Right, okay. So, we'll have to wait and see if there will be any new announcements for programmers being hired. Or maybe, well, they're already collaborating with Pimble Brothers, so why not? I mean, I'm sure they have plenty on their own plate to take care of, but Daniel Jansen is also a programmer. So, if he has some spare time left, then who knows what he might be coding. Okay, let's move on and let's talk about American Pinball now because it brings us back to Melvin Brow-Williams who we were just talking about. Exactly, yeah. He was at the Austrian Pinball Festival in May, in the middle of May. Right. So were you, by the way. I was, yeah, and he very kindly as representative for American Pinball was able to donate some posters, drinks, can, koozies and pens for as gifts for the prize quiz I ran there. Stefan Riedler, who runs the Austrian Pinball Festival, heads up the team who runs it, there's a big team behind it, I'll talk about that more later, asked me if I could do a quiz to give away some prizes so I had to dream up some questions very quickly on the hoof. You did a quiz without me? I know, it wasn't that kind of quiz, it was very different. Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say. Yeah, yeah. I didn't even use any of our questions. But no, it's just a quick 30 minute filler. And yeah, anyway, we did that. Melvin was there as a guest, but didn't hold a seminar, unlike some of the other people who were there. And I did want to pin him down and try and record a What's Cooking With segment with him, which he agreed to do, but he was in and out and busy all the time. So we never actually got around. I bet he was in the kitchen preparing. Yeah, it could be. But yeah, didn't get in that time. Tying out his own recipe to making sure that he gets the right recipe across. Well, we will see. We'll get to talk to him, I'm sure, before too long anyway. It won't be that long before we run into him again. So not this time, but soon, hopefully. Right. Okay. But there's more from American Pinball because they also announced a new game. Actually, we already knew it was coming. Yes, that's right. Last month they announced they're going to be the reimagined Circus Voltaire game. But there was very little detail there. In fact, there still is very little detail was announced, Along with the fact they were going to be remaking it. I think that was announced at the Texas Pinball Festival. But credit goes to Don's Pinball Podcast who published at least a picture taken at the Golden State Pinball Festival, where there was a poster from American Pinball about Circus Voltaire. Banner to be more precise, yes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Canvas banner saying get on our interests list. Only 771 ringmasters planned. I assume that means the entire game rather than just the ringmaster. But it's an interesting number. We don't know where that number comes from, how it relates to how many of those will be reimagined versions of the game or how many will be just straight up remakes. This is the other version they're going to be making. So Melbourne did say previously they wanted to just do a run of them and then move on to the next game and not keep them as a continuing product line like they do with Houdini or Galactic Tank Force. So basically, one run and done and that's it and move on to the next remake. But 771 seems to be the magic number for that. And so if you do want to get on the interest list, I guess you have to contact or go to the American Pinball website and see who you need to speak to or speak to your distributor for American Pinball and get your name on the list. If you fancy being having a Circus Voltaire either remake or reimagined version. Right, so, and in the meantime, American Pinball have been building and shipping their limited run of 100 Houdini 100th Anniversary Edition games with the new artwork by Christopher Frenchy and Playfield sculpts. Yeah, yeah, so only 100 of those are going to be made and two of them reported in Texas Pimble Festival were actually given away whether that's two out of the hundred or whether they're separate two I don't know but yet they are building them and and they look very nice so congratulations to those people who got one of the 100. Right, okay, and it rounds it up for American Pinball. Still to come, Barrels of Fun, we're going to be talking about them, Spooky Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, Pinball Brothers we already briefly discussed, Dutch Pinball, but right now we're continuing with Hexa Pinball from France. Yes, they too were at the Austrian Bimball Festival in Moklabrook in the middle of last month, month of May, which we are looking at here of course. They were showing their three, the Three Musketeers game. They had that alongside. This time it was there. It was there, yes. A bit easier to get it to that show than it was to the Texas show. He had two Space Hunt games as well. Alice from Hexa did a short presentation about the game and how the company's unique approach to building them and with an emphasis on their unique playfield manufacturing technique and how that allows them to create any shape inserts they choose. Alex's talk is available in the Pimball News Austrian Pimball Festival report and on the YouTube channel as well. I think it's probably fallen off the Twitch channel by now, but