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BDYETP 58: Pinbrewfest, Porsche pinball, Deeproot update, Topper Talk, Fish Tales Review

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 32m·analyzed·Mar 28, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Ohio Pin Brew Fest interview + Stern hire + Heist update + Deep Root delays amid manufacturing struggles.

Summary

Buffalo Pinball podcast episode featuring an interview with Keith Campanelli about Ohio Pin Brew Fest (April 8-10, 2021), pinball industry news including a new Stern hire (Mark Panaccio), a Multimorphic Heist update with new wizard mode, and a critical Deep Root update revealing continued delays due to Texas winter storms and UL certification issues. Hosts express deep skepticism about Deep Root's viability.

Key Claims

  • Mark Panaccio hired as senior assistant engineer at Stern; previously coded Earthshaker, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Roller Games, Hurricane, and Fishtails

    high confidence · Pinball News report cited; hosts confirm this is news

  • Mark Panaccio's background in high-speed trading systems and low-latency connectivity suggests Stern is building in-house internet connectivity, online updates, remote diagnostics, and network gameplay

    medium confidence · Pinball News editorial interpretation; hosts note this aligns with rumors from Stern's EULA rollout

  • Multimorphic released Heist update adding a new wizard mode and adjusted core gameplay to increase accessibility

    high confidence · Kevin confirms personal access to update since Tuesday; mentions special stream planned for release

  • Deep Root's Raza game certification delayed due to Texas winter storms; UL lab closures set back ULCE, Canada UL, and CE certifications by 2+ weeks

    high confidence · Direct quote from Deep Root customer update email read on show

  • Deep Root projects mid-April or sooner for final certifications (4-5 weeks from early March restart)

    medium confidence · Deep Root customer email; hosts express extreme skepticism this will happen

  • Deep Root clarified that mid-March shipment expectation was 'internal goal' not a delivery promise

    high confidence · Direct quote from Deep Root customer update email

  • Ohio Pin Brew Fest will feature 100+ pinball machines and 20-30 arcade games across 30,000 sq ft (doubled from original 15,000 sq ft plan)

    high confidence · Keith Campanelli direct statement on podcast

  • Deep Root sold approximately 100 machines in a couple of weeks when pre-orders opened

    medium confidence · Kevin's estimate based on awareness of sales; not officially confirmed by Deep Root

Notable Quotes

  • “We're officially one year into doing this podcast remotely. I think we found a good groove.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~3:00 — Meta-commentary on podcast production challenges during COVID; establishes timeline context for show

  • “Everything's going to be spread out a little bit more... you'll still be wearing masks because that's a mandate... but you'll be able to sit at the beer garden, sit down, take your mask off with your friends and have a couple of beers and chat about what's the next pinball machine wife's not going to let you buy.”

    Keith Campanelli @ ~25:00 — Details COVID safety protocols for Ohio Pin Brew Fest; shows community-building aspects of event

  • “I don't even know [why we podcast] – we podcast once a month there's no news but don't tune out keep listening everybody there's lots of good stuff this is not a bullshitter.”

    Nick Lane @ ~45:00 — Candid acknowledgment of content scarcity in pinball industry; honest about show's struggle with slow news cycles

  • “It was meant as an internal goal and external expectation, not a promise of delivery.”

    Deep Root (via email) @ ~60:00 — Deep Root's walkback of mid-March shipping expectation; demonstrates communication/expectation management issues

  • “Nothing. This is all, like, to be honest, I'm sort of not listening to everything because it's just a slew of nonsense every month... The outcome of the movie, right? Like before the movie even begins.”

    Nick Lane @ ~62:00 — Explicit expression of deep skepticism about Deep Root's ability to deliver; compares to predetermined failure narrative

  • “I'd love to see a montage of all of our comments on Deep Root... I'd love to release it when they finally throw in the towel. So that's my dream, right, to see a nice montage of all the last few years where Kevin and I are just predicting this nonsense.”

    Nick Lane @ ~65:00 — Hosts express confidence in Deep Root's eventual failure; document history of warnings as evidence

  • “It's like a dumpster fire. We're just waiting for the day where they're done because we saw this coming, man.”

Entities

Keith CampanellipersonOhio Pin Brew FesteventMark PanacciopersonStern PinballcompanyMultimorphiccompanyHeistgameDeep Root Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Deep Root Pinball experiencing severe operational and credibility crisis with repeated delays, failed delivery timelines, and questionable management practices

    high · Deep Root's own customer update citing Texas weather, UL certification delays, clarifying mid-March was 'internal goal not promise'; hosts cite employee reviews, absent ownership, payment issues, repeat failure pattern from founder's previous venture (Zidware)

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball industry experiencing content scarcity; monthly podcast struggling to fill episodes with substantive news

    high · Nick Lane's candid statement: 'there's like nothing happening in pinball'; 'how do people do these weekly... there's nothing to fucking talk about'; comparison to weekly content shows with more material

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts express exhaustion with Deep Root situation and document pattern of predictable failure; frame coverage as inevitable 'autopsy' of failed startup

    high · Extended segment of sardonic commentary; Nick Lane's stated dream to release montage of past warnings when company 'throws in towel'; Kevin's 'dumpster fire' characterization; repeated references to having warned about problems for years

  • ?

    event_signal: Ohio Pin Brew Fest positioned as first major pinball event post-COVID shutdown; April 8-10, 2021 at Metroplex in Northeast Ohio

    high · Keith Campanelli interview confirms event status; 100+ pinball machines, 20-30 arcade games, 6 breweries, food vendors; originally scheduled April 2020, delayed to August 2020, now April 2021

  • $

    market_signal: Deep Root sold approximately 100 Raza units during brief pre-order window despite ongoing credibility concerns; demonstrates FOMO/exclusivity appeal overriding skepticism

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.276

0:00
Coming up on this episode of Brew, do you even talk pinball? We're going to interview Keith Campanelli, the co-director of Ohio Pin Brew Fest. We're going to do the usual news and updates, and finally, a review of Fishtails. All that and more, coming right up. Double Super Jackpot! I need a ramp.
0:29
I need a loop. I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super jetpack in my life. That's right.
0:47
And now, the Hall and Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Boom shakalaka! What's going on everybody? Happy March? Almost April? It's episode 58 of Brody Even Talks Pinball. Nick Lane, how's it going? We're officially one year into doing this podcast remotely. We are.
1:10
I think we found a good groove. Made it happen, made it work. I like just waking up and going downstairs and putting the computer on and doing this. It's working out. It beats the drive, but like you've said, the chemistry of the show is a little different. Like, you got that inherent latency over the internet, but I think we've figured it out. I think we've got it. Yeah, yeah. I'm feeling better about it. Nice. It's a good fallback plan for the future, too, if there's a snowstorm or whatever. That's right. Excellent. So, yeah, here we are one month closer to vaccination, hopefully, and getting back to normal.
1:47
We've got lots to come ahead on the show for you guys. Before we get started, why don't we thank our sponsors? Nick, I think it's your turn to thank the sponsors this month. Happy to do that. Get it up on the screen. Believe it or not, I don't have it memorized verbatim. But, all right, first of all, our premier featured sponsor, Pinstadium. Pinstadium.com, lighting kits for your pinball machine. fantastic premium lighting it's for your pinball machine um they're app controlled you've got various models um or different kind of configurations of what you can get so easy to install that i did it myself that's pin stadium use a coupon code buffalo to save 10 highly recommend i think it's uh you know i'm not i'm sort of mixed on on mods but um there's definitely games where I'm like, I can't live without a pin stadium on it. And then it's a little dangerous because once you get a pin stadium on one game, you're going to want to win all of them. So just be careful.

Kevin Manning @ ~70:00 — Clear condemnation of Deep Root's operation; frames conversation as inevitable failure autopsy

  • “Build a product and then sell it, especially for your first game. Build one product. Don't say you're going to build like a million.”

    Kevin Manning @ ~75:00 — Prescriptive advice on manufacturing startup best practices; implicit criticism of Deep Root's approach

    • Raza
    game
    Nick Laneperson
    Kevin Manningperson
    Buffalo Pinballorganization
    Fish Talesgame
    Metroplexvenue
    Pinball Newsorganization
    This Week in Pinballorganization
    Elsa Projectorganization

    medium · Kevin's estimate based on sales awareness; acknowledges buyers were attracted to exclusivity and limited production despite warning signs

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Mark Panaccio hired as senior assistant engineer at Stern Pinball, bringing expertise from Mortal Kombat/NBA Jam development and high-speed trading systems

    high · Pinball News report cited directly; confirmed via formal announcement

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic released significant Heist update including new wizard mode and adjusted core gameplay to improve accessibility to endgame content

    high · Kevin's direct testimony of early access testing; update released prior to episode date; special stream reveal planned

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern Pinball appears to be building in-house internet connectivity infrastructure for remote diagnostics, online updates, and network gameplay features

    medium · Mark Panaccio's hiring background in low-latency connectivity systems; aligns with Stern's EULA rollout rumors; hosts discuss ULA restrictions on code modification and potential machine bricking

