purposefully want it in attract modes. However, their plan was not to have that be the first way that you see in the teaser trailer. What? No. Come on. It was so well executed. Well, you know, you got so much stuff scheduled on all these different mediums and they're like, oh, wait, we gotta do this. Wait, we gotta do this. Okay. Oh, shit, we forgot to wait on this thing. And then, boom, there it comes. Oh, no. And then the floodgates open. So, yeah, I think that was a A whoopsie. A whoopsie, baby. But, I mean, we didn't have Ken there to help them out during that. We'll talk about that later. Whose fault is that? That was another... I would say Jersey Jack if I had to say. Okay, okay. No fault of their own, but if we're going to blame anybody, why not? So we got the attract mode video, and then we got the actual trailer, and we got pics of it and everything, and then we got the featurette by Retro Ralph, and then they did a feature at this time around. And then we got a gameplay video the day after that. So plenty of content and stuff to consume on this launch. The launch is being heralded as not executed perfectly, but does it really matter? No, it doesn't. Yeah, it didn't really matter. Doesn't matter. The cat was already out of the bag, so we did the jack anyway. Well, honestly, because of Joe Kamikow, the cat was out of the bag. But, you know, ever since TPF, there's no real surprise here. So that's why I didn't think it really mattered all that much. Plus, it's Harry Potter, so I really didn't think it mattered all that much. That's why it doesn't matter that much. You first saw it on the track mode or whatnot. Like, it didn't matter. Anyway. Launches do matter. Launches do matter. Yes, but this is an exceptional theme that gets treated differently. It doesn't matter as much. Correct. Doesn't matter. Yep. There are three models. Doesn't matter. Three models of this game. The arcade edition, a new edition, like a reboot, where it is sub $10,000, $9,999. They have a wizard, which is what we have become accustomed to know as a limited edition or the platinum edition, whatever you want to call it. It's a $12,000 model, a mid-tier model. And then the upper tier is called the collector's edition, which is $15,000, this time around, being a little bit different in that it is not limited to unit quantity, whereas it is limited to a time window. They're going to close that window at some point, and you can no longer order the collectors, and that's how it is limited. So unknown limit at this point. That's fair, right? Yeah. Just like every pinball machine has an unknown limit if it's a license. I would argue the same, yes. No price increase, which surprised some. It surprised me. Yeah. And then design team, designed by Eric Meunier. Game programming lead, Joe Katz. Mechanical engineering, Dan, I apologize. Let me see if I can get this. Lachic. Art by Jesper or Jesper Jesper Abels. and the team Mina Lima, who's the kind of the renowned Potter artist. They did work for the CE cabinet and such. Sound design by David Thiel. He's back. And custom speak by Marc Silk. Features of this game, Dennis Art. Let's jump into the art. The CE has art. The collector's edition features the renowned Potter artist team Mina Lima and feels more like an illustrative package to me that you would see from, I thought, from the books. Now, they're renowned for being the illustrators for everything that you see in the world of Potter, in the films. Yeah, but they've done art for books as well. Yes. So, yeah, illustrative guides. They did alternate art for the first couple. But, yeah, they are the hot, they're basically the Potter artist. them and the person who did the other novels. So that was a big draw. And I remember when this... I remember when I seen this package for the first time and I knew how important it was to Jersey Jack. And how important they were banking on it being for the public and the potential consumer. Do you think it paid off? Yes. That's simple, isn't it? Yeah. But it is starkly different from what we see in pinball. I mean, kind of. It's still oversaturated colors. Oh, no. It's the same. They're all the same. Compositionally speaking, it looks very much different than what we see on. I see WWE gold trim, and I see saturated colors. There's no focus on the characters. There's no... You know what it reminds me of? It looks fancy. It looks luxurious. It looks like... I've made a couple people laugh. It looks like a really expensive, ornate, oriental rug. Like, when you walk into a really nice place, and the rug is kind of... It is what it is art-wise, but you're like, ooh, that looks expensive. To me, that's what it, like, rings true because whenever I first had seen the arcade and wizard editions, they feature, listen, the movie art, you know, the goodies versus baddies kind of thing. I'd seen that, and I'm like, okay, that's Harry Potter. And I'd seen this, and I'm like, I guess that doesn't say Harry Potter at all to me, but it looks fancy. If I heard EGP correctly, you prefer the CE. Yes. And Tony had an art boner over the CE. He loved it. I suppose so. I will not speak for his boners. The firmness of his show. Which one do you like? So you like the CE. I am torn. I'm so torn. How? I'm going to eat a little crow toe. here. I'm going to, you know, this is what, listeners, this is what humility looks like. And it's what a lot of different content creators just simply fucking lack. It's being open and honest, not having an agenda to the point that you just are blind with some of your takes. That's why you guys have been anticipating this episode. Full transparency. I'm licking a little crows. I'm sucking on it. I'm giving it the full orc. Oh, God. Trim that toenail there. Is it a toenail? It's a claw. A claw's not a toenail. It's a... What is it? A claw nail? Is it a nail or a claw? What's the difference between a nail and a claw? I do not know. Oh, damn. I was wrong. I'm standing here. I'm actually sitting here before you, listener. I was wrong. And I don't like being wrong, but I was wrong. When I had first seen these presented, it may have been before the launch of this game, like a long time ago. When I seen that CE art, I thought they made a big mistake. And I, you know, without reference and stuff, I'd seen that and I thought, oh, no. Oh, no. No, no, no. JJP, what are you guys doing? This is a bad decision. People know Harry Potter because of the movies. that they don't want ornate risk-taking here, not on the CE. Please don't do this. But I was really wrong because apparently people are eating this up. People are loving this. Like the majority of people. I thought it would be a small sect of people. And it's the majority of people are eating this stuff up. They're just gobbling down on this thing. They love it. Very much surprised me. I thought that was a bad decision, that it was going to be a bad decision, and I was wrong. I mean, it's all hindsight. Would you have thought this was a good idea? I don't understand the question. All right, if you'd seen this before the public's seen it and they said, you know, at that point in time, I thought they were going to limit the CE probably to like 1,000 units, and they said, this is our $15,000 model right here, and you'd seen nothing else besides just the exterior cabinet, would you be like, oh, that's brilliant? Or would you have been like, whoa, that's a risk? No, because I don't think the size of the cab are going to determine the sales of the game, so I wouldn't have felt strongly. Okay. And maybe it was just my own preference for the film stuff over the seat. Did you not know that there was going to be film art on the other ones? I knew that there was. Yeah. With that context, I definitely would have been okay with it. Yeah, I was very concerned, and I was wrong. The books are loved. They are. They are. But I knew this was a game based around the films, mostly. So it just kind of threw me there. The only thing that really bothers me about the CE is that they didn't change the play field for it. I heard you saying that, and I don't... It's lazy. I don't agree with that. It is. That's, I mean, that's. It would have been so much better if the whimsy was also on the play field. I felt like it is. The cab side, like, what do we call it? The art decals or side blades or whatever. Art blades. Like, they're there. They're there. They're still the same theme. And then you got actors. Acting. but it is a lot of like color blending, almost AI like with the blending of, you got snakes and stuff. It's very, not watercolor, it's just more bold than that, but it's very painted. Like it looks like a painting. So I, I don't know, I disagree. I think it, I kind of flow, of course it's not going to flow like the outside because that's very different, but I see your argument, but I don't, I think it's, I think it was good. I mean, again, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So yeah, I was wrong on the artwork. Now, which one do I prefer? I'm still stuck because then I'd see the damn CE in person, and I'm like, well, shit. And behind the scenes to the individuals that I've spoken to at JJP, they were like, no, just wait until you see it in person. Damn, it is crazy great looking in person. And I'm like, yeah, but it's just not the movie. I want the movie stuff. And then, yeah, I've seen it in person. Now I'm torn because, shit, that does look really good. And it's not like that dark foil, too, that you see on the side. No, it's like a sparkly, really nice foil arm. I'm torn. I don't know which one I like better. Layout and design, four flippers. There's technically five ramps, question mark. Three spinners, two diverter magnets, two and a half pop pumpers is what I'm going to call it because it's like two pops in a sling. Back there in the cluster, numerous ball holds slash locks. a dual-entrance subway. I would classify and characterize this layout as fast and flowy, a fast and flowy layout, typical to what you'd see in something like a Steve Ritchie. Diverters, numerous ball path changes. There's an upper play field. Feels like at times there are three levels to which the ball can travel, out-lane crossovers rather than a traditional standard in-lane, out-lane set. So that's the layout and the design. Toys and mechs include the Grand Staircase. That's like the big toy in this game, which is the multi-change state. There's three entrances to this shot, 13 exit points. It represents the grand staircase. And Hogwarts, that's the big toy. There's also an upper play field. It's like the Quidditch matches in the field, which is quite a fun play field, too. A molded death eater with a kickback feature. A whomping willow with the Weasley car stuck in it. And it's attached to the pop bumper, so it moves around. A ball lock that is on three wands, replicas of Ron, Harry, and Hermione's wands. And there's a molded cauldron. The balls lock on the wands, and then they go into the cauldron. A protego, protego, prego ball saver. And that's one of the outlanes. Can an outlane be an in? An outlane is out just because it is out, not because it's on the outside. I have to remember that. Correct. Listeners. A reactive Quidditch player. It's just Tie Fighter and a spring is what that is. And then a sorting hat molded toy. Before we get into rules and code, layout, design, toys, mechs, your impressions of that. Successful, unsuccessful? Successful. It doesn't matter, but successful. None of this is going to matter because it's Harry Potter, right? Yeah. You know it's the theme. Yes. Okay. I hope so, because the theme is the one thing that you had to notice. Yeah, but it looks good. I mean, yeah, I didn't like the flat plastic Quidditch player on the upper play field. That's like the one thing that I didn't like. That's not even one of the toys, really. The spring one looks okay. The tie-dye one, I think that looks fine, yeah. Cauldron looks cool. The wands, of course, are a nice touch. The mechanical staircase, I think, is, yeah, it's very obvious that it's the centerpiece, because it is very interesting just in terms of the game state. It's like a Godzilla building on steroids in a way. Okay. Just in terms of the diversion that it offers. Obviously, it's in a way, it's a much smaller footprint. And because its movement is just about rotation, it allows for things. But I think it's a great choice in the sense that it's really, well, maybe not the most iconic thing from the story. it's one of the best ideas that ties to pinball, that moving