Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside Pinball Podcast. I'm your host Retro Ralph, and this is episode 11. Thank you so much for all your support. Definitely feels really good to see the kinds of people and the numbers that are going up and up and up on all the episodes I publish. So I really appreciate the support, especially knowing that I'm a little bit newer, you know, as far as Pinball podcast goes. And I know you have a lot of great ones to go out there and listen to. So I appreciate you giving me that consideration. Anyways, today we're going to talk a little bit about what we just saw this past week. It was an exciting week in Pinball because we had the Uncanny X-Men reveal. Then we had the actual Uncanny X-Men live stream. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. And then Jersey Jack finally showed, I say finally because it's been a long project, probably three years in the making, they finally showed Avatar. And I think I have some opinions on that, so I'd love to share that with you. So let's kind of get into it. So I, for disclaimer purposes, I did pre-order Sight Unseen, the Uncanny X-Men LE. So that should be coming in a couple weeks now. So I'm pretty excited about that. And Stern did something a little bit different with this release. they decided to give early access to the LEs, where normally they make the pro versions of the game first, and those pros are specifically destined for locations. So those would go to pinball locations, pinball bars, and things like that. So that didn't happen this go-round, so you're actually going to see private collectors get it, or private owners get them first. Anyways, that aside, the thing that kind of, you know, obviously the big elephant in the room is, what did I feel or how did I feel about the live stream? And there was a lot of chatter about this. I didn't love it. I didn't love it. Not the gameplay. I didn't say that. I didn't not love the gameplay, but I didn't love the presentation of the live stream. And I'll tell you why. And I have much respect for everyone at Stern, including Jack Danger. But what I felt like after I watched it or while I was watching it is I was underwhelmed with the presentation where it almost seemed like everyone there was just not playing the game well and that kind of did that did provide a little bit of caution on my end because those players like a zach sharp or jack danger they're really good pinball players you know far beyond my skill set when it comes to pinball so it was kind of concerning me because the beginning of that live stream everyone was really just it was throwing up a lot of bricks there was a lot of you know balls being drained and uh that concerned me quite a bit i was like man what's going on but when i took some more time to think about it i was like okay because i was really trying to analyze it and i'm thinking all right the music seems pretty rough in this in this uh in this version of code the just the animations seem light the uh the code itself as far as modes we weren't really getting a lot of exploration of that and then i started thinking well maybe the reason why they didn't make this more of an educational live stream about the game was because a lot of this stuff isn't ready that was my thought and then i listened to um and i'm gonna forget the name of it i'm so sorry i gotta take a drink really quick all right by the way if you go to starbucks these um these new like burst energy things dude it's crazy amount of caffeine in this so i'm like yeah let's go uh but so on the phantom tilt pinball podcast they had which i had never heard of before which is very good by the way i think they're over in um in the uk really really good podcast they had george gomez on their show and joy and they this was right after i believe the trailer it was either right after or right before i think it was after i believe it was after so they were asking him some questions and he sort of this was something that was not knowledge to any of us i don't think but he basically said look there was another game that got bumped to put this game ahead of it because the progress on x-men uncanny x-men was going better than whatever the game was that was supposed to be released so and i don't know what game he didn't say what game that is the only games i know that are like kind of slated from stern to come out or at least highly rumored and somewhat confirmed would be the metallica uh remastered or whatever they decide to call it so i don't know if that was the one i'm not really sure i don't know what they were planning on doing, but whatever it was, they said it wasn't progressing. So they, they, they like rapidly accelerated uncanny X-Men. So he kind of alluded to the code, not really being quite ready. And so that kind of sort of confirmed for me that what we saw in that live stream was that the code just wasn't ready. They had to get the live stream out. They had to do it. You know, obviously because you announced it now, it would be kind of weird if they didn't. And maybe there's a little bit of, you know, you got to think they get into, they get into conference rooms and they discuss uh you know hey what should we do jersey jack is launching avatar they're undoubtedly going to show their game like it would be very weird if we don't stick to a schedule and show the game maybe they would have waited a little bit longer had uh had jersey jack not announced that avatar would be this week to kind of like maybe last minute do some code revision so they get it a little bit tighter but uh they didn't do that that's that's that's probably my guess is that they were in a room thinking about how they're going to plan the rollout right now all this stuff is scheduled, right? They have plans for all this stuff, but maybe they got into the room and went, oh crap, like guys, we're a little bit, we're a little bit behind as far as code goes. Uh, but we kind of have to show it because Jersey Jack's about to drop the avatar trailer. That was really long. I want to say it was like 18 minutes long, but it was, it was very in depth as far as like telling you about the game, how it plays the feature sets. So I think there was like a conscious effort to say, look, we got to do this and yeah, it's going to be a little rough, but we, but we have to. And so did that hurt it or help it? I don't really know. For me, I didn't, you know, I didn't cancel my order. I didn't stop my order. There are people that literally are saying, oh, they're, they're, they're