the dodds pinball podcast cannot be stopped cannot be held down cannot be kept from getting to you not by hell nor high water lord willen and the creek don't rise we come back again and again 225 is the episode number here but it ain't even about that it's about celebrations of pinball friendship monster league hockey kiss pinball rumors and all kinds of other resorted garbage Gather around friends, grab your carpet squares, we're going to talk about some pinball madness, get on it. I'm having a devastating week here. I'm moving out of the house. I've been packing things nonstop. Today I did a six-hour drive through the countryside of Wisconsin down to the far reaches of Benton just to deliver 17 cardboard boxes to the new house. I had to get out of the house, man. I had to get out of the house. I did get to play some pinball, actually. I played some Lord of the Rings down there at this cool little place in Benton. it's a little barn out in the country where they build pinball machines there's also a lord of the rings there and i'm having a new appreciation for it i i think i'm starting to get it now that kind of i leveled up in pinball i'm playing this thing and well it's built to the standards of the time but i would i'm gonna add my voice to the cheering throngs of thousands of enthusiasts that want this game remastered with full assets i would love it if stern would do it now the rumors are not pointing strongly in that direction i don't know if it's ever going to happen but i would love to see this thing just a couple of little fine-tuned tweaks a couple of extra modes and a nice big beautiful hd screen the best screen in the world i want to see that with lord of the ring gold edition gold armor man palantir edition or whatever like i'm here for it i want to powder coat that orc sword that you lock the balls on i'm gonna go nuts with it i want you know the two towers to bash back and forth and you know be made a little bit more robust uh i'm really digging it and hey i don't i'm not even particular i want another lord of the rings game made and somebody do it in jersey jack go ahead and take it throw hot rails in there make it shoot as amazing as harry potter fill it with all the assets like harry potter with an even bigger screen and gold armor and an awesome topper and i'm gonna be pinball happy i can't be sad man we're here at the new year it's 2026 we're on the eve of a certain cornerstone release which is it's always a fun time when you see the teaser and you're like it's coming i haven't seen any leaks what's it gonna be right and until we see what it is it's almost as if the game exists in like an infinite number of parallel universes all at once right like dr strange is uniting everything in his uh you know glowing world and everything exists and then the second that the trailer drops or the second that of potato picture leaks all of a sudden the wave function collapses like schrodinger's cat and then we get what we get i'm trying not to set myself up to be disappointed in a game if it is pokemon i want it to be great i want i want it to be like like lord of the rings level of intricacy of fun shots of cool wire forms that aren't just returns to the in lane that take themselves through that little crisp blade back and forth and then dump on a sword and then come in it could be pikachu's tail coming down the play field for all i care and gomez is involved he did the sword on lord of the rings he did the sword on deadpool he can turn pikachu's tail into a sword we could have balls rolling down it that's what i want in my deepest darkest pits of pinball enthusiasm now i am preparing myself mentally for this to be two ramps that with wire forms to return to the inlanes some kind of bash toy a rudimentary ball lock on the premium le and like that's kind of it maybe some pez heads on the slings for the premium le that aren't there on the pro maybe a magnet effect and like that's kind of it that's what i'm prepared for if they blow me away i'm gonna be super excited i might even buy this dang thing i'll tell you what i'm not gonna do i'm probably not gonna be able to call bad pinball and get myself an le because despite the enthusiast circles and their doom and gloom on this machine is nobody's seen it yet though this is all just like second third seventh hand information jeff is telling me that he's already got enough people on his interested list for the limited edition version of pokemon that your boy don can't even get in on one now um which is fine you know i was i i i was never interested so much the point like i can let other people enjoy this le like you know i'm not die hard pokemon like this is my dream theme I'm dying on this hill. So like I knew fair and good that I was, I was on a list for a premium or maybe a pro, but the Ellie will go ahead and let them have it. So, I mean, there's a level of enthusiasm out there. Now maybe everybody's just hedging their bets and we'll see what happens when the game comes out and releases. Will this