stairwell. Yeah, and back to the theme, we've argued this for years, and I agree. The Harry Potter alone is going to sell units. But I think there is still a substantial difference, significant difference, between if it were the movie-based Harry Potter with assets versus the wizarding world of Harry Potter. so just the movie version the art tells you that all over so we already know it's the movie version even on the CE when you look at the play field and Harry's staring at you and discount Ron and Hermione are staring at you so it's the films that does sell this I agree layout how do you find the layout it's different it's very different yeah I agree with your description of fast I'm not, I don't, I need to flowy I'm a little torn on because the feeds back to the flippers are different oh, ok, I can see that I'm not seeing the combo ease like we would on a Ritchie for example, and so I don't know if I want to say flowy when you may have to spend some time trying to regain control of the ball more often like if you make your shot you may still that's what I'm getting at, but the speed, yeah You can see there's not a lot in the way in the lower half of the play field, so that will accommodate that speed. And obviously with all those ramp shots, if you're making those, you should have some pretty high-speed elements. It looks pretty fast to me. I think once you play, once the listener gets their hands on it, I would argue that the flowy moniker comes in not from quick returns to the flippers that you can then hit, which is absolutely the basis of flowy for the most part. I would think it makes up being a flowy layout with the other flipper shots. The other flipper shots do allow for continuous flow as well, whether it be a loop, whether it be a ramp. Yeah, I really noticed that with the upper plate. The upper plate filled very much so. Repeatable loop, repeatable ramp. Like, it's just always flowing. Boom, boom, boom. And we forget that even if there was not a return wire form to one of the things, It because it kind of a lot of the shots feed that outer left lane that then flows right to the flipper which you know just because the wire form isn right by the sling still serving the same purpose Almost too much so because it very fast coming out of that left lane to the flipper But you could argue not really always well I guess it so flowy But to stop that, it's hard to trap up. You can't really trap up. You could do a ski jump, but then it's going to go into a sling. Like, it's fast and chaotic at times. I do, the layout surprised me a lot whenever I just seen it on. Because when I seen it on paper, I didn't think it was going to be quite as flowy as it turned out. It looked very novel. The shots did. But they looked forced, some of the shots. I'm like, oh, they're just trying to make ball paths any single space that they can. But then whenever you play it and see it played, shit. Like, no, it works in space. Like, I don't know how it works as well as it does, that kind of thing. Like, this game has no business with as many shots as any time, like, listen, you divert shots that many times, by proxy, you're going to get some clunk. You can't create diverters that are going to feel juicy both ways or all ten ways. Like, you're creating diverters because you're diverting the ball in ways that typically are going to be novel and they're going to clunk around. But, yeah, this game has no business being as smooth as it is. It is no top echelon of smooth by any means. But because of the ball paths, yeah, in my opinion, it doesn't have any business being as smooth as it is. But what a happy, wonderful expertise for Eric Meunier and team over there. The toys are, I think, beautiful. And when we talk about, like, a lot of times world under glass, we talk about scale of things. We talk about interactivity. I think it does a really good job of scaling items. Nothing is just predominantly like, holy shit, like, there's a big walking dead head inside a little barn. Like, that doesn't make sense. Or a prison. Nothing like that. But it's not so world under glass where you're like, well, wait a minute. Why is this this? No. It all makes sense to me It all really does make sense And it all looks really good Just like that Whomping Willow That thing I think even licensed with Ford That car to be licensed I'm looking at you Jurassic Park But like just the moldings that they used So that the tree limbs would jiggle around With the pop bumper But still be strong enough to hold that car By an inner gauged wire Like just really really well done rules and code. The goal, this has been kind of a sticking point for some people because it is with every JJP game that comes out. Minus Elton John. Elton John's still not direct. You can really just understand, oh, there's four modes. Oh, we start those and there's two multiples. But convoluted is what JJP gets described as with their rule sets a lot of times. Right We look at Avatar Even people struggle with Hobbit It's very basic Whether it's the UI I don't know what it is People struggle But I'm going to try to break it down As simply as I can here The goal of Harry Potter Pinball Is to earn all seven Horcruxes And then you play the boy who left That's the goal That's not too difficult right there It's straightforward Collect the seven Horcruxes Yeah. It's even more simple to understand. You're earning all those seven horcruxes, and they can be earned from different game tasks. There are seven tasks to get those horcruxes. One of them is to play through the movie modes. Simple enough. Yeah, most people want to do that. Six movies. Boom. Get through all of them. Then you start a wizard mode for the seventh and eighth movie. So that'll get you horcrux. You know what else will get you horcrux? advancing through all the Quidditch matches in the World Cup and getting a jackpot. That's another Horcrux. We need five more, though, listener. One of them is to collect all the allies, like the Super Awards. Super Pops. Super... Okay, we can do all that. And then you can get another Horcrux for the Golden Trio Multiball. That's the standard multiball. The wand one. Yeah, Wand Lock. Wand Lock. You get a super jackpot during that. Boom, you get another Horcrux. We need three more. There's spell training and potions and different stuff. You get a Horcrux there. You can explore Hogwarts multiball. You get that multiball going and get a jackpot during that and you get another Horcrux. And then you destroy enough Death Eaters and get through all the Death Eater stuff. You get a multiball. And then during that jackpot, you get a Horcrux. And that's it. See? It's not that hard. What I do really appreciate is the focus on the movies as modes. I'm a sucker for it and a lot of people listening are as well. So you get those. And I like the progression. It's not like a hit four shots and you're done. They're trying to base it around the films, going to school at Hogwarts. So they're based in terms, and that's what they call these modes, terms. And throughout the term, you have a fall term. You have to hit so many shots in that fall term. And then you've got a spring term to hit so many shots. And then if you do all that, then you've got a final exam. mode completion, if you will. And you progress through each of those movie modes like that. That's cool. And then if you get all six of them, the wizard mode in that is movies seven and eight, which is the Deathly Hallows. So that's the basis, the foundation of the rules and code. It's not too bad. Animation. They did get video assets from all eight films, and it is industry-leading, beautiful, as all JJP's games are. I mean, some people didn't like Dial Ben's art. It's still... So beautiful is subjective. That's so long ago. Audio and sound. They did license Hedwig's theme. Thank God. I don't know where this game would be without that song. It's so important to this film. To this game. And to the film. but I'm just trying to trying to think of what the game would be like without that and I think it struggles we did get David Thiel back so who better to create ancillary kind of music they said 90 something scores that he produced for this that's fantastic audio assets from all eight films as well model differences Dennis the CD has that another for you yeah it's got that MinaLima Metallic Radcal Cabinet Art Package Gold Sparkle Armor Gold Mirrored Backglass Magic Glitter Playfield And Plastics People forget about that They're in the plastics too Gold Wireforms Which Oh man That's almost a deal breaker They look so good Interactive Hogwarts Castle Topper With Projector Training up this week That topper You just wait Shit We'll talk about it Misses We'll talk about that Mena Lima Metallic Inner Art Blades and apron art. You get the golden snitch shooter knob. And for all of you wondering, is that a cheap plaque? No, it is like metal. It is a heart. If you took that thing off and whacked that somebody in the head, yeah, that's assault, brother. You got that. You've got rear and under cabinet lighting that comes on the CEs. You get the spell form laser cut action button applique. Applique. Applique. You get the wax sealed and signed signature card and the wizard edition back glass poster. That's an accessory there. The Wizard Edition is going to have a Radcal cabinet art package, but themed more around the movies. You've got color-shifting armors, just black with a lot of rainbow metallic flakes. You've got printed back glass still, so you still get that screen-printed back glass. Full surround back glass lighting that goes all the way around the back glass. You get Invisiglass Quidditch interactive toppers. You still get a topper, cinematic inner art blades, shaker motor, external volume control, And then the lowest edition basically is minus all the wizard stuff there. So you just get a regular detail in the cabinet. You get black wrinkle powder-coated stern armor. You get a trans light rather than a back glass. You only get the marquee lighting up instead of all the way around the backbox glass. Standard play-filled glass. No topper. No art blades. No shaker. No external volume control. All right. Overall, this game, we'll talk about our first impressions of this game in a minute. But let's talk about production timeline. If I order today, Dennis, when would I get a Wizard Edition? Tomorrow. Man, stay away from the dealers that say that. They're out there. Well, the other dealer said he could give me one in four weeks. I'm like, well, I'll tell you what. If he does, have him buy me 50 of them, too. I'd love to have them. The production timeline, I'm going to tongue-in-cheek say, who knows? Who knows? And that is because this has been, as a seller, one of the most frustrating parts of this release is not having the information to provide to prospective consumers and purchasers. most people are going to ask hey you're wanting a non-refundable deposit uh when am i going to get it and i don't even know at launch if jjp even knew what their timeline for what are they running first how many of those are they going to run all of those and then switch to another model or are they going to run just some of those and then switch to another model if they do switch another model. What model is that going to be? Would I get a Wizard or an Arcade Edition quicker? Where am I in your line? All of these questions are relevant. They're all good, great questions that I would love to have the answers to. The problem is, no one fucking knows. Well, yeah, my dealer said, your dealer can say whatever, but your dealer doesn't know. I've also found that even if somebody from the company tells one person something, that could be true for that day but then somebody else in the company has a different plan you see where I'm going with this I do, I don't understand why they're confused so I think what they did was I think they I don't know what they ordered initially parts wise they're probably conservative with their I don't know why but they're probably conservative with their part order I think that they wanted because they were really big on dealers putting in an initial order I think to gauge how they wanted to do the timeline for production. I would have guessed them to have had a rough timeline prior to, but it doesn't feel like they did. It feels like, well, we want to see what people are ordering before we commit to telling people what we're going to run and how often and all of that, which that was frustrating. And this is no exaggeration because I'm neurotic and