It's time for a beach episode of Don's Pinball Podcast. Hello, everybody. I've completed the first 24 hours, and I've got some things to report from the show floor here in Pinellas County, Tampa, Florida. The world's most glorious trailer park ever is now full of pinball. Let's go. Hit it. Give me the air horns, man. I've had a request for more of them. So there you go, man. There was a whole handful that I scraped up from the sand myself. Sitting here at the Tradewinds, patio opening up to the pool and the bar and the sand. And what a great time everybody is having. First day was done. Went late into the evening. And I even called it early, like 11 o'clock. It was still going on. So here to report back exactly how each company is represented and what the overall vibe is. Now, first off, early word. Let's just start with Beetlejuice. The 12 games of the show are down here. I had mentioned on live streams that, unfortunately, it turns out it was wrong that they were bringing 10 of these Beetlejuice games because they showed up with 12. All 12 are show games. All 12 show games were sold out months before ever arriving at the show. there are not any down here that are available so yeah i could have tried to scalp some and then run with the cash but that would have been that would have been absolutely criminal uh so i can report and i don't want to jinx anything um but i did not see and i was hanging out spooky with basically the whole time i did not see any playfields up in the air yesterday so so shout out to them and uh it's a spooky maintenance and qc team because these games are all doing well uh Dylan was there providing some code updates early just to get everything set up. So they're running the bleeding lead edge of code. There's so much in this game. And it's fun to play these games now. These are like the production ones, not just the prototypes that I've been playing for months, but like what customers are actually receiving. And the code and the modes in this game are already incredibly robust. For a launch title, it's nuts. I had a great game, multiple hundred million points, played for a while. was wowing everybody everybody stood up and applauded um and i don't think i really interacted with the worm at all during that game because there was so much to do these spooky games play like theme parks where like there's different themed areas of the game and as you're playing it just organically you you focus on one area because you tend to be you know hitting a couple of lucky shots and a combo in this area let's focus on that and then the game becomes about that region in this region and then you realize man i didn't even play over here yet like there's so much to do in this sandbox and i've been going around of course there's a lot of people here that very enthusiastic about the game uh weren't able to get one for various reasons and so they really have no skin in the game as far as like you know a shill factor and i'm just asking i'm like what do you think you know what good bad what do you think of the modes like the lights and just unanimously everybody's just like in love with this game so uh i mean i knew i liked it i know everybody else at the party liked it you know even when we were playing that early early code But now just rank and file people, the people that will be pumping quarters on location, like what's the word? What's the verdict? The verdict is good. Twelve machines with lines on them the entire time. It was crazy. As soon as the doors opened, I was back there at the booth. And as soon as they let people in, it's just our little area back there, which had like five or six people in it, was just packed wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder with people. Not only are there 12 Beetlejuice games all here being played, all still turned on, nothing turned off. But there's a whole wall of Spooky's back era there as well, starting with America's Most Haunted all the way down to Evil Dead to come play. So if you want to play a Jetsons, if you want to play a Domino's Pizza Adventure, a Rob Zombie Limited Edition, there's only 50 of these, or even AMH. Like, they're all there. They're all there to play. As far as the games that are still available, Scooby-Doo is playing great. TCM and Looney Tunes are there if you want to get some time on them. Jump back and forth, you know, between them because they have the same layout but different themes. Super fun. You can do that. Evil Dead sitting down there at the end looking sexy as hell. It was awesome. So Roger Sharp come by and play Beetlejuice. I was like, hey, man, what do you think? He liked it too. He was like, yeah, it's great. Elman was there last night. I guess he blew it up. I heard something like 700 million plus, which is a pretty phenomenal score for that game. And I heard that he didn't break the spooky game this year, which is great. I guess he found some way to lock a ball somewhere behind a ramp for Evil Dead last year or some such. But it was fun. It's all good fun. The spooky shirts are selling like crazy. It's like out of every five people, two people are wearing the Hawaiian shirt that Spooky designed. It looks awesome. There are shorts to go with it. They have plenty. And, yes, I'm here to report that any leftover will go to the website later on. That's super cool. Here's something that even I didn't know about. The new magnets for the side of Beetlejuice for the armor down there at the bottom. Franchi did some art. I guess he was doing some late-night brainstorming. So every game is shipping with some additional magnetic accoutrement down on the side armor. But specifically for this show, they're doing another set. It's the Barbara and I forget the guy's name in Beetlejuice. But like they're kind of