be another $9,500 Ellie in six weeks? I don't know if this trend is going to continue. Pokemon's a hell of a license. So I think we're here in this, uh, uncollapsed wave function. Mathematicians helped me out. Am I explaining this properly? String theory or whatever. There's a good Pokemon machine out there. There's a great one out there. I'm just not sure which timeline I am in right now. Although when you take a look around the situation of things right now, it can't be the best one. There's got to be one better than this. Maybe it's just the seasonal affective disorder that's starting to hit. But on top of that, we've been getting conflicting rumors about the next Stern remastered game. I know Nap just shocked the world, slapped the paint right off my face when he basically confirmed that Kiss was getting a remaster this year instead of ACDC. And, oh, heck yes, man. I'm here for that. Now, ACDC, a fun game, cool mechanisms. It has that bell. It's got one of the canons from Star Trek The Next Generation. It's got music from ACDC. And probably there would be more songs. Probably there would be an extra mode or two, a more robust hopper or something. uh of course that lower play field with the tiny marble which isn't kind of the best but you know it would be okay i think it deserves to exist like i think that the walking dead remaster deserves to exist but the walking dead remaster doesn't deserve all of my cash right now so as we were all getting ready to like resign ourselves to the fact that okay acdc is going to be the game this year you know it'll probably sell like walking dead le or you know it were 200 of the 500 it'll go out there and the rest will kind of flounder um and then we get slapped by not nap arcade with this kiss rumor which i love this one from a business perspective more than acdc listen uh kiss le's go try to find one their high dollar amount this is absolutely the game that should be targeted for a remaster right people that want this game you know like i would i wouldn't mind having one it plays like a precursor to rush i kind of get the 70s vibe of kiss even though i not like you know the biggest Kiss fan or anything you know but I enthusiastic about the game but I not going to spend for it And of course if I get it I want the good one I want the topper and forget paying $5,000 for a topper. Homeboy's not going to do that. But you tell me that I can get a $12,999, maybe a $12,500 or $11,500 LE and then a $1,500 topper. Maybe I'm still not in at that point but i'm at least a little more excited about it i'm excited for the fact that kickback and madison would have two of them sitting next to each other and i could go play the new one with the bigger screen and hopefully new modes and stuff so like this makes a lot more sense now on the inside i've heard from people right that are completely assured don this is a solid lock uh that it's going either way i've heard from people that say no It is absolutely ACDC. Other people that are like, no, I've talked to people at the factory. It's definitely not KISS. And like, I don't know who to believe because this is coming from what seemed to be, at least in the past, credible sources. So I don't know. I'm sure all these options are probably on the table and have had discussions that somewhat somebody probably got wind of it and took that as meaning it was confirmed. And, you know, for all I know, last Tuesday, KISS was absolutely confirmed. and Monday it fell through and ACDC got its place. So maybe both things are true. We're living in the wave function, man. Just collapse already and let me know what we're getting. Either way, from what the rumored titles are coming from Big Daddy Stern this year, I think we're going to get some kind of pinball excitement. I'm going to watch it and we'll see if anything tickles me enough to need to go out and snatch and put it in the arcade. Speaking of games that I had no idea I had an interest in until now, and now all of a sudden I'm like scrambling to get on the list. Monster League Hockey for Mr. Jake Danzig. Have you seen this thing? Monster League Hockey will cause Jake Danzig to make you his biatch. Loser Kid Pinball did a great interview. It was like, I listened to that on the drive down to Benton today. All with Jake Danzig. Mr. Dukes of Hazzard himself. Comic book adventures of Jake and Jesse. So he had that head-to-head game that we didn't know that we wanted, and then we went to Expo and then all of a sudden all of us wanted this thing. Brad Brad Albright did a great job on the art of this game. It's head-to-head like Joust, but it's fun unlike Joust. Apologies to all the Joust fans out there. But this thing was cool, right? Two defensive flippers, one offensive flipper, relatively simple gameplay with a symmetric layout, and it essentially reinfects us with the same aesthetic we get from air hockey, but like in pinball form so we can use like pinball methods and pinball tricks that we already know trapping up dead bouncing and everything