I get to the point of getting overwhelmed with the same question I don't have an answer to that I count it. I count how many times I'm asked something. It's a really pissy, petty thing to do, but it makes me feel better. It's a rationalization. But over 260, I think two was my last, 262 times I had to answer somebody that very question, and the answer was invalid because I don't have an answer for them. 262 times I had to type up. Unfortunately, at this time, JJP has not told dealers any type of rough timeline production estimate. We hope to know soon. Yeah, that's very inefficient. But that's too much business talk. I know nobody's here for that. So who knows? I've heard rumblings. We know that the CEs are online because they did make, which kudos to, do people still use the term kudos, Dennis? Yes, they do. Oh, what an outdated. I still use it, too, but I wish there was something. Props? No, that's outdated, too. Praise? Credit? Credit. Credit to JJP. They're the only people in the industry that they had a CE out to major dealers at launch day. They launched on, what day did they launch? Thursday? I think that's when they shipped a showroom CE to a lot of major dealers. That's impressive. And they're showing When do you get yours? We got ours Friday So it shipped Thursday, we got it Friday But it was very smart to do so Because they called it a display sample And without divulging too much information They make it to where their dealers get that showroom version In a very fair, more than fair agreement So it makes sense for dealers to put that on their showroom Financially speaking And it's good for JVAP because they can get them out there. And what it does is it's a display sample, so it's not a production. It's a production run because they started the production. But if something comes up where they see little things here and there, better to have your dealers identify that so that they may have a chance to modify or change that on a production line for consumer machines. That's all very smart. I give them a lot of credit for all of that. And I know that they had the CEs on the line. And the question is, how long are they going to run those CEs? Because the CEs was the biggest seller. We'll get into the details of that later. CEs, believe it or not, the $15,000 option was the best seller. And I can't wait to break down how those fell here in a minute. But those are the best sellers. But they have them online. I just don't know how long. Are they going to run all the CEs before they switch? The rumor is that they're going to run those for a period of time, and then they're going to switch over for a couple weeks or a month to, I heard a couple weeks, but it's hard to believe a couple weeks. Can they not run more than one line? Ah, that's a great question. Everybody wants to say they have multiple lines, like Stern Pinball. But in reality... I don't know if Spooky wants to say that. Yeah, Spooky does have two lines, but it's like there's one line. And then there's this other little line. Yeah, there's Baby's first line. Yeah, you know, catch up, secondary line. Come on, guys. Like, that's where they're from. Like, it's not running at the speed of the Steve that is production line one. So I don't know if J.J.P. has a second line or not. What would they be running in the second line? Avatar? Well, I guess they could be doing Elton John's. I mean, could be doing Elton John's. Yeah. And Avatar. But they just recently sold out. They do not need it. They don't need it for Avatar. Come on. Well. Wow. I'm just saying. But that's a good question. So why not run two lines? Maybe they will. I don't know. But, I mean, them talking about jumping back and forth, I don't know how I feel about that. But I don't know. But that's just rumors, right? Or are you hearing that from the company? I think that I haven't heard the interview with Eric Meunier, but I read that, yeah, that's what Eric Meunier said in the interview, that a couple weeks they're going to run a thing and then they're going to switch over to another couple weeks or something. Well, I mean, isn't that kind of what Stern does? Yeah, but Stern can build 500 in fucking two days. Whereas I don't think Jersey Jack can come close to the production speed of Stern Pinball. why switch after two weeks? I would think month minimum. Maybe the CE numbers are so high that they won't need to run very many Wizards and Arcades. Yeah. Yeah. I did talk to Jack Guarnieri on the phone. I'm mixing up my days last week. But he didn't really say, nor is he really in that. I don't think he's deciding much the production line and how that works. I told him. I said, well, from a business perspective, so getting the arcades is smart to get out to the locations so that more people can see it. Conversely, if you make less money on the arcade versions, then why are you in a rush to make those, right? Well, if you have a ton of orders, Yeah. Why are you in a rush to make the thing that makes you the least amount of money, which also what I told him was, I said, you've just got to be careful how many of the art. See, this is full-distance. People aren't going to like this. But I said, be careful about how many arcade editions you're going to make because if those end up on the shelves, purchasable, people with the Wizard Edition preorder, they will jump just so that they can play it earlier. And everybody involved will make less money. So I don't know how advantageous it is to really run a ton of arcades Run enough to get them out there so people can play them Didn't they put a cap on the arcade though? A numeric cap? I honestly think it was the wizard I think that they said the wizard was like 5,000 or something Or whatever, arbitrary number They might sell it I thought I had heard before the reveal that there was a plan To not let there be more than 1,000 arcades Okay, not that I know of Well, I'm not seeing anything currently, so it's probably irrelevant, even if it at one point was true. I mean, my only thought was perhaps they'd like to get it on location. Because let's say the CE, the plan is to take the orders through 2025 and then cut that off. Then they'd be thinking that, well, we need to get some on location, and the CEs are the least likely to be on the location. So we need to get the arcades out there. And then when people see the art package and everything of the CE, they're going to jump up and buy that one. Sure. So let's get the arcades out as soon as possible. I don't know. I'm throwing that out there. I can see it. And some of this is maybe based on the sales that they got, too, and especially why I'm pitching. Well, that was my initial thought was this is all built around just what they're seeing the order counts are coming in from their distros. because I'm thinking to myself, a lot of locations probably don't put Jersey Jack games out. It takes probably a very dedicated pinball location to do Jersey Jack games, as well, for that matter, as other manufacturers. But do you think that that $2,000 difference is really the determining factor for locations? like um I'm going to say yes um the reason I'm saying that is I think for a lot of locations that do this the way they route the like they don't make the game back in the coin they sell the game before they actually fully pay off the game so the resale of the game is part of the factor yes yeah that's true some will keep games in storage and do full rotation and make more than what they, you know, the game will more than pay for itself. And I think a game like Harry Potter could definitely do that at some stage. But if they're factoring in, you know, well, people like to see the latest new stuff, like if it's one of those locations where people just want to constantly see new games, then they might be going, well, how much of a hit is this going to take? Sure, yeah. $2,000 different. Plus, in this instance, if you're going to say $2,000 difference and this game's going to sell so well, the resale value is going to be lower because there's going to be more of these out there than there are avatars, for example. That might be part of the equation. I don't know how many put that much thought into it, but... I would hope so. And the other thing being, like, let's say they had wizard editions, and they were like, look, arcades are going to come after we make all the CEs and all the wizards. I think that you would make more money on location just buying a $12,000 piece than you are waiting to save the $2,000, you know, if it was like four to six months away. I think you would make that differential by having the game quicker than your competitor down the street that's waiting for the arcade. A lot of locations, there's not a nearby competitor. Yeah. But I think Harry Potter, we see these new releases, people will travel. They will travel. Sure. The hardcore. Yes. Some of the hardcores will. So they are building cities now. And I had a lot of customers saying, hey, I got a city on order with you. They're building them now. Am I going to make the cut? I'm like, I'm not trying to bullshit you. I just don't know. I have no clue because I don't know how many they're going to make of our CE order in this batch before switching. But what do you do? Do you lie to people? I've never lied. I don't know why you would lie to people. I think that a lot do. I honestly do. I just don't because you can only do so much with not having anything to tell people. I think some people resort to, you know, making guesses. I don't know. The reception and sales of this game. Oh, it's going to be a fun thing to talk about. Breaking down how many people want to see versus Wizard versus Arcade. Is it really that big of a difference? And all the behind-the-scenes stuff. You guys can find all of that out as an official member of the Pinball Show. All you got to do is go, where, Dennis? Patreon.com slash ThePimpleShow. And Dennis and I are going to be breaking that down and talking all about the reception, what people are liking, what people are not liking as much, our thoughts about some of their criticisms, our thoughts about some of what they think is great, that a little bit in theory is nicer than what they're really getting, and how sales, maybe how sales line up to some of the other heavy hitters in the industry, such as Godzilla, King Kong, Jaws, et cetera. And I think for that, I want to get your guess on some of that too, Dennis, to see before we dive into that. That'd be great. So we're going to do that, patreon.com slash the pinball show. All the support helps the channel here. and you get like quasi-private conversations in Discord. You get the extra content. There's swag associated with it. We got our happy hour hangout coming up for those in the mid-tier to upper-tier levels. So just do it. Why not? Sign up. Here's what you do. It's Father's Day. If you're a father out there, treat yourself. It's after Father's Day. I've been hearing this. Just think about what they got you. Aren't you worth more than that? Sign up today. we value you as our daddy. The first impression, Dennis, I want to hear what you like about this game, what you don't like. I do that little what I like, what I don't. I'm going to do that. But some of the first things that really stick out that you really do like about this game. The CER package I really liked. Okay, so you really like the art package? Well, on the cab. Not the glass. Or the playfield. No, the playfield's okay. I just wish it had better matched that art package. Like, in the movie version, I think that playfield makes sense. You don't like alley-back glass? Gold-mirrored owl? I just find it, compared to the sides, I just find it a little boring. Why? Because the sides are so whimsical, and then it's just like, well, how do we fill out this weird glass? Let it have its wings out. But, hey, we're saying positive things, so I like that. I like the rotating bookcase. I think that's really, really clever. It is, yeah. Got a lot of exits. Oh, I do like exits. Got a lot of exits. Sculpted wands in the upper right. Nice touch. Yes, I do. I like that quite a bit. Another art thing I'll praise, I do like on the play field, but they did, and I think you would like this too. Like, they didn't do the whole bunch of tiny little heads everywhere down at the flippers. They did actually give some space to the three main wizards. Okay. Yeah, I've got a thought there. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. I mean, now, granted, oh, no, when we get to Christmas. Oh, you're not granted yet. Okay, all right. No, not yet. Let me pause on that. I do like that it's a fast player. Yeah, uh-huh. So I thought that's pretty positive. Does this seem like a more positively received, just overall, a better game for Jersey Jack than a lot of their offerings in the past? Yes. I'm surprised you're that hesitant. though. Well, it absolutely is. It is, but I hate stupid, obvious things. Zach, that is Harry Potter meant it was going to be. In a way, it's not even worth having the conversation. To your point there. I'm sighing because it's like, well, do I think it's their best player? I think it's up there. Again, I need to play it. I don't think this is at Elton John's level, but I think it's pretty good. I think this layout looks like it's pretty good. But I don't think a lot, like if I think about all of their layouts, like I thought Godfather's layout was pretty decent actually. Avatar's layout didn't work for me. But, you know, I think it's been more like they've just had some really bad theme decisions lately that have held them back in part. And I also think that their rules in certain instances have been great and in other instances have been a little too well. Well, we talked about it earlier. You need this entire weird flow chart to figure out what you're going to do. And when I heard Joe was on the rules on this one, I had a lot of confidence that it would at least be a decent rule set. Same here. I'm going to jump in and say that's one of my main – I'll jump into what I like, what I don't. One of my main points of what I like about this game is the theme. You're right. And to me, they could have made a Harry Potter pinball machine. Any company could. But this is a legitimate Harry Potter pinball machine. What I mean by that, like, it's the films. They didn't skimp on the assets. They got the assets. They paid out of their ass for all of this. They got Hedwig's theme song. This is a, whatever you want to think about the game in and of itself, this is as legitimate a Harry Potter pinball machine as I could have ever expected. So that alone is one of the major what I likes. Now, conversely, and maybe you can chime in on these dislikes, though, Dennis, what I don't like is it's a world under glass. It's all of this. You know, it's this, it's that. It is a legitimate Harry Potter pinball machine to a large degree. But I do feel like I'm missing, if I had to pick nits here, I'm missing one large interactive mech in the game, like something that's just more. It's a staircase. It's a staircase. What the heck do you want? I know that's what it wants to be. It is. Okay. Don't get my dander up. To me, it doesn't. I'm always big on this predominant toy that brings personality to the game. King Kong does that. King Kong really does that. King Kong ain't got nothing on me. Rudy does that. You trouble what, dog? King Kong ain't got nothing on me. I don't know if I don't know if the staircase it is is it too small? what's your issue with it? is it that okay 13 exits it sounds good on paper but it's like Godfather with 26 different exits which once you start playing it you don't really care is that what it is? no it is majorly impactful it feels good it is the major it looks impactful so I don't understand what your issue is is it that it's that it's just a glorified diverter? what is it? I want Hogwarts I want, like... It is! It's the key stairwell in Hogwarts. I want the medieval madness castle. I want something so they know what I'm talking about. All right. I actually do sympathize with you on this. Okay, thank you. All right. What? Well, but... I know. I want to... I've been doing this for like seven years with you. I know where you're going. Yes. I need you to tell me what you're going to take out to put it in. Oh! You bastard. Don't you dare. Because I'll tell you the answer. The answer is that Quidditch upper playfield is unsacrificing. No. Then you could have put in a real mech. But because it's Quidditch and Harry Potter fans have to have their Quidditch, we had to have a boring upper playfield installed on the game. So I can tell you where I would free up enough space to have a real substantive toy. I know. You'd have to rearrange. You probably don't want it in the back corner like Smaug, which was one of the worst toys J.J.P. ever did. Oh, my God. You were making enemies with me as we speak. What are you talking about? That's the second character. You couldn't even bash it. You couldn't even hit smog. There's a smauga. Symbolic bashing. I need to kill him. I need to physically... Keep off of you. Look, I'm missing magnets, Dennis. There's no pinball machine about magnets. Magnets? That's not a magnet. That's a magnet. Well, I'm talking about a molded neck with magnets. What would you rather do here You can make one of those type of pinball machines You have magical diverters You have magnets You got to have magnets I want the balls to be whipping around to doing the under stuff Like, if we could put it on Guardians of the Galaxy, damn it, why can't we put it in a Harry Potter pinball machine? But did it fit with Guardians? Did it really fit? Not really. That's what I'm saying. It fits here. Fantasy, magic, magnets. I mean, I agree that it would fit here, but, again, I just, with everything else that they've done, I just don't, like, Remember, don't kitchen sink this or you're going to ruin how it plays. I'm not Twilight Zoning this. What I will say, though. I'm getting a little worried. My Dan is worried. I'll tell you where on my second point what I don't like. That will illustrate where I would take out. But where I would not take out, to your point, is that Quidditch field? No, no, no, no. Now, if they sold me before I seen this game, maybe even showing me this game, an upper play field, I'm going to say Avatar. No. No. Like, we don't. No. We don't need lower playfields. We don't need upper playfields. They always suck. I take it out there. But that's one of the things I'm anticipating people getting their hands on this game mostly. That's one of the pieces. That upper playfield has no business, again, being that fun. But it is one of the best upper playfields that's ever been created in the history of pinball machines. Objectively. Damn! It, like, makes sense. It feels so, so good up there. Hitting a ramp shot, you guys didn't even know. I hate inverted ramps. I think they're lazy and they're space-saving and they just don't feel good. This feels good, and then it throws it into a repetitive loop shot, and then you have a loop shot down there, and then you have one of the best shots in the entirety of this game, listener, is from that upper play field. One could argue two shots up there. But the side shot off the little flipper goes into the existing ramp, but the flow and feel of it, Eric, I mean, you're smiling if he's listening to me, because I know that that took some time to design, because it feels like you have a regular-sized flipper, and you're shooting it up the entire playfield, but it's not. It's just to the other end of the playfield onto a ramp. It just is butter and feels so good, and you just don't feel that with other games. So my second thing of what I like about this game and what I'm gushing about is the layout and the mechs. It's like I think maybe competitive players may hate this game. They may really dislike this game because it is a lot of unpredictability. There's so many damn diverters, and they're going everywhere that competitive players like. They like predictability. We can't even mix up their mystery awards. No. We've got to go into a sequence. They need to know what they're getting. and rightfully so if you're doing competition. I hope that Eric Meunier, when designing this game, sat back and crossed his arms and said, you know what, competitive players are going to hate this game. And then I hope he smiled and he said, fuck it, I don't care. Because what this game is, it's pure fun to shoot. Pure fun to shoot. I didn't think it would be, looking at the layout, but it is without a doubt one of the most fun games to shoot because it's unpredictable. Balls are changing paths. It's doing things that you're not expecting, which is what a lot of us pinball, just general pinball players, love. It's stopping the ball. It's showing emotion. And it is challenging. Don't get me wrong. This game is challenging. But it's not what I would call difficult. Big distinction there. It is very challenging. Not what I would call difficult. But we can go into that later. But, yeah, the second thing I just really love about this game is just it's pure fun to shoot. It's so much fun to shoot. Do you know those games, Dennis, where you're like, I don't even care if it's, you know, what the rules are. Like, it's just fun to shoot. Yeah, sure. One of those. It's very unique. Like, it doesn't feel like an insert designer that does a similar layout. It doesn't feel like that. And what I would say to the argument of, this ain't no Elton John layout. And I say, you're right, and thank you. Elton John is the best JJP shooter. But who was it? I think it might have been Joel. How about that, Joel? Nicely done. I think in their recent podcast, he was talking about, like, the argument of, well, what's a better shooter? and he kind of said what I'm saying is that Elton John is formulaic, like just exceptional work. It feels good. It's tried and true. It's going to be the polished sports car, but it might not be the most fun to drive on the road. It might be a little boring at times. He used the word safe, but he's like, I'm not meaning safe, but formulate just kind of what we've become accustomed to. Whereas this, this has all of that feel good, but it's different, and it's new and unique. I mean, if you played Star Trek over and over and over and then went and played Elton John, I don't think it's knocking your socks off is what I'm saying, listener. This is different than, this is like when Keith Elwin designs a game. You feel his little tropes, but everything is just so much different than the one he did before. And that's what this is in a great way. This is Eric Meunier's, easily his greatest design, and maybe my favorite layout from JJP. But if we're grading it based on geometry and stuff, sure. I'll give it to Elton John, even with that cumbersome, unoriginal three bank right up the middle. Third flipper shot in the same location. Orbit that you can almost backhand, you know. And you guys forgot I was describing Elton John because there's so many Steve Ritchie games that are like that. What I don't like as much, though, this is where I would change. If I had anywhere, I'd get rid of that Death Eater. That was my first thing. When I saw a Death Eater dentist taking up so much real estate, don't get me wrong, it's one shot. The physical effect is one of the coolest moments in the whole game, where it fires back at, I would argue, probably the highest speed of a ball traveling in pinball is whenever it kicks back that ball from the Death Eater. So it is really something every single time you experience it. That's another thing. I cannot wait until people experience those flippers fluttering like you're about to take an attack from a Death Eater and it blasts that ball at you. It makes the Ag-Off look tame. This thing is a rocket. So that's fantastic. The use even of the Death Eater, like even in theory, working through different Death Eater characters, battles based on the different films, makes absolute perfection of sense. But all of the wizarding things in Potterworld, of all the things you could do, I would have rather had a physical Voldemort. Give me a Dementor. Oh, gosh, with all of the robes and stuff flailing around. Give me a Dementor Voldemort. over a Death Eater? Ain't nobody care about no damn Death Eater. You know why they did it? Because it's got like a mask and you can portray it as anything and licensing it would be easy. Try to get Ralph Fiennes a character likeness and a molding. Good luck. So I get why they did it, but a Death Eater? When I first seen this game, that was one of my first feedbacks. Death Eater? Really? Death Eater? You could have went anything. You mean Death Eater? And speaking of, this is like a 2A or 2B. Speaking of, the display animations for that Death Eater, they're what I would call good enough. Okay, sure, I'll keep going. The listener, Dennis, said, no, keep going, keep going. All right. We need more Voldemort. I need more Snape. I need more Dumbledore, predominantly just on the art package. You talked