    • 2:44
    Double danger pinball. Use code BUFFALO to save. Do they even have our shirts? I don't think they have our shirts anymore. Moving on. They're actually not a sponsor anymore. All right. We'll update that. We're still loving you. We're working on a shirt solution, by the way. Right now, people can't get our merchandise, but we are working on something. Big things ahead. Alright, anyways, moving on. TheModCouplePinball.com is still a sponsor. TheModCouplePinball.com Again, listen, high praise coming from me. I'm not a big mod guy, but they won me over. I've got their mods on my pirates and I'm sure when I get an itch for some more mods and I'm just looking to put some money into games, that's my first stop. I really love the quality of their work. FlippinOutPinball.com. They are the go-to distributor, sponsor of Bumble Pinball. They have basically every pinball machine that's manufactured out there to buy. Zach and many will take care of you. Heard nothing but good things about his customer service. I know he cares. He's a collector and player in the community, so check it out when you want to buy your new in-box pinball machine. Pinside.com, Pinside.com, where it all started for me in terms of the pinball community. You've got news. You've got reviews of games. And you have the forum. So if you have a tech question, want to see people's reaction to a new game that just came out, you just want to talk about whatever, that's where the pinball community gathers. Jersey Jack Pinball. Figures of the most beautiful pinball machine on planet Earth. Love Jersey Jack.
    4:19
    At some point, Kevin, they're going to have so many games that we can't announce them all. But we're just going to highlight their newest game, which is a major hit. But Guns N' Roses pinball, check it out. Head over to jerseyjackpinball.com. Kevin is an owner. I am. Owner of it. Maybe me one day.
    4:36
    Pinball.edu, pinballraffle.org. So you want to go to pinballraffle.org. You can buy a raffle ticket to have a chance nearly every month to win a pinball machine while also supporting kids with autism. Fantastic program. So it's a win-win in my book. Community Beer Works. Community Beer Works, my favorite brewery in Buffalo, New York. Kevin doesn't even drink, and he likes Community Beer Works. Great people who are pro-pinball.
    5:02
    They're supporters of us. They believe in what we're doing. And if they didn't, I'd say they must be fantastic. TiltCycle.com. We love, we love, we love Dan Burfield. TiltCycle.com. If you've got a game room or you have one, even just your bedroom, bathroom, wherever, and you want some pinball art, this is authentic pinball art. He's upcycled pinball machine parts, play fields. That's tiltcycle.com. Does he still have a coupon code? He used to. I don't think so. Just throw a buffalo into everything and see what happens. That's how it works. That's my pro tip. All right. Cometpinball.com. Cometpinball.com is an OG sponsor of Ryan. They have everything for your LED lighting needs. That's your one-stop shop. want to make your pinball machine look good works in great conjunction by the way with pin stadium so if your machine hasn't been led yet or you just want to give it your authentic touch go to cometpinball.com pinballmix.com pinballmix.com will make a custom soundtrack for your pinball machine um basically then pinball makes some songs that you own that you purchased and he will do a remix of the um every pinball machine soundtrack does a fantastic i would say highly professional job it also has a discount code john you use buffalo you get also an easter egg in there then last but not least another og titan pinball titan pinball.com takes uh silicone rings and uh has a fantastic anti-fatigue mat again you're gonna need uh at some point if you need replacement rings or maybe you just have rubber rings on your pinball machine, go to TitanPinball.com put the silicone rings, last longer, they're better got tons of colors and Eric is just the right guy to work happy to have them all as sponsors Can I say, Attack our friend Attack, tipped me off that the glow in the dark flipper rings look really good on Guns N' Roses, so there's your tip if you're putting an order in at Titan and you want to get some Titan rings for your new Guns N' Roses, glow in the dark is cool again yeah i heard somebody did a uh bad girl oh bad girl i have not even tested i've not put it in yet so hopefully it's accurate but that's there it exists all right there you go okay um without further ado let's let's bring on um keith campanelli he is the uh co-director of the ohio pin brew fest uh that's taking place april 8th to 10th 2021 in at the metroplex in gerrard ohio That's Northeast Ohio. Keith, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so Keith reached out to us last year and said, I'm a big fan of the show. We'd like you guys to be involved. You guys come down for this new thing we're doing, Pin Brew. We're like, cool, sounds great. It's within striking distance. And then it didn't happen. You guys were like right after everything kind of shut down last year, right? yeah yeah we were i think april 16th was uh the go date everything just started to fall apart and march yeah fun stuff so what kind of impact did that have for you guys because you know you get all geared up for a new show and then you got to cancel it like how did that affect you guys um i it was kind of a hard pill to swallow originally because again you guys we were talking earlier about setting up events and so much to do to get this thing going and then we were right there we We had everything in line. We were ready to pull the trigger and the whole world came unglued. And, you know, we just, there's no way we can do this. So it was a little heart wrenching. We had moved it back to August, hoping that this whole thing was going to just blow over in a few months. But obviously we, a year later, just now getting near the other side of it. So strike two, we weren't going to do it. And then we were scheduled. We had already lined up this year. we were thinking of moving it back uh talk to the people that at the metroplex we don't have any other room so either there you're not doing it so it was we would do this or we're done so we pulled the trigger and i'm kind of glad we did now the way things are opening up out here i'm looking promising excellent so for you know this is a brand new show haven't done it before uh why don't you explain to us what the ohio pin brew fest is and what people can expect to see it and do at the show? So the difference between this and conventional pinball shows is we take all the best aspects of a pinball show, the games, the tournaments, the vendors, and we added a couple of features to it. We added craft beer and we added food. So a lot of times you'll go to one of these big venues and it's just pinball, but here you're going to be able to enjoy pinball. You can go to the beer garden,
    9:53
    try out at least a minimum of 12 different craft beers from six different breweries in the area. and we will have different types of food coming through, setting up. And so you'll be able to just pretty much do everything you want there, eat, drink, and be merry.
    10:08
    That's awesome. So as we've seen beer and pinball tend to go together, like Nick, when he was operating machines last year and the year before,
    10:18
    they paired pinball machines with breweries, and that was good for them. Right, Nick? Absolutely. Yeah, and it's not just like a phenomenon in Buffalo, right? Like I've seen people post location pinball. I've seen machines at other breweries around the country too. So it just seems to work very well. Yeah, I have myself two breweries. I'm just adding a third now. So, well, they love it. It goes together great.
    10:48
    Awesome. So what makes now the right time for pin brew? You had to push it back a year. and you know i think you guys are the first event to come back the first pinball event to come back after all this so why why is it the right time for pinbrook well uh we looked at it and i i talked to you guys a little bit i'm i have a background in medicine i actually work in a physician's office i actually run a physician's office my wife is a doctor and we have a lot of people in medical field that are friends of ours and we've been keeping track of things and seeing how things were progressing and we did look at the date and consider well another month would be probably perfect but we think that we can pull it off now we looked at the data we looked at what's going on and i looked at what's going on around us here in ohio we've had events at the metroplex going on since november they've learned how to do it safely they know what to expect so it was one of those somebody's going to pull the trigger and uh we think we were at the right time right place and we decided to go forward and since our first assessment of what it was going to be like when the show is here with vaccinations and all that we're already surpassing them so uh the state of ohio already uh next week uh vaccines down to i think 21 years old and then even if there's extra down to 18 so we vaccinated a good part of the population and it's the right time it's it's time to come back out and pinball has uh had taken a beat and we're all stuck in our basements and uh We need to come out and enjoy Joe's company again. So why don't you talk a little bit about how the event is going to look different with COVID protocols and things like that. So what kind of changes can we expect at the show versus what you were planning from last year? Well, we literally had all the machines, just like every other show, lined up in rows. Rows of 20 machines back to back, long hallways in the middle of the venue. And then all the vendors were on the outside. We originally were taking 15,000 square feet. uh metroparks was kind enough to give us all 30 000 square feet parts to charge they said we know it's difficult and this will help you guidelines so what we're doing is we're actually sporadically putting a machine throughout the building you'll come up on an area there'll be two machines and come up on another area there might be three machines together the vendors are all going to be spread out there will be machines in just different places throughout so it's just going to be like walking through this this large building there's a main area and once you go lot of the main area there's a lot of hallway conference-y type areas big open areas um everything's going to be spread out a little bit more uh we are going to have a beer garden in the middle uh based off of what ohio allows us to do go to a restaurant you sit down you take your mask off in that area we'll have seating uh you can purchase your beers you can walk around with your beers right now you'll still be wearing masks because that's a mandate um and uh you know distancing just enough with other people, but you'll be able to sit at the beer garden, sit down, take your mask off with your friends and have a couple of beers and chat about, you know, what's the next pinball machine wife's not going to let you buy.
    13:53
    So, excuse me, talk about some of the challenges in organizing an event right now. What's the biggest challenge, would you say?
    14:05
    Everything together, it's just getting all the pieces of the pie together because you're combining pinball, first getting all the vendors lined up and seeing who was coming when we first started. We weren't sure if anybody was even going to want to come to a show. And we were lucky that all the vendors were like, yeah, we'll come. We'll do this. They all signed on again. And organizing the vendors, lining up the beer, getting the insurance. We use a 501C.
    14:34
    We're using the Elsa Project. is our charity organization that the proceeds of the beer go to. So just aligning all that stuff.
    14:43
    My first show, how many cups do you order? How many wristbands do you order? Where are you going to put this sign? Are you going to have a banner here?
    14:51