to play against a goalie and and we have a little goalie that pops up and he pops up like seven times and so you have a little bit of a life bar too it was fun to play the transitions when the ball drains need to be sped up to keep the game moving along um but other than that like a solid effort and i'm used to pinball as a solo experience even if I'm playing with other people where it's like basically me versus the machine but this was different this was playing like defensively like mainly pinball is a defensive uh experience right it's all about recovering the ball and then like trying to get it up there and then just like you're always on defense trying to nudge to keep the ball from going out the outlanes and such to keep your score going but this one you had to be conscious of what was going on downfield against the human opponent that you're playing while still playing defensive at the same time And it was flexing some pinball muscles that I have that have not been tickled yet before. So like this is super cool. I'd like to see the industry kind of revisit this idea and build upon it. So, you know, I threw out just a random comment the other day to Jake on the Facebook page. Like, hey, man, when's this thing going to be available for preorder, right? Thinking like, you know, it's a one-off homebrew idea or something. And he's like on Loser Kid stating that basically not only does he have a list with greater than 100 people on it that are interested in owning this thing, but he's already been talking to pinball companies about getting this thing made, and he says there's already a deal that's been inked. So, like, this thing is actually coming out this year? Like, we're getting back into, like, what 2023 was like at TPF where there was, like, six brand-new games and Galactic Tank Force was out there in all of its 3D-printed glory, and now we're going to have this head-to-head game with Brad Brad Albright art and, like, girls on skates, giant mohawks and uh like battleborn gameplay as an actual commercial game this is awesome man my buddy glenn Glenn Waechter is involved in there doing music for it i love all of glenn's projects i'm a huge fan of him cool team came together a lot of the guys from saw are involved in this one as well and this one doesn't have the hang-up of a license that will sue you into oblivion if you try to put it out there so this got me to thinking um you know jake basically said this thing's getting made It's probably going to be made this year. Just email them, Facebook message them or something to get on an interested list. And then I guess they're going to be direct sales or maybe they're from a company. But he basically said everything except for who is the company that's making this thing. And will this be a contract bill that Jake will sell? Or is this a game that the company will sell? Will they sell through distributors? How many will they be? Will they be 100, 300, 525 unlimited? Will they be built in batches? Or like we're going to do an initial run of 300? We may not do any more, but if there's demand, we may do this thing. I don't know. But my brain got to thinking, as it does when you're on a long drive and you're listening to the sultry sounds of the Loser Kids, man. The two co-pilots of the show. So awesome. So immediately the obvious choice that comes to mind is American pinball, right? Our friends down in East Palatine, Illinois, right? We're just down the street from, is it Chunky Dunkers? What is the name of that awesome 24-hour donut place that's just down the street from American Pinball? Go look it up. Just down the street from Ametron. It's Krusty Dunkers. It's something like that, man. But I stop there every time. I go by the shop, and they give me a dozen. They're phenomenal, man. 24-hour Illinois donuts, dude. It's great. So American Pinball just put out that flyer that they're hiring. They're looking for designers. They're looking for assembly purple. They're looking for also purple. You know, everybody, you know, they got to they got to staff the factory again for a build. And we know that they're doing another game. I thought that they were saying that it was going to be a licensed thing. But who knows in the concophony of information that comes out from the pleasure dome known as American Pinball. We know it's not Cuphead that they're making. So is this game that they're going to be running soon, maybe happening sometime after TPF can actually be Monster League Hoppy? Monster League Hockey. That would make sense, right? So if I was just going in with a 62 IQ, I think that would be my Sherlock. But then I kept thinking, much like Sherlock Winston, and I'm thinking, all right, so what about – let's see. The game has been down in Texas. The team is in Tennessee What about I got it Barrels of fun right Barrels of fun is a company that would do something like this They got some capacity to build some games They're doing Dunes right now. They're saying they're getting, well, I don't know if they're