morphological forms that they take when they're trying to scare the deetses. So there's images of them as limited edition magnets that are only available at this show for $30. And then you can get those and switch them out if you want. And what I'm hearing is there's even going to be another exclusive set at the next show, Texas Pinball Festival, next month for another probably $30. I don't want to commit, but probably that's what it's going to be. And you can only get them at the show. Or if you're like my friend Steve, you texted me and you're like, grab me some of them and ship them to me, mate. So he's got a set going. Super awesome. So it's just fun that they're doing like these little exclusives. It's got franchise art on it. Exclusively only at this show. And then we'll be exclusive only at TPF. and like it's just something fun it's something fun to do like i was at the show that was the only place to get these i got these or i have a friend that i goaded into getting them for me uh it's super cool that they're doing that uh they got spooky shill shirts for sale and the dust covers for uh for beetlejuice so it great it was just a cool vibe that over there someone handed me a rum punch last night and then the the whole i went to another planet for a little bit came right back came right back it was super fun the next door neighbors uh for spookier jjp they're there with every one of their games uh there was multiple harry potter ce editions um eric muneers you know hobnobbing with everybody uh did a couple laps through there played some Harry Potter arcade edition, still a great game, still a great game, still a great price. What a success. What a sales success for these, you know, I guess these are the leading boutiques, right? Um, didn't see anything about their new game here in some rumors about a release date for it. I will say it won't be at TPF. It will be at expo. And so the release will be somewhere in the in-between area. I think, I think more towards the in-between than at expo, We got the release and reveal of Elton John at Expo that year that that came out. It feels like five years ago, but I think it was only two. But I think we'll see Sonic here sometime soon. I hope it's not a situation where there's still so many Harry Potters to make that they release this Sonic and the hype is really high. But they only have small capacity to run those until they get caught up with the Harry Potter orders. And when I talked to him, I was like, not this time, but before, you know, I was trying to say, like, are you just going to delay Sonic or whatever your next game is until whenever you reach a point that you get caught up with Harry Potter? And they said, no, no, we're still planning on releasing on a release date. Don, don't worry. We have the capacity. I'll see if I can hobnob a little bit this morning with somebody that would know and see if they truly are doing like parallel manufacturing or like where the orders are out. We'll report back. We'll see if we do a daily dispatch. um from the pinball at the beach show here but yeah jjp's represented all their games are there they look great you can look up at the ceiling and see where elton john ce is which of course you can because it's got all those great projections please pinball companies more projections i want my game room to look like a roller disco from 1972 can you make it happen i love projection effects expand the game to the whole room by doing that i think there's there's definitely some innovation to be done in that sector imagine playing a game and you get to a multiball you get to a wizard mode and all of a sudden like your entire room is transformed with projection mapping and and uh you know the ceiling projections and sparkle lights and things and just make it truly like a magical kind of thing um you know maybe satellite sound that you can put around your game room and then when you hit things you know you got like surround sound coming from different areas focused sound capture devices i think it could be fun i think it could be fun but i i like i like just being able to look up and be like oh that that's where elton john is i'm gonna over there i'm gonna play i'll play some some honky cat let's go do that barrels of fun is here and they have twice as many winchesters as i was led to believe and i came in early was sneaking around looking at the boxes new in box dunes uh new in box labyrinth there was one and then i saw one winchester and i'm like all right that's all they had led us to believe that there was going to be one but there's actually two winchesters mystery houses here and both of them headlines of course all night everybody wants to play it uh the last x uh expo was the only place which you could play this and it had you know hours long lines uh these lines are not hours long maybe you know 20 25 minutes or so is what you'd have to wait last night i'm sure if you got there first thing this morning at 10 a.m you could probably jump right on it but you should be able to get a couple of plays on it at least without committing hours of your life away to it which is kind of the point of going to a show like this the labyrinths they look great the the back glass is shiny high contrast i dig the graphics very spooky super cool um the don't and i'm the only time i did see uh playfield rays was on dune they were doing some late night maintenance on one of the dune escarpments there in the back now these weren't um games that had been at someone's home that they brought in for the show these didn't come from a collector's private collection to come to the show or from a distributor these came new out of the box so maybe some new out of the box shooters i didn't get down to exactly what the issues were um but they were you know