Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. We've got content galore this week on the Pinball Show. Dennis and I give you the goods regarding new info about Stern Pinball's newest release, James Bond 007 Pinball, as well as fresh production updates from Stern, pricing changes moving forward, the unreleased Elwynn 60th anniversary Bond game, a possible future Goldfinger edition, info on Steve Ritchie's upcoming JJP machine, Cactus Canyon LE production updates. This is Spinal Tap? A creasal strong take on the 2022 game release catalog, and maybe not the pinball market trends you wanted, but the pinball market trends you need to hear. Hey, if you're headed to the kitchen, I'll take some buttered popcorn as well. Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for the Pinball Show It's pinball with personality Hey fellow listener, I'm glad you guys clicked the play button this week for the Pinball Show I'm Zach Manning alongside secret pinball agent himself, Dennis Creasel You know, Craig Bobby has hummed the last two episodes the James Bond theme. Would you like to hear my James Bond on the recorder? Oh, yes, absolutely. Okay. Do you really have it? I've been practicing so hard. Let me try here. Let them live. Oh. Oh, Lord. Oh. There it is. Oh. Oh, there we go. That's harder than it looked. Man, I'm finished. I need a cigarette now. Nice blowing, pussy. Dennis, how are you this week? I'm fine. I got to catch my breath from all that intensive recording. We call it a song flute. So that's just an Indiana thing, I believe. I guess so, because I ain't never heard that before. In preparation for this episode, I just actually, before we started recording, watched an interview with Pierce Brosnan going over a lot of the major roles he played in his life. And it started, of course, with James Bond. Oh, golden eye. Not the Bond we're going to be talking about today because Gomez doesn't focus on Pierce. No, we're talking about Sean Connery. You know, we got a lot of messages, and by a lot I meant a few, that they really liked my impersonation of a Sean Connery. Really? Yeah. Okay, I mean, I thought it was fine. I didn't think anyone would write in about it. But, Dennis, they did say that my impression sounded more like the version of Saturday Night Live. Oh, like the Jeopardy Connery. The Jeopardy, yeah. Your mother. Yeah, that whole, you know, gush it up. That pushy. Ah. So what's new? Did you order a bond? I did not. I was told I couldn't have the first pro. And I'm told the second pro we're going to get to. It's going to be a bit of a wait. You have to wait and play. And maybe see if I can last that long. Speaking of seeing, I had to get spectacles. Oh, my God. I thought you were going to say something. You got spectacles. I did. I finally went to the eye doctor after I hadn't been since before the pandemic. and I was noticing the road signs were looking a little blurry, and I'm having more and more trouble reading, like, subtitling and stuff on the TV. So I went in, and I'm like, yep, you're nearsighted now. I used to be farsighted. How's that changed? I don't know. It's been 20 years. I don't know. Wow. So it's optional if you want to wear them. I think maybe they're used to dealing with people who don't like to wear glasses. I'm like, just give me the script so I can see better. I'm like, oh, look how much easier the TV is actually. I think I really only talked about the car. But, yeah, actually putting them on, because I play a lot of video games, but I sit pretty far away from the TV, and I was like, holy cow, there are labels, and I can read them now. Very exciting. I think that a lot of our listeners can attest to that my mom used to always tell me the more you play with it, you go blind. So maybe that's what's happening there. Spectacles rhymes with something. I should have just said glasses. But then it would have rhymed with asses. What's the line on Austin Powers? Spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch. Oh, and remember the order of doing the cross on yourself. Oh, yeah, spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch. So you didn't order James Bond. You did order some bifocals, so that's nice. Nope, just driving glasses. They're not bifocal. Cheaters. You got some cheaters. Nope, those were for reading. What kind of frames did you get? I don't know what that means. Like the design of the glasses. I just pointed at two and said those. You didn't have the person pick them for you? I mean, they didn't say I looked stupid, so I was like, well. I've ordered a pair of sunglasses. Those will be aviators. Those are mine. I got to pull the Biden style. I always like aviators for sunglasses. You got to roll just like Goose, baby. I don't know. I'm going to hit my head on the canopy. Oh, poor Goose. We got a lot to talk about this week, Dennis. A shitload to talk about. such as last week we didn't have an episode on the pinball show because we had a brand new podcast enter the TPN channel. You did, and of course you had to put yourself on it first. I did. I was asked. Examination. I got to give the people what they want, and the people wanted me. And boy, oh boy, numbers don't lie. I saw another pinball podcaster complaining and saying that the pinball party is over before it started. I'm like, oh, that's kind of mean. You haven't seen the fucking numbers then, because that's doing very well. Numbers, as they say, don't lie, is that right? No, they don't. Not on that one. Especially whenever the numbers of the new guy surpass that three to four times that of this five-year pinball podcast. Of this very show. Yeah. No. No. No. No. No. Imagine what your numbers could be with Greg Bone, though. Maybe higher. Maybe lower. Maybe. Why is he so popular? I don't know. They can't see him on the podcast, so the looks difference, like, I can't lose when that's not in play. He was a little pistol this weekend. I was trying to watch Rings of Power this last weekend. One evening, I was slammed on launch day for Bond and Stern, and I finally get a chance to sit down at 11 o'clock at night, and I get messages. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I'm like, well, I guess L-160 is out now. I need to go back downstairs and start taking L-160. But no, everybody's like, oh, shit, Greg Bone is fired up. Oh, damn, he is going off. Oh, and I was like, oh, no, what's going on now? He was feisty. He got a little feisty. Yeah. Never put Boney in a corner. He's the buffalo sauce chicken wing. He is, man. He's got some kick. He doesn't say much until it's that time, and then he's got some kick. You know who else has kick? Donkey. Okay. Onion Leis. It's Craig Bobby. Oh. Or, as we now call him at TPN, Bobby Bonds. Is he going to do the theme we have a third time? People want two things this last week in Pinball Listener, and that is a little Bobby Bond and return of the wamp. Yeah, give us our wamps back. Shoot the wamp. Shoot the wamp. They got rid of it, mostly. Did they? Yeah, I heard it. I actually heard it. I did have it come up, but only one time. Was the voice actor dejected? Was he like, shoot the wamp? Wamp, I guess. If you want to. Jerry, why don't you just replace me with a Japanese voice actor for all of it? I think that was the whole line. Oh, my gosh. The last thing, and then we'll jump to Craig Bobby. I don't know if anybody realized this, but my mind is oftentimes in the gutter. Listener, I was watching the stream they did. They did the talk stream this last week, the first impressions of James Bond with Joel Engelberth, Craig Bobby, Hottie from Frisco Pinball, and a very sleepy David Dennis. And it was brought up, his ability to do the theme song with a tone thing of a like he can do that. And Joel, sweet, innocent Joel just comes out of nowhere and is like, I bet you make your wife proud. And he was meaning it as like. Like proud of that. Yeah, like, oh, my husband can do the James Bond thing. But the way he said it. Oh, Joel. Oh, wow. So young, innocent Joel. Wow. And I bet Mrs. Bobby is very happy. She's very happy. See what you got, Craig? Catch you on the lick side. She probably feels fucking good at it. I've been waiting years for this. My tongue is as mighty as a sword. Bond. James Bond. Hello and Welcome to the Pinball Show's Top Stories. I'm Craig Bobby. Well, my God, we're finally here. After literally months and months of intense speculation and years of rumor-mongering on the possibility of a James Bond theme machine, we finally saw what all the fuss was about. Stern, after a canceled official launch, followed by an avalanche of leaked information details, we now have the official videos and website unveiling this past week of the George Gomez-designed Stern Pinball Masterpiece, James Bond. Now, as the rumors already told us, the game is based on the Sean Connery era of the Bond franchise, but with each pro, premium, and LE trim levels, each themed artistically around a different Connery era Bond movie. The pro is based on Dr. No, the premium based on You Only Live Twice, and the LE based on the Bond classic, Oh, and let's not forget a yet-to-be-released, completely redesigned Keith Ellwyn's 60th Anniversary Edition, featuring a single-level machine that incorporates all 25 Bond films. Is anyone's heart beating faster yet? Now, Stern's departure and their art package theming generally hasn't, to my knowledge, been done before, which ultimately served up to stir tons of confusion on the rumor front, as folks just couldn't get their head around this idea as people generally thought the game would be based solely on one film or another. Of course, beyond George Gomez taking the lead design roles, Stern deployed Mike Vinikour, this time on rules design, with assistance from Lonnie D. Ropp on code. John Rothermel took lead mechanical engineer with some assistance from Tom Capera. Jerry Thompson, of course, is on sound design with Chuck Ernst on animations. And for that all-important art package, we had famed artist Kevin O'Connor last seen for his artwork both on The Kiss Machines by Bally in 1979 and The Stern Kiss in 2015. Who, as George Gomez praises in his recent interview with Nate Shivers on The Stern's in-house podcast available to all Access subscribers, had to methodically take images from Bond movie posters and film art library to repaint, touch up, or correct much of it so that Stern could use these retro images on these modern machines. Now, I'll let Zach and Dennis go over all the interesting shots, layouts, and mechs that this exciting new release offers, and its various trim levels and incarnations. However, I think when you stand back and look at what Stern has offered up, we can easily come to this conclusion. This Gomez design machine is definitely not your slapdash, throw some maximum designs in a ring and then cut three quarters of them out due to an inflated cost and overrun bill of materials. As usual with Gomez designs, there is a thoughtfulness, level of detail and caring here that we frankly just don't see enough in today's modern pinball era and something that many fans and collectors in the hobby have been clamoring and crying out for with each passing new release in the last five years. Yes, gone now were the cries for more mechs, better art, and better layouts, as this machine is mech-heavy with a fresh and exciting Gomez layout and beautifully vibrant Vaughn movie-themed art. But let's not forget that nothing is for free and that everything comes at a price. And in this case, the price paid in Stern's James Bond is literally the selling price of these new machines. Yet those cries for we need more have been replaced now with fears from potential buyers about continual, some might say aggressive, price hikes, as Stern dares customers to put their money where their mouth is and give buyers more, but once again, also charge significantly more for it. Now, Stern chose to modestly raise prices by $100 on the Pro machine, the mainstay of most operators and price-conscious buyers. If you call paying nearly $7,000 US for a pinball machine as price-conscious, But this strategy keeps machines, in theory, being placed in the wild, which keeps the Stern name visible and their operator owners happy. Instead, Stern chose to go where the real money now sits, in the coveted affluent collector and home buyer market who seem only too happy to continue to pay more for their beloved machines if there is a real or perceived perception that they are in fact getting more, with a bond premium now $700 more to $96.99 US, and the LE limited to 1,000 units, going up another $1,900 to $12,999. Ooh, I love gold! But the most intriguing thing behind the Bond release is that Stern chose to go further out on a limb and offer its customers the chance to buy an even more exclusive but completely redesigned machine for Bond's 60th anniversary celebration. Unlike what Stern did for the 40th edition of the Elvira machine that was basically just repainted and came with some additional collector swag items, the 60th anniversary James Bond machine has been confirmed by Gomez to be designed from scratch by none other than the greatest of all time, Mr. Keith Elwin himself. Rumored to have no set retail price by Stern for its distributors, Stern will once again allow market pricing to rule and give distributors another chance to make bank on a very limited number, 500 60th Anniversary James Bond Machines. George's recent interview on the Stern All Access podcast confirms that the now-leaked images of the Elwynn 60th Anniversary Machine, if not 75% accurate, does a pretty good job of outlining what we might expect to see, with those images leaving out key mechs like the scoring reel or cabinet design features. Yes, you heard right. The Elwynn single-level playfield