moving their money from one game to the other. I don't know if that's true. Right. Who knows? Maybe there's like a couple. I don't think that's like a widespread thing. And I think the game is going to be really great. I just think in its infancy, there were some things I didn't like. I didn't really, um, I didn't really care for the music. It just seemed like the music was not really giving me this like superhero vibe. it was very like almost uh i don know people had had referred to it as like musac kind of style thing I don know if I would have said that but it just seemed too casual and too chill And it's like when I first plunged that ball, you want to get into the game right away, right? And I didn't feel like it did that. So I think there's definitely some work to do, but all the shot variety and everything is all there. There's some really cool features. So I think the game's going to be great. I just think it's going to take some time. And that's kind of the state of when Stern does a release, which is kind of unfortunate that we've gotten sort of used to that. Like Jersey Jack will work on a game and the game that they release is it's not that the code is the final code, but it is a complete game. And they might add to it over time. But Stern tends to release things more like how the video game industry does. Right. The code is very incomplete when you get it. It is it's what I would call in the software world. It's called MVP. It's minimal viable product. It's like the minimum version you can put out to a customer that you can say it's a game. But is it the complete game? No. And that's kind of what Stern does. It's minimal viable product, right? They give us MVP. And those early adopters need to know and understand that what you're getting is going to get better over time. As Stern does that, that is their workflow. They try to get it as good as it can for that early release, you know, those early adopters. And then it gets better over time. now sometimes it gets a lot better like we saw with james bond and sometimes it's slow like i kind of feel like john wick is slow i'm still enjoying it there are people that don't uh but even in the recent release they added some different music to it like there's some things that when when you trigger a mode the music is different where the music before was kind of it was kind of um really like one or two or three tracks as a matter of fact when you go in there is no jukebox mode this kind of tells you right here there is no or dj mixer mode whatever they call it, where you can listen to the music of the pinball machine. There is no mode for that in John Wick right now. And that leads me to believe it's because all the tracks are not there. Why they're not there, I don't know. So again, that is par for the course with Stern. I'm not saying it's bad. It's just the way they do it. So just know, I think that's why we saw what we saw. Not making excuses. I literally think that's actually what we saw. We saw incomplete code that's still being refined as minimal viable product. And that's why they didn't go through all the feature sets. so i know that might have been a turnoff for some uh it was a slightly i was disappointed i mean i was absolutely disappointed it it it lessened some of my hype for the game but then uh my buddy kale who's uh from from electric bat who's out there right now for the jersey jack media thing where they were showcasing avatar he went over and stopped at stern he's like dude the game shoots awesome you're gonna love it he's like just needs some code work but he didn't say that i'm saying that but uh but he did say he loved he's like man it shoots great you're gonna love it so anyway that's for what that's worth but this week we also got the avatar thing and i will tell you my instant reaction to that long video they posted was like holy crap did they really focus on theme integration now i have to throw out a disclaimer i am not a big avatar fan i watched the first movie when that came out i haven't seen the second one i liked it it was something i definitely talked about, but it wasn't like movies from my childhood where I was like, oh my gosh, I want to rewatch this a bunch of times. It wasn't that way for me. Now, maybe depending on when you grew up and how old you were when you saw the original, maybe that there's some nostalgia there. I just think it was a weird pick and we already had an Avatar game, although this one looks beautiful. I will say this about Jersey Jack. Their games just look beautiful. And I got to give some uh i was listening to a little bit of canada this week and he made some comments that i do agree with he's like look their system seems more advanced than the spike 2 system and what it can do capabilities around light shows and things and i think that i think that's true i mean elliot eisman when um he's the um coder for or sorry not elliot eisman no uh shoot i can't think of his name right now crap um the code developer for for john wick ah tim sexton when when we met tim sexton at the stern tour and he was talking about the capabilities of john wick with the expression lighting and some of that uh he said they were kind of pushing the spike 2 system quite a bit and i thought that was kind of interesting because um that was sort of what kaneda's comment was he didn't go to that degree talking about you know maybe the technical aspects of it but just if you were to visually compare the two you can tell Jersey Jack has a lot more capability and and we may see more of that like an enhanced lighting system capability when it comes to the Spike 3 system which should be whatever the next game is for Stern that will be their next platform it will be the evolution of Spike 2 so who knows what's going to come with that but anyways back to Avatar I was blown away by the trailer it's unfortunate that the game that the theme is avatar though because it's just not something i would want to buy and have in my home but i really want to play it i mean it looks awesome there were some things and i didn't have enough time to really deep dive it because we have family in town but i wanted to still get this podcast out to you there was this feature that i can't remember it's something where like for a period of time you're challenged to play with one flipper only and then you're kind of like hedging your bets on when you want to cash out your bonus i don't know how that works exactly but like as soon as you hit your right flipper i think you the pot like the the bonus pot goes