    Who's running the tournament? Where are the trophies? There's just all those little pieces. And every day I just make a couple more notes. So there's no piece that's worse than any other. It's just making sure I didn't forget any pieces. so you mentioned tournaments there's some tournaments uh coming up um and also some uh special pinball machines that are going to be there right yes we uh we are uh pretty excited we're going to have uh and i don't know that anybody's seen them in the past i know there are aliens or a few floating around but alien will be at the show uh coin taker is bringing that point taker and tilt amusements will both be there they're bringing all the latest sterns will be set up for free play with that. We do have a couple multi-morphics showing up at the show. You and I talked about that. I'm not sure if Heist will be one of those. I hope one of them will. We'll see if we can pull some strings. We've got a couple big Lebowski's going to be there.
    15:46
    And then a lot of interesting different games that Marvin and I have collected over the years. We're bringing in some high-end restorations and some older games. Hold that whole flavor of every piece that a good show can put on. Awesome. So how many games do you anticipate there in total? Right now, registered, we have over, between the arcades and the pinballs, we have over 100. But we expect to have, based off of what I know is also coming, definitely over 100 pinball machines and about 20 to 30 arcade games. Nice.
    16:20
    Nick, did you have any questions you wanted to ask Keith? No, I just appreciate Keith joining us. And I, this is an event that I'd love to attend next year, right? It checks the boxes of pinball, beer, and being within striking distance in terms of something that we can travel to and support. So catch you next year, man. And good luck with this year's event. Thanks. Appreciate it guys. Yeah. Thanks for joining us and good luck with the event. We look forward to seeing the reports on Pinside. All righty. All right. We'll hope to see you in person there next year. All right. Take care, Keith.
    16:57
    All right, Nick. All right. Why don't we roll into some pinball news? Okay, let's do it. Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. Show hunt. It's on fire. All right. Up first, we got a new hire at Stern, which is relevant to what we're going to be talking about later. Mark Panaccio, he's the new senior assistant engineer at Stern. This comes to us via pinball news. They reported on this. He coded Earthshaker, Elvira and the Party Monsters, Roller Games, Hurricane, and Fishtails. And Fishtails is the game we're reviewing later, so we'll talk a little bit more about Mark. But from there, he moved from Midway to work on video games, and he helped develop the Mortal Kombat series and NBA Jam. So he's got a pretty good history. I thought this quote was interesting from Pinball News. He says, since working on those games, he developed software for high-speed trading systems before his appointment at Stern Pinball. They kind of editorialize a little bit here. It says, his network and low-latency connectivity skills would appear to be a good fit at Stern as the company looks to launch its internet connectivity for features such as online software updates, remote diagnostics, and network gameplay. So we know that's been a rumor since the lovely EULA they rolled out at the end of the year came out that they were looking to do some of this stuff on their own. And I think a hire like this solidifies that they're looking to do some of that stuff in-house. They're going to be able to brick your machine if you change the code on it. That's right. Sorry, Pinball Mix.
    18:33
    Or what's the other one? What's the software they use to do that? Pinball Browser. Yeah Pinball browser It might be rough For a pinball browser You know Maybe you just don't Connect it somehow You know Maybe you Got a way to do that Stay offline We'll see Don't put a Plastic transformer In your pinball machine Either Because that violates The ULA too I think Alright That's the Stern update Dude Let me just Before we Plow through the rest Of this news There's Like nothing Happening in pinball I'm just gonna It's so funny Kevin It's so, like, this is the high of mine, but that was my, I was just going to even interrupt you and be like, there's nothing going on in this month. Like, why the fuck are we even doing a podcast? I know we do a monthly podcast, but, like, seriously.
    19:24
    Sorry, I'm going to be a fucking asshole for a minute, but how do people do, like, these weekly, there's nothing to fucking talk about in pinball sometimes except bullshit. You can't even shit on, do we even have anything to shit on in Deep Root? Oh, yeah, we do. All right, good. Thank God. Well, I'm glad I got up this morning and fired up the computer. all right the fish tails things is good though fish tail we're gonna do a review especially games that you know people buy a lot we got some questions from from listening at least keith helped us out thank you keith for you know coming on but jesus christ there's there's you know and when i tell people like sometimes uh uh my name on discord nick buffalo pinball and i play a game someone asked me what's that about i get into the podcast and i was like dude i don't even know we podcast once a month there's no news but don't tune out keep listening everybody there's lots of good stuff this is not a bullshitter just not a bullshitter you know let's go all right so um next up i got in the rundown a little update from multimorphic um some personal experience that um i've been lucky enough to get access to the big heist update um that we mentioned on the last show so they're kind of the the foundation of the game is the same but they've um added this massive wizard mode at the end and to facilitate people getting there they've uh adjusted the core gameplay uh on the game to make it more likely that you're going to get to the end and see this awesome wizard mode right um so i've gotten there once i've had the game i've had the update for since like Tuesday, I think. I haven't played it a ton. I played it a bunch the first night I got it and a bunch another day. So it's not super easy to get to it. So it's not like a gimme to get there. But it's not out of the question either.
    21:13
    And it's really cool. I can't spill the beans yet, but I think we'll probably end up doing a special stream when it gets released and walk through and show it off for everybody. So stay tuned for that. So I made a great game even better. added more value to your game, and made a great game to the next level. So there you go. All right. The moment Nick Lane's been waiting for. It's time for your Deep Root update.
    21:39
    So for this Deep Root update, let's take you over to not this one. We want to go to This Week in Pinball. Is this the Jesus game? No. We're not talking about the Jesus game yet.
    21:52
    Old Testament. He's not even in it. There isn't a Jesus. That's a sequel if they even get there. That's right. All right, so last month, to take you back, last month we talked about how games were going to ship in March, and everything was going good. They were waiting on their UL licensing and all that. So here's the update from Deep Root that they sent basically right after our last podcast. It says, Dear Raza customer, hope all is well. As promised before, we want to provide an update over what happened in February and where things are now. Bullet point one, weather. Saw that one coming. As some of you might know, the winter storms in Texas last week resulted in prolonged power and water outages. The office was closed and all of us faced varying degrees of outages. The outages also impacted the lab doing our ULCE certifications. We hope those of you impacted are doing well and back to normal.
    22:47
    Yes, pinball is easy. Thank you, Ball Search. ULCE obtaining a full system certification rather than relying on a non cascade certification from just the power supply is important for us to be able to offer a quality compliant and reliable product The primary goal for Rasa in February was to get the ULCE certifications done Unfortunately, the weather prevented that from happening. The last update we received prior to the lab closing was that USUL was close to being done, the Canada UL needed a few minor corrective measures, and the CE was about 75% done. Since we have been unable to work with the lab for the last two weeks, We are hoping to get back to the schedule early next week and finish the outstanding requirements. We are still being told it will take four to five weeks for the final certification and report once all certifications pass. That puts us into mid-April or sooner if we can. Okay? You following along?
    23:45
    Parts and production. I mean, I just see, like, bullshit, whatever, like, incompetency, like, excuse, whatever. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. So, parts and production. As an update, we have the lock bar, not the pin bar as reported. So I don't understand what that means. And lighted side panel vendors remedied. So do they have a lock bar vendor remedied and a lighted side panel vendor remedied but not a pin bar vendor? Or are they not using a pin bar and they're using a standard lock bar now?
    24:20
    That sentence is not clear. Does it matter, Kev? Because this thing is never going to see the fucking light of day.
    24:25
    Well, that's true. Keeps hanging out with us, I guess. I like having a laugh track, though. I like it. Not just Kevin, yeah.
    24:36
    Let's see. The last engineering task to improve the stability of the kickstand is going to be complete next week, which will be the last assembly parts to be sourced. Parts orders continue to come in, and small parts and sub-assemblies will start as last posted, whatever that. This is very, very difficult to read. We received some criticism in reply to the last update about putting an expectation of mid-March for first shipments. You'll like this one. It was meant as an internal goal and external expectation, not a promise of delivery. Nick Lane, does that make sense at all? Nothing. This is all, like, to be honest, I'm sort of not listening to everything because it's just a slew of nonsense every month. And it's just like, you know, the outcome of the movie, right? Like before the like the movie even begins. And we knew this. We knew this three years ago. I'm trying to think, Kevin, when here's something for an enterprise and enter enterprising. There you go. That's the word. Enterprising viewer listener. I know there's some people that maybe they have the personality for this. But listen, if you want to go through and find when we first started talking about Deep Roop, I think it was around the time that they were a sponsor of the Texas Pinball Festival. And we were like, how does that make sense? Right. Like they don't like they're throwing money at marketing something they're not even really up and running as a company. But anyways, I'd love to see a montage of all of our comments on Deep Roop of a timestamp where we warned about this. and I'd love to release it when they finally throw in the towel. So that's my dream, right, to see a nice montage of all the last few years where Kevin and I are just predicting this nonsense and saying what bullshit this is. And it's sort of, like, fascinating, right? Like, I sort of like doing an autopsy. Like, this is, like, what documentaries are made of, right? Like, if there was, like, a pinball documentary, it would be a documentary on Deep Root and just how difficult it is to make pinball machines and the audacity of this guy to say it's easy and think that he can just come in with little knowledge and make this all happen.
    26:50
    I remember, Kevin, and I'm glad we're not putting this on the podcast and reading this per se, but you had sent me, I guess, a public review of an employee who works at or worked at Deep Root and talk about how employees – look, this is just somebody around the Internet, so take it for what it will – but it's not a good – it doesn't paint a good picture, and it's not hard to believe where people aren't getting paid, the owners in absentee, like whatever. That's just out there. We're not going to get any more into it, but it makes sense, right? It's just a dumpster fire. We're just waiting for the day where they're done because we saw this coming, man. We try to warn people, and we talk about these things because you know the company is going to try to sell a product or ask for money at some point, and it's just like we've seen this before. there's warning signs, there's warning flags use caution, maybe don't throw your money at it and try to help people that's all we've been ever trying to do and we're just breaking down the bullshit and just seeing this implode in real time yeah, it's uh we've seen this movie before, we know the ending like you said, you know, it's the same old song it ends, buy the pinball machine once it's manufactured preferably once you've had a chance to play it and you decide you like it and you can just exchange money for products I'm not shocked, but I am shocked that they were able to sell like a hundred of these things in the couple weeks that they had the orders open.