game has actual mechanical scoring reels in the backbox programmed by Mark Panayko, who used to work at Williams Pinball back in the day and came over to Stern in 2021. Stern will deploy a small video display from their Home Pin Edition on the play field to display animations, movie clips, and game information. The game also contains every actor who ever played James Bond as well as new mechs not seen on any of the Gomez designs. Wow! Could we be looking at the game of the year here in James Bond? Well, when matched against rivals this year in John Borg's Rush and Pat Lawler's Toy Story 4 as previous frontrunners, theme aside, I think this George Gomez-designed James Bond certainly edges out those titles in design and theming. But with many question marks still looming about what we might see from the Elwynn's 60th anniversary machine and still to come any live James Bond gameplay from Stern, You guessed it. We shall have to wait and see. From the Pinball Show, I'm Craig Bobby. Gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong. Catch you on the flip side. Change spot. That Craig Bobby's good. He's great. What would we do? I'm trying to think the next game that's rumored to come out. I'm hoping he can do something with his tongue to that, too. I guess Godfather. La, la, la, la, la, la, la. It won't be as fun, but we'll get that triple-span cannoli on. I just can't wait to hear that original theme song for Tinker. Yeah. Tinker, Tinker, Tinker. I hope they got Craig to do the laser sounds of the tank's fire. Pew, pew, pew. Pew, pew, pew. Pew. Dennis, all last week I've been receiving messages. because everybody wants to hear what our take is on the reveal, the launch, the game, everything that is Stern Pinballs, James Bond 007. Released last Thursday, this is a George Gomez design. Lonnie Ropp and Mike Vinikour on the rules. A little hard to find who was on the rules there for a while. Yeah, I don't understand it. I only picked up on it actually in the transcript of the Gomez interview on the CERT Insider podcast. And I think the last time those two worked together was on Stranger Things. Yes, yes, I believe that is accurate. But I will argue that those expecting a very similar style of rule setter code, keep in mind that by trade, Brian Eddy was a software engineer and rules guy. So I think Brian Eddy probably contributed quite a bit just knowing the attack from Mars rules and the medieval rules very similar to Stranger Things. So I don't know if we'll get, I don't know what we're going to get, but I certainly think Brian Eddy played a role on Stranger Things more than some people think. Artwork by Frank McCarthy, Robert McGinnis, and Kevin Adam. Now, these individuals, I think, are Bond artists. This isn't a pinball. We're not pulling these from pinball. These were sketches and artwork that's made famous from movie posters from the six Bond Connery films. And I think, don't quote me on this, listener, but I think Kevin O'Connor at Stern Pinball helped kind of pull it all together for pinball. This is a Cornerstone release, so we've seen a Pro, a Premium, an LE, limited to 1,000 units. Plus, in a bit, we will talk about an upcoming 60th anniversary limited edition game by Keith Elwin that's coming out soon. So many models. We've got three of the standard Cornerstone models. There's new pricing now. CERN has increased pricing to Pros, that is the Dr. No Pro version of James Bond. Now $69.99 MSRP. Which is $100. Yeah, went up $100. Actually, not bad. Less than I thought it would. Okay. The premium went up $700. MSRP is now $96.99. The premium features the You Only Live Twice film art package. And then the limited edition model based around the Thunderball theme, $13,999 MSRP. That went up significantly. Yes, $1,900 versus the Rush LE, $2,500 if you care about the comparison to Godzilla LE. Okay, so significantly, and they're still keeping that 1,000 unit alive and well. Yes. It's a three-flipper game. We haven't seen that from George Gomez since his initial design in Corvette, Alley Williams. I think there's only two pops in this game. Hmm. I've been looking at diagrams of it. I don't see a third pop unless it's hiding. No, but, you know, I've noticed lately Stern has been willing to deviate and allow the non-rule of the three nested pops. Yeah, and they might have, like, a sling pop to mimic a third pop. but I don't know if that's in here or not. Maybe. The game features all six films that featured Sean Connery. There are, in the game, Q gadgets, Spectre weapons, villains, henchmen, Bond women, even push a galore. Carefully integrated speech from all six Connery-Bond films and the James Bond theme by John Barry as well as other film theme songs. I don't know if people know that. I didn't. It's all in there. I like how you said carefully integrated speech. Not like that sort of slapdash style we're used to. A bummy bumbum. The whamps. But I just shot the scoop. So what are the differences between these models? A quick rundown here. All models are going to feature the Spectre Bird 1 rocket base. I thought a different joke was coming. No. All models also feature the custom-molded Aston Martin DB5 with ejector seat. Goose nose. People were asking, is that flap going to hold up? It'll hold up. All models feature a right post in lane to stage modes. Kind of like Keith Elwin likes to do instead of scoops. He often favors the left in lane. Yes, he does. All models have the Thunderball eject from the left side of the play field, almost like the staged locked ball in Elvira House of Horror, shoots it back up towards the target or the pops. Chunk. All models feature Diamonds or Forever Opto Spinner. Ooh, Opto Spinner. Yeah. Not only that, do you see the glitter on that spinner? It's so shiny and cool. See, I care about those little details. Sparkly. There's nothing better than a sparkly spinner. All models feature a special bond, what they call assignments, that are only possible with connectivity, which is coming soon. Oh, it'll be interesting to learn what that is. Sounds like modes. Mm-hmm. The Premium LE stands out from the Pro with a couple of different features, one being what the enthusiasts are calling bond on a wand. I do love that name. I do, too. Whoever is credited for that, sorry for not knowing. You're a wizard, Jamesy. That's a good one. That's a good one. So the bond is like a moving jetpack figure that carries the ball. Now, this is information I have not heard out there, but Gary and Seth did tell us, the player or game can actuate at times this mechanism. So maybe the game is programmed to pick it up and drop it, But maybe, just maybe, and I don't know yet, we haven't seen a stream or gameplay, maybe the player can hit that action button to drop the ball where they want. Or maybe, why not both? Why not both? Gary and Seth also indicated that the moving jetpack figure, you can hit the dragon tank target. There's two targets on the dragon tank. Or, they said in their seminar, or lock balls start multi-balls. Now, this can be one of two things, Dennis. This can mean just by default when a ball gets diverted up there and Bond Wand picks it up, that is the initiation of a virtual lock. Or maybe you can drag it all the way over to that wire form. I don't know. To lock a ball. Because if you get it to that wire form and drop it, you technically would get it into the physical ball lock. Yeah. I don't know if it reaches, but it's just an interesting thing that they said they can lock a ball. I won't say that's an odd decision, but it does remind me of, like, Demolition Man, where everyone only chooses the ball lock in that case. Like, I, yeah. Anyway, that's a rules question. So I don't, I don't, it just, I saw them talking about it, and I was like, that's interesting. The Premium LE also showcases a stainless steel Bird 1 gantry with the diverter. So it's like a big building in the back by the missile, which has a spiral ramp and a three-ball physical lock. We like that. The Premium LE also features a Thunderball reverse eject scoop with hidden custom sculpt James Bond and Spectre diver figures. Think Creature from the Black Lagoon on Monster Bash. It's like a clear window, and then whenever you hit it, it lights up and you can see something underneath, and they're fighting down there in their scuba gear. Premium LE also has a custom molded Dr. Nose Dragon tank with internal illumination. It's got a flasher inside. The LE also has the traditional LE aesthetics and upgrades, Most notably, the teal Thunderbolt trim package that we'll talk about and a mirrored back glass. Clear glass, shaker motor, better speakers, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, your usual, your usual LE fare. So let's talk about this game. Let's talk about what I'm calling tagline failure to launch. Isn't that a Matthew McConaughey movie? All right, all right, all right. Be a lot cooler if it was. When will Matthew get his pen? Would you buy a failure to launch pinball machine? I've never seen the movie. So, I mean, if it plays well, yeah, but I wouldn't buy it off theme. That's a damn shame. Isn't it? Pushy. I've seen Mud. I've seen Mud. I've seen McConaughey and Mud. I've seen Interstellar where the sound balance is so bad. Well, fuck off, dude. The Interstellar, we're not doing that because Interstellar is the best sci-fi film of all time. I don't want to hear all you nutty Event Horizon 2001 space. Fuck it. No. It is Interstellar. No one picks 2000. 2001 is what people like who are trying to pretend to be pretentious. and no stuff. It's a slow film. No one cares. Get them, Rosebud. Event Horizon is awesome. Have you ever seen Fire in Zero G? It's beautiful. Mama Bear, open the door. No, it's interstellar. Where we're going, we don't need eyes to see. Really stellar. And I wish I didn't have eyes to see how this launch had gone. It was messy. This is... I've got my Fixian level of tenure. I've been in the hobby. I've mapped it. We count it from when I bought my first pen. I've been in over 10 years now. Watercoloring? Yes, yes. And I have never seen Stern have such a bad launch in my entire time. I agree, which makes me think that it was something out of their hands. I'm going to say partially. Okay. There's got to be. There's some culpability that falls within the corporate level. Absolutely. And it was from, I mean, I don't know how to approach it from announcing a launch date and then changing it, but not changing it immediately. And when I say immediately, what I mean is it's all well and good, and I understand that it's a UK license. And so with the death of the Queen, I get it, but also it felt like they dragged their feet on making that determination. Like, why is the game already at the show, getting set up for the show? The Queen had been deceased for, I think, over 48 hours before they made the determination. Then they change it again. They push it two more days back. So that stuff, at least in part, falls on Stern. I don't think Stern for the week. Yeah, but so it's like it's super pushed. Then where it's not their fault, but it doesn't help, is the 007 store then ends up leaking all the photos, probably because they had their website scheduled to post all the pages. And this was after the leaks that came from that convention. Yes. And someone said they got upset, or the licensor got upset. Yeah, I heard the licensor got really upset about that. And they pulled them off the floor. Right. And, again, that's a partial. Obviously, Stern didn't leak that. But they knew that control was lost the moment the games left the factory. Like, you don't have control anymore. They decided to go over there knowing the Queen had passed. Yes, that's the thing that's so strange to me. Even if they had pre the games they still chose to you know plan to get them ready Whenever the Queen had passed they had to have called the licensor and said hey this might get a little messy How do you want us to do you still want us to go to this convention What are your thoughts out there? It's like, okay, so they didn't do the release because of the Queen. They still ran their show at the UK IAFA, though. It's a head-scratcher. But I'm not English. There were a whole lot of weird, I saw some stuff online about just the inconsistency on things. So, like, cricket matches got to keep going, but they suspended all of the soccer matches. Like, I heard that one of their major convenience stores, in respect for the queen, like, turned down the beep sounds. I don't know if that was of the doors or the checkout lanes. And when you swipe stuff, like, they reduced, like. Is that like a flag? They didn't mute them. They just turned them down. It's like, I don't get it. It's so weird to me. All of this makes no sense to me. It was strange. It was very strange. And then we had to wait an additional week with grainy photos out there, like you said. And whilst, I'm going to use the word whilst, in respect for the Queen. Whilst all of this was happening, and we have the grainy photos, the potato cam style stuff floating around, then the information leaks out about the Elwynn game. Oh, that's right. There's an additional game, which at that point in time, this information, I don't think dealers had their seminar yet because we had it the day of. No, you hadn't had your seminar yet. So we were like, is this true? And if so, are we going to be able to see this prior to people going in for an LH? That wouldn't be right. And so, I mean, it was just, there were multiple misses on multiple fronts. And I, you know, I'm not being facetious. It is, as long as I've been around, the worst reveal, Stern. I've seen worse reveals, but this is the worst I've ever seen from them. Yeah, usually they have their shit in order when it comes to this kind of stuff. I