away and i think you but you can build it back up again like that kind of stuff is really innovative and cool like i like that kind of stuff so so i'm like wow they're really thinking about some next level things there's that under play field with the smaller pinball where you're battling again not an don't know avatar enough to know what you're battling under the table or under the machine but under the pinball machine i can't believe i said table i like get so triggered when people call pinball machines tables i don't understand that that came from the virtual pinball world and it drives me nuts when people are like oh look at this cool pinball table like it just sounds weird like no part of me describes a pinball machine as a table so i can't believe i just said that but i don't know i'm weird though certain things trigger me that triggers me so bad i just don't get so i'm triggered myself now i'm triggered anyways so underneath the playfield there's that uh there's a couple of, there's two separate under, under like underworld play fields. And there's a smaller pinball under there. And you kind of have this little mini battle with someone, something in the game. That's the, something in the game. That's part of the movie. I don't, I don't actually know, but there like a lot of cool innovation There the eclipse thing with the lighting system Like there a lot of really cool stuff There some stuff to celebrate here And you know one thing that I say is you know and you guys know I'm like a really big Stern fanboy, is that the quality, like the overall quality aspect of like the amount of money you can tell they put into the feature sets and the toys and mechanisms of the game seem elevated. and and i kind of i guess my perspective of jersey jack has always been they're kind of like this boutique pinball player that our pinball company manufacturer that builds elevated products that have an elevated cost too and so their overall um their overall customer base is like a higher end customer base because i mean you think about it i think their their games it's like 12 grand and 15 grand for their most for their best one it's like i mean 12 999 for an le seems like a crazy amount and now you're talking their version of an le is 15 000 and then you add tax to that and everything so if you're buying that new in box it's a lot of money so but when you look at it you're kind of like wow i kind of see the value for the money now i've never really spent a considerable amount of time with any of the jersey jack games i spent a little bit of time with elton John I really liked that but some of the ones um like Toy Story I actually spent some time with at Southern Fried Gaming Expo and really kind of had a I had a good time with it I wouldn't want to buy it but I had a good time with it and it felt of high quality the only thing that I did notice a big and I know this comes up all the time is people always complain about Jersey Jack like the flippers and how they the the overall like strength of the flippers they feel weaker but that that was definitely resolved um on Elton John so I don't know if that was like a software thing or if there's actually different coils or what, I don't know what they're doing differently in their flippers. Uh, maybe it's just software. Maybe it's just software tuning. I don't know, but it felt more like a stern. I like this. I like the strength of the flippers in a stern. It's just how it, it's what I grew accustomed to. So when I jump over to a game that has like weak flippers, I have a hard time with it. It feels cheap to me. That's just my perception of it. Right. Just my perception. So, so am I excited about avatar? Yeah, I am, but I'm excited to play it. Not excited. I'm not a buyer for that game. And what, what it made me think about, it was like, wow, like I have not really, I have not really taken the time to like slow down and take a look at the quality of a Jersey Jack and it's really good. But my thing is, what if they did a theme I really wanted? I kind of hope they do because I'd like to own one despite the big, the big price tag my only thing that gets in my way is insider connected i put a lot of emphasis on insider connected because i freaking love it it's funny because i have some pinball friends that are older than me and they still are not like big insider connected fans and i don't know why that is but i feel like my age group this like you know i'm 45 by the way but my age group i think that like the 50 and under that are into pinball really like that i that the features of it and i think there's so many cool things they can do with insider connected in the future right and i think there's a big really involved roadmap around it too like one of the things that i would love to see is i'd love to see if me and a friend had a the same game like my buddy nick madsen he has a lot of the same games as me like it would be really cool to play a cooperative game or even a versus game over the internet, right? And if they incorporated like a camera in there, it'd be cool if it was almost like we were hanging out together playing the game, but we're doing that, you know, virtually. That would be so cool. Or even hold your own tournaments, right? Like I could host my own tournament on Insider Connected, do invites, and now all of a sudden we're doing tournaments, you know, virtually. Or even I could participate. Imagine if I could participate in a tournament virtually. Like that would be really cool. Anyways, lots of cool stuff, lots of cool ideas and things that we could do with Insider Connected. But that's my biggest like Jersey Jack doesn't have an Insider Connected. I'm shocked by that. I think there's got to be some roadmap for something like an Insider Connected because that seems like the future where you can enable a lot of cool features that that you can't do if you don't have something like that. So but, you know, kind of going back one more time on Jersey Jack games. I want them to make a theme that I really like, because I think even though if they don't have the online capabilities, I would love to have a Jersey Jack game in my collection and, and kind of, you know, feel that quality of that game. And do I feel like I would regret the purchase at that price? I don't think so. If as long as I felt like I was getting the quality out of it, I do think that, you know, maybe controversial to say, But I do think that an LE is really expensive by Stern, right? It seems like it should be somewhere a tick lower than $12,999.