saying it, but somebody was saying that they're going to try to have all the Winchesters done by June. I reached out, and apparently the word I got back was that they'll be done when they're done. But that would leave them with a build for fall or later in the year for something like a 300-1 or 300-run of a head-to-head game. And correct me if I'm wrong, but who did the art on Winchester's Mystery House but Mr. Brad Brad Albright, the dude responsible for the art on Monster League Hockey? So this seems like a slam dunk for this company, a way that they can build their Winchesters, they can build out their dunes, and then they can build out the rest of the year with some guaranteed sales, some more leveling up experience, and currying some favor and goodwill within the community by building the game that Jake made. That would make total sense to me. So I like that better than the American pinball rumor. And then I got the real one. This is the one that I think is really what's happening here. I think still sticking in Texas, sticking in Texas, and Texas Pinball Festival is apparently when this whole project will come to fruition that you'll be able to order this thing. It'll be the next place where this game is going to be to play in public. will be a Texas Pinball Festival in March in Fargo, North Texas. No, Frisco, Texas. And that is our friends that, while not in Houston, they are kind of down the street. I guess you got to go past Austin and all that. I'm talking about our friends. You know them. The guy who needs a hit. Guy's making a couple games. He does good builds. He's an awesome guy. He's got a great team. Really cool technological improvements that he's bringing. I'm talking about Chris Turner and Turner Pinball. this seems to be like the perfect match for him he did his hundred run of ninja eclipse he you know took constructive criticism with all the grace that more than i could muster and then put together a smashing cabinet and a great game that totally sold out set him up for merlin's arcade you know i don't like this idea of reaching back into the deep root bag and bringing out this stuff you know so like i wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it but it's cool for what it is and i know it's not selling its 800 or 1100 run i think you want to do 300 of the top end edition and 800 of the other one or something like that and i know it didn't sell that i know the guy can build and so he should be coming up pretty soon on you know maybe catching up on all those maryland's arcade orders and could pivot to something like this he's got his own shop he's down there in climate controlled san antonio where the food is amazing is a tex mex down there riverwalk is down there go to Rainforest Cafe if you want. I could see him building this. And this would be a game that would absolutely, if they were doing 300 of them, if they were doing 333, 311, they would sell out. I think they would sell out. There's enough people that have love for Glenn Wechner and his team, have love for Jake, have love for Monsters on Skates, head-to-head pinball, Brad Brad Albright art. It's got all of it in there to be this kind of kitschy, kooky, fun little game that even I'm kind of hype on. and I think it would serve Turner well to do it. He builds a hell of a cabinet. Also, with this kind of head-to-head game, do you want to have a lockdown bar on one side you have to slide out and then the glass comes out? Or would you like to use Turner's innovation of being able to unlatch the entire armor and glass as one piece, lift it straight off, and have access to this whole cabinet? I think that works. I think that works. I like how he does his lighting, too, with those contact plates when he puts down the armor and the glass. Chef's kiss, man. Some of the best integration in the industry. I love that. So I think that if I were to pick which timeline I could be into and it was one of these three, I think I would step into the one where Turner was driving this thing. I think it would be great for his company, great for the community, great for the build quality. And I think that would free up barrels to make their next banger of a theme and free up AP to do whatever the heck is coming out from them. So that's where I'm at with it. Tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if I'm off base. Jake, if you want to disclose something to me, let me know. I have not reached out to Barrels, AP, or Turner. I didn't want to do anything to sour more of my brain spaces right now because, like, I like this. I like this. So I want to go forward with this. Bring me a Kiss LE with an awesome topper. Bring me a Pokemon. Bring me a Monster League Hagi. And then we'll continue to innovate and iterate ad infinitum, right? What else are we going to talk about? I wanted to talk about pinball design and something that I've been thinking about. So I've been lucky that I floated kind of from just the outside observer, casual pinball person to like I started playing some