mean, if I were Stern Management, marketing would have gotten a talking to about this. I mean, you have. It's just so hard to know who's. Maybe it wasn't even a marketing. Who knows? I don't know. I don't know. But it's a company that relies on its reveals. I mean, this isn't like just screwing up a social media post. It's a big deal when you do a launch. This felt very, very bungled. People know that myself, Greg, we've helped with some launches of games in the past for different manufacturers. So I've got a lot of questions asked to me this last week, Dennis. Like, you know, if you've done consultation in the past, does this hurt sales? Does this affect a company's ability to sell games whenever you flop a release and you flop it again and then you can't take orders? And I told everybody the same thing. And especially now, retrospectively, this game is a certified hit already. It is selling like fucking bananas. Right. It is selling very well. And given that, especially now that we have numbers, we've been hearing from a variety of distributors about the sales. So it's selling great, but. So, yeah, it's like, yeah, it was a terrible launch, quite frankly. But this is pinball. It's not like a lot of other industries where there's not really a lot of competition against them anyway. So it still worked out. So I guess, you know, ultimately maybe Stern can probably shrug and say, does it really matter if our launches are bad? Does it really matter if it looks amateurish? They can, but ultimately what I've responded to these people was this. Sure, it is, you know, hindsight is selling great, so does it ultimately matter? But I will say objectively, when this happens, it does objectively affect sales, period, dot. They could have sold more had this reveal been better. And I really firmly stand behind that because from a sales marketing standpoint, whenever a potential consumer first, quote, unquote, experiences a game, and in this respect for pinball, it's usually a visual thing. Once they see pictures, you are at the highest peak and probability of making that sale, that immediate emotional reaction. The hype is immediate upon visual reveal. Absolutely. And then after that, it only degrades. Yes. Every second, every minute, every hour, day, week, month, it will continue to go down no matter what. So, yes, I objectively think that it did affect sales. Now, grand scheme of things, is it a big deal? Maybe not. But they can't say that it didn't affect the potential sales of this product. It did. Having said that, what do we think about this game? We think a lot of things. Let's jump in pretty quick on some of these takes. Your first impressions. When you first saw the grainy photos, what was your eye turned to first? Was it art? Was it mechs? Was it, oh, it is James Bond and Sean Connery? What were your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, the first thing I'd say I noticed was the trans lights and cabinet art. Old style. Yes. Very release movie poster-esque. Yes. My initial thought. Very yellow. Oh, my initial thought was strict license. Actually, no, my initial thought was wolf. But my next thought was a follow up thought was I bet the licensor is extremely strict about what you can use in terms of assets. That was my take, too. Yeah. I also thought after after that. So now I've got two afterthoughts that this would have been an assigned Steve Ritchie game because when he was at Stern, he always got the unreasonable art package. You have a trap art. Yeah, exactly. Always, guys, we don't mean Johnny Crap. We mean Batman. He's like, you always got the stringent, you're going to use what we use on the lunchboxes, and that's that. And I'm like, wow. Poor guy. It's like, other than Black Knight, it was like everything was just, like, terribly strict. And this feels exactly the same. Like, I do not like any of these art packages. Oh, strong taste. I just don't. Now, I don't buy games based off the art, so ultimately that doesn't matter much to me. But seeing that, and before I noticed the mechs, it was the same thing with the play field. And it's like, there are just floating heads everywhere. There are faces everywhere on that art package. Faces upon faces. And it looks, the game art package is not attractive, I don't think. I think it is objectively not attractive. It reminds me of the Photoshop era. And I think a lot of people, when they saw these things, especially the Translight and Cabinet Art, were wishing for that. I think he took it down. But Christopher Franchi had a mock-up that he did at one point. And it's so much better. It's so much better. Franchi always does that. So I was like, look what you did. Yeah, but it was, like, years ago. But people saved it because they did. They learned. People take stuff down on Facebook. So people saved it. And I had people, they were passing it around because they're like, look at how much better. It looked damn good. I mean, it did. It did. I mean, I would have wished for his art over that. But, again, based off of, you know, even what he had noted in the post at the time, I don't think the licensure would have approved it. That's true. For me personally, whenever I seen this the first time, my gut reaction and emotion was, this art does leave a lot to be desired. There's nothing that I would call beautiful on the cabinet, on the back glass, on the play field. It was a miss for me personally, but art is subjective. I did not, nor do I think this is a beautiful artwork. And I think you talked about it being fitting, and I'll give it that. I'm going to give the left cabinet that, the Thunderbirds premium left cabinet. I'm going to give, surprisingly. Sorry, he said Thunderbirds. And surprisingly, I think the back glasses are very bold. That was a risky move. And I do love them composition-wise. I love that it is, if you know Bond, it's Bond. Doctor, no. If you know Bond, it is You Only Live Twice. I do love that bold move. I love that. I don't like the faces on the play field. and what just really cuts me to the core is seeing an art package on the right side of that cabinet that mimics some of my worst work in pinball promotion. It is Microsoft Paint posters that have no reasoning. The layout is horrible. The negative space is bad. It just breaks up the entire storyline of the rest of the art package. I don't get it. Leave it for the 60th. I don't understand it. I get that. Another thing for me was I just think it's odd that I know it's more and more homeowner dominated, but there's still a sizable operator market. And for the back glass slash trans lights to not say James Bond or 007 anywhere on them I think is extremely weird. From a business standpoint, marketing, I agree. And I get that they have it on the front beneath the coin door. No one looks at that. No one sees that in an arcade. And the same with the sides of the backbox. They're often in rows. So a lot of people, I'm just thinking, if you've got a bunch of hipsters at a bar and they never saw these movies, they're not going to know what Dr. No is. Well, if it's a bunch of hipsters at a bar, let's be fair, they probably shouldn't watch these films. Well, but that's not the point. The point is they might know James Bond because of Daniel Craig. So saying that this is about James Bond might mean something. But when you look, unless you know the movies, this doesn't tell you that. You have to actually go up to the game. I just thought it was an odd, again, it is what it is. It's just, I think it was odd. I found a lot about it odd. And again, it just feels to me like it was restrictive. I like the whole choice. I think it was an artistic choice. And I think that that helps that package personally. But from a sales standpoint, yeah. And separate from like critiquing the design of the art itself. And all right, so they went with the posters. I get it. I get it. It's an interesting idea. Not my style. Whatever. No Goldfinger art package. Weird choice. Most popular Connery movie. I just don't get it. Dr. No is, it's a fairly well-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes. There's only one explanation for that. I mean, come on. Yeah, that would be my inclination, too. But, again, it's like. There's a reason that Thunderball was the LE and Dr. No was the pro. Right, right. Thunderball would be the second, would have been my second rank. and be like, Goldfinger and Thunderball are the two most popular ones. And then after that, you know, I guess kind of whatever. Welcome to Elvira's 40th anniversary coming out in 2023. I wonder, you know, I guess it doesn't really matter, but it kind of feels like people might get mad about that if they were like, do you want to buy Thunderball if you have the money and you really wanted Goldfinger and then you feel like they bait and switch you later? I don't know. People only get angry if the machine is no good. Elvira people ate that damn thing up. So I think it'll be fine. But, yeah, I could almost bet we're going to see a small 250, 500 run of a Goldfinger, even if they call it a premium edition or a studio release. The Lucy edition of Bond. We'll get it. Look, the Thunderball, I kind of do like that cabinet art, though, with the scuba diver. Thunderball wasn't a bad pick. You only lived twice, I thought was weird. But I also thought they picked Dr. No for the pro to try and force people into the premiums. It's so yellow. I actually like that there's lots of yellow. I had a silver slugger, so I respect the fact that they're like, let's just do a bunch of yellow. Well, it is showcasing the Bond girls, too. I mean, you know. Yeah, you know, but again, I know someone who is a, you and I both know them, huge Bond fan, has been very tempted about getting the pro, but he's got a family, and he and his wife have been talking about that they're not super comfortable with the side of that cabinet. Really? They're in babies. They have it in their house. and... Are they in bathing suits, I thought? They were... I don't know. Yeah, but I mean, it's sort of a... the poses are suggestive. Again, it's straight from the poster. But the poster was of an era and they, you know, with young girls in the house, that wasn't a message they were really keen on sending. And the other art packages they don't find as offensive, but they find the price a bit of a problem. It's offensive, yeah. Yeah, yes. No, I didn't want to... Does George Gomez design offend? No. What do you think about the design, the layout, the I think a lot of people – People are eating it up. Yes, yeah. They're fucking eating it up. We haven't seen, as you noted, other than his freshman effort, we haven't seen a three-flipper from Gomez. So I think that alone just feels like – it reminds me of when people so badly wanted Stranger Things and Mandalorian from Eddie to kind of feel like a pull from the shadow. And this is like, here you go. And there's some elements here that's kind of like NBA fast break. Obviously, the third flipper gives you this Corvette feel. So I think a lot of people are just really excited that we don't see Gomez design much anymore. And now he's definitely gone away from where he had been for so long, so many fan layouts, or other just sort of two-flipper configurations, because I don't believe that they're all fans. Good argument. But this ain't no fan. No one's going to think this was a fan. This is no fan. And I'm starting to see the stock on George Gomez over the last couple of years really rise up, especially after Deadpool and what people have come to love in Batman 66. It feels like we've got Gomez here, very Elwynn-esque, that they're going to get a following and a good sales push regardless of what they do from here on out. So he's hit that special kind of Epsilon level to me, where I don't know if he could have messed this up with how much he's been giving to the industry and everybody's loving him. He's got that cult following, if you will. So I see this layout, and it looks different. It does. Like you said. I see elements of him in it, which is what you expect from any veteran designer. They have certain things. But it's definitely, I mean, with that third flipper, and there's more than one shot accessible with it. Gary, I will say this, not to interject, But Gary Stern, Seth Davis said during the seminar, there are four shots from that third flipper. Now, I don't know if that's going to be like a Led Zeppelin middle ramp. Okay. I see three in the photos, at least in the photo of the pro. For sure, I see three. I was saying on Pinball Party here on TVN, go listen to it. Bink. Gomez always seems to have some of the most genius geometry and flow and kinetic satisfaction. but damned if, and I love my homie Gomi, but there always seems to be one shot that is just straight poo on a Gomez game. Yeah, I heard you say that. And I think I have. You called it the poo shot. Well, it's got some validity behind that. Look at all those passes. There's always one shot. And I worry that that side flipper straight up to the ramp is going to be that shot. Oh, you think it's the ramp. I thought maybe you were going to think it was the shot into the pops just above it. Well, yeah, but that's, yeah, I wouldn't want to ever shoot straight into the pops from a right flipper or from an upper flipper. But, no, it's just the angle. You're going straight into a stainless or you're going straight into a metal guide. And I just don't know how satisfying that's going to be. No diverter there that gives you that arch geometry. Just bam and then comes back around. It just worries me. It's like a Lord of the Rings right cabinet, right ramp. But that's the only one I have problems with. Everything else looks fun as shit. Man, it looks different. We've got drops that are right in front of the