David Van Es himself was working on it he had a he had doing his hand it's something they had to adjust underneath the mountain so they had gotten to it uh so we'll go back we'll play some more dune that new back glass looks awesome it looks awesome i like that they do this like not only do you get you know alternate art but it's like a completely separate back glass they did this with labyrinth they're doing it with dune are they going to do it with winchester do they need to because the winchester one really looks great you know the the original shipped uh Dune Backglass has, of course, all the movie characters on there and all their licenses, likenesses and all that, which is great. But like the other one with just the solitary sandworm coming up, I do dig it. I do dig it. I want to go back and play some Dune and get on some of that new code and see if I can hear some of that music. Although the cacophony is hitting pretty hard. Stern Pinball was represented last year with multiple Dungeons and Dragons. Of course, that game had just released prior to this show, like a month prior. similar to what like pokemon should have slotted in at um and that was all like the front of as soon as you walked in it was just like here's all of our new stern games come play them there's the designers and everything nothing like that this year uh just rows of just a uh a hoi polloi of other games um stern's indiana jones is out there on the line there's a big buck hunter pro which is always fun to play a lot of cool games that are out there there's a kiss le you know scattered amongst everything and then against the uh north side wall is where like the lineup of all the modern spike 2 and spike 3 sterns are uh so you can go play them uh play some x-men with the new x-men topper i dig it of course the topper looks more impressive in person you know it doesn't have you know a lot of intricacy into the light show from what i noticed but it was cool being able to look up there and see it do its thing you know uh so yeah okay you know you may argue is it worth the price it doesn't do as much as i was hoping it looks like a freeway billboard It does look better in person than it does online. I'll give it that. And that game still has a very unique, innovative layout. I was talking to that game's designer last night for a while and, you know, just kind of going through a lot of the issues. I think it really just needed a little bit of time to cook, and it was a bit rushed because, of course, it had to jump in front of the line. So X-Men really wasn't set up for the most success due to the kind of corporate push that it got, you know, meeting deadlines or something. But who necessarily is making these deadlines? I mean, if a game would benefit from three extra months, you know, maybe just take the three extra months. Who was saying it from Raw Thrills or something? You know a good game takes time and a bad game is bad forever or something like that Meaning like you know if you can wait a reasonable amount of time to deliver a product that not going to have issues and just iron them out maybe that the time to do it I don know a cautionary tale with Uncanny X because that layout I mean you look at it and there just wire forms going everywhere It's crisscrossing in patterns. You know, I think the code has been hampered a bit. You know, it's hard coded into the inserts. But, you know, I think it's getting there. But like when you look at the game, like, yeah, for a comic book themed game, I mean, you look down at that, it looks like it's got more to do than Avengers Infinity Quest, you know, which is one of its contemporaries. So it's coming. I'm coming around on Uncanny X-Men. You know, it is a game that you could pick up for a pretty good song. I had a good time playing on it. And maybe it'll remain a location game for me now, although I did own two, two or three of them at one point. Yeah, but just fun to revisit now that the code's fleshed out. Speaking of code fleshed out, John Wick was right next to it. And I'm like looking over at the screen, seeing things I haven't seen before. It's kind of cool how the game finally came into its own. And now we are waiting for the brand new game to come into its own. The Pokemon teaser did drop yesterday, as speculated. Although people have been speculating that every Friday for the last eight weeks was going to drop the teaser. Anyway, it came. It's Pokemon. They played some of the Pokemon fanfare opening music. So likely that is in the game. Very good. AI images have been cropping up all over. They're very impressive, too. I mean, we were all fooled for a bit. The last one I saw, I had the game set up in the factory where the ladies were making the wire harnesses. And the two co-designers for this game were looking over it. And I'm like, this looks like a legit image. But why would they have their brand-new Pokemon game out in the field where all the women are working making wire harnesses? It just doesn't seem like – like why would you even do that? So that was Cautionary Tale 1. If you looked, you were able to see some AI gibberish on the Insider Connected badge up on the speaker panel. And then the most telling thing was you looked down at Jack's hand and there's no tattoos on it. So, ha-ha, gotcha, AI. Very impressive. But the interesting thing, I've seen two of these AI images for Pokemon. And I've been joking that, you know, given, you know, kind of Stern's lackluster and complexity with releases that we've seen of late, I was expecting Pokemon to be two ramps and a bash toy. And if it's anything more than that, I will be very happily surprised and impressed. I'm keeping my expectations low so I don't get disappointed. It's just me kind of prepping myself here. And each of the AI