tournaments. I got some games. I got way deep in this. Now I've like walked through the jelly looking glass at like the other side of pinball and like actual professional design, commercial machines, how the butter is actually made, how the butter is actually churned to come out. And so I've got this thought that kind of dawned on me a little bit earlier in my journey. You know, and that's when it comes to pinball design is a layout design first and then you get matched to a theme and you kind of like shoehorn it together. Or do you start with the theme and the theme drives the layout of how everything's put together? And now that I've been able to dip, dip a couple of my toes into this process, I can honestly say it's probably a mix of both. And I think it depends on on the actual person doing the design and things. the approach i've seen recently is to take a theme that just automatically when you think of it picture like any one of the top grossing movies of like the 1980s to mid 90s and you know take like a terminator 2 uh pick like a stir crazy uh pick an et pick something and like there should be six or seven things that should jump out at you that like you'd feel disappointed if they weren't in the game and that's like the game's already kind of designing itself so like i like the approach personally of taking a theme like mac and me and be like well we got to have the kid on the wheelchair going off the cliff we have to have the ronald mcdonald uh cameo that was in the movie we have to have the ugly alien popping up and whistling and those big sea monkeys and what like you know all that business and then design the layout around that and then put mechs in you know and just see how they work but i could also see it where maybe like a jack danger type brain would come up with something like let's do some crazy stuff i know i want to outlane spinner i know i want to put an upper play field in the left out lane let's say it another flipper down there i want to have shots that cross back and forth i loved how say the wire form on ghost busters premium dipped underneath the play field and pop back up like a roller coaster maybe we could do something where like you shoot a wire form it goes down to the play field rolls across it like it's picked up by a ramp another wire form going in the opposite direction just continues on, you know? And then you bring a theme to that. And so it seems like with something like Tank Girl it almost like he started with this cool layout and design and then is finding a way to like what theme speaks to this design Whereas you could start with a theme and say what what design layout would speak to this theme and i think it a bit of both so i don't think there's any one way to really approach it i think it's all kind of in the mind of the creative that's behind this process so i salute all the people out there that are making some pinball i've been posting recently i've been frequenting down there in Benton, I shoehorned myself somehow convince these guys to let me have a soldering iron and sit down with a fresh play field and start soldering wires on the stuff. And I can say that like the appreciation I have for anybody that's ever built a machine, let alone a commercial machine, let alone a commercial success machine, just made a product, got it out that technically works. You guys are wizards and I am in awe of like that process. It's like when I was learning about the development of the human, right? As you go from zygote all through embryo to fetus to full creature. There's a billion different dominoes that all have to fall in a very specific order. And if any one of these things is out of sorts, the whole thing just falls right apart. You've got nothing. And so it's a miracle that any of this stuff actually happens. And I think, while maybe not as complex as the human entity, I think the fact that a pinball machine can leave the factory in a box and actually work on the other end is just like proof of supernatural hands at work pulling the monkey wrenches of our string theory world. Which brings me back to the want. Because I've been going through my head. I talked about it on the last show. Like, you know, the fact that I don't have tons of deposits out on games means that I have some cash in hand. and I'm kind of what we would say in biology pluripotent right I'm one cell that could become many cells step in many different directions many different timelines I'll branch from my one location here that wave function is open we're coming full circle here and so just in the last week I've entertained getting myself an avatar ce again because I like the experience of playing that game in a dark room with the illuminations I love that topper still one of my favorites of all time um i i feel like i'm in the animal kingdom close to closing time i could almost i can almost smell the uh the fried cheesecake chimichangas they sell from that stand at the far corner or like the bagel dough wrapped hot dogs they saw the kids me