missile surrounding, and you've got that bobbling around like a... Yeah, why does it vibrate? Zach, why does it vibrate? Does it vibrate on the Pro as well? A lot of our buyers are just generally male, but I've had a lot of the buyers reach out and say, man, for some reason my wife is really getting behind this game. Well, you know, it's a bobble, missile bobble. I haven't seen the film. I don't know. What does it do? It's been so long since I've seen it, I can't comment. I like the idea of it. I like the idea that the ball can bounce off of an object and hit targets that you need to complete the spell, I think, Spectre. I like that. The ramps area is cool. I kind of think it's funky that little, how you have to shoot in between the two right ramps to do the orbit. I kind of like that. A little buckshot. People are getting behind this because it's different, and everybody wants different right now. It's been working for Elwin. So the design, I think, is a good, good thing. So with me, the mechs as well. Yeah. People are saying that this has got more in it than Toy Story, and JJP used to be known for filling up their games. Well, it is a different manufacturer And they say, what is up with Stern leading the industry on mechs and features? You've got Godzilla that feels loaded down Now you've got this that feels loaded down And a pro, frankly, that still has a lot in it The ejector seat, you know, it still has a lot of stuff in it Do you think the mechs are a central feature of this game? What do you think out of these categories? We don't know the code yet Do you think it's the layout or do you think it's the mechs? Which one do you think is going to be the highest rated by people? Well, I normally would say the layout, just because that's what you ultimately play. But it's hard to divorce that from the mechs. That's true. Because the mechs are a key part of the... Here's the, based off of some discussions from folks, I'm going to go, I'll stick with layout. And the reason is there are a lot of people that look at this, and as you noted, they look at the pro, and they seem pretty comfortable with the idea of getting the pro, that it has enough mechs in it. that they would rather not pay the additional price on the premium, especially given the difference on the markups versus Rush. Yes, really good point. And so that's telling me that the mechs that they were able to cost into the Pro are sufficient, that people feel there's value there. That's good analysis. That could also make you ask yourself whether or not that meant that the mechs aren't interesting enough to justify the upcharge into the premium. You know, to go back to Godzilla, because I'm more familiar with it, Obviously, you have that nice building drop that was only available on Premium LE. And I think the thing is – Right. And tummy rep. Yeah, I got tummy grab and the rotating band. I mean, people need to listen to me talk about Godzilla because they know my feelings on it already. But I think Bond on a Wand, mechanically, very, very interesting. I think people are also getting Rescue 911 vibes, though. It was a huge blow killer. things that move the ball like that are very slow. Going around and then just dropping it on one of two vertical targets doesn't on paper, that doesn't sound like it's as much fun as the amount of real estate I thought one of the targets might have a magnet. I was like, that could be cool. Visually, I think it's going to be incredibly awesome. If it dropped onto a magnet and then the magnet held it there, I was like, that could be pretty cool. I could, but I don't. Again, as the gap widens, see, that's one of the factors now, of course, is the gap of the pricing between the pro and the premium is widening. So people are going to really start to, I think, question. But part of the thing that could be happening when you get back to your comparison to JJP is maybe the bomb on the premiums and LEs has been going up as Stern has been inserting their price increases. Perhaps they've been like, you know what, we'll raise the price and let's put a little bit more in the bomb on these in order to have it stand out and be a little more distinguished. Thus not seeing such an increase in the Pro. But my guess, and you're the distro, so you'll be able to correct me. You may need more time before you know, but I think in the case of Godzilla, the mech difference was so compelling that a lot of people just had to go premium LE over the Pro. I mean, it was the one time I did. I think on this you're going to see a lot more even split of people going pro versus premium LE. Your analysis, per usual, is spot on there, Dennis. I will say that when it came to Godzilla, we don't have a backlog of pros right now. So our next run of pros, we will have some available. We are still waiting for maybe I would say majority of our back order still for Godzilla premium. So, yes, 100% unequivocally, without a doubt, the premium is the model there. I won't say tenfold, but fivefold. Now, on this, you are correct. We are getting a lot more pro buyers. Now, it's hard to differentiate. Is that coming because of max, or is that coming because of discrepancy in price between now a pro and a premium? So it's hard to measure that, but a lot more pro buyers this time around. Having said that, the premiums still are outselling the pros at least two to one, if not closer to three to one. It's still significant, but a lot of people are going pro. Godzilla, it is so surprising to me. That game is so well-received, number one on Pennside Top 100, whether pro, premium, whatever. But people are waiting for the premiums when they can buy the pro. I've played the pro several times. It is a fun game. But in the home environment, the mechs were enough to convince me that I wanted a premium. Rush has kind of leveled out where we had an abundance of premium buyers. Over the last five years, people have really shifted towards the premium model of Stern Games, the hobbyist, that is. But they're leveling out now. We see just as many sales of Rush Pro as we do premiums now. So about even now was initially offset a little bit. Turtles, people are still buying more Pro than premium. Mandalorian, believe it or not, people still barely, they're buying premiums more than pros. Well, it does have the moving play field. Mm-hmm. So there are some things here. This is going to be more of a closer to call thing, so you're right there. Code, like I said, we don't know what's going on with code quite yet. I don't think you should put all your eggs into the Stranger Things basket because Brian Eddy did bring a lot to that package. But I think that if you would have asked three years ago what a response to a Lonnie, Rob, and a Mike Vinikour code set would be, it would be significantly different than the perceptions of that duo team today. Would you agree or disagree? I don't know if I'd say significant. Mike Venacore didn't really have much of a code rep. I don't know if Stranger Things was his first game or not. So, you know, he's more of an unknown. Lonnie, you know, people have mixed reactions with Lonnie. I think the main complaint I've heard with Lonnie is a lot of people feel he always kind of does the same thing with the rules. So where I think, but with like Stranger Things, what I think happened is when you pair him with Mike, I think you have something more dynamic. But the one thing with Lonnie is a lot of competitive players, while he may not be their favorite programmer, he does know balance. He balances well. I've heard that too. He balances well. And so because of that, I think a lot of people, there are some people in the hobby that are very vocal, kind of like anti-rop code, but by and large, I think most people are okay with it. That's what I think in the perception-wise in the hobbyist community. Lonnie has trended up a little bit over the last year or so because he was just getting pelted. I mean, Dwight was really high up there, Lyman really high up there, Nagel really high, and then there was Lonnie. He was getting bruised and battered pretty good, but now we're seeing people start to say, no, I don't want to be Dwight Coe. I'd be fine with Lonnie, actually. His rules are balanced. You know what you're going to get. And I would argue that Lonnie on this code, If you're apprehensive about code sets that Lonnie has done in the past, we know that he is solid, knows what he's doing, been in the industry forever, balances well. Look at all those faces. There's going to be a lot to do on this game. So just by default, a good, solid score with a lot of depth, I think will be received very well. I don't know how far along the code is. I am hearing, this is a rumor that I've heard, but I have heard that there are, and we'll talk about production and delays in this game coming out a little bit longer, taking a little bit longer to produce than usually when they reveal a game. But I heard that we haven't seen a stream announcement yet because they would like to build up that code a little bit more before they start showing it off. That's the rumor that I heard. Can't confirm that. We do have new pricing, as we alluded to. What's your take on the new pricing? Too much? Not enough? What the hell are you doing, Stern? Are they pricing people out? I mean, I was surprised the way they did it. So I was expecting, my prediction had been, because of inflation, that we were probably going to see something on the order of a $400 to $900 price increase. The premium was in line with where I was expecting, towards the higher end, I guess. Well, kind of in the middle, really, between $400 and $900 to $700. The pro was an increase a lot lower than I expected, given the current state of inflation. I agree. And the LEs increase was a lot more than I thought it would be, a lot more. I agree. So, yeah, I mean, so in one way I was not surprised, and in one way I was surprised happily, and in one way I was surprised sadly, as sad as I get about LEs, which I don't care about. I'm with you as well. I thought the Pro would be going up more than $100. I thought that they would likely try to squeeze in a little additional bump here in pricing across all models pretty evenly. I thought we'd see maybe a $300 to $400 price increase for each model. So the 100 did surprise me. The premium was a little bit higher than I thought it was going to be, quite honestly. And then the LE, that kind of really surprised me because I guess they're thinking, you know, it just surprised me 1,000 units at $13,000. And I think that's the JJP effect. Yeah, that's right. I know I've typed it probably on multiple discords at this point. It's, you know, LE buyers are whales, so why don't you harpoon them? Yeah, but here's the thing. You would have thought I would agree with that, but they watched JJP kind of get egg in their face. What? JJP, like, got 20 or 25 or 30 million, I forget how many millions and millions of dollars they got on day one selling out all the CEs. They sold all the CEs out, Zach. Sold them all out. They're all sold out. Sold out forever. But the Toy Story sales are affected because of price, period. Zach, sold out. CE, whale. What did not surprise me, Dennis and the listener, is that when these LEs did come out, they did sell out immediately. I could have sold as a dealer. We had a large allotment. I could have sold double that. Easily. Whales. Whales. You know why, though? You know why? It wasn't because of James Bond. For some reason, I feel strongly about this. It wasn't so much James Bond. James Bond is like, people love it, and they're like, okay. It's like a Godzilla. All right. We're good there. Everybody knows that. It's freaking Gomez. People want to get that next Deadpool. They want that next Gomez game. He's like a king in this industry. I think it's going a long way on this title. I really do. It could, but I think the L.E.s were going to sell out day one no matter what from Stern. I think they would have. And I think Stern's trying to. Actually, I would say of the strategies, overall, I think I like this approach from them. I think what they're going to do is they're bifurcating the way the hobbyists work. And I think they're going to continue to dramatically profit gouge on the LEs more and more, continuing to jack that price up until they start to struggle just a little bit with selling them all. While trying to keep the pro as low as possible to still allow an in. I don't think they want to alienate a lot of the hobbyists that just bottom line can't go into that price point. And so that's the bifurcation. What I'm not sure on is the premiums. I think what they'd like to do is make more money on the premiums than they have been, but they don't want to go so far out that the premium is like more than what a lot of the other competitors, you know, it's hard for me to say that the other companies are really competition to Skrn, but like they still want it to sort of seem like a. They want to pour around a CGC prize for an American pinball. Well, because the thing with the premium is the angle that Skrn does, which even JJP has started to forsake, is like other than like minor little things, it's the same gameplay. Yeah. So it like LEs are for whales premium are for people that want all the mechs and pros are supposed to still be the value option for people to be able to get in If a whale was to LE what would premium be It'd be more of a... Well, if you want to, I mean, if the premium prices keep going up, they're both going to be whales, but the premium is going to be like a beluga whale, and the LE will be like a sperm whale. So your premium is still a whale. I don't like it being a whale. I think it should be more of like a man-necked two. I'm not throwing $10,000, Zach. I think premiums