about, Zach, I think you'd like the main characters. You are 100% correct. Seeing the Golden Trio down there, Harry and Daniel Radcliffe and his sexiness right there in the middle of the playfield, larger than life. I love that. But then you sprinkle in very smallly everything else around this art pack. So I feel like I'm looking at the Simpsons pinball party cabinet when I'm looking at all these little playfield characters. I don't need half of these characters. Just give me the big ones. Like, it's almost a disservice to have poor Voldemort in an outlaying Dennis. Just little bitty. He's almost so pixelated you can't even make out his features. Lying there in a right-out lane, and that's the only time you see him on the playfield. Poppycock, I say. Poor Voldemort. Snape, hiding up by an upper flipper, probably blocked by a plastic. Ridiculoso. That's the spell I'd cast on that. People just don't get it when it comes to the art. Just don't get what we're looking for, do they? You like that whole Simpsons pinball party thing? I mean, it is fair. Why do Voldemort guys have the same space as, like, just a one-time actor that's in, like, the fourth film? Like, what? No. I want to see them battling. Just to let you feel the wow. I want to see Voldemort daintily holding that long. Voldemort didn't have a lot of screen time when you think about it across all the movies. He didn't have a lot of time. He is those we don't speak of. He had. That's right. He was the hidden threat. Oh. With his little snake nose. The Jaws isn't like the, like Bruce isn't the big main art on the play field of Jaws. Of course not. He's the hidden. He should be in a wand fight across the play field, blasting color. That's the fucking lightsaber. It's like Star Wars with no lightsaber. You need Voldemort. What are you going to put? You're going to put Darth Vader in an outlaying real small? Hells no. Sorry. Got my magic dander up now. All right. Fine. What do I like, though, Dennis? The presentation. Yeah, you love presentation. The choreography. Giving you emotion. You got film clips. The theme song all playing in unison. Light show changes. Plenty of different rules, paths, and decisions that I can make. Goals that I can achieve and task-based rules to get to different wizard modes. All that lights up my pinball endorphins. Pinball boner time. That's what I love about this game. It is all done so well that it's just a fucking Harry Potter pinball machine. Thank God. I just stand back and I see it in my game room looking all beautiful. Listeners, it's truly a special pinball machine. And I'm not going to deny that the big chunk of that pie is because this is Harry Potter. I will not deny that. But it's just a special pinball machine. And if the other manufacturers, and I've told this to some of them, if they didn't even attempt to go for this license, then this is what they get. Every loss of sale is what they deserve. Because I don't think, if you're in pinball manufacturing, I don't think you're doing your job if you didn't fight to the fucking death to get this license. You don't even deserve, in my opinion, to be taken seriously in this industry. But my last point of what I don't like I say I agree with a lot of people You know this whole Sync gate Where people are like you're showing the videos But you're not showing distinct audio And the dialogue during those movie scenes Do you hear about all these complaints I mean I think I saw a few But when it's like trailers and stuff You know DMCA You have permission to start striking things automatically So I just assume they have to keep those out Of a lot of the online stuff Just because of the way the automated systems work? If I'm them, I'm leaning into that as an excuse, because I don't think it's a valid one. I don't think that's the case, unfortunately. Really? I mean, we've seen it. We've seen it with Stern when they show music pins and their strings get taken down. I don't think that's the case here, because when you're playing the game, a lot of them aren't synced. Oh, so there's actual sync, like the mouth's not being synced and stuff? Well, no, saying like, when you're showing a clip of, if there's any time that they're showing a video clip and a character's mouth's moving but there's nothing coming out of it. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, I had not heard about this. J.J.P. is known for this. You go back to Toy Story, same fucking thing. You go back to Avatar, same thing. You go back to, like, they're notorious for this where they get a lot of the video assets. They claim that they get a lot of the audio assets. They might use the audio clips as, like, call-out kind of things. And they might use the video clips as sequences as the remote, but syncing them, they just don't have. I thought for the longest time it was probably an IP issue. Probably had to pay more to have it. Really? I'm not sure that it would be, though. If you've got the rights to them, why would there be a rule that you can't have them synced? What? That doesn't make any sense. I know that some licensors do argue, because I've heard Sterns told me this, like we always want to get so much assets, but some of these licensors, they're protective in that they don't want you playing an entire movie because they want you buying that film. Oh, sure. No, I don't want you. That's a fair point. Then why not just limit, yeah, just cap the, I don't know. Again, it's not my realm. I just think it would be easier to say no longer than a 15-second, you know, chronologically sequenced clip without some sort of break in between. Well, and I do know that there are licensing agreements, in which case you do buy portions throughout the film. Like, you don't just, as a whole, just sign up for all the assets. Some deals you might, but there are some very specific stuff that you're buying. I mean, you're buying every little 20-second clip. I did joke when Multimorphic got Princess Bride. It was like, they just dropped the whole movie straight into this thing, because it seemed like every scene was in there at length. Well, and like Evil Dead? Like, that's how it was for, I think, Evil Dead, the first film. They got the older, like, yep, go ahead. Use what you want. They are older films. They're probably like anyone who wanted this already bought it. Yeah, yeah. So there are certain things like that. But for this, I agree with people. I'm not going to sit here and try to lie and say, no, you know, it's fine. No, I do want more. I want them synced. I think any time a film clip, I think the film clip should be longer. I think they should be more sequential. I've got a lot of feelings about this because ultimately I don't think this is a licensing issue. I truly, listener, I think that this is a choice issue and one that they have made bad choices on for the last number of titles and one that I think needs to change immediately. It's so, so obvious and loud from people like myself and the rest of the community when we say this is exactly what we want. Please give us progression through modes, through different films. Give us the assets. Of course we don't want them to be muted assets. We never want that. I think, honestly, I'm not going to say names, but I think there's people that are coding and programming this game that are hard-headed, that just want, they feel like it's taking away from the game. They feel like it's just playing the movie. If you want to watch a movie, just pop in a DVD or go and stream it. I think that that's where their mindset is, and I'm willing to say it publicly so strongly because I disagree of equivalence here. Because we can do so much more. Don't limit people on what they want just because it's not what you want. What did Joe Dirt say when his buddy was just selling snakes and sparklers? It's not you. It's the consumer. I'm on board with all these people whining and crying. Color me a crybaby. I want it and I think we deserve it because that's holding this game back. It's selling anyway, though, so it's not really holding them back. Here's a podcaster to sell the game that can still be balanced about it and talk positive and negatives to make the product better. Holy shit. There are podcasters out there. I can – look. I don't know if they use paper anymore, but here's a paper pad. Take notes. So one-sided. And they call me the shill, Dennis? I'm the shill? What a pinball pioneer, damn it. Do you agree with any of those? I mean, where are we at? Is it a good take? I mean, sure. Okay. Yeah, it's fine. Anything else you want to say about Harry Potter Pinball? You want to jump in the Patreon and really talk about where these sales break down, don't you? Mm-hmm. Patreon.com slash The Pinball Show. That was almost Patreon-worthy right there. Yeah? Strong feelings. What don't you like about this game? You know what? Hold it back. Is there anything you just despise that this game or just don't think works? No. No? Wow. You going to own one? No, I mean, it's not, you know, I want to play it, but the theme doesn't do anything for me personally, so that's not a motivator for me. Yeah, but themes generally in art don't really do anything for you. Yeah, so, you know, and it may be hard because you love the theme so much. When you think about that, you know, in that regard, a lot of this is actually pretty standard in a lot of ways. The layout's interesting, though. I'm curious about the layout. I see that. If you think about, JJP's done a pretty good job getting a lot of assets on a lot of games. I mean, don't forget GNR had a tremendous amount of asset integration and such. But if it's not a theme, you know, that level of integration doesn't mean very much to me. Just like I appreciate the clips that are done on Guardians on the backbox, for example, but, you know, it's not a make it or break it item for me. Yeah, and that's the last thing I'd say about, like, we're hearing people talk about, the complexity of the rules and stuff like that. I would venture to say that, and I would encourage people, like don't fall down that if you hear that a lot, especially because most of these are going in the home. Even if it's difficult to understand the first hundred plays, that's okay. I would rather have that than the alternative. So that's one thing that I can't criticize right now because when I look at just the foundations I've presented here, that's what my mind does. It says, okay, I got seven Horcruxes. Now, that can be as complex as you want to make it, and maybe they don't do the best job of communicating that to the player. However, that's not one of the things I think we should poke around on. Like, well, what if people walk up to the arcade from a business standpoint, take all day or all podcast an hour to just discuss one point and beat a dead horse. but you're here listening to a pinball podcast because you're a pinball player that's not one of the things that's going to draw you back it would be confusing at first but there's a way to look at rules in a basic way like I do all the time because I don't understand any of these rules I've learned my rules from fucking Joel at Flip N Out Pinball Tutorials I truly do and half the rules that he tells me I don't even care about when I play Star Wars, it's one of my favorite games I could care less about multipliers and it's still one of my favorite games because of the basic foundation of modes and multipulse. You can find that in this game just like you can find it in every other game. And if you can just focus on that, who gives a shit about, well, if you maximize this potion and put this gem on the left ramp, like, fuck it, who cares? Just let it go in one ear and not the other. Find your modes, find your wizard modes, make them be the goals, and that's it. I feel really strong today. And in this game, you do have to find your modes because it doesn't start you in one. I am punchy today, Dennis. I feel really strong today. I guess it's been too long. I was on vacation, went to Epic Universe. Oh, Mario Land, good stuff. If you guys want to see more, hear more about Harry Potter Pinball, go check out the gameplay stream that they have. We have a gameplay stream. Joel did on Flip N Out Pinball's YouTube channel. The tutorial video, he's in the process of making right now, so make sure you're following that channel so you can be notified when that comes up. Other Potter content, I did an unboxing reel. That was a lot of fun. I got some more reels coming up to show more details of this artwork on the CE. It's hard to