    28:13
    Like, it makes sense in that there's always people who want to have something exclusive and limited.
    28:22
    And it's from J-Pop, who for whatever reason, people idolize this guy from the like three games he made in the 90s. and then he came back and zidware was a big dumpster fire and now we're seeing a lot of the same things happen here with with deep root it's just it's if he got the money i guess it's not as big a deal but like i throw throwing that amount of money at something that you hope might happen because you want it to happen i yeah i can't i can't all right yeah it's ignoring the reality of the situation and you know like this wishful thinking like you want to happen so much that you're ignoring all the warnings along the way, right? We're trying to hammer, like, just be careful. That's not to say, look, we were against this company. We just saw things that were like, wait a minute, this doesn't add up. What this person is saying doesn't make sense. Pointing it out along the way and just be careful, right? And listen, I would have loved that they came out years ago and launched titles when they said they would and that these titles were awesome and that they created games that we would want to own. That's great. Who doesn't want more games? And they, you know, brought people as employees into that. They had Dennis Norman at one point. They've got, um, um, right. Like, right. Like, it's like, great. Like you, you want to see games and you want to see titles that they're, they may, you want to see the innovation, but you know, there's problems. Yeah. Easy to see. They're going to blame all the, all the press and everything. It's all, it's everybody. This is a classic, everybody else's fault that we failed and didn't work and never got a fair shake and blah, blah, blah. and it's going to be a million excuses because I've seen these type of personalities before, and it's sort of boring at this point because it's just so easily predictable, but whatever. Yeah. Well, the solution isn't hard, right? Like, build a product and then sell it, especially for your first game. Build one product. Don't say you're going to build like a million. First of all, here's the steps. You're going to start a new pinball company. Don't come out and start trashing all the other companies that are actually making games. You've got to come out and say, listen, here's a pro tip, because there's probably other people thinking that they're going to make a game. We recognize that pinball is difficult. So our plan is to do a limited run of a machine and get one solid game out the door and focus on that and keep on building up our infrastructure and more after that. Again, Spooky's model showed people how to do it in a way. Then American Pinball came in, and they're able to make these high-quality games and get them out there. So, look, they're able to do it. They just shut up and make the game and let the game speak for themselves.
    31:00
    Not deeper, though. All talk and no show. Right. All right. We'll just wrap this up. Getting tired of talking about that, Kevin, in some ways. It's like, how can you not? I know. If there was more going on this month, I would have skipped it. But it was also, they said they were going to ship mid-March. We said, no way is that going to happen. And here's them the following month saying, it didn't happen. It's not going to ship. It's not going to... When are they saying it's going to ship now? It was going to be like four to five weeks just for the certification, and they still haven't gotten all their parts sourced. They're still working out all that. When do you think the game is going to ship? I think it's going to end up being like Magic Girl, where they like cobble together a couple of them and get them out, and then that's going to be it. They're going to be done. I'm going to predict they're going to be closed by the end of the year. There's no way that they can... So it was the promise of internal goal and external expectation, not a promise of delivery. Okay. We are sorry for not better communicating that. Since the certifications and receiving all parts are critical to the start of shipments, we will not put out another expectation here, other than to say we want to ship as quickly as we can, provide a quality, well-QA'd Rasa machine in a box. We thank you again for your patience. We plan to update customers again by the end of March. If you have any questions, please contact us by visiting the website or emailing them. So, yeah, they've got a couple more days in March for their next update. I don't think they've put out another one yet. So that is your Raza update. I feel like we need a stinger sound effect. Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee. Raza update. Deep Root update. There you go. All right. Moving on to everybody's second favorite pinball manufacturer, Home Pin. And you may remember them from such critically acclaimed pinball machines as Thunderbirds and the other one they were working on, Chinese Zombies. I don't think that one ever came out. But this is coming to us from Pinball Magazine.
    33:04
    They say, well, there hasn't been much news to report on Home Pin since they moved to Taiwan almost one year ago. Mike and his team basically had to start all over again. While doing that, Porsche, who is very big in China, ordered four of these pinball games that will be taken to various car shows in China to promote the new Porsche Taycan model.
    33:23
    The games basically function as a marketing tool to harvest email addresses via a WeChat logon, which sounds very China to me. There are no plans for a commercial production of the game. So you're going to make four of these. Nick Lane, what does that layout remind you of?
    33:39
    Firepower, right? Yes, it's Firepower. so they took firepower and they slapped some blue and black art on it and says take hand on the drop targets and there's some checkered flag ish kind of stuff around the apron area and uh there's your your your pinball machine i guess this is the news for the month folks there you go um this was interesting it uses rollover micro switches or it doesn't have Roller micro switches it has optos Okay so Uh hopefully they have Inserts or like if that gets dirty like What that's gonna do you know how finicky Optos can be yeah true True but I suppose if they're only using Machine don't get dirty though so that's true I don't see A problem this picture they sent Isn't dirty at all Um but if they're only making four of Them and if I don't know if they're just Gonna like keep on top of that it shows Or whatever you know people Buying a Porsche don't care about a Pima machine if it's working right anyways they just want to be able to which is fine right like it's just you know it's just a marketing piece which is whatever that's that's fine yeah um spinners blah blah not shown uh back wax not shown contains a blue dot matrix display as well as a 27 inch lcd the dmd is mainly for scores names and simple animations all the lcds used to display commercials and advertising hey listen home pin made a game it exists so there you go yeah that's a that's porsche it's a it's a novelty that'll be one of those things where uh down the line somebody will own one and it'll be like 10 000 you think that'll be a game that'll be like a ten thousand dollar machine someday in somebody's collection i mean is uh dominoes a ten thousand dollar game yet They sold like 150 of those though Yeah You were going to buy one at one point You were thinking about it I was Domino's It's got us in it It's got our voices in it Listen you can hear my voice anytime you want It's true Can you just say yummy cheese for me every once in a while Only when I get paid Okay alright fair enough So that's Porsche Oh man I don't want to spoil Gorin's We do have a full episode of Topper Talk Coming up at the end of the episode I felt like we needed to talk a little bit about the Stranger Things topper. There it is.
    36:07
    Nick, have you seen the Stranger Things topper before this moment right now? Yes, because I watched Gorn's video. Okay. I got a preview of it. So if you haven't seen it, it's an Infinity Mirror-style backlash. So think of...
    36:22
    Actually, so... Not Alien. Yeah, no. Space Invaders. has it and uh vector had it as well i think if i'm okay i know that that just have chase lights i don't think it had infinity lights but it's got that effect where it looks like the the lights are going on forever and it looks cool it's a cool fit for the for the game um it doesn't have a giant logo on it does say stranger things on it but it's small so it's not one of those where it has the name right above the name and looks ridiculous i'll i'll give it that um but it's 650 dollars for some plastics, some LEDs, and a mirror. It's interesting, though, that they've been charging $1,000 for toppers, so this one scaled back. I wonder why.
    37:10
    It doesn't seem that much lesser than – I mean, you can make an argument. It doesn't seem like $350 lesser than the other ones, right? Right. Yeah, the only thing I can think – well, on something like – I don't remember how much the Avengers one was, but the, I think the turtles one was about a thousand dollars. Yeah. And that's got like a motorized thing on it. So that's the only thing I can see that. Oh, I'm sorry. It's got a motorized part. That's probably like 50 cents. Right. Spin shit around. I know, I know what you mean though. That's how they justify the difference in cost probably. Um, yeah. So there you go. It's cool enough, but like, you know, like, as like a hundred and fifty dollar add on, maybe. Yeah. You know? Mm. So stay tuned for the, for the full, hot takes on the Stranger Things topper at the end of the show. There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, that is your Pinball News for the month of March 2021.
    38:05
    Real, real. Really exciting. Things are really happening. You might have to listen to this podcast twice. In case you missed it all. You can't take it all in. I got a Buffalo update.
    38:19
    We're bringing back 12 games in 12 hours. If you've been with us for a long time you know we've done two of these it was one of the the first things we did when we started the fundraiser it got us off the ground yeah so that helped having a rig yeah help help buy the uh the the stuff that we need to stream and then we did a charity version of it for um for a st jupy live a year or two after that but it's been like four years since we did this and uh we thought for fun let's bring it back we'll do 12 games in 12 hours again starting at noon Eastern on April 10th on our Twitch channel, twitch.tv slash Buffalo Pinball. I'll give you the rundown of the games, right? We're going to be playing Deadpool, Tron, Adam's Family, Willy Wonka, Heist, Pirates of the Caribbean, Metallica, Black Knight Sword of Rage, Guns N' Roses, the new Guns N' Roses, Wizard of Oz, Dialed In, and the one you're all waiting for, Future Spa with Rudy Soup. That's going to be the highlight of the stream. So tune in, join us, hang out. It's going to be a good time. We're going to have some giveaways and things like that. So hopefully you can tune in and catch a little bit of that or all of it. And we look forward to hanging out with you. Doing the marathons is one of my favorite things. It's just super fun. And I like seeing everybody switch. So basically we play one game for an hour, then it changes to somebody else. I'm going to be organizing it in a way this year so we don't have to drop the stream every hour, which will be cool. So you can just leave it on and not have to worry about refreshing your, your stream or anything like that. So, um, good thing to good way to spend your time during the pandemic. And you just want to have some pinball on to the background noise noise for, for a Sunday or Saturday, Saturday. Um, then, uh, you can join us then. Yeah. Well, well, shout out to, and kudos. Hey, kudos to Kevin for, um, always thinking of better ways to do this and always kind of keeping, uh, current with the technology to make the viewing experience better for people. So, so that's awesome. I'm looking forward to it, man. It is, it is a fun time to have 12 hours of pinball and feel that kind of camaraderie of, of, of streaming with everybody else and Buffalo pinball. So yeah, Martha and I will be doing two streams. Nice. That's 12 hours or two. Yeah. It's going to be the, the whole Buffalo stream team aside from the local, all the local bros, It's going to be me and Nick and Martha and Skip Natty and Rudy and Tuna. So we're all going to be mixing it up. So every hour you're going to see somebody else in a different pinball machine every hour.