are a man-made piece. When you start throwing $9,700 out at games, at some point, you ain't middle class, okay? I mean, there is a line there, especially with inflationary pressure. A lot of people have less discretionary income right now than they did a year ago. Now, that might not be true because there's a lot of people out there, including myself, that are middle class that just don't always make great decisions. Yes, yes. I'm overgeneralizing for a sec. But my point is that there were people, and we've seen them. We've seen them on the Facebook. We've seen them in comment threads that were they would love to get a premium, but given another $700 after last year the premiums went up, what, over $1,000? I mean, the pros went up last year $900. Yes, I know $400 of the price increase where the sternums are connected, but still you had to pay it. You didn't have an option to not take it. So at some point, it's just compared to how much their paychecks go up, They're just like they can't rationalize it anymore. Or they rationalize down and say, okay, I can't rationalize the premium anymore, so I'm going to get a pro. Again, you and I know someone, loves James Bond, dream team for them. When they saw the LE price go out, they knew immediately they weren't getting the LE. And they preferred it, too. They really wanted the LE. And they're struggling on the premium as an option. And they could afford it. It's just at some point it becomes, to some people, it becomes irresponsible to spend that amount. I hear you. And listeners will want to hear this. I've got to be careful here. So I can't talk about, as a dealer, as an authorized dealer, I can't talk about margins and what we're making or anything like that. That goes against Ryan Policky. But I think what I can skate around and say, because people have been asking, well, its pro went up 100 and the premium went up 700, and then the LE went up this much. Like, how does that break down for you guys margin-wise? Is it basically just whatever went up that's forwarded to you? Like, how does that work? Oh, like about did all the profit go to the dealers? Exactly. Yeah. Where did the profit go? I can say that, I don't know if I can say it, but I'm hoping that I can say that I was surprised, both in a positive and negative way, about how the breakouts landed for the dealers. It did change things, and I'm like, oh, well, that's interesting. That doesn't make sense. And I'm like, oh, well, that's nice. I see that. So there were some changes there. I think I can say this. You guys like information, don't you, listener? That's why you love us over here at the Pinball Show. I can say that the MFRP for these, and there are different forms of you can do a map, minimal advertising price, what we're allowed to advertise them for. Stern in the past has had MURPs, the lowest we're allowed to sell it for, the floor. But we can't advertise at that price. So they matched a lot of these things. So very much like the other manufacturers. Other manufacturers, the Chicago Gaming Company, they've got one price, they've got one price. J.J.P., they've got one price. You can't advertise any lower than that one price, and that price is universal. I heard from a not-Zach source that the pros were completely unified, so the MSRP is everything now. Correct. That's right. So, yeah, there is, for the pro there, it's $69.99. Do you think that's a strategy to try and eliminate some of the smaller distributors? because I had heard reports that the smaller distributors often relied upon people. You know, they wouldn't advertise it, but they would just sell it at a map or something and sell for lower, and that's how they stayed afloat. But now with it. It could be. I mean. Now with it being the same as the MSRP, their one advantage to turning to Joe Bob's Stern dealer is gone. Yeah. Yeah. And MSRP is the same for LEs as well. It's $12,999. That's the lowest you can advertise for. That is it. I wouldn't mind if people are like, oh, all these little dealers. They're really hardworking little dealers that are putting in the work. I would never want to see them go away. But there are plenty of dealers out here that are just, I'm sorry. They're billiard stores, and they know nothing about pinball. They're dealers, and they'll sell them if they can, but they're not ordering inventory. I want them to go away. They're a succubus. They're taking all of our hardworking dealers a lot mess. So, yeah, I'd be okay if they went away and went away far away. That's an interesting dynamic that we have in the dealership network. So the reason these things aren't coming out until later, we'll talk about a production update, but basically bonds aren't starting until November. Production is not starting until November. We have a whole month, people, of October that we get no bonds. It's very different. And that's parts delays. They told us parts delays are the issues for that. I'm very confused about that, Zach. Because I just, again, especially with the delays that they ended up doing, why do the reveal now if they're so far out from production? They don't normally do that. Well, I think because it aligns with the 60th anniversary kind of thing of James Bond. They knew that they were going to have events that they were going to. They probably planned on having this thing out in August and then start going to these different 60th anniversary events. I guess. You know, there was a rumor that this has shifted and that Venom was supposed to be first, but it got punted. That, I don't know. I heard some of those rumors, but I don't know. That's why we call it a rumor, because we don't know if it's true. I don't know. It could very well be not true. Or maybe this is just a hidden way to develop KOMOR. Who knows? So 60th anniversary. So there's an Elwynn bond. A lot of questions with the release of this game. A lot of questions with the production of this game. A lot of questions with Goldfinger and where that's at. and is it coming in the future? Questions about accessories. They said coming soon. Topper, art blades, armor. As soon as the Godzilla toppers come. Who knows? And the other question, the big question in the room is, yeah, the 60th anniversary James Bond 007 game designed by Keith Elwin. Here are some of the things, listener, that you may or very well may not know. We know it's a Keith Elwin design. We know that it will be limited to 500 units. That's half of the LE for the regular cornerstone. We know that they're aiming at starting to produce this game in late December. So we get a late December Q4 kind of release here. We know that it's going to be a street level. Single level. It's going to be a single level. Gary called it a retro-inspired play field. Okay. Well, yeah. Dang it. No ramps. No whamps. Do you think L1 will have the shoot the whamps inserted in there just like as a joke? Shoot the whamps, pussy. It could be any bond. We could get Pierce to say that. Shoot the ramps. Christmas Jones. No WAMPs. Retro-inspired play field. It is going to, it's supposed to incorporate all 25 Bond films and the Bond actors. Gary and Seth said there are ball-activated mechanical devices in the game. That's an fancy way of saying, what is it, like a bash target? Yeah, stand-ups. Super stand-up WAMP. But, I mean, maybe there are interactive mechs in this game. That's an awful wordy way to describe it. They described it also, this Elwynn game, this special game, as a classic drop target game with ten drop targets. That is a lot of drops in this day and age. It is. Kinetic spinning disc. Versus the non-kinetic one. I think they said odd jobs hat, probably. Oh, okay. Does that make sense? As I'm saying this, I'm like, am I allowed to review it? I think so. Multiple fast-flowing spinners. The Insider Connected podcast transcript interview said four spinners, which I can't think. I was trying to think of a single level with four. I could not. Right into the pinball network at GMO.com, if you know of a single level that had four spinners. I can think of three spinners on several, but I struggled to find four. In fact, I couldn't think of four. And we oftentimes, on Keith Elwin Designs, people love the placement of his spinners, because they are fast-flowing, multiple-combo-shot spinners. And I also read they're all four-opto. Whoa! That would be sweet. Diamonds are forever. Now, here's... Here's a detail. He jarred out Craig Bobby. Roger Moore is... Diamonds are forever. Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to... I expect you to... I don't know. That's a Ryan Seed call back there. skipping stones. I don't know. A bit of a controversial topic here is that when describing this game, Gary and Seth indicated to dealers that it would have mechanical scoring reels. Now, Dennis talked about it earlier, listener. There was a leak on the 007 shop or website that showed the 60th anniversary game, but it had an LCD screen with digital animation of mechanical reels. I didn't zoom in and enhance, but I saw that. It was about the history. I had only heard screw reels. I hadn't heard mechanical because I wasn't part of the district call. But I was like, really? Which made me think that that was a thing. But if it came from that 007 website. They didn't mock it. I mean, they didn't make their own art for that. And speaking of woof, oh, my gosh. I get it, 25 films, but did we have to collage all the posters? My sister wrote to me. She does not like doing box pinball machines. But she wrote to me about, she and her husband, they have a couple, a couple machines. And she wrote to me and she goes, I finally saw the Bond. And finally, first I didn't know which. And then I realized she'd seen the Elwynn Bond. She's like, why is it a collage? She wasn't very nice about it. Why is it a collage? And I'm like, I don't, I guess the license. The artist likes scrapbooking. You get one thing, Toaster, and that's it. I don't know what your sister's name is, but she feels like a tabby. I think I'm going to start calling her Tabby. She's not a tabby. That would be the name of a cat. It's better than calling her Pushy Creshole. Pushy Creshole. I'm going to go with Tabby. Darian says, there's a Playfield mounted LCD screen on the 60th anniversary James Bondable's opening game. Where? Like Highway Alien in the Playfield? A playfield monitor could be Star Wars. It's going to be like a tablet, but it's not really a tablet, Toy Story style. Rumors were that they're going to take the same size monitor from the home pin and put it somewhere on the playfield. But I'm like, man, if you're featuring all 25 Bond films, damn it. Make the monitor bigger. If anything, don't make it smaller. It's got to be a baby monitor. The monitor for ants? The monitor for manatees? It does come with, we saw these leaked photos, if they are true, comes with armor and a topper. And people are shitting on this topper. I think the topper's sleek and sharp. That's actually the best looking part of it. I like it. I don't know. For those of you who have not seen the pictures, they're floating around on Facebook right now. Yeah. I mean, my impression, and again, I couldn't see the play field, so I don't know. But it is an L1. When I saw the decisions for the art and digital reels and all that and home pin style displays, not home pin as in the final tap. We'll get to that later. My impression was, wow, they are really just testing how powerful the Elwynn name is. It felt like everything else was just like not a reason that you'd want it. But maybe that's all you need. Well, I think it is. I think that, how many calls have you, Zach, reveal this. How many calls have you already had to order one of these? Because I have a feeling it's more than three. I would say over 40, probably. Okay. People want to know. That's all it takes. People want to know. That's how it wins power. Because he hasn't failed us yet. No, he hasn't. But, again, it's like how we used to do this a few years ago with Lyman Sheets code. Yep. I knew plenty of people. If Lyman was on the game, the game was bought. And you could say, well, look at how bare-bones Elvira, or not Elvira, but Batman 66 was. And it's like, it doesn't matter. You know that Lyman was going to make it good. It's the code. And in this case, Elwin's rules and Elwin's layouts have always been winners. Especially when we know his history of competitive pinball. This is his first time to really showcase a nostalgic, classic feel to a game. My favorite thing is he was, I guess, on a stream, and it talked about how he wasn't reskinning Quicksilver, and everyone just switched that to, Elwin said he's not doing a 007. Oh, really? Yes. That's funny. It's just like, oh, my gosh, people. It's just like, they convinced themselves. The lie sets in, and they're like, he lied to us. Elwin lied. He's a traitor. How do you say that? How many drops does Quicksilver have? You know, I don't. I thought I had more than one bank, so I don't. I don't know. And this, in the interview, the Gomez interview on Stern Insider, again, I didn't hear the interview. I read the transcript, which the transcript's voice to text wasn't always the best, because I think at one point Keith became Keith Olsen. So I was getting very confused. But I think there's not only the drop, a bank of drops, but there's also a set of inline drops. Oh, I do love some inline drops. I always want them to bring that back. Dolly. You could get a Fathom revisited and revisit those inline drops. Or a TNA 2.0, which Scott Danesi said don't call it a 2.0, but Spooky calls it a 2.0. We'll call it what we want to. I would do what we want. We made Halloween. So that's about all we know for the 60th anniversary James Bond 007 Keith Elwin designed game. I don't know. When people ask me, I don't know