images I've seen have essentially been two ramps and some kind of bash mechanism. So is it telling that when AI creates a stern game, it creates one that's a little lacking in luster? And that's just by going through algorithms? or is the AI just jumping on the pin side and reading everybody's foul posts and like cobbling that into reality what a strange time to be alive sounds like uh Monday is the uh the the distributor day uh for the game I'm hearing a couple distributors are going to try to make it up there by then um but I know most of the media people were kind of tapped out we already have plans to be down here and maybe are traveling that day so there's just not a way to feasibly like get back there. I think I'm probably the only one that lives like within spitting driving distance. And I had to take off work to come down to pinball at the beach. So I have to make that up. So I have to be at work while the media and other associated celebutants of pinball will be assembled in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. So I'm going to miss it. Are we going to see anything, though, on the 10th or 11th? I guess that's up to the uh the pokemon license holder and their marketing approvals if the marketing approvals come by we'll see that pre-recorded video with george gomez and team as they expound upon all the amazing things that are in the pokemon pinball machine um if not it may be delayed you know a week or so who knows but it's got to be sometime soon i mean this game needs to come out now let's speak to this growing hype now all right the fomo train has left the barn again and like a week ago we were all convincing ourselves that we don't need to get this game of course we could wait maybe if we like the le we pick it up at a discount later if you need a pro or premium those can be available anytime there's at least one amazing game that i'm expecting to debut at tpf in just a couple of weeks and so i'm trying to do that whole not one dollar thing at least until we get to tpf in case i want this one instead um and then we got sonic looming out there on the horizon as well. Beetlejuice will be coming due soon. So there's a lot. But I'm hearing now people are, I don't know where this is coming from, but what about the Pokemon collectors? They're going to want one of these 750 LEs of Pokemon. You want to be able to get in with a distributor now and get this $13,000 game because it's going to be worth millions here next week. And I'm not entirely convinced of that. First off, that's entirely speculative. okay we've seen how this goes the last release we saw from stern where an le really went for money if you were able to get one was the metallica remastered game something that was truly exceptional it was an exceptional game to start with it was even better which was amazing which blew away all of our expectations when that game released it looks sexy brand new art package that was absolutely hitting the one issue i had with the original metallica was the art was a bit cartoony and weird and this one was very much like i associate this with metallica very much sir yes and so what happened that thirteen thousand dollar game i think at its peak maybe traded for sixteen thousand seventeen thousand new in box okay which was considerable it softened a bit and now goes for what 14 uh maybe 15 if you like gotta have it now um you know which is a modest gain a modest game um but you look at the last five releases from cernan just no they're not matching that level at all of being able to flip an le heck le's are still available of kong of walking dead remastered which did not repeat that so i think it is speculative so the idea here i think is that there's rich pokemon collectors out there that have to have everything for their game room and they're simultaneously not going to be able to just go to a distributor and force their way and get one, they're going to have to wait and buy it from Tony on Pinside. Apologies to Tony out there if there is one. They're going to have to go through Pinside to buy his flipped game for $25,000 and be a windfall for Tony just because he had a good relationship with his distributor. Now, if you're a Pokemon collector and you're in this situation where you've got all this money and you didn already know this game was coming and haven been on a list for a year then you not incredibly savvy with pinball So if I putting myself into the position of Mr Whale Pokemon collector of all things and I have to have a Pokemon pinball machine for my game room and I don know anything about the nuance of pinball and mirrored back glass versus a Translight, and I'm looking, and I can go out at any time and get a $7,000 new in box Pokemon game that's going to have all the code, the insider connected, collect all the characters and all that business. and I can have that for seven why am I paying Tony okay apologies $25,000 for an LE with features like a shaker motor like if I don't know pinball probably not gonna play it that much do I even care do I even care about you know the art is different yeah I just want like the Pokemon toy here and for that matter they'll probably go out to Costco and just buy the Costco version for $5,500 and whatever dollars and just put that in their game room because in their mind it's a pokemon pinball machine that's what they wanted so i don't who knows this may all blow up and these things are traded for 25 000 tomorrow as soon as they're dropped and they're all sold out instantly and who knows who knows i don't know i'm not willing to take on that level of speculative risk um i think the j curve as they call it there is not favorable for me to jump in here now if you want to go ahead and speculate with your money perhaps perhaps i know canada's got a