certainly go to Pimball News videos on YouTube. You'll be able to watch that and all the other talks that we'll come up to come to a little bit later from the Austrian Pimball Festival. It's interesting to note that they are also taking the game to the Southwest Flipper Festival in Pontac in France this weekend on the 6th or 7th of June where they will be running a The Three Musketeers tournament. So I hope the software has improved a bit over the version it had at the Austrian Pimple Festival because on that the sound would often either disappear or have unusual volume changes and the game needs to be restarted a few times during the day in order to solve those problems and other problems too. So, yeah, it's an interesting game to play and interesting ruleset till I finally get to play it. But yeah, it certainly did have some issues and it does have some interesting features in there which I haven't seen before. Like holding in the start button to vary the strength of the initial plunge and the light bars at the side growing in length. The longer you hold it, the stronger the plunge is. So that's an interesting feature. And also the whole lighting looked very good. I've commented on that before. But didn't really get to experience all the features of it yet, because I think the software is still at a fairly early stage. And also some of the call-outs and things need more fleshing out. But there's work to do. But it's nice to actually get to play it. After not being able to play, as you said, at the Texas show. Right. I don't think there's any other news from Hexapinball, so I just recommend go and watch the video from Alice on the Pinball News videos YouTube channel or read the report from the show. Right. On pinballnews.com. Indeed. Right. Okay. So then moving on to Barrels of Fun. And I have a feeling I have to leave this one to you as well because, well, they had all three Barrels of Fun games at the Austrian Pimball Festival as well. Yeah they did Now when we been to pinball shows you pretty much used to being permanently long lines to play certainly Winchester Mystery House but also Dune and Labyrinth 2 But it was very refreshing with so many games set up in the free play area at the Austrian Pibble Festival. Most of the time it was like it was one person playing any of these games and sometimes those games were not being played at all. So you could just walk over and play a game. Sounds like they need more audience, more visitors. Well, maybe, but on the other hand, you kind of get the same kind of vibe that you do at the Pimball at the Beach, where they limit the number of people there. So you do get a chance to play these games, rather than having the long lines all the time. But this was not deliberately limited, but it was the very first Austrian Pinball Festival. So it's something that's going to grow, not next year, but it will come to that, but in future years. So, yeah, I was going to say, to put things in perspective, most games had no lines, because there were so many of them. So, it's a good event if you want to play lots of pinball. And on the other hand, there were so many tournaments being run at the event that a lot of people were tied up with those, which is partly, I guess, why the free play era was less packed than you might expect. Okay, so if you're ever planning to attend the Austrian pinball festival, get ready to play some pinball because chances are you have more games to choose from than you expect. Yeah, and also it's like five days long as well. So if you want to play a particular game, there's no rush. You've got all the time in the world really to get to play it. And because it was open from like 10 o'clock in the morning to at least midnight, if not later, there were plenty of hours to play all the games, which I guess is pretty much an ideal situation as a player. You can play everything at your leisure. Right. Okay. Going back to Rounds of Fun. Yes, indeed. A slight detour there. Yes. Yes, what I've understood is, and I've seen the photos that prove it, David Van Ness, the CEO or whatever his name is. Chief Mischief Maker. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I couldn't get that out of my mouth because I didn't remember exactly what it was, but has attended, The licensing show, the licensing expo in Las Vegas. And so have other Pimball manufacturers, namely Spooky and the Jersy Jack Pimball. And well, if you're interested in what they might have been shopping for, so to speak, Then you can take a look at the list of exhibitor at licensingexpo.com. And there you can start speculating on suggestions, rumors and what have you about the future Pinball licenses that we might be seeing in a couple of years. Because let's not forget that it takes a couple of years to develop a game. Or longer in some cases. Well, in some cases longer even. And well, in case of Barrels, which we're talking about here is I think they have a couple of games already in the pipeline, which means also years of production schedules. If they start working on a new license today, it will probably take five years before we get to see that game. It could be, but yeah. Interestingly, when I was talking to Gary Stern today about licensing and I was saying I expect you went to the licensing expo show. He said no, no he doesn't do that kind of thing any longer and it's now Seth and Jodie