pricing. There's rumors out there that dealers get to set the pricing. I have no clue. I don't know my allotment of how many we will get. I don't know when they will reveal this game. They did say very soon. And if they're planning on producing it in December, I would say maybe one of these events at the end of the month here might be a good guess. All right, so that's all we know. That's a lot. We know a lot, Dennis. Are we behind the curtains now? We know maybe too much. Ooh, maybe we do, Pushy. We even know about production scheduling updates over at CERN Pinball. A lot of changes since we last spoke, listener. For example, Star Wars Premium is online right now. Your last call for Guardians Pro starting this week. First week of October, we're finishing up some Led Zeppelin Premiums and then starting... We're starting a new additional run of Godzilla Premium. People don't like it. Yes, they do. We love your adorable roar. One person doesn't like it. Third and fourth weeks of October. Wait, huh? Okay. Turtles? So Turtles was bumped from December to this month and bumped back to December. Now they're bumping it back up to October. Huh, okay. Now Turtles is in October. I've got terrible turtle rage if I went into Turtles because I'm getting really confused. Oh, probably because you're not part of the turtle club. Yep. First and second weeks of November, Star Wars Home Edition. Ooh, the movie and the comic versions. And they're going to do all those homepins before Q4 here. So second week in November, they're going to simultaneously run the James Bond Pro for locations only. Everybody's like, can I get in on your first run, Pro? Yeah, that's me. And you're always like, no, Dennis, I'm not allowed. People think I'm always lying. I'm like, why am I subjected to your stupid rules? I will send you the form that Stern now makes dealers fill out for every damn one of these location pros. Is it the Stern Army? Is it not? What's the address? Who's the operator? What's the operator's email? What's the operator's... Oh, my God. Second week of November is James Bond Pro, four locations. End of November, Jurassic Park Home and James Bond LEs. Mow, mow, mow, mow, mow, mow, mow. Early. This still seems so far out for a game that just revealed. Early to mid-December, James Bond Premium. That first run might get before Christmas time, unless the Creso Grinch steals it. Oh, I don't know. Steals. I don't know. Steals. Late December is James Bond 007 60th Anniversary Edition. Late December. And everybody right now is saying, Zach, what about Elvira's House of Whores? Uh-oh. Den Dan. Mmm. The whores have left the building. They're going to be bumped to next year. Oh. Oh, no. But it's okay because the old price has still been locked in. Okay, so here's the thing on that. They're hoping Q1 production, but there's still going to be a price increase for Elvira. They just don't know what it is yet, just like I said last time. And then if you guys are looking forward to a James Bond Pro for your home or a premium, the second runs of James Bond Pro and Premium will be April 2023. And then effective... You heard me right. April 2023 for the second run pro and premium of the new Cornerstone release of James Bond. October, November, December, January, February, March, April. Shit! Seven months. Jesus. You know how many emails I get to answer that says, hey, if I were to buy a premium, can you give me the first run of the premiums that's coming out in November? It always makes me feel bad. I don't blame those people because I would want a first run, too, so I'd call around, too, but I'm like, nice. I don't have a lot of firsts. They're like, either you can give me a first run or I'm out. Or I'm out. It is a long wait. It's not like they're being asked to wait 60 days for the second round. It's just so hard to see a sale go away. Other questions about production scheduling include effective immediately all of the home versions of Stern pinball machines have new pricing. Are they lower? We get immediate pricing for Bond when it comes out. That price increase. We see the same thing for the home pin versions which are now all $49.99. Take it to the bank. Ouch. Starting now. And then new pricing. People are like, well, at least the old games are going to... No, new pricing for anything non-Bond and non-Home Game will go into effect January 1. As usual. That's standard. As usual. But for those of you, and I'm sorry for those of you who have a Jurassic Park premium and they're not going to run until next year, a Deadpool, pool. Take your pick of Avengers. If you've ordered it, even if you've paid for it, dealers will contact you for additional funds in order to pay the remainder or else they'll have to cancel. You know, that's one of my least favorite Stern business practices is that. I guess I get it because I don't think Stern's actually requiring the money, but I still think it's kind of tasteless. It's not the buyer's fault that they had to wait this long. No, it's not. I hate that. Damn, I hate it too. And I can't put myself in their shoes and say, oh, I wouldn't do that because technically I am doing that because I'm forwarding it on to the dealer. Yeah, but that's not your choice. No, because the price for the prior price, if I were to say, you know what, I can still sell it to you at that, and I'll just eat the cost and pay you to take pinball machines, which doesn't make business. No, it wouldn't make sense. Going against the agreement that we have signed on a threshold, a floor of a price that we talked about earlier, the MSRP and the mat prep. So I'd be breaking a deal and losing money. It's just that when you've got Jersey Jack, like when they raised the prices on the GNRs and they said everyone's already got a preorder in, old price is honored. We just saw Multimorphic raise the price of their modules. But anyone who ordered before, I think, September 1st got to lock in the old price. You know, it's when you're the outlier, even if you're the biggest manufacturer, you're still the outlier. Like everyone else is doing it in a way that most people would think of as quote unquote fair. Yeah. And I think Devil's Advocate would say the stern pinball CFO right now sit in his office and say, well, that's cute. If we only sold as many games as Multimorphic does, then we can talk about that. He brings your prices and maybe we'll see that. Oh, Mr. CFO, that is your name. You know what I say about all that? That's what I say. You know what I say about all that? GTF! We're not going to talk about GCF right now, but we are going to talk about JJP. Another three-letter... An acronym? An initialism? It's an acronym. Usually I call them initialisms when we say the letters out. A week or two ago on the Flip N Out Pinball stream, go like, follow, and subscribe, the JJP team come and they hung out with the gang over at Studio B, and they played Toy Story 4LE. It was very enjoyable. They talked a lot. So much so that exclusive news came out. Hashtag, where's the media? Hashtag, right fucking here. I missed this part because I only caught the very end of the stream. JT Harkey has been working there for a long time. He's a programmer. He's worked on, you know, the wonkas of the world. He's worked on GNRs. He's worked on all of it. But he announced that he is going to be the lead programmer on the upcoming Steve Ritchie title. Oh, big speed three. Big news. It's the Steve Ritchie's going to get the lead of JT Harkey. Harkey's good, too. I like him. I like him. Peter Dorner's also there. He's the J.D.P. project manager. And he said something that went against what Jack Guarnieri recently said. What? About licensing in Toy Story, Toy Story 4. He said, quote, Say what? Say what? Craig Bobby. He's building a catalog. We've got to watch him, Dennis. He's building a catalog on us. Fucking Hulk 2D2 sitting on a bench. Peter Dorn said the following, quote, Toy Story is a phenomenal license to have. Disney has the absolute right to tell us what to do with the game. So when we were directed to do Toy Story 4, that's all we had to do. With the license, we really didn't have a choice. But Jack said that they were like, we'd love to do Toy Story 4. What a great idea. Let's do it. I don't know what to make of any of this. What do we make of this stuff? You know, I'm wondering if this – I've heard Jack G is more and more distanced from the day-to-day of the company. I mean, push comes to shove, I would probably trust the words of the project manager who would be more directly involved more. But, you know, just all things being equal. But I'm wondering if this is some damage control. Because, I mean, we all saw. I mean, we have eyes. We all saw the reaction of the community after Jack did that interview. I think it was on Super Awesome. And was like, oh, no, we, yeah, Disney asked us to do Toy Story 4, but we were all like all in. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's like, and the community's response has been, you have got to be kidding me. Doing just one, just the first three, or all four, are all superior choices to just doing Toy Story 4. Absolutely. It's like an objective fact. And I'll pull back the curtain a little bit here. Whenever I heard Jack Wennery say that on that podcast interview, number one, I was like, even if that were the case, what the fuck? Why would you say that? Number two, I was taken back by it because it did go against the information that I did have as well coming from the offices in the factory over in Chicago. Well, it was every – I had heard they had to do it. Up until that interview, that is all I had heard. But again, you know, I'm hearing things secondhand and stuff. So I'm like, okay, well, Jack's now saying, no, they chose it. And it's like, he's an official employee, owner type. I don't know what exactly his relationship is anymore with the investors. But it's like, when he came out and said, like, it was voluntary, it just, I mean, even if it was true, it looked really bad. It just looked like you didn't know, like you had bad decision making. And it did not air. There were additional pieces of the featurette when we were doing the Toy Story 4 thing for Straight Down the Middle. There were additional pieces that just didn't make the cut. You have to make these things. So we were going to release it later, but I can say, you know, Pat Lawler is no longer with Jersey Jack Pinball. He had full intention and did discuss that on the featurette, and it just didn't fit in the featurette. But he said that, and that's where I got the info from, straight from the horse's mouth. Isn't that what they say? Why does it have to be the horse's mouth? I don't know. He doesn't look like a horse. He's not very horse-like. But straight from his mouth, he said initially, paraphrasing here, he said initially, yeah, the idea was to do just the Toy Story branding and theming. Assets would have been significantly different, maybe not up to the par of what we wanted. But then over time, as the film got delayed and then the license kind of got delayed, design maybe got delayed, all that. But then, yeah, they were then pushed to, hey, you're doing Toy Story 4. Like, that's the newest product that we have out film-wise. That's got the best digital assets. Everything else is archaic now with visualizations. We want you to do Toy Story 4. So I was surprised, too. Eh, who knows? You know what else surprises me? No. That there's going to be no Stern tour, physical tour, this year at Chicago Pinball Expo. Interesting. It's always. They always have a tour. It's going to be virtual again. I mean, they had to do it virtually last year, but Chicago still had a lot of pretty stringent pandemic requirements last year during Expo. But those are lifted now. Yeah. This year, JJP stepped in and said, we're going to do the factory tour at Expo, but we're not going to charge a dollar for it. I think the other ones, I think Chicago Expo was charging $50 for a stern tour. This is free. Not only is it free, you're not in school buses. These have training up coach buses that people are going to be riding in. Oh, I know people who love their bags. Yeah, charter buses. Oh, coach. I'm glad you caught that. Make sure that you hop on a bus, I think Thursday morning, and head over to the factory. It is a cool factory. I liked it. Only other news this week we've got, and we don't have time to talk about, we've got Chicago Gaming Company. They're expected to start shipping the Cactus Canyon remake LEs in a couple weeks here. Oh, finally. So those should be coming out two or three weeks ago. Those have been solved. Yeah, they have the parts for it and everything. It's just building them now. And then Home Pin revealed this is Final Tap, a pinball machine. Was it? I mean, yeah. You know what? I'm going to say this. I could care less about that theme. I don't even think I've seen that whole movie. The art is atrocious. The topper almost makes me want to like it, but it looks like I built it. Yeah, I got to say, Stern kind of got a mini-boon with the critiques about the James Bond art, and then those Spinal Tap play field pictures came out. It was like, okay, you want true Photoshop era, here you go. No, so, so true. So I don't. And the price, though. The price is just atrocious. The price, and that's the thing. There are some people that they love the theme. They give a lot of it to pass. That price is like $10.50 US. It's a lot. Nope. I think all a potential buyer or interested party would need to know is that this person designing this game or running this company chose to put an LCD screen and a fucking orange DMD. And if you look anything past that, I don't care if it shoots like a Keith Elwin, it's a bad product. Come on. Come on. Read the room. Get with the