hot take that I haven't listened to yet today. I just saw it went up. So we'll see. But for me, I don't know. I would be cautious about jumping into a $13,000 game with the intention on immediately listing it on a Facebook marketplace and expecting a $10,000 windfall. I just don't know. I don't know. I think this game may actually be popular amongst pinball people that happen to cross over that Venn diagram with the theme and maybe want this jewel. But let's be real. The premium, the pro versions will be available forever. anytime you want them dealers are going to have them you're going to be able to get one you're going to be able to play it on location and really the trick to this game may be traveling location to location to play them to collect all the different characters if they do the coding right i think at this point i still just don't know i'll tell you this i do have my name on a list for a pokemon le that's free right that's free of any speculative uh risk and then we can just kind of wait and see and go in the moment and making decisions in the heat of the moment is just speaks to the center of the nugget the juicy nugget of FOMO so who knows maybe that's just a lot to say nothing but I I'd be a little cautious I just said it's a little caution I can't wait to see this game and it's weird that AI is showing us a game that's completely devoid of anything in the middle and everything's the back third of the game so strange so strange who else is here uh Turner pinball is represented here there is a Merlin's arcade I'm gonna get some more time on this thing I love the sound when you hit the billiard ball stand-up targets it's just fun the code is goofy and i'll tell you this uh turner bin ball makes a game that when you lift it up it looks like you could eat off the bottom of the play field fine uh super cool integrated circuit board with plug and play replacements if you need to ever replace something super cool i love how the whole glass comes off as one unit i love how the lighting is baked into that i guess box lid that sits down on top of the game i like the way he builds his cabinets very slick right Very cool, like, you know, jointing. Nice jointery on there. Nice woodworking. So I see Ninja Eclipse and I see Merlin's Arcade as proof of concepts. We can build pinball machines. They work. You can put them on location. They work. We've got pin access. We're developing for them and all that business. So I'm convinced that this man can build a pinball machine that's not just a piece of garbage that needs endless amounts of maintenance. So that's great. What I'm waiting for is the banger. and I think it may be coming I think it may be coming and hopefully it may be coming soon haven't heard anything specific from Chris Chris you don't have to reveal anything to me let's we don't need to do the NDA thing I'm happy to come down and visit and get some hot dogs or whatever but I'm not trying to you know drill him from information but I think he may be poised that if he gets a game that's got the right kind of theme that connects with us the right kind of gameplay um you know i know he's got like a back catalog of some designs have been floating around between you know deep root and other projects so what's he gonna go in and select now i'm really not sure but i'm hearing whispers and i'm getting a little bit excited and maybe i'm hyping my own self up but i know the man can make a game i know he can see and see the hell out of a cabinet um and then put it all together and you can eat a pasta dinner on the underside of the playfield so So I'm getting a little hype. I'm getting a little hype. So we'll wait. TPF is coming up very soon. We know that's his hometown show. I'm just, I'm pre-hype. I'm pre-excited. I know there's a lot more coming from TPF than we've even heard about. And that's even discounting Hexa Pinball Three Musketeers. It's supposed to debut there as well. So that'll be fun. Space Hunt is on the floor here. Interesting game. Very rare. Mad Pinball are the dudes. So all these old spooky games, about 80% of them Mad Pinball rolled in with late last night. there's a rotation eight that's here as well that's working that people are playing that mad pinball brought they brought space hunt they brought merlin's arcade so like these guys are just passionate about pinball especially rare and hard to find pinball and they they love putting in the work to tour these things around the entire nation you know these games have been on location around ohio you know they bring them out to events they drove them all the way down here to florida just so people could be able to play a merlin's arcade and a space hunt right next to each other And rotation eight, and it's working. Like, amazing, amazing stuff. So great job, guys. Best beards in pinball. Dude, I totally love it. So I'm going to head back over there, get my flip-flops on, wade through the sand, and bask in what sunlight we do have down here at this time of year in Florida. And then we'll get our hands on some games. Hopefully everybody is still hungover from last night, and I can get a couple of games on that Merlin's Arcade. More information as I hear it. Man, we're having some fun here at Pinball at the Beach. I'm Don. I do a pinball podcast. You can reach me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com, on the Facebook page for Don's Pinball Podcast, on the YouTube page for Don's Pinball Podcast, at the Patreon page, backslash donspinballpodcast, if you want to throw a couple shekels my way. My hat is down and I am busking, sir. Throw me $2 if you were entertained. More as I hear it. Let's do another show tomorrow. Who knows what's going to happen in the next 24 hours. I am hype. I am Don. I am hungry. I'll talk to you later.