film that CE for people because at different angles it has like this embedded glitter. Just beautiful stuff, Dennis. In other news, Ken Cromwell. I won't do that. He just resigned from flipping out. Ken Cromwell, formerly Marketing and Communications over at Jersey Jack Pinball for the last five years, has joined Flip N Out Pinball. So you're big enough to do a press release, are you? Oh, man. You had that locked and loaded? Man, I just feel like Rodney Dangerfield over here. No respect. Just no love. Ken is press release worthy. Anybody part of my team is press release worthy. I think so. Yeah, I had to on our semi-private Discord. I had to give a talk-and-to to some of the people in there. Oh, yeah. because they're starting to, there's some conflation going on, thinking that the pinball show is flipping out pinball. And that, no, no, no, no, no. One of these things is not like the others. And that one other thing is me. And then they're like, but you work for flipping out. I do not work for flipping out pinball. I'll have you know. For the listener to understand, they were asking when Ken Cromwell was going to be joining the Discord. I'm like, the same time Greg is when he pays $10 a month. Exactly. I don't even think we included Greg. Poor Greg Bobby. No, we didn't. Greg actually had a good opportunity. He was providing content for the show. But no, we told him you're too busy disguising yourself as furniture. Keep him out. These people, I swear. What do they think this is? We're running a legitimate operation over here. They think because Flip N Out Pinball sponsors the pinball show that somehow I, like, I don't know. I'm like, do they not listen to you? You talk about how you're kind of like it is and how honest you are. You know, I am what honesty looks like in this. Yeah, for better and worse. It's true. It's so true. There is no worse. There's only better. There's only honesty. Let the record show that Dennis Creasel not only does not work with flipping out pinball for flipping out pinball, But even at $100,000 more than his current salary, he would still not work for Flippin' Apple. No, at $100,000 more, we would be able to have a conversation. That's your kitchen table. Kitchen's at the table. Now, Tony over at A Collected Gamers Podcast, $100,000 on top of his salary, he's ready to be your pen pod. He's ready on top of his salary. He's always on his back whenever you want. You want me to star in your commercials? Do it. He was like, oh, no, no. He was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Tony and I are both in public service, so we have a different perspective on working private sector. But I think his threshold of being bought out is a little lower than mine. That's my general view. When I heard that, listening to you, they were talking about just all the fulfillment they did at working in public service and all that stuff. I was just smiling. I'm like, I felt like the dark side. I was like, oh, no. Wait until you feel the private sector. You only need the power of Indiana. It feels so good. But, yeah, so, sorry, taking away from Sir Ken Cromwell. We're just really proud and glad to have him because for those who have been in the hobby for quite some time, And they know Ken Cromwell from he did special when lit pinball podcast. He did some of the streaming for Flip N Out Pinball. Remember they did the whole project pinball thing raised over like $50,000, $75,000. So Ken has become very respected in the community, hard worker, very creative. I think so much of this individual, so much so that over the years I'm like, God, I would just love to be able to work with one of my really good friends. and he's brilliant, which makes it even better. So I was able to do that with Greg. And then Ken and I have been friends, and he knew of our desire to be able to work together, and I would like to think that he felt the same way. But whenever we made the announcement that he was no longer with J.J.P. and joining Flip N Out Pinball Pimble, a lot of people were shocked by that. and they may, like, a lot of people thought, like, did he get fired? Like, that was the first thought of some people. Like, I think the perception is in this industry that if you work for a manufacturer, that's, like, the high point. Yeah, I think you're right that people think that. Yeah, like, that's the apex of you've made it once you work for a manufacturer. Well, you think about, like, all those people, like, we know a number of people work on homebrews and stuff. Explicitly, like, they're not shy about it. They want to break into a manufacturer. Mm-hmm. And they're doing that as a portfolio. So, yeah, a lot of people think maybe he was laid off. Like, nobody would leave a manufacturer to go for a dealer. That is simply not true. Everybody has their own needs. Everybody has their own goals in life. And the truth of the matter is that, yeah, he resigned at Jersey Jack Pinball. He thinks the world of them over there. He's got a lot of close relationships. And we'll hopefully talk to Ken in the future about this. And he even did so in, like, the greatest way possible. We knew for a couple months that he was going to join us, but he asked and requested, hey, you know, instead of a two-week notice, professionals generally do a four-week, you know, a whole month. And he said, I'd like to get through the – I don't want to leave them in the middle of a Harry Potter launch because that's part of some of my role here is to help with launch and rollout and stuff. So he said, I'd like to, this was back in March. He's like, I'd like to roll out then. I got a family vacation scheduled at this time. So all these plans. But then it got pushed back. And then it got pushed back. And he's like, I can't stay here indefinitely. The guy plans on flipping out pinball. So at some point, so he gave them, I think, a six-week notice and then did everything he could to prep them to the certain point. And still gauging hopefully in that six weeks We still should have launched and all of that And they still hadn't So you know he had to Respectfully just okay like this is my I gotta leave So he left so he didn't want to leave during that But he couldn't just Stay for an indeterminate Amount of time once he already committed and everything So I think it was more than Kind of him and the truth Of the matter is that a lot of the launch Stuff is decided and planned prior to. So once the game launches, all of a lot of Ken's work and stuff gets scheduled and launched with it. But over a flipping out pinball, Ken Cromwell, the lovely Ken Cromwell, is going to be doing a lot of things including some acquisition of new business partnerships. What does that mean to you, Dennis? It sounds like more upstart, possibly taking people money companies. Or us losing. He's going to be developing some new relationships before flipping out Pinball as a representative into the different industries, whether it be arcade, whether it be game room decor, whether it be we're going to, we have plans to do all kinds of different fun stuff. Because there's only so much you can do in Pinball. You get capped. Like, Stern Pinball, I've got I don't know how many machines back ordered. I can only do so much. So we're trying to expand that. He's expanding the product line in general. General sales, marketing. He's going to be a brand ambassador. and do some content creation, hopefully. So hopefully we'll see more from Ken Cromwell. He said one of the most exciting things for him is that he hasn't been able to play a lot of the other manufacturer games over the last five years or so. He just hadn't had time, hadn't found time to do it, and he's interested in diving into some of that stuff. And he can be reached if you have a sales inquiry or anything. Ken at FlippinOutPinball.com. K-E-N at FlippinOutPinball.com. Or you can reach him via text, 812-778-6083. Text him. You know what? Buy a Harry Potter pinball machine from him. Who better? All right. So we've got Trough Team 2025, Dennis. Phase 3. Pinball Brothers is in that, right? Predator. I mean, right? Yeah, it is. It's not launched yet. It launches June 18th. Right. Oh, my God. They tease this more than my wife teases me. Good and bad teases, people. I know what you're thinking. June 18th. It's coming. Have you seen all these teases? I've seen a number of them. I can't say I've seen them all. They've done so many. They even have, like, they showed you the game already. They're like, here it is. Yeah. Here's a cabinet. You can even peek into the play field a little bit, and they're like, here it is. They've been teasing it for a while. Well, here's what we do know. Listener, it's going to be a wide-body design. Dennis's favorite. It's going to be three flippers. That sounds like alien. They're going to the fast board system I believe What were they using? I think their own stuff So they're going to the fast board system which they're saying improves flipper handling and feel This is a fully loaded game with key scenes and toys slash features This is coming from them Key scenes what does key scenes mean to you like the part where they gun down the entire jungle Yeah part of the movie is what it means to me Yeah When Billy cuts his chest on the log waiting for the predator to come so they can not fight. What a great theme for pinball. Man, so fantastic. So this may be a little underdog here. Dark Horse. It's a fully lit and interactive yacht-jaw apron display. Yacht-jaw? I don't know. Fancy apron. And then there's going to be two versions of this game. The Predator version. Remember, they don't say edition. They say version. Predator version, which is going to be $10,995. Okay, so right around what other manufacturers are selling their higher-end models, or like even entry-level for a lot of them, which this Predator version has a Predator iconic cutout trim, stealth black, stealth black. Don't try to church it up. I mean, I'm really doing the Joe Dirt references today. Stealth black wire or trim, exclusive Predator poster. No one cares. Limited Predator merch package. Nobody cares. And a jungle service kit. No clue, but I bet no one cares. Or you can opt for the trophy version, And that's going to be $12,490 plus shipping. This is the military green ammo box trim. Or starry green. No, it's the starry green trim. Shaker motor, invisiglass, a backbox jungle mission lighting. I don't know what that is. Limited game exclusive Predator poster and merch package. What do you think about the cabinet and such? I liked the heat vision. Yeah. I think it I think the art is fine I'm now I wondered if you would like that though Because it's going to look weird in your lineups Like any lineup It wouldn't like Like that doesn't match anything That's just weirdness But it's so on brand Yeah It's all I think it's all fine It doesn't look bad It looks like Predator Fully loaded games What impresses me more Like we've seen the chopper But then people are crapping on the chopper Because they don't think it's Deluxe chopper enough They want it to look more choppery. But the ball stops under it. That's cool. And then the little blade spin. I like that. Raven had its blade spin, too. Yeah. That's right. That's the one redeeming factor about that game. They even have, like, the hut and the truck. Like, I think it's going to have some cool skull. I think it's going to look cool. It's even got, like, the little thing that the wire form that goes behind the flippers. From what we can see so far, it looks cool. All right. I'm going to cut to the chase, listener. this game will either sell like dog shit or it's going to sell really wonderfully and it's all based on one thing can you guess what that is listener or Dennis tariffs you may be right maybe you have to remember that it's not a US company Oh, shit. I mean, pricing on the 10 may not be the pricing that we're actually going to see. I think because when they reached out to dealers, they essentially said something to that effect. They were like, look, the shipping's going to be priced on this thing. I think they're charging $500 for each of these machines to get over to a dealer. So that's just, it's each machine. It doesn't matter if you order 100 or 200, 500 a game. So that gets tacked on to whatever it is domestically from flipping out pinball to customer. So you're going to be looking at, I would say, probably $800 to $1,200 shipping. Maybe not. Maybe we find some little crafty way to keep it and eat the cost. But you're still going to have to pay for shipping to some