who look after all the licenses at Stern. So Gary wasn't even at the licensing expo show and hasn't been there for a couple of years. Well that explains Transformers I guess. Yeah well he's just saying you know now his era and to an extent my era as well of themes are not the kind of licenses that they're looking at, looking at a younger demographic. And so we've got Jody and Seth, who are both probably younger than us. And so they are the ones who are making decisions about what licenses they're going to buy. Right, okay. But getting back to barrels of fun. Yes. Any chance they released some new code last month? Well, finally you should mention that, but no. Oh yeah, hang on, yes they did. Yes, in fact two games got it. First of all, Dune got a new version on the 13th of May. Not really any new features, but did fix quite a list of bugs. On the other hand, Winter to Mystery House got an update two weeks later on the 28th of May, and that did add a couple of new modes to it. New Sarah's Bedroom mode, The Possession, and new Hall of Fires mode, Ashes in the Wall. Walls, I should say. Also added several new light shows and quite a few bugs were fixed in that game too. So yes, those games are getting quite regular updates now, which is good to see. Yes indeed it is. So okay and that rounds it up for barrels of fun. Yeah. So do we have any news on Multimorphic? No, fellow Texan manufacturers but no, no news at all yet on what their next title is going to be. I mean it's been 15 months since Portal was launched so you know just saying it's probably around about the time we'd hope to I think we're going to see something new coming out from there. So they're still building Portsmouth and I think the production was a little bit delayed I would say. Yeah, I think it's proved to be very popular though. Yeah, well that's a good thing. Definitely, yeah. Oh well, so, hold on. Moving on to, if there's no other news from Multimortals, then I suppose we can, Moving on to Spooky Pinball. Yeah, why not? Well, as you mentioned, they were at the licensing expo, but also attended the Golden State Pinball show in Lodi in California. Not exhibiting themselves, but I think one of their distributors was. Going back to the Austrian Pinball Festival again, they had the full lineup of spooky games there, including Beetlejuice, of course, and the giant inflatable Beetlejuice as well that we saw at Texas. I think that probably the same same height inflatable model turned up partway through the Austrian Pinball Festival show, which kind of dwarfed the, up until then, seemingly very large Pikachu model that was an inflatable one, which was next to the Pokemon games. So everyone's got to now have an inflatable model to promote their games from this point onwards it seems. Right. Well, you know what's even cooler? An inflatable topper. Oh, I like it. You can put the fan that's in the back box to some use and use it to inflate things. Yeah, exactly. Patent pending. So, oh, well, if that's all for Skooshin Pinball, then, well, it's a short bridge, I would say, to Jersey Jack Pinball as Jack was also at the licensing expo in Las Vegas. Like what you did there. Yeah. And well, Jersie Jack Pinball have been heavily teasing Steve Ritchie's upcoming game, which is widely believed to be based on the Sonic the Hedgehog character from Nintendo. I think it's fair to say that it's going to be Sonic. Even in the way Steve Ritchie was promoted was sort of a reference to images of Sonic. I'm not even sure from whether it was a movie poster or whatever. Yeah, backlit, should we say. Yeah, with a blue backdrop or whatever. Yeah, Halo. Yeah. So, let's assume it's Sonic. Yeah, okay. Let's go with that. Yeah, and let's assume Steve Ritchie is the next designer or the designer of this game. The game, according to Jersie Jack, will be revealed in June, but we don't know when in June. Well, we can rule out the first three days, because it hasn't been revealed yet. Yes. Yeah. So, now, Stern are premiering Transformers at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show in Tacoma, and that is in Washington State. At the start of the month, this weekend, yeah. I'm not sure whether Jersie Jack Pinball would want or need to go head to head with Stern in competing for attention for that game or taking away sales as some people in the industry think that it works. Although there are plenty of people who buy every brand's game and I mean that doesn't matter. So that sort of leaves me wondering when do we get to see this presumably Sonic the Hedgehog game to appear at a major show or which show will be the first one to have. That new Jersey Jack game which is about to be revealed somewhere this month. Yeah, there's normally a sort of lull during the summer months for major pinball shows and then things start picking up again towards September time. So, I think Jack said in the past that he doesn't necessarily feel the need to launch a game at a show. I'm not sure whether that was done with Harry Potter. I don't think so. Somebody better correct me on that, but I have no recollection at all about that game. I have been informed that Steve's game is already on the line at Jersi Jack, meaning they are still building Harry Potter, of course, but there's a second line which is currently building, from what I believe, distributor games, so that once the game is