time. Yeah, it was a shockingly weird decision. And I was wrong. It's not $10,500. It's $9,500 is the price. Okay, so $5,000 too much. The design did not look horrible, though, the layout. No I would say again I only saw like 20 seconds of gameplay Again potato cam No one bothered to do anything proper But it did look like it would play better than Thunderbirds Yes. Yep. But it looks like a shit game. I don't really want to cover it. It's not a $9,500. You look at that and you're like, it doesn't look like a $9,500 game at all, even in this market. That's your news. Bing. Dennis, pinball market trends takes all shapes and forms. It comes in all sizes and colors. It doesn't discriminate. It's a living, breathing segment that people have come to love and respect and follow and trust. It's the type of pinball segment you want to take home to meet your parents. But it's also the segment that may get caught out in the backyard smoking a stogie with its future father-in-law. To you all, it's simply unfiltered entertainment. but the best forms of entertainment always come with a healthy dose of truth. This is Pinball Market Trends. Trending up this week is Stern Pricing. I say that tongue-in-cheek, but it is true that Stern's recent announcement of price increases, some of the models being very significantly increased, it will have an effect on the market moving forward. Some may call this another correction in the ever-evolving, living, breathing market. Now, to a certain extent, sure, but overall, I'm not yet convinced. As long as Stern Pinball continues to be the preferred product for hobbyists and operators, it's certainly going to help uphold the value of newer games, especially that Spike 2 catalog. And now it certainly does make sense for some titles, such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Led Zeppelin, to be retiring, which is going to help hold the value of those titles that probably wouldn't see significant additional sales from a future January 1 price increase that's coming. But games like Avengers, Infinity Quest, Iron Maiden, Deadpool, Jurassic Park, and even the competitive pinball darling Rush, those games are sought after. Even with a price increase coming Jan 1, they will still sell. They will still sell well. And the reference to the correction that I'm speaking of is that these new in-box titles by Stern that are going up at the beginning of the year will help stabilize the secondary market on used Spike suit games. You're not going to see Deadpool significantly creep down now because new premiums are no longer $89.99. for $96.99. You cannot purchase a brand new in box Iron Maiden LE, but if you have a used one and new LEs are going for $13,000, that makes that $15,000 secondary market Iron Maiden LE stay at $15,000 a little longer. And I say all this hesitantly because I don't believe that it's going to drastically affect the marketplace maybe as it has in the past with these price increases. But it certainly is another technique and tactic to use to continue selling products that everybody has to have regardless of price, it seems like, and stabilize that of trending down values of the remainder of your catalog. It's economics, people. Turning up this week is Pinball Party Podcast. Remember, don't lie. Put in the air horn there. We only report the facts. This poor guy jumps in with a new podcast here. We jump in at episode five once he joins TPN. Yeah, you, like, seduced him into joining TPN. Well, you know. Because you're like, there's this podcast, and I think it's really good, and I think we should ask him if he wants to join. All shucks and kicking rocks. You know, maybe you just ask him. He seems like a good guy. I know, I know. It's like, because I'm going to be on the episode that premieres on the network. Air horn. Will you join me? Pew, pew, pew. There you go. There's your air horn pushing. Pinball Party Podcast. The only reason I'm training him up is because, objectively, numbers do not lie. Hot damn. Maybe it's because it was our only podcast last week. Woo. That thing's soaring high. A lot of great feedback, too. So for those wondering if it's not doing well, I assure you it's doing very, very well. Also treating up this week is pinball machine artwork prior to 2022. What happens on pinball artwork? So what's going to win this year? I'm going to guess it's got to either be Toy Story 4 or maybe Rush. What happened? Stern, look, I get it. I get it with the whole Franchi thing. You know, I understand. Believe me. That doesn't mean that you can't have artists come in that do what he does. Give us some of the people love Franchi art. Their hands were tied, Zach. Tied hands are a death sentence. They're like a tiny hand. As I get it, like, just give us back what we want. We want Zombie Getty and we want Franchi. That's what we want. Dirty Donnie. I put Dirty Donnie. I know this is going to be a strong take. I put Dirty Donnie there with the Johnny Crack. Give me some Randy Martinez again. Even J.J.P. Come on, really. Just imagine Randy Martinez. I know he could do lots of art, but I just imagine James Bond play field. Bond just has Mandalorian helmets on him in every spot. Sean Connery. light sabers everywhere. It's like it's been it's been randified. I want to see Baby Yoda strapped down to the laser gold finger table about to get cut in half. Like, for whatever people want to say about Franchi, like, this freaking art is gorgeous. Like, I want them to take Franchi's portfolio. This is Stern. Even if they don't want to hire Franchi again, take all of his artwork and all of his shit he's trying to sell that he's not supposed to be selling. Take it to all these artists and be like, can you do this? This is what the pinball people want. And just give us that. Man, American pinball. I'm paying attention to you as well. No more Oktoberfest. We want good artwork. Artwork sells. It feels like we're taking a step backwards. Am I crazy? I wouldn't mind. Am I taking a crazy pill? No, I don't know. I mean, you've been talking about, you talked about on the party podcast about, you know, pinball improving every year. And I'm kind of wondering, and maybe it's just because of the releases. Obviously, we're not at the end of the year yet, but I'm starting to think 2022 might be seen as an inferior year to 2021. Oh, you Godzilla-bias bastard. I know it's not fair, really, for me to bring that up, but, I mean. You may be right. I don't want to agree with you on that. Do you think we see another reveal from Stern this year? No, I do not. Especially not with Bond production happening until November. Okay. So we get one more reveal from Stern, essentially. We get a JJP reveal? Maybe. I think maybe. My spies are telling me that that comes down to parts. Oh, look at you. We met Connor. Go check it out, EGP. Chicago Gaming, do we get another? I mean, they're still doing Cactus Kings. Do we see anything else this year from them? All signs point to yes. What? Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. What about from? Haggis. What about from August? No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I stopped to unbox my bad and it's sitting there. Oh, I'm mad. Pinball Adventures? You know what? Maybe. Getting closer. Punnier things have happened. You know, that's not the only game they got in the works. What about Multimorphic? Well, they just had Weird Al this year. I don't, not with the backlog on that, no. Okay. No, that doesn't count third party reveals. Turner Pinball? So, there might be a third party. No. That's it. No. Oh, I didn't know where I'm at. I forgot about that. You get it. Bring back. Why don't you bring up Great Lakes Pinball while we're at it? Weren't they going to do Deja Vu or something? I've been in this. I'm like Pepperidge Farm, okay? I've been in this hobby a long time. I remember some of the companies that didn't ever put out anything. Raisin Bran, two scoops. Yeah. I just, wrapping up, Stern, you know what we want. Please. Just give us what we want. That's all we want. Bring back the art. Bring back the WAMPs. There's going to be a mutiny, Dennis, if the WAMPs pullouts don't get updated. We want those back. The WAMP day is right up there with when Scott, like, ruined the beep on TNN. Yes. That's right. Yeah. It does deserve to trend down. The new update for Godzilla, they got rid of a lot of shit. The WAMPs. Yeah. And we are not happy. No. We need those WAMPs. We have embraced this whole out as a bubbly bobo, and we want them back. We want them back. Yes. We demand them back. We bring joy to ourselves by saying that one. It's like when Scott Danesi changed the beep on the TNA. That's right. He's like, well, it's more audio balance and all that for the song. I'm like, no, I don't care. It's beep. Don't beep me. It should be obnoxious and beepy. I don't beep with my TNA anymore. Do you not? I did on the old beeps. Wow. And it took my beep joy away, and now my wamp joy is gone. We need it back. Elwin, don't be hard-headed. Elwin, don't make me choose Rush. Don't make me choose Rush over Godzilla. You're a hard-headed guy. I need my wamps. But we want our wamps back. How will I know to shoot them if you do not tell me to? That's right. And sadly, it's not all praise and trendings up here on Pinball Market Trends. Trending down this week, I've got to do it. Canada's Pinball Podcast. Now, I was hesitant to even put this discussion into Pinball Market Trends because this segment's often filled with gimmicks, silliness, entertainment techniques, bad impersonations. But today, I'd like to be a little bit more frank, a little bit more serious because trending down a fellow podcast channel is something not to be taken lightly. In the past, I've poked my friends and trended them up and down, and it was done so with an understanding and good fun. But this last week, I've heard myself, sometimes my family, my personal information, discussed on Canada's Pinball podcast or live stream, to the point that even I am tired of hearing about myself on someone else's media channel. Many of you listeners may not know the things I'll be referencing. Many of you don't care to hear about pinball media drama, and admittedly feels kind of icky even having to spend time on this. So I understand. that doesn't make it any less important, though, to discuss. And my focus and discussion this week on Kanae's Pinball Podcast may not be of central focus to the provider and host themselves, but rather to many of those who consume said content. I've listened to many episodes of Chris's podcast, watched a lot of live streams. He's talented in so many ways, very entertaining. Controversy sells, literally sells. He does the Patreon thing, which he's doing well with. There's so many attributes to this person and what talents they have and can provide for this industry, community, hobby. But sadly, a pervasive pattern of behavior occurs that needs further analysis. Dennis is no longer on the call. He'll be back. So these are my thoughts, my experiences. And before you write this off as just more pinball drama, I encourage you to listen. and maybe even you a good exercise on putting yourself in other people's shoes. Chris Kouleris, or Kaneda as he calls himself, has a pattern of behavior that at this point is pretty calculated, charted up pretty easily, and while I will not map that out, I will say that a lot of his recent content not only discusses myself, but also has the potential at harm. His content is consumed by many. His content is paid for by many. but much of his behavior has been and is at times harmful, negative, and cringy to a lot of the people that you respect in this industry. I've been accused of a lot of things this last week by Chris, including but not limited to him getting banned from the Chicago Pinball Expo. That's a rumor going around and publicly and live on the internet. First reaction was to blame myself and my wife Nicole many for the reason that he was banned from a pinball convention. That's simply not true. We've talked on here and other media outlets have talked about the upcoming fundraiser at the Pinball Expo called Flippin' the Script on Autism. It's a fundraiser to help with children's autism efforts and treatments, therapies. The Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, Josh and Scott, have created this fundraiser, and they've put in so much work alongside many other media outlets to make this thing a success, which makes me proud to even be in the industry when people are giving back to the extent that they will be. Canada got wind of this fundraiser and wanted to participate. And while everyone would love to maximize participation in a fundraiser for children, sometimes it's not always the most appropriate to have every party involved. Chris has burned a lot of bridges in this industry and has caused harm. And for those people receiving such harm, it is hard to forget. And it's hard to stay focused when a participant has caused so much conflict in the past. I was told he was banned from Expo, and once Chris found out that he was asked not to participate with, whether it's live streaming or interviewing or anything, he threw a fit and made insinuations that he would make attempts to disrupt the fundraiser that was going to go on. He also took the time to again publicly, live, internet, blame myself for organizers to ask him not to be part of the fundraiser. Again, if he only knew, I mean, just simply, simply not true. He blamed TPN for why he couldn't be a part of the fundraiser again. Objectively and factually, not true. And that's fine, as long as the truth is out there. The issue and the pattern behavior that I'm just frankly, I'm getting just tired of dealing with, is creating a narrative, a drip feed for others to consume. That does