    40:57
    I'm sorry. I read the chat. Wildcat doesn't chat that. Deep Root's going to blame the delay on that ship that's stuck in the CUSP now.
    41:08
    He's calling it. We're calling it now. He's calling it now. All the Deep Root parts are on that ship. Yeah.
    41:15
    I'm sure, I'm sure. It's going to be something. That's what makes it entertaining. Yeah, it is. All right, so following last month's show, I had a couple folks in the Buffalo Pinball Discord ask if I could do a deep dive into the P3, now that I've owned it almost a year.
    41:35
    And I've been thinking about doing a YouTube video on this, because I feel like you need to show what's going on in the P3, because there's so much that's different about it from a traditional pinball machine. So I do want to do that, but I'm being lazy and I haven't done it yet. So instead I asked if they had any specific questions they wanted to ask about the P3. And if so, I would answer them. So I got a couple. The first are from Sergeant Ski, 1978.
    42:03
    He asked, after owning it for a year, and also feel free if you have questions, throw them in the chat as well and we can pull them out from there. But so after owning it for a year, how do you feel this would do the P3 if Multimorphic went to a distro model? Is it the cost? Is the cost to do it worth it for sales? Asking because it's always been hard to find them in the wild. And I think the risk to dropping whatever amount of money on one is significant if it turns out to be not your thing and you want to sell it. So Multimorphic does have a couple of distributors in the U.S. They also have RS Pinball in Europe who handles sales for them. And I've seen them at shows.
    42:44
    So that's, I think their main way of kind of letting people get hands on the machines is getting them out to shows. And without the shows over the past year, that's kind of lagged a little bit. So they do have a distributor model. I can't speak to whether or not that makes sense from a, if it's worth the cost. I don't know what the costs are to having a distributor host your machines and sell them for you. You know, all that stuff. I don't know the ins and outs of the pinball industry.
    43:09
    But I think, you know, the more they can get them in front of folks and hands on the games, the better off they'll be. You know, like at the Pinbrew event, they're going to have a couple games there. So if you want to get out and try it out there. In the P3 Discord, folks have talked about taking their fan-owned games or, you know, player-owned games to machines, to events, and letting people get their hands on them. Because I think what happens is when you buy it, you realize how cool it is. You want to share that with other people who may be hesitant to try it out because it's something different. And people in pinball tend to have a certain thing they want in pinball. And we've seen over the years it's hard to introduce new ideas to this audience. So I think the best thing for the platform is for folks to get their hands on it and try it out. Especially, I think heist is great. and the more people that play heist are really going to jump on board with it.
    44:08
    So the second question he had, oh, I have something special planned for this, so let me go lights on for this. We're going to take it over to, because the P3 is right behind me, SergeantSki1978 says, what is the wear and tear like on the play field screen? Is this something that can be replaced? And this is a question I get quite often when I stream it, and I feel like I've answered it a lot. So I want to switch over to this. I'm going to take you over to the P3. Come with me to the P3, okay? Really exciting. Let me unplug Nick so I can hear you. Here we go.
    44:44
    We're going to show you how this works. So let me grab my mic stand. And put you in over here. My thing almost fits here.
    44:58
    So we're going to do this together, okay? Open up the game. Slide out the glass. And then at the front of the game, you just lift it up.
    45:20
    Set it down right there, right? Okay. So the game, the play field's up, and there's a little bar that the play field rests on. Watch this.
    45:32
    So there's two tabs. You pull that down, bam, you got access to the front of the game. And then out the front, if you're listening, I apologize that you can't see this, but this is what the ball rolls on. It's a giant piece of plastic. It does not roll on the screen. So there no interaction between the ball and the screen It is not a touch screen There is an infrared grid that floats above the playfield that tracks where the ball is So there is no wear and tear on the screen because the ball doesn't touch the screen. It touches this, which you can pull out and clean. Or if you drop your razor blade on it and it gets a scratch, you can just get a new piece of polycarbonate and slide it in there, and you've got a brand new playfield. No chipping, no pooling, no scratches. It rolls on this, okay?
    46:33
    You can also, from that front, you can slide the playfield screen out if you need to. For whatever reason, I don't see you needing to do that. You can also slide the whole flipper back assembly out. So if you want to change your flipper rubbers or you need to work on something, And you just slide that out, take it to your workbench, and that's how you work on it. So there you go.
    47:00
    All right, coming back. Nick, how was that? Did it make sense? That was good, yeah. Very straightforward. Good job. You're a little quiet there. What did you say? I said very straightforward. You did a good job. That's all right. And look how quick that was.
    47:15
    All right, I'm plugging my headphones back in now. um uh the what what protects the plastic um yeah just goodwill and hopes and dreams okay uh let's go back to nick um all right so that is the deal with that um so does this current scoop configuration all in all so he's talking about the walls and the scoops that are like right behind the screen and before the physical shots on the playfield.
    47:49
    Does that pose limitations to future design, or is it something that can also be swapped down the road if P3 develops it? So I don't think it's modular. I don't think you can lift that out. That's an integrated part of the machine, and you also kind of need it for minigames like Rocks and things like that. So the minigames that only take place on the lower part of the playfield, you need those there for that so um that's so i'm i'm guessing that you can just you leave that in there at all times i don't think you can swap that up and as i played it i thought about like well what if they wanted to bring a shot further down the play field they could just have it go over one of those um one of those scoops and just in the game never use that scoop and then you could bring your shots down closer so i'm wondering i'm wondering if that's a possibility i don't know i don't have any inside scoop there no pun intended but um that's that's my my thoughts on that um all right did i miss any questions in chat uh okay here's one that's what i'm getting a p3 um i don't i don't have a current plan yet but i haven't played heist so So that might be a game changer for me. I love the innovation. I love that E3 is pushing technology and looking at pinball differently. I love it. So I'm kind of following closely what's going on, and I want to see the system continue to develop. And again, I've not played Heist. I've seen Heist. It looks awesome. It looks interesting. And I look forward to playing it at Cabins. yeah it's um you know we always talk about what's what's innovative on new games and what are you know what's new and interesting and there's just so much that's cool in this that they're really pushing it uh to the next level and uh you know i you know i'm i'm i'm in i love it and i like to share my my enthusiasm for the the platform with folks so um yeah hopefully i'm i'm just happy to be friends with kevin who's got one there you go um i have i have some more uh p3 stuff to talk about dude did we skip oh no we didn't do uh game in game room updates uh we'll talk a little bit more about that um how does the screen affect the physical play towards this is from void star in chat how does the screen affect the physical play toward the lower half of the play field i understand that some of the games can have toys that extend from the upper but does that lack of physical toys closer to the flippers change the game positively or negatively at all so this is This is another very common question, concern, point of interest for the P3 platform, that there's nothing down low on the playfield, which for the first couple of playfields, I would agree. There was no physical interaction aside from the targets on the side lower down. But with games like Heist, you see the crane that extends down and brings all sorts of physical action to the lower part of the playfield. It's also a little deceptive, and I think watching it on a stream, it's not as impactful, but you're always interacting with things on the screen. So you're shooting for things low on the playfield, even if it's not a physical object. So if there's cash falling down the screen on heist, I'm taking a shot to hit those targets, those virtual targets, lower on the playfield. So there's interactivity all over the game, even if it's not physical. They've also shown on some of their, they did it. There's a promo video on the Multimorphic YouTube channel where they show some concepts of like pop bumpers and things on the lower part of the play field. So, or scoops. And I heard Jerry, Jerry just did a great interview on the Flippin' and Mashing podcast.
    51:47
    So check that out. He talks a lot about this. we talk a lot about it on the interview we did with him a couple years ago here on the podcast so if you want to dig in the archives or go to the youtube channel um go back and listen to that interview that we did with jerry too um but you know in in his most recent interview he talked about a scoop and how you would put a scoop on the lower part of the playfield it would just you'd need to be engineered different so you would shoot it and like maybe hold it up above the playfield because you can't go through the playfield because there's a screen there there's the infrared grid it would hold the ball there and give you that same effect of you know shooting a scoop or a saucer just engineered in a different way or if you're going to have a pop bumper down on the lower play field it would have to connect to the rails on the side and hover over the top and fire that way so it is possible for them to bring more physical interaction to the lower play field i know they're thinking about that based on that interview that jerry did and that they're mindful of that. Some that's something that people want. So, uh, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some more of that, um, down the line.
    52:54
    Um, what do we got? Can magnets work through the screen? I don't know. I would guess not because this magnets would screw with the, screw the teeth, the video screen that's under the play field, but maybe, maybe they're magnets on the side or something instead. So we only knew how magnets work. if only, um, yeah. So the, uh, you would have to just do it differently. Um, you know, that's what Jerry said in that interview. It's like, you can do pretty much anything. You just have to rethink how you do it. Um, so that, I guess that's my update. Did I miss anything else in chat? Uh, do I regret not waiting for a Raza? No. Uh, I think I made the right choice there. Um,
    53:43