extent. That's why I laughed so much. I was like, well, yeah, that's right. And who knows? I can't even keep up with that stuff. But no, the only thing that's going to determine. Ani. Ani. Yes, it's Ani. Look, if Arnold Schwarzenegger's in there, this thing is Predator, and it's going to sell wonderfully. And people can look over some of the things they don't like about this game. If this doesn't have Arnold, this could be a Keith Elwin game, and I'm not sure it sells well. I just, I don't. Whether him gets eclipsed, I'm sorry. I'm just imagining. And so you have, like, Pen and Proctor staff have to do, like, the Mara Flex hands. They're wearing a red polo. Should they have a green hat at all? I don't know. He's not in the artwork. I'm already getting scared. I don't think he's on the artwork anywhere. But, we're holding out hope because that doesn't mean that he's not in video clips. It could be like John Wick. Remember, no guns, and people got all worked up, and there were lots of guns in the footage. Oh, I see. Yes. I thought you meant like Keanu Reeves. Yeah, but I'm using it as an example of, because this is an older movie, so again, when it's the older movies, the licensing got more complicated. Like how with Alien, they didn't have Sigourney Weaver allowed in the art originally, and nor the clips, and then they got her, like, where the whole clips, it felt like you were watching the Sigourney Weaver life story. Do you think so? It sells as the world of Predator. It doesn't matter how good the code is. I just don't. I think given the history of the company, their popularity right now in the scheme of things, I just, I don't. I need to see it, but I don't have high confidence. Like, just the description, because, again, I haven't seen, you know, I've seen that green washed out shot of the play field, which could be interesting, but I don't know how it plays. I like that the little Predator's bomb counter is on the apron. That was a cool thing. But I'm already, like when I see the descriptions of the stuff, they've done, and others will probably disagree with me, but I don't like that they've split the difference. And by that, I mean you've got things like the chopper ramp and the scorpion, stuff that I associate with the parts with the Predator. But then you've got the truck and the rebel camp and the camp attack ramp. And it's like the camp thing is before you even really get involved with the Predator. And it's a fun scene in the movie, but I would have done this all about the Predator and the claustrophobia of being hunted one by one in the jungle, not the scene where they're killing a bunch of communists. Like, to me, that's a different – it's like from Dusk Till Dawn. Like, if you're going to do a pinball machine from Dusk Till Dawn, do you do anything before you have Salma Hayek dancing with a boa constrictor? I say no. But, because the vampires aren't in the first part. The rollback, yeah. I get that. Okay. If that one thing would be my entire setting from Death's Got a Log, maybe we should do Death's Got a Log. Death's Not a Bad is a cult classic. Not bad. I just, either it has Arnold or it doesn't. That's. Yes, I agree. Given what they've done with the art approach, I'm okay with it. But, is he not on the play field? I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I don't know. I'm worried. Look, Queen should have been a slam dunk fan that had never had a pinball machine. Oh, it's their worst game. I know. I have to hedge because I haven't tried Ava. Ava's better. I've heard. I've heard it is better. There's big risks here. If they can make a lot of money, they may make little to nothing at all. I just feel bad for them, too, though, because, again, like financially with the whole international trade stuff going on, it's not a great time for people that are building machines overseas to try and sell them to the U.S. And we're the biggest market. It seems like there are certain companies like Pinball Brothers. I hate to be like this, but they're a little out of touch on a lot of things, though. The way they're rolling this out, like, I'm like, who the fuck? Do you think maybe they have to? No. Like financially? Maybe they need to sell a game? The way that they are rolling this out, like it's just weird the way they're rolling. Just the way they're doing the, do you mean the way that they're doing the pieces? The way they're doing the pieces. The way they're doing all of it. I wasn't sure if you meant that or if you meant like they shouldn't be releasing on the heels of Harry Potter. Maybe we can talk about more in the Patreon. But like just all of that, I'm like if those are your decisions, then it makes me question other decisions. I don't know. So what? Oh, just a minute. I hear something. What is that? Huh? Do you hear that? I don't hear anything. It sounds like something is rolling. Is that Trough Jam 2025 extra ball coming soon? What? I think there may be another phase of Trough Jam. No, we're done with this. That ball just drained down the middle. The three rolls on. No, what you were hearing was a stuck ball. It's now been liberated. Ball drops. People don't know. Maybe we get another Jaws. Maybe we get to dissect Predator. Maybe we get extra ball coming soon is what I'm saying. We're past the jam part. All the major releases are now known. There might be more. What people think of as normal. We want to say thank you to all of the screaming goats In our exclusive screaming goat club Like Rodney He's our Bob And we thank him so much Oh shut the fuck up Rob thank you We love you You're a papa to us The panther We appreciate you Frank So far What are we batting so far Rodney and Rob on Harry Potter. You think we're two for two on Harry Potter's Order? Yes, I do. Oh, smart man. Frank? I'm sure Rob ordered it. What about Frank? Is there ever going to be a day where 100% of these people have ordered a new release? Maybe. I do think Frank, yes. I think Frank. Okay, Charlie. Thank you, Charlie, for the support. Yeah, Charlie. I think Charlie, sure. Ding dong and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The dude, William? No, you don't even have to ask. No, that's right. Absolutely. Bill, it can be claimed that the North Florida Circus is there on victory. What about the rooster? No. The rooster! I'm going to rock out with my cock out. He's not feeling very cockle-doodle-doish from the potter, huh? He's waiting for Predator. He's waiting for Predator. Yeah, okay. All right. Thank you guys for the ongoing support. Discord. Right now in Discord we're talking about all the new releases. And there's the Happy Hour Hangouts coming this Wednesday. Is that the same day that they're launching Predator? You damn skippy. That's right. It's almost like we picked up perfect time for a discussion. Timing. So we're going to be there live giving you our feedback and what we know about Predator as well as Harry Potter and everything else behind the scenes. So all you've got to do is sign up to patreon.com slash the pinball show to the mid-tier, the high-tier, the Nordman level, or the Screaming Goat Club, and you're invited. Get on there. June 18th, 8 p.m. Central. People missed it the last episode, so I've got to bring it back. I'll do so calmly and respectively in this edition of Pinball Market Trends. The Bobcat Techno Board! I like your style, dude. Did that not work for you? No, it's nice. Mellow. I figured you'd appreciate that. Training up this week. See, even my training up wasn't as happy. Yeah. I'm punchy. I'm to the point. Well, after 90 minutes on Harry Potter. At least I didn't talk for an hour about a scoop. Scoop game. Right now, other podcasts are like, I hate Zach. Calling it as I see it. I'm like the Babe Ruth. Taking my bat and pointing it to left field, baby. We're going to knock it out of the park But turning up this week is definitely Harry Potter If you don't believe so Go listen to the details Of our Patreon content this week And you'll be turning it up as well So Harry Potter May be one of the biggest releases In quite some time So we've got to turn it up Also turning up, believe it or not The upcoming Dune Code Update Dennis It's coming Remember, I've been critical of the code on this game. A lot of people have been frustrated. Mm-hmm. Poor Dune. It may be the Troth Jam 2 2.0 Part 2 that is the biggest failure because there's no content in the game. I think we're going to at some point talk about who won Troth Jam 2025. And right now, I don't think they're doomed, though. I don't think they're doomed. That's pretty clever. No, they're not. I did. Because they did send me the beta version of their newest code that they haven't released yet. Oh, I'm sorry. And, oh, man, this is good stuff. I hate being a beta tester, so I'm glad they didn't send it to me. Well, we were, like, prepping, possibly streaming it, so they were like, hey, show off these. These are the new things we're going to add. We'll kind of launch it on your thing. We may still do that. It makes me a little sad because, you know, of all these crop jams, Dune is my favorite IP. Yeah, so I know that you do love that theme, and it just didn't feel like it was ready to prime time with that code whenever it was launched. Now I can say if they launched with the code that I'm playing, they would have been good. They would have been good. Nice. Yeah. So not only did they have the modes in there, but when you open up the modes, there's a couple of them that are so complex and integrated so well into the lighting, into the shaker, into like, it's the training mode specifically. Oh, shit, man. So you start this training mode, and it's with, what's his name? Oh, the Goonies, Bran. It's with Thanos. Oh, yeah, Brolin. The Brolin, Josh Brolin. Thank you. I just pictured Thanos fighting Sloth. But it's with the training mode. It gives you all these shots that you have to perfectly hit, but if you hit a target to the outside, it like flashes on the play field like it hits a shield, like, and, like, you miss, and you got to do it. And then once you get it into the captive ball area, it holds it as a ball lock, and then you hit that captive ball as, like, positive shots, and every time you hit one, it progresses more and more through that scene of the movie with synced audio. It's like the whole dialogue and the video. It's pretty fucking awesome. And then there's another mode, Dennis, where what's the thing whenever they have to get the right tune with their voice to make people do things like Darth Vader shit that they want them to do? What is that? You know what I'm talking about? Oh, like the busy jazz or what's the use of it? I think they just call it the voice. Yeah, the voice. So there's a mode, the voice, where it's like hypnotic. All of a sudden, like this teal lighting fills up, and it goes into this wave, almost like a vocal wavelength, but it's the lighting. And when you hit certain shots, it's whether or not you hit the right pitch. So different scenes throughout that helicopter scene or plane scene will happen on every shot. Like, no, I'm not even lying. I'm such a pinball nerd. I'm getting fucking goosebumps thinking about it right now. That and I'm cold. I'm a heater on. Yes, they're getting the raw emotion from that movie. If you want movie into pinball form, just in those two modes that I've described, holy shit, it's getting there. So I have to trend it up because the shit's getting good. This is going to be a game, though. I don't know how many. It's not going to be like this Godzilla type of sales. but it's always going to be this like pinball players game. That makes sense. Almost like a team. Like it's because I still think that it's hard to sell a difficult game. And this is a, this is a difficult game. Like this game, the more I'm playing it, you're fighting this game. This game is battling you. This is a Ghostbusters like game where if you're not slapping this game around a little bit, you're going to start shitting. Oh, this is no fun. You know, It's bullshit. No, it's a pretty tough game. Works well for me because I really like that. But, man, I just nerded out on Doom. Look at me. Turning down this week, unfortunately, is Elvira Premium and the Uncanny X-Men Premium. These show up often on Turning Down on Market Trends, and I apologize, but numbers don't lie. I'm just reporting the facts. So much so, in the last two months, we have had record trade-ins at flipping out pinball. And of those record numbers, those two models have come in more than any other by a decent margin, too. For whatever reason, Elvira Premium and Uncanny X-Men Premium are the most traded in titles in our dealership. And people are like, well, that's just your dealership. So right now we're getting a pretty healthy share of the used games trade-ins in the marketplace of pinball for different reasons. But we're getting a lot of trade-ins, and those two are the ones. And you know what happens. Whenever more games get traded in, the value does lower. So I see those. Now, a little birdie did tell me it was more of a hawk. What do you mean a birdie? It was a hawk. Big beak. Is a beak the same as a claw? Like, is it formed the same? Is it like a tooth and a nail difference? Or is it like the same composition of what it's made of? I do not know. I don't either. Shit. How many veterinarians out there? Any wildlife people? A little birdie told me, big birdie, said the upcoming X-Men code update is transformative. I've been, you know, Dennis, I've been holding out for this game because I do think it is a great. I've heard other people have given up. I'm not surprised you're seeing that one. I'm not quite sure what's motivating Elvira. They're coming in. But they're selling. They're going back out. So they're not sitting. People love the theme. The market on those. The weird layout. Those have dropped. I mean, they're, what, 97 new? They're 75 with like 100 things. 