affect the reputation of a person, whether it's the truth or not. If you spoon-feed little bits of false information long-term, it does have lasting effects. And whether you delete a video after you're severely inebriated, saying hateful things, toxic things, placing blame where it should not be placed, and saying people by name, that type of high emotion is hardwired pretty quickly to the consumer of that content. So whether you delete that video later or you say you're sorry when you're sober, that doesn't take away the damage that possibly occurred. We all make mistakes. Lord knows I've got a Santa Claus list full of them. But the difference being, if I've made a mistake, not only do I learn from that mistake, but I immediately change my behavior. And as I'm consuming a Canadas Pinball podcast over the years, two or three times a year, we will receive such behavior quickly followed by deleting all evidence that it happened so that only your true hardcore target audience intakes that information and then immediately followed with a quick apology. Oftentimes, I was drunk. I'm sorry. Look, you know, you can't tell me you've not done, made a bad decision when you're drunk. And many of us can say we have, but the boy can cry wolf only so many times. But when behavior becomes pattern to this point, apologies are no longer acceptable. The only thing acceptable is action. Last week, during this intoxicated rant that Kaneda had, I was brought up numerous times. My home for sale was brought up with, you know, information to where my family and I live. He was talking of my financials. There were links in his chat with his strongest supporters discussing this. I had people, my wife and I are selling our home, and I've had some of the strong followers he has linking other people on our home for sale, the page linking others to our home and our information to keep up with what Kaneda is talking about. This is public information. I mean, it's doxing-esque, but that's not the big deal here. I mean, you've got to do what Google is out there. but it's going to be crazy if I feel a little bit weirded out by or scared by the fact that myself, my family, are being brought up in a live public conversation fueled with hate and anger and done so in a way to put a spotlight on us as the cause of conflict when we have or had nothing to do with any of the complaints being made. I'm speaking on my platform because I'm trying to do so in a fair way that while I don't want to talk about this, I'm choosing to talk about this because I'm saying it's making myself and my wife uneasy. We've been through a lot this year, and adding additional stress and feelings of unease and possible safety issues, we just don't need it. I've said before, it's not so much Chris Coolers that I'm worried about. Pattern behavior, I can predict. I'm more concerned with maybe some of you listening right now that are so enmeshed in the narratives, in the toxicity. I can't predict your behavior. I don't know you. And it only takes one person to try to be a hero for someone like Kaneda that they may look up to. It only takes one person to make that quote-unquote just a mistake while I was drunk for my entire world to be gone. So I understand some of you listeners, this is a hobby for you. And I want it to be the most gratifying, entertaining, fun-filled hobby ever. I don't want, as someone whose livelihood is around pinball, I don't want you to have to worry about this kind of stuff. It doesn't affect your life. Sure, but it affects mine. And I just ask that you're cognizant of that and you don't brush that off as if it is everyone's hobby. For some people, it is their lives. This is supposed to be fun, this drama, playground behavior, spatting back and forth. I'm encouraging you to realize that that type of quick blanket that you throw over something may be encouraging it. We don't need this type of behavior. I want it to be a hobby for everybody. But it can only be that way if people are safe. You know, Chris sells negativity. He boasts about getting leaked information. He pokes at content creators in general, just not for being his perception of as good as he is, creating podcasts. Us content creators, we try to bite our tongue. You know, it is what it is. But other things, at this point, I'm in a position to speak out against. And that's where I'm at today. I'm tired and no longer will I accept this type of behavior towards myself or to others. When he calls for the termination of industry employees, marketing employees of firm pinball, of Jersey Jack pinball, he publicly calls for their job terminations. That behavior is unacceptable. That behavior is disgusting. And the irony of all of it is him doing so live from his place of business, his place of employment, a marketing firm. Chris said in a recent live stream that his employer was all in on himself in the pinball industry and the content he creates. I hope that that is merely a fabricated statement by himself because I don't know any company that would be okay with an employee from their property, their building, calling for the job terminations of another fellow marketer. And at the end of the day, just like this podcast, we don't have to listen. But keep in mind that doesn't make it go away. I can turn my cheek to a live stream. I can turn my cheek to a podcast. But it doesn't mean that I'm any safer. It doesn't mean I'm shielded. The only way for it to stop is for Chris to stop the behavior. Many of you support him not only by consuming his content, but by paying him. And look, you can rationalize that all you want. I'm only paying for the rumors that he gives. I'm only paying for the entertainment. Dammit, you're paying for his content, and his content many times is harmful to other people. That's why I talked about that blanket. No longer should you pull the wool over your eyes for your own selfish entertainment purposes. There is a line there, people, and I have no issue with someone supporting what they believe in, whether it be audio consumption or monetary fulfillment. But don't try arguing with me that by doing so, you get to pick and choose what you're supporting. That's garbage. And I will leave the somber pinball market trends with this. Moving forward, no one should be quiet about rhetoric that wants to minimize behavior during an intoxicated state. There are many of you listening and people you love, many women in the world that have been affected, who have been harmed, who have lived in fear simply because a man had one too many. That shit's got to stop. That behavior is unacceptable. That behavior is often misconstrued by its strongest supporters. This isn't cancel culture. I can't stand that shit either. This is humanity. This is morality. This is right from wrong. It is pretty easy to dissect. That's why I'm speaking out on it on my platform, that you can choose or choose not to listen to now or in the future. But it's important to me. And this silly little hour to two-hour show every week, every other week, is my way of not only informing and entertaining, but to grow from. And I just hope that with the many listeners that we have, some of you can grow along with me. For most of you, it is just a hobby. I want it to continue just being a hobby. But never forget that behavior is behavior, no matter where it happens. And ladies and gentlemen, that was this week's Pinball Market Trends. I do truly appreciate your time. Let's close it out, Dennis. How can people get a hold of you? Easiest way is email. Click the Gamers Podcast at gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash click the Gamers Podcast. Use Messenger tool. I check those regularly. You've been on fire with watches with Dennis. Go check that out. Follow, subscribe to that as well. You've got another this or that talk coming out, don't you? Tots. Tots for days. Got Tots coming up on Thursday. Tots are hot. Live Tots. We do the polls live. We do it only on YouTube so I can do the polls. And I think you teased a little bit of a pinball sprinkle in this next episode. I've got one. Oh, I only did it on our private TV and Discord, but since you've leaked confidential messages. Yes. Actually, there will be a matchup that will involve a pinball machine as one of the choices. I've got so many guests who are pinball people that it's like, oh, I might as well. You've got to go check that out. Actually, I had a listener request it, too, so I was like, okay. Go check that out. You can check out Straight Down the Middle. We've got some fun, exciting stuff coming up that's more official in the coming, I guess in the coming months. It's going to be released. We also have some Halloween-themed pinball content coming up in the month of October for Straight Down the Middle. And flipping out pinball. If you're ready for a brand new pinball machine or a used pinball machine, some pinball accessories or whatnot, arcade games, you name it, we got it, over at Flip N Out Pinball. Product showcase this week. I'm going to say it. All the premiums that we have in stock, because come January 1st, those damn things are going to go up $700. Why not buy what we have in stock now for the price it is right now? Mandalorian premium, Rush premium. Why are you going to pay more money January 1st? Get it now. Buy, buy, buy! Put it in the storage for Christmas, but buy it now. Save some money. Oktoberfest Classic, we do have in stock. Mandalorian Pro and Premium, like I said. Rush is in stock. Star Wars Pro, I think I even have some premiums coming. Get the old price now. Led Zeppelin Pro and premiums. Get the old price. Cactus Canyon Remake SEs, we do still have some in stock. Every time we get those things in, they're like, oh, see you later, Godzilla Pro. Oh, see you later, Cactus Canyon. They're in and they're out. Toy Story 4 LE and CE, we still have spots available for that. G&R LE, we have some pre-owned ones there, as well as Amanda Pro pre-owned. Iron Maidens, I'm going to list it. Follow us on Facebook. I'm going to list some used Iron Maiden Pros. And that thing ain't getting made until next year, so you know the price is going to shoot up on that. Elvira 40th Anniversary, oh, so many people are tickling. They just tickle. They want it so bad, but they just don't want to pull the trigger. Buy, buy, buy! Maybe they will now that Elviras have been bumped to next year. Here's your chance to have a brand-new sparkly purple one. with custom tagger, Shooter Rod. You guys can order accessories, pre-order accessories from us. We're taking lists for Bond, Topper, that may be your Shooter Rod. We're taking lists for all of it. We didn't even talk about the LA side art, the black and white. I mixed on it. I think it'll look good, though. Golden Tees 2022. Oh, CGC shaker motors. We haven't had those for a while. We have those back in stock now, so go buy, buy, buy on those. Buy, buy, buy! Escaleras, check us out at Expo. I think we're going to bring a couple if you guys want to pre-order for Chicago Pinball Expo. We will be there. I've got to give a shout-out to Flippin' the Script, fundraiser for Autism, Loser Kid has partnered up with TPN and other media entities to be helping with that, so that big stream. So come check that out. I think I have to do a guest spot. I'm interviewing somebody. Oh, no. What a heavy burden for you. I don't know. I think I'm the headliner. I ain't going to be there. I sent them some EGP stuff. Do you agree with me being the headline of that show? No. Really? Who would you go with? Scott or Josh? Yeah, why not Scott and Josh? We'll lead. They would be a bigger headline than me. Well, I mean, more people like them. Sell, sell, sell! You're being nice now, which makes me think you really do truly believe that. Damn it. Well, TVN last week, there's Pinball Party Podcast, episode five. Go check it out because it featured you. Not the headliners that many, but whatever. The tertiary headline. The opening act. Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, episode 23, live from Cleapin. TPN this week, a bunch of stuff's going on, so much that I can't even list. I do want to take the time at the end of the episode here wishing a friend of the show, Paul Pratzer, of the Delaware Pinball Collective, a speedy recovery from a recent surgery that he had. Wishing you the best, Paul. We're thinking about you. Get well soon. Get well soon. And until next Fortnite, maybe. Maybe I'll do one next week. I don't know. For Dennis Friesel, I'll always be your headline and pushy. Zach Minow. I always say, just remember, if you can't shoot the lamps anymore, just go for the... And to always practice safe pinball. And just remember, the true media is right here. Have a great week, everyone. A person is the person, no matter where they're at. Isn't that a fucking... I think it's a Horton Hears the Who. Or no, no matter how small. That's right. Yay. So you got my Dr. Seuss tropes going here. You're seussing it up. But you know what I say, this is all a bunch of ca-ca. That's. Pinball by ca-ca. Ca-ca market trends. Ca-ca. I can't do that one with the opening. It's time for pinball market trends. Ca-ca. There you go. It's like a brand new damn game, The Mandalorian. New season's going to come out. Everybody's going to have a bone for The Mandalorian. Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo. Pick it up. Pick it up. Wham-pa-wham. Wham-pa-wham. Wham. Shoot the center wham over and over again. Yes. Sorry. Oh, Mandalorian. Pinball! Market Trends! Black lung The rasp Pop You've been minding You've been minding You've been minding The spinal tap Too much pop About to get a fucking Spinal tap On the 6th of October It's about time You got that back fixed Some black lung Damn Man Tickled me like Craig Bobby Tickles What Poor Joel.