    cheaper plays. Okay. I think we're good. Okay, so that's some thoughts on the P3. If you guys got more, send them to talkpainball.gmail.com. We can get into it more next month. I'm going to think more about how I want to do a video for YouTube about the P3 because I think even just stuff like pulling the play field out and showing how the flippers come out and things like that, it's very interesting, and it doesn't always come across on a gameplay stream. So being able to highlight some of that from an owner perspective, maintenance perspective, just how it all works kind of perspective would be interesting, I think. So more to come on that.
    54:25
    So here was a question. Attack submitted a non-P3 question, and it's troll-y, but I think it's good. He says, who will deliver more games in 2021, Pinball Adventures, Pinball Brothers, or Debrute?
    54:40
    nick what do you think couldn't fucking begin to guess i mean deep root well no deeper allegedly has the sales right they have the most sales of anybody that that we're aware of i don't know how many pinball adventure i dude i have no idea i have no idea it's about who's going to deliver games though how many machines out the door who's going to do the most i couldn't even be I can't see Pinball Adventures selling more than 20 games at best. Yeah. Pinball Brothers is making Aliens, right? Yeah, they've already delivered a couple of those because Cointaker's got at least one.
    55:19
    And it's going to be at the show, the Ohio show. You know what? I have more faith in Pinball Brothers than... I believe that Pinball Adventures can actually manufacture games. The question is, are there buyers for the games? that's that's their that's their downfall right like who who wants this game that they're making i i don't know somebody does but not not many i'm guessing deep rue i have no confidence that they can put together a working game and deliver it they're going to cobble something together that's going to probably be a disaster because it's their first game right i mean this is the problem like your first game is always there's going to be issues there's so many you know quote unquote new things in there that just means new things to break that aren't really tested the pinball Brothers, you got the license of Alien.
    56:06
    I think there's people who want that game. I'm going to say Pinball Brothers. I'm going to go Pinball Adventures. I think they're most ready to start rolling them out. Whether or not they get the orders, that's the thing. That's the thing, Kevin.
    56:21
    Is Pinball Brothers, are they scaled up for production? I don't know if they are. It's easy, quote-unquote easy to put together a couple prototypes. Like we saw with Big Lebowski, right? They made a couple that they took out to machines or took out to shows and got the hype all built up. But when it came down to the nuts and bolts of let's just start cranking these out,
    56:46
    that's where these companies run into trouble. Well, I know. It's actually sales isn't the question. I know you're talking about deliver, but I understand. I'm saying a game that is delivered. Yeah. It all factors in. You have to sell a game first before you deliver a game, otherwise you're dropping free games around town. Free games. This is a bad business model. You're here first. I don't want to do that. It's your business insights with Nick.
    57:13
    So Nick says Pinball Brothers. I say Pinball Adventures. Let's see. Somebody hold us to this, and we'll revisit it at the end of the year in our 2021 Pinball Recap. Yeah, can't wait. Count your days. he also brought this one up imagine that pinball machines could be parents which two games would have the most awesome child I feel like I have an answer but I can't say it without getting in trouble I was going to say like Hardbody and I was trying to think of like the male equivalent of Hardbody, Paragon maybe i was just going based on theme but uh i think what he was thinking was like what are two games that you love that would be cool together like if he wants this yeah he knows what he's doing i think nick is nick is passing on this one attack yeah he gave the example of uh tron and whirlwind so like a smooth flowy super rampy kind of game with the like the feel and the vibe of a Tron.
    58:26
    So if you put those two together, Tron plus Whitewater, yeah. Alright. Alright. Very nice. Alright. Next guy, nothing. Nothing. Next. Moving on. Game Room Updates. So I got my Lexi talking more about P3 because this was...
    58:44
    It was a P3 shill. I'm shilling. Allegedly I'm on the payroll, but I'm really not. But Jerry said I was, so I'm expecting my paycheck any time now. Um, so I, I, I perceive it. And yes, I bought it. I paid for it, uh, shipped it out to my house and I received it. What? Two weeks later. Did we talk about this? Cause I had ordered it last time, but did we talk about me receiving it last time? I don't know. I don't, I don't think I had gotten it last. So what was cool is, so it was weird because I was expecting it to deliver on like a Wednesday and it came at like eight 30 at night through UPS. so what happens is they put basically the only thing you have to swap to get a new p3 game is the back part of the playfield so it ships in a in a like 24 cubic inch squared box approximately and so i got the notification that it got delivered so i went out thinking it was going to be like up against the garage it was just like sitting there on my front step and i thought how different an experience that was to the typical new pinball machine purchase where you have to like run a truck and haul it upstairs or it gets delivered on a uh on a lift truck a truck with a lift gate you gotta get a dolly and wheel it in i just carried it in plopped it down and then you know 10-15 minutes later i'm in i'm up and running with a new pinball machine so just the the whole experience of buying a new pinball machine with a p3 is just so different and cool that that kind of struck me when i got it so uh i i got that um installed it streamed it the next week and i got real close to the wizard mode on that stream um so i highlighted the the video and showed everybody kind of like the ins and outs of that game i was i was like a couple multi-ball jack jackpots away from getting to the wizard mode so um if you want to see more about the uh game lexi lightspeed escape from earth for the p3 you can check out that video it's on our youtube channel it's also highlighted on twitch um so check that out big big fan of Lexi. The other thing I did P3 related was I built a caddy for my P3 playfield. So I got some pictures here.
    60:50
    Right here. So Nick Baldridge had put together some plans for this. It's a holder for two of the playfield modules that slides under your pinball machine. So this is what it looks like without any games in it. And there it is with two games in it. It will fit two play fields and then it just slides right under your pinball machine so you can store them nice and you may say Nick may say hey but aren't they going to get all dusty because there's nothing covering them up do you have a little dress for them? I got a cover it's in progress it hasn't gotten here yet but it should be here I hope next week so once it's here I'm going to go ahead and show some pictures of that that's great I mean see if Jerry's going to offer that I mean, it seems like a good product to sell to customers, right? Like, who are me and can't build anything, or you don't want to see me trying to build something? Yeah, and he has mentioned in the Multimorphic Owners thread that they know this is something that people want. So I wouldn't be surprised if they offer an official solution. But this was a good pandemic project and $20, $30 worth of labor and some spray paint. I put my junior high shop class skills to work and got the table saw out and did some cutting and hammering. And so it was kind of fun. And it looks nicer. It's easier to get at. So the cardboard boxes they ship in actually fit under the machine. So you can fit two play fields under the machine in the boxes they ship in.
    62:24
    But they're a little awkward to kind of pull the games in and out of. And you have to fight the flaps and stuff like this. So this makes it a little easier. So there you go. That's my game room update.
    62:34
    How about you? Nothing. Next. Moving on. But you've been streaming Black Knight, right? I have, yeah. Yeah, I've been streaming Black Knight and having fun with that game. So I'm going to – I couldn't stream yesterday. Like, I tried to stream on Fridays. That's my time slot. But somehow, you know, I still have the possibility of work meetings getting booked on June, on Friday. It seems weird, but it's been happening. So, yeah, I'm going to stream some Black Knight hopefully this coming Friday. and I'm going to stream it during the 12 hours of pinball as well. Nice. More Black Knight coming your way. You're going to do Deadpool and Black Knight, right? Yeah, Black Knight Sword of Rage. You're the stern shill for the stream. I am.
    63:23
    I'm doing a multi-morphic and a Jersey Jack, so I'm shilling the two shills that I shill. It's funny if anybody ever called me a stern hater when I stream so much stern and I have more Stern games than anybody else, so I'm not. No.
    63:39
    All right, so I think that brings us to review time. Where's my review intro? Where is it? I forget where it is. We never do it. All right, we'll be back right after this with a review of Fishtails. Let's go!
    64:03
    Ready, ready, ready, ready, ready for your eye exam. Showtime! All right, it's time to talk about Fishtails. Fishtails is a game manufactured by Williams in 1992 with a design by Mark Ritchie, Pat McMahon, and Python Angelo.
    64:24
    Art also by Pat McMahon. Software by Mark Panaccio. We talked about him earlier. He's a new hire at Stern. Sound by Chris Granner, so you know it's awesome. and pricing according to pin side right now as of uh march 2021 is in the 3300 to 3800 range so um nicolene it's fishtails what do you think yeah fishtails fishtails fishtails fishtails so what was your first experience with the fishtails do you remember oh god i wish i could tell you my first experience with fishtails and it's to be perfectly honest in this review it's been a couple of years since I've played the game. But I've certainly played enough fish tails in my pinball career.
    65:06
    And fish tails I always think of as being in this category of games where there were I think there's a lot of them produced. And when I got into the hobby, this was like a $1,200 game. I know, it's crazy. And it falls into the category of a lot of people's first game that they got, or one of the first games that they got. right like you know you know when you get into the hobby you might not be running out and buying a new box game you know you're dipping your toes in and getting your first dmd and fishtails is on the list along with things like judge dread and demo man and uh um uh bram stoker's dracula right so um you know it's uh let's just go down the categories right it's kind of my uh overall impression of it but um the art is fantastic you know you had the uh back glass yeah let me put it back on the screen a moment ago and it's just like that is uh it's vibrant it's fun it's the kind of thing where you can just look at for a while and there's kind of these you know small details that you can pick out and you know there's just a a lot of like uh love and care went into these games to be attractive and you know it's an original theme you know you hear people talking these days about wanting original theme do you think if they came out of the game fish tales today how people do you think people would shit on it oh people would lose their minds they'd be like what is this shit nobody wants this a fishing game oh my god where is my whatever action movie theme no way this would fly right now but because it came out in the 90s and people have nostalgia for it now oh man fishtails what a great theme what nobody does games like this anymore you know meanwhile dialed in heist tna black knight look at the sales of those versus the licensed games exactly good point i can never bring that up enough because i always hear people saying that it pisses me off they have no idea yeah it's just so uh and we're just gonna hear this for the several more decades to come so anyways we'll get out when we can but yeah i mean the art is absolutely fantastic this is such a like just there's games that just communicate fun the visual nature and fishtails is like a 10 out of 10 in that communication. I love the art.