on satouli canteen like for me like i like being in that universe right even though you know the game wasn't the most innovative layout of all time i've also thought about bram stoker's dracula like i'd maybe like to have one of those i've also thought about getting an alice cooper or a scooby-doo again like it's fun being in the space where like i'm not fully committed man i'm a player i can have anything all multiple experiences all exist and diverge from this one point where i stand uh much like i am the magnet on beetlejuice standing between the flippers and like which way am i gonna go i'm gonna end with a story that it kind of explains a little bit about uh me and the way my brain works. I was 18 years old. I had a Hyundai XL, gold color, barely ran, hatchback, 1987. Oh my goodness. I did something fun. What I didn't have was a lot of money. I didn't really have any stable place to live, but I had this idea, right? This comes under lottery tickets. A lottery ticket, it costs a dollar. I think they still cost a dollar for the scratch-offs. So the price has diminished over time with inflation, but $1, right? Okay, so you scratch it off and it's worthless. So what's it worth to you now? Absolutely nothing. You've collapsed that value of what that $1 you paid and got nothing back. Or you scratch it off and it's $5, $10, $100. Okay, now it's got a value again. But before you scratch off this ticket, when you pay $1, you've received a ticket. It's not scratched off yet. So as a thought experiment, what is the value of that ticket that's not scratched, right? It could be, and most likely is nothing, right? but it could be ten dollars a hundred dollars a thousand dollars it could be a bonus jackpot or something could be a free ticket you don't know so like how do you put a value on something that could have well not an infinite number of values but at least like 17 or so so what i did was i didn't have a lot of money i had a skateboard and a car didn't run uh or barely ran so i would i paid a dollar and i got a lottery ticket and i stuck it up in the uh the the cloth backing up above my rearview mirror and just kind of stuck it up there with a safety pin or some damn thing. And like I would drive around and my friends would come in the car and they're like, dude, you've got that lottery ticket. Aren't you going to scratch it off? And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If I scratch it off and it's probably going to be worthless, it loses all value. But it could be worth a hundred bucks. It could be. But right now I paid $1 and I received a ticket which has an unknown value. It could be a lot, a little, who knows what it is. So I spent $1 and I received this thing which has an undefined value. So that's what I bought. I bought an object. What other object can you buy that has a value that's undefined, right? You buy a Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card. You know what that costs. You buy an antique firearm. You know like what value that has. You buy like a divorce paper. You know what that's not worth to you. Now you buy something that is just unknown, undefined. Like you can't even tell me how much it is. So I had this thing for a full year. In my car drove people nuts, right? They're like, dude, would you scratch that thing off already? What the heck? And I'm like, no, man, I spent $1 and I have this object that's so mysterious that I can't even place a value on it. And you can't even like comprehend it. But it bends my mind around. I loved having that. Now, the shelf life of these things is only so far because like, you know, the tickets will expire at some point. And even if it's a winner, like you can't cash it anymore. So eventually, dear listener, yes, I did scratch it off. But for like a whole year, I enjoyed this intangible valued object that only cost me a dollar, and it was just super fun for me. And that's kind of how I see myself here in the pinball space for like all these other machines that I can't have but I haven't yet. And it's like so many different infinite possibilities. It's like massaging my brain giving me like good brain tickles. Like I love it. So I did scratch this thing off. Wouldn't you believe it? When I scratched it off, guess what it was? it was a free ticket. Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com is the email address to get at me. Also join the Facebook group. Also give me a like and hey, help a brother out and start off the new year 2026 by giving me some spending money to take my family out to the HomeGoods store and get them something by joining the Patreon. Patreon.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast. $5 gets you in the more. $10 gets you more. And as soon as I get settled, we're going to get the giveaways all caught up again, man. It's super fun. There's a fun chat on there. There's all kinds of stuff. There's a Discord. More fun stuff is coming soon. As soon as I'm done with this move, man. Be cool to yourself. Let's play some damn pinballs.