7,500 for a premium. Dang. That's $2,000. Boom. Gone. So I think it does. I don't think it can go much lower because it is that fun of a game. And honestly, maybe all of these people that are trading in these games have fixed. I think that might have been blown out of proportion. Like the whole skill or the plunge that goes around and all these like flipper. They just don't have the problems on the games that are coming in. But maybe these people are fixing them. I don't know. All's trending down. Say anything. So, Dennis, I have to report. Toppers. What? Why? No. Well, it is what it is. I've heard around the water cooler that people are so hot about this Harry Potter CE topper. Oh, no. Have you seen this topper? People hate it. I have. They want to burn this thing. I hate it. Well, I loved it until I saw it move. People believe that this company is going to halt production, take all the toppers off, and redo the topper. No. Come on. No. It ain't that bad. No, it's perfectly attractive until you watch it move and then you feel like, wow. Okay. But again, what were you expecting? More. I agree. But what more? What more? I mean, they're wizarded. It's a $12,000 game and they've gone full stern flat plastic on it. It's not stealing your pets. No. People are just outraged to a degree that I don't agree with. But it is still trending down. I was describing what it reminded me of, and I'm like, oh, that's not going to go well. So it reminded me of, like, because Harry Potter is like a novel illustration kind of book. It reminded me of, like, one of those elaborate pop-up books. Yes, it does. I thought that was deliberate because, yes, it looks like a pop-up book to me, too. I know. I want it to be deliberate, but I don't think it is. It's so. It's so. It's so cheap looking That's the thing It just looks so cheap I don't think So I think that's what they were going for But you know Instead of seeing that they could They should have stopped To think that they should There was a rumor going around Canadians had this rumor that The reason why it's like that Is because they were designing it And they thought they had Lior Was going to design an actual topper for the CE But then something happened where he couldn't So they had to go back I can confidently report to you guys there's just zero truth to any of that shit. I'm sorry. I wish I could skew it in a way and make it dramatic, but no, it's just Leor's never in the conversation. There's never anything. See, what I would have done. Maybe it's worse because they designed it like this. What I would have done is taken that spot, and this would have been where I would have put in the Dementor. Oh, yes. And I would have a Dementor figure and then a really quiet, basically a really quiet fan inside of it that would let its cloak billow. Yes. and you think he's going to suck your soul out, man. Mm-hmm. Like good sex. It's going to be very creepy. Well, maybe a little less succubus and more, I don't know, evil vacuum. I don't know what we're saying. Evil vacuum. That's the name of your pocket, Pussy. Evil vacuum. Oh, my God. Sucks so hard it hurts. Dude, I would buy that. Evil vacuum. That sounds great. Sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, my God. Oh, we've been recording too long. I know. Sorry. But training Dennis Toppers, because, look, I've also heard that... You know what? This will make you laugh. Sorry. Evil vacuum. Some of this nickname out there. Oh, man. Cheat. I did like your idea, though, the Dementor. Like that half a bust with the billowing robe. Yeah, that's a good idea. A little fan blow. And it can even make that sound, too, because it sounds like it's trying to suck. Yeah. Hire us. But I had to trim down toppers. You'll get a laugh out of this because another delay at Dutch Pinball. Oh, no. It's because of those damn Cheshire Cat toppers. The one with the wrong number of toes? Zach, are the claws the same as fingernails or the same as beaks? I don't know. On a Cheshire Cat in a magical world? If there's a delay in the toppers, is it the same as a delay at the end of the year when you get your closet back? I don't know. If the claws are what's holding it up, just have the cat hold like a natty light and fit in with the trailer park theme you went with with the rest of the art. Yes. A warm Natty Ice, too. A warm one, of course. Obviously. Because everybody's like, oh, this is like a Leor Topper. No, I think you probably sculpted the first one, and then they sent it overseas to China. They make them, and then they bring it. All manufacturers do it. I'm not poopooing that. But the problem is that that manufacturing business went out of business or something, and now they've got to find a different supplier. So they are now sending games without the topper, and they'll send the topper at a later time. So another delay. Damn. So toppers are just down in market right now. Turning down. Let's save some people some money in deals of the week. Buy, buy, buy! Deals of the week this week is from Flip N Out Pinball Pimble. There's a Funhaus remake LA. These damn things are $10,000 brand new. Ten grand! I've got one like me. These are like 100 and something plays. I had it marked down all the way to $79.99. Don't share this with people. But as a listener, I'm going to mark $500. $74.99. Buy, buy, buy! Like new Funhouse Remake LE. And yes, Dennis, it also comes with a custom gold timepiece that they sent out with all the LEs. I was going to send you one of those to see what you thought about. Yeah, the little pocket watch. Is it functional? Yeah, yeah, it's a commemorative collection. I can always open one up and tell you what it's used in to run it. Pinball Bouncing, I'm still looking for that Primo Congo. Don't bring me your quote-unquote restored ones. I want one that looks like it's the ones in the museum. Or those Segas. I really want a Batman Forever. Please, people. I know there's a nice one out there. There's got to be. There's got to be a nice Batman Forever that has no playfield wear, that has no cabinet wear, that looks like it's been in a basement without any moisture issues. Like, it's got to be out there. And I'll pay big dollars for it. Or any of the other Segas, for the most part. And as always, I'm just here to report the facts because members don't lie and neither will I on pinball market trends. Caw, caw. Dennis, where can people catch you? You can always reach out to me, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. Very nice. You can reach out to the pinball show at gmail.com. That's the pinball show at gmail.com. Please follow, like, and subscribe to all our socials as well. On Facebook, YouTube. Go to YouTube. Go to TikTok. Go to all of that stuff. And go to patreon.com slash the pinball show. So sign up to support us, hear the extra content, join the Discord, all of that fun stuff. Straight down the middle, video series on YouTube. I'm getting ready to record again, so follow us there. And the sponsor of this show is Flip N Out Pinball. When I buy my pinballs, then I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. From Topper Shop, from J.B.O.S., I've got it figured out. Flip N Out Pinball, Flip N Out Pinball. When I take a pinball, I think Flip N Out Pinball. Flip N Out Pinball, Flip N Out Pinball. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. Buy, buy, buy. Product showcase this week is Harry Potter. Of course, why wouldn't it be? Do you not have yours ordered yet? And if so, why not? Which model are you going to go with? All you got to do is email us at Zach, Z-A-C-H, at FlippinOutPinball.com, or Greg at FlippinOutPinball.com, or Ken at FlippinOutPinball.com. Hell, you can go to Nicole at FlippinOutPinball.com. Poor Tim. I don't have him in an email address. Predator. If you want Predator, pre-order one right now. Get on our list. Hell, I don't care what you do. We'll get you one. King Kongs. We actually have King Kong premiums in stock. And I found two LEs out there. Don't ask me what I had to do to get them. But it may involve that evil vacuum that we were talking about in the last segment. I got two LEs that popped up. There's a Rumor Jaws 50th anniversary. If you want to get on the list for that, do so. We're still taking, we still got some spots for Dune. So, get you one of those. Pre-owned games? Forgot them coming in. We've got a lot of them coming in. The last two months have been a record number of trade-ins that we've had come in. So take advantage of that. Get you a brand-new Harry Potter. Here's the difference between ourselves and a lot of other dealers. If you want to trade for a Harry Potter, how would you do so, Dennis? Because you're like, well, wait a minute. The Harry Potter's not going to be ready for a couple months, but I'm wanting to trade in this. What do I do? We actually give you options. We can assess the value of it once your Harry Potter's ready. Or actually, we can take your game in right now to lock in that value. It's pretty intuitive. We lock in the value so that you don't have to worry about it losing money or value over the next four months while you're waiting for your Harry Potter. Lock it in now, and then once your Harry Potter comes in, it just gets applied to that. Boom, bada-bing, bada-boom. Done. We'll get it picked up now. So pre-owned games, you can trade in some stuff. All the other games from all the other large major manufacturers, we sell them, as well as accessories, arcades, et cetera. Flipping out Pinball Media Channel. Joel streamed Harry Potter last week. Does he think I believe he's streaming Harry Potter again? He's got a tutorial coming out. We've got reels. He'll follow us there. And that's it. Dennis teaches people. They really are dying to learn something. I think the big thing to learn about is, obviously, all these trough jams that we've been going over. You know, there's a lot of confusion. Like, who's making the right move? Who's making the wrong move? Obviously, Harry Potter coming out was always going to be a right move for Jersey Jack. But, you know, a lot of questions about this reveal on Predator, both how they're rolling it out and when they're rolling it out. But, you know, regardless of how rocky these launches could be this year, I do think fundamentally we always have to remember that it could be worse. It could be pinball cribs. That's not fair. It was funny, though. It's Jesus, wasn't it? It's Jesus. Oh, I was just, I got up this morning and I just thought about pinball. I had thought about pinball cribs for years. I was like, I'm going to work it in today. There you go. And always practice safe pinball. And special thank you to Jersey Jack Pinball, not only for being a great partner in bringing me personally and selfishly one of the things that we've all been dying to see, feel, touch, hear, maybe even smell. Thank you so much for Harry Potter, the boy who lived. And also thank you for the man that left, King Cromwell. I couldn't be more happy that you enjoyed our time. Couldn't be more happy that you joined the Flip N Out Pinball team. I'm so excited to show these people what all we have in store for them over the next couple of years.