    67:23
    I've got a picture of the cabinet up on screen now and one of the unfortunate things about this game is that the art on the side of the cabinet tends to fade a lot. I was able to find a nice full color version of it but a lot of times you'll find it. I think of this game there's one that was, I don't know if it's still there but it was in a pizzeria nearby and it was just faded to yellow. It was like yellow and white. And it's such a shame because the art is so good on it. And I think you can buy replacement decals, but that's not an easy thing to do, swapping decals. But yeah, so I looked it up. 13,640 of these made. So they made a ton of these.
    68:04
    And for me, I remember two things. At that pizzeria, I remember playing it. And I also remember playing it at Jamie's house when we first started going to his house. He had one, and I was like, this is cool. Crank on those ramps. It's just such a fun game. I remember, I think the first time I ever played it was,
    68:23
    it might have been 2011. I probably played it at maybe Pimberg or something, but also I remember Matt Hess down in Binghamton had, my folks are in Binghamton, and I was looking for pinball to play in the area, and I was scrambling around, and I think somebody posted there was a Fishtails at a bar, and I went down there and played the hell out of it. Yeah, that was it. So it must have been like summer or fall of 2011 that I actually have a memory of traveling to a place just to play Fishtails because that was the game available Yep It pretty typical of the time I think because there weren these big arcades and barcades and retrocades and beercades and all that stuff like there have been over the past few years It was like, all right, what's out there? Let me track it down. Who knows somebody with a pinball machine? Maybe they'll let me come over and play their brand new ACDC. Balser Snow's one. Balser, are you from New York, that area? Yeah, there's a bar and deposit, I think. Yeah. Sorry, Kev. There you go. Nice. Bringing it home with the chat. That's the one I'm talking about, I believe. Yep. All right. Let's take a look at the art a little bit more. We'll talk about the play field art.
    69:33
    Very cool. I mean, you get wear on the inserts around the fish a lot. So if you're looking at this game, let's see if I know it's not in that close up. But if you look at the fish, the four main fish in the middle of the play field, you'll see insert wear around those a lot.
    69:47
    But otherwise. It was clear coated, though, that game, right? Yeah. But I think there's, you know, around inserts. You saw it on stuff like Roadshow and stuff, too, or on Kickout. It's just like the real high wear areas of the game tend to get worn out, even if it is a Diamond play game. I like this play field shot we're showing right now. It doesn't have the flippers on it, but I like when the flippers are on it and they go up, it looks like the fish's mouth opening and closing. That's a very Python Angelo kind of thing. Speaking of flippers, they're lightning flippers. Yes, lightning flipper game. if you don't know if lightning flippers are if there's newer people those are shorter than standard size flippers yep um eighth of an inch on each side so it doesn't seem like much but when you're playing it it definitely does but yeah lots of blues lots of greens definitely a great art package for the theme and it's just fun like nick said it's a it's a fun looking game and really draws you in so um all right what's uh what's next on our rundown here sound sound i I can hear the sound effects from this game as we talk about it. Great sound. Great music. I got the music in my head, yeah. It's got the kind of like hillbilly banjo plucking kind of music, right? Fantastic, yeah. And the callouts are really good. It's like, how big was it?
    71:03
    Really top-notch sound. It's Chris Granner, right? Yeah, so no surprise there that the sound would be amazing because he's got a great history of games. And welcome to our friend Skip Natty, and thanks for the raid. yeah so what do you what are your thoughts on the sound fantastic i mean especially you got to put in context of the time um catchy music um the call outs um it's really well done really well done 10 out of 10 for the time yeah agreed uh it doesn't get much better than the sound effects and music on on fishtails all right toys uh let's take a look at the play field again and we'll talk about toys so the the cabinet itself it's got an interesting uh shooter knob on it which is like a one of those like autocast uh oh yeah um fish fishing rods um so that kind of draws you in right from the start and then um like physical interactivity wise that i guess the main thing is the the fishing reel lock for the for the multi-ball so you shoot the spinner shot or there's no spinner there it's just a saucer shooting there's a on the far right there's a orbit and then just to the left of that there's a shot you shoot to load the lock and it whips it around on a on a wire form over to the fishing reel lock on the left and that's that's a really cool effect in that it's well uh choreographed with the display and the sound like they do they do a great job uh highlighting that um other than that you know the the boat ramps in the middle isn't you know to usually call ramps toys but um it's a well-integrated layout um um you know the let me ask you this do you know if the topper was standard when this game was released it was they did not charge extra for this it just came with it look at glorious topper we we should it's a non-interactive toy but i would say you know it's a topper but it's it you know by some people's definition is it might be a toy or call it non-interactive toy and in one of the best toppers of all time i'm gonna say because this is when it was a billy the bass or whatever the hell it was or you get that animated fish on a on a board that you push the button and it starts singing and dancing they i heard the story was they basically stole the idea of billy the bass from this this topper or something there there's some there's some kind of relation to that billy the bass thing i always assume they stole the billy the bass idea and put it on the top of this game yeah because it was something uh i don't know which order that played out in but it was definitely a thing in 92 when this game came out that all the infomercials for it you remember that shit it's so stupid uh and it reminds me when we so when we streamed this game on on the bro show we went to neil's house and he had the game in his basement but his basement is not tall enough to have the topper on it so instead he like put the topper on a shelf on a different wall and wired it to the game so you play it and it'll flop on the wall to your side it was so crazy i always think of that when i think of this game now uh but yeah great topper can't can't go on without talking about that topper good point thanks for bringing that up um but that's about it toys wise right yeah yeah okay um display and lighting uh so i i think that you know it's got a dmd it's an early 90s game um but i think they do a good job with the display on this it doesn't really stand out the only thing i think of the display when i think of the display on this game is the the video mode it's got a very cool video mode um it's it's one of the the more fun dot matrix video modes uh you're trying to you know shoot down the the people passing by on boats and jet skis and stuff like that so um very cool um animations and display there i don't the lighting doesn't stand out to me at all does it to you no you know what i guess what game of the era really stood out in terms of lighting right i can't i can't think of anything you know lighting has come such a a long way today than what it was it's like that's kind of the new focal point in terms of what you can do in terms of uh pinball presentation right i feel like um in the in the 90s it was like toys and gimmicks were a lot of thought and and that's what distinguished pinball machine now be honest i mean a more cheaper way is just elaborate lighting and programming lighting effects. So you just don't really find it in those older games. I mean, maybe there's a good example that I'm just not thinking of, but yeah, there's nothing in my mind notable about it. Yeah, the only thing I can think of is like the Addams Family multi-ball start, the Showtime thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that like integrates the topper and the flashes on the topper and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, you just couldn't do as much with lighting back then. And I guess it's not fair to compare a 92 game to a 2021 game, but it's definitely one of the things you notice when you're looking back at these older games that there was only so much you could do with the incandescent bulbs and the insert lighting and things like that. Now we're spoiled with hot rails and expression lighting and whatever other kind of crazy stuff you want to throw in your pinball machine. So the full-color RGB LEDs have really taken it to a nice level. uh gameplay um i guess that's that's really where this game shines right it's a it's a fast flowing game uh the boat ramp in the middle you can just combo that all day and then if you lose you're dead you know it's got the the captive ball in the middle that to entice you to shoot that and you know take that risk um the orbits are fast and fun the the lock shot is cool um just i just think fast and brutal when i think of the gameplay on this game yeah i agree this is kind of my style of gameplay right it's just a really tough game um it's you know it's not a deep game so when you don't have a game that's deep you go towards the spectrum of fast and and brutal i love the um casting shot that loops all the way around to the left flipper and you can hit it on the fly into the lock, like incredibly satisfying. It's the same concept that Deadpool does, right, when the super skill shot of hitting into the lock. I just love that. It's such a good feeling on fishtails, and I always, when I talk about Deadpool, I just say how much I love that shot, and I'm glad that George Gomez did it on Deadpool. So very cool. It's great to kind of get into the flow of doing the boat. There's a couple strategies, I think, in the game, which makes it interesting in tournaments and kind of like, your decision making in it if you want to go for the multi-ball or you want to do like the boat loops I think this game shines as kind of a competitive game because there's there's two viable approaches to it at least you know in my world there's I could be wrong but remember always stepping up to the game in like competition at pinberg and be like okay am I going to go for locks here I'm going to you know see if I'm feeling a little more flowy and I'm just going of do like the boat loops over and over again and collecting a monster fish and stuff like that so um it's pretty cool yeah and that takes us into rules um yeah it's like you said it's not a super deep game i don't think is there even a wizard mode in this game i think it's just like a it's more of like a doctor who era game where there's different scoring strategies and you're just trying to you know blow it up and and maximize from a few different uh available scoring strategies yeah i mean i wouldn't say doctor who i mean doctor who has a lot more going for in terms of the doctors and stuff and decision making but yeah i mean this is in that era not really getting into wizard mode so much so it's it's pretty basic pretty basic but i don't i don't think it has any broken rules on it like i think it's a i think it's a legit tournament game in terms of that so could be wrong um but yeah it's pretty pretty basic that time yeah it's not like a uh a getaway too where there's broken broken stuff and bugs that really make it a bad tournament game or anything like that yeah as far as i know yeah i don't remember seeing a an overly um like unbalanced part of it like i think of johnny mnemonic and the spinner millions right there's not like that one thing that just like totally destroys the scores um that i think you know going for monster fish is a pretty pretty typical tournament strategy but then you know everybody's pretty much on the same page if you're going for that um steve's daniel says bonus occasionally doesn't collect so there's there's a thing um it just has um it's just very satisfying pull things off in the game it's very satisfying to lock the ball it's very satisfying to collect the monster fish it's very satisfying to hit the um the u-turn kind of uh um um loops on on the boat like that's what i think of when i think of this game and the design of the game and And I don't know. It's when you've got it going on, when you're in that rhythm and groove and you're hitting your shots, it's incredibly satisfying because it's a dangerous game. So it gives you a good feeling, too. I actually love how it shoots and plays. I think it's one of my favorite games to play kind of additively. But it's also very scary. Like with the Lightning Fiddlers, there's so many things that can go wrong and it's a little anxiety-producing, but it's great. I think it produces an exciting match to watch people play Fishtails on. Yeah, I can agree with that.
    80:24
    So what are your thoughts on Last Ability? Would this be a long-term? It's not a game that either of us have owned, right? Oh, no, no.
    80:33
    Man, this is like, that's such a positive attitude towards Fishtails, right? Like we just said nothing kind of about positive things about it. And then I look at like the price on it. you know, this is three times as much as it was when I got into the hobby. Now, look, things go up. There's more people in the hobby. There's more people buying things. You've got inflation, et cetera.
    80:56
    But there's other games that have not gone up three times in price that I think are better. So at the price that you have listed, Kevin, of, you know, $3,300 to $3,800,
    81:05
    it's like, oh, man. You know, and also, like, the fallback is like, oh, it's great in a large collection. it's a weird thing to say because I guess you can stuff any game in a large collection and have it there and this used to be like a game that you'd recommend to somebody just getting in a hobby, grab a fishtails $1200 even when it moved up to like $1800, grab a fishtails it was an easy recommendation to play plentiful, a good game to cut your teeth on I don't know man it's not it doesn't have the depth of single ball play, it's getting more expensive I think there's better games to spend your money on that you're going to get better last ability out of for that price range. So, I don't know. I struggle with that. Yeah, I would, you know, I look at something like Johnny Mnemonic that really hasn't gone up that much in price. I think it still hovers around that $3,000 price. Yeah. And there's just so much more to do in it, rules-wise. Agreed. And it's another fast game. you know it's just for whatever reason this game it i think this is the occasion where uh original theme uh is better you know it causes that price to go up versus a licensed theme people don't think fondly of johnny mnemonic the movie um you know so it's got that kind of negative um air about it i think you know now we kind of look back and laugh on it but it's one of those bad 90s movie games so i think that keeps the price down on it um yeah i would take uh i would take a johnny mnemonic over this when we talk about because you gotta factor price into it right this is the million dollar question or the 3800 question i would take a johnny mnemonic over this and i would and i would take a uh world cup soccer over this right i think those games kind of fall into those price brackets yeah or uh demo man right yeah this game is just it's it's too, in my humble opinion, it's too much. If that's the current market price for it, it's just too much. And I don't think it fares well in the current price range that it's asking for compared to other games that you can get for maybe a little bit more or even in that price range. Yeah.
    83:17
    You're somebody who has classic games, but gameplay-wise, I think this falls in line with the playability of a classic game. If that's your style, and if this is a game that you love and I think that's your gameplay style, then go for it. But like Nick said, there's going to be other games that offer more either in that price range or less.
    83:41
    Yeah. And it's tough, man, because as we're doing this review, I'm like, I really like Fishtails, man. It's like I'd kind of like to have them, but it'd be hard for me to pull the trigger on that compared to some other games, especially it's not just on price. It's space too, right? Like, you know, there's money and there's also space in a collection. Yep. So maybe one day, you know, depending on where things are in my life, I'd maybe love to have one for a while and play the hell out of it. Maybe it has a permanent place in the collection because I think it is a good game to showcase. I have a lot of respect for it. I think it provides a lot of fun to just go up to it. Like you said, Kevin's like a classic. Like you go and play a few games on it, and you don't ask too much of it, right? Like you know its limitations, and you just have some good fun with it. All right. Well, I guess it's time to put some numbers to this review.
    84:30
    I'll take you over here and show you. Where's my thing? Interact. There we go. Okay. Scroll down to show you our beloved review score key. Zero to two is a burn-in. Three to five is an expensive nightlight. Six to eight is a solid game. Nine to ten gets your wallets out.
    84:50
    Why don't I go first? And I will say this is a six. I'm going to put it at a six. It's a solid game, but it's got everything going for it except for the rules, I think. The rules are fun, but it's just not a long-term keeper.
    85:12
    Yeah, I mean, that's where I put it. I don't know what else I can say. All right. I see that. I'm looking at the screen that's up, and I see that.
    85:21
    Is that Tuno, Mike? Who gave Revenge from Mars at 8.25? He did, yeah. You can't do that. He did, yeah. Son of a bitch.
    85:29
    All right, I feel a little more bullish on this game. This is a game that makes me smile. I sort of love everything about it, just the presentation of it, what it is. I love the fulfilling shots on it. It's an easy seven and a half for me. Okay. At least. I think, again, the asking price, if that's correct, it's just gotten too much. I mean, $1,200 was a steal, maybe undervalued, but it's just too high in the market where it's at.
    86:02
    But overall, for what it is and where it falls in terms of pinball, 7.5. It's such a cool game. I do have some love for this game, no doubt. Maybe one day I'll have a nice one. There you go. That's your review of Fishtails. Thanks, everybody. And that's going to almost do it for this episode of Brody Even Talk Pinball. I'll stay here for the much-beloved Topper Talk. We're going to wrap up the show. But before that, if you like the show, give us a follow on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You can follow us on YouTube for all of our past videos, highlights of streams that are interesting, like the Lexi Lightspeed thing. You can smash that Like button, do all the YouTube things. Yeah, do all the YouTube things. Smash Like, subscribe, blah, blah, blah. Leave a comment down below. Give a thumbs up. Yeah. All that stuff. Oh, you know, you've got to do that. That helps other people find our content. So if you're like, this is good stuff. It is. You're helping other people in the hobby. You try. You try to do good. NT Hits wants to know if we're on TikTok. No, I'm too old for that. Sorry. No, never. Pretty much everything else, though.
    87:05
    I think Jay's got a TikTok account where he does dance. Is it dances about finance, personal finance dance? Yeah.
    87:14
    Email us, talkpinball at gmail.com. you can follow us on Twitch if you want to watch us live do this live, watch us stream pinball gameplay live if you want to watch the 12 games in 12 hours coming up and you can sub us there if you want to support the channel and if you have Twitch Prime you can sub at no extra cost to you we would appreciate that you can drop us a few bucks on PayPal if you're so inclined or you can leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice again that helps folks find the show and share it with their friends So, Nick, any closing thoughts before we give it to Topper Talk?
    87:49
    Let's go over to Topper Talk. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. We love helping the pinball community and connecting and talking about the stuff, even on months when there's not much going on. But hopefully we find it entertaining and helpful, and we're looking forward to you guys joining us on April 10th for the 12 hours of pinball streaming. All right, we'll see you guys later. Have a good month.
    88:14
    It's Topper Talk with Goran right now. Let's all have some fun. This is about plastic on top of your pin. Go and buy one now. There's a topper here and a topper there. Here a topper, there a topper, everywhere a topper. It's critical to the gameplay experience. You must buy one now. It's your monthly fill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Goran. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Gorn, the part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Today we'll be taking our first look at the new Stern Stranger Things pinball topper, as well as we'll be debuting a new segment called Hot Topper Takes. So let's head over to the real world and take a look at that. Okay, now we're at the computer, so let's take a look at the video that Stern Pinball just released, of the new Stranger Things topper.
    89:14
    Okay, so we see pinball machine here. And here is the topper. Okay, I mean, it looks pretty cool right off the bat. You got those really cool infinity lights for a really nice light show. I think that's the first time that's ever been done on at least an official topper. But I do want to point out it's not the first time we've seen an effect like that on a pinball machine. the arcade's homebrew Metroid actually has that effect in the back glass and it's really really cool you know you got some nice artwork on the inside probably could have been molded figures back there for added effect but had to save money somewhere so I think it's just etched acrylic fits with the overall Stranger Things theme I think it overall ties together the theming of the game with, and all the cool gimmicks that it has, like the projection mapping on the premium and Ellie, the black light kit that was an add on. And this really takes it the next step further, sort of enhances the gameplay experience. But here's my problem. It comes in at about $650. We believe in. Okay. Yeah. At first glance, that's a seal. All the other top is recently more like a thousand dollars, But one of the coolest toppers ever, the Black Knight, like, animatronic head topper, was only about $450. So I don't know if this was made lower than the usual stone topper as of recently to just make us think that it's a steal, but I honestly don't think it's worth it. Yes, I would love it on top of my machine, but at $650, that's pretty steep. Now, also, we're going to be debuting a really quick new segment called Hot Topper Takes, and a Buffalo Pinball viewer sent in this wonderful Avatar topper that does not enhance the gameplay experience one bit. I just look at this topper and I'm like, oh, the game is Avatar, but it says it right on the back glass a couple inches right below. I'm not familiar with Avatar. I've never really played it. I don't know if it's an uninspired game, but the toppers for this game surely seem uninspired. I did a quick Google search of other Avatar toppers to see if there was something creative out there. Let's see what we got. Once again, the exact same thing. We have Avatar written a couple inches above where it says the game name on the back glass. And okay, okay, surely there must be at least one more creative Avatar topper. But once again, we look at the same thing. It's another topper that just says Avatar. So not a fan does not enhance the gameplay experience. And those are my topper hot takes.
    91:46
    All right, that's going to do it all for today's episode of Topper Talk with Goran. Tune in to the next podcast for another episode. and as always, get out there and buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my topper talk.