announced, distributors will already have them. Jersey Jack's Headers in their shops or warehouses or wherever. Jersey Jack's Headers can either play them or decide whether they want one for their location or whatever. Jernsey Jack's Headers from what I understand is they're currently building games to have games all over the US And possibly also in Europe as soon as it is announced. Yeah, well, it's certainly an alternative way to launch it at a show, isn't it? To have the games out there for people to try, but at the distributor where you can actually buy it rather than being at a major show. So people can settle their own time to go and go and visit their distributor and check out the games. And of course having them all over the country and indeed all over the world is much more, gives a much wider audience than just having it one single show in one location. So yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's a good way of doing it. And also I think it kind of adds a certain sort of exclusivity to those people who do buy it. I think it's a great idea for people who do buy it because to have that game in your home when most people wouldn't have had the opportunity to go to a show and play it. If you've gone to a show and there's so many thousand people who have played the game already before you get your game at home. But if you buy it first before it's been at a show, then you have that early opportunity to know the game before other people do. So it's a different marketing technique, but I think it could work. Right. Well, we'll have to see. I do recall Jack indicating that he, similar to Harry Potter, he played the prototype game and he said, don't buy anything until you play. See his next game. So, and that's sort of becoming a catchphrase for upcoming Jersey Jack games, I suppose, at least for the second title in a row, that is. It takes over from the old adage that Jack's played it and he likes it, which always used to be the seal of approval for any game. Right. Okay. So now usually we don't do rumors. Oh no, definitely not. No, no, we stick to the facts. Now the fact is that there's this rumor coming around. Is it a fact? Well, actually, well, we started a rumor about Mark Siden's game last year, which we discussed a couple of times already, where we loosely, or I should say, I loosely hinted at that it could have been, well, All I said was there was a reason why Stern Pinball is not doing a vault edition of Ghostbusters. And that was already enough to spark a little rumor that Mark Seidon would be working on or just Jack would be working on a Ghostbusters game. But there's a new rumor, for some time it's already been rumored that Mark Sarnan's game will be a music themed pin. And the latest rumor is that that theme would be Michael Jackson. Hmm, yes. PINball, I think, well, yeah, a little bit. Although, not to everybody, I suppose. There's plenty of people who will only care about the music. And not so much as private life, I suppose, unless that's really part of the game, which I... I can't see that somewhere. Neverland. No, let's not even speculate on this. No. No good will come of it. Yes. But it's just a rumor. It could be interesting. Could it be a title that I would see Jack taking on for Jersey Jack? The name is big enough, but it's also controversial title. It could be interesting. On the other hand, too many ballads in Michael Jackson's repertoire, I would say. But there's probably about a dozen danceable songs that make sense. And then again, Guns N' Roses had ballads too, and that worked very well in Guns N' Roses game. So, um, well, anyway, that is a, it's a fact that that's a rumor, right? Yes. Okay. Good. Good. Because we wouldn't want to do rumors that are just rumors. No. Yeah. I still like Ghostbusters better, but yeah. Yeah. So anyway, we'll see what other rumors we can start. Sure. So, uh, well, he is one to start. What would Pinball Brothers currently be working on? Well, is there a fact about what a rumor is about that game? I think there is a rumor for a fact. Oh, rumor for a fact. Okay, so is it a fact or rumor that they're working on the fifth element? I think it's a factual rumor. Okay. Well, there you are. Take it or leave it. Or leave it. But we haven't had an announcement about what the next game is after Predator because Predator sales finished at the end of March, I believe. Right. I'm curious whether they're still building ABBA games or Queen games for that matter. Because those licenses have, as far as I know, not expired. I'm just not sure how big the demand is. Yeah. Although based on the names of these groups you would say that should be huge. Yeah, I suspect there'd be a small dribble of orders for those games but not large numbers. But they could probably fill those from stock I imagine. They're hardly going to pull it back onto production line unless they have a smaller line. They can just do small runs of these games. But then if they're doing the League of War game in Pedretti, then that is effectively a Queen game, re-themed. So, you know, maybe it's not that difficult to run some Queen games at the same time. Right. And I also wonder what happened to that alternative backlash for Queen that was shown at Expo, but I've never seen it actually. As an option or an add-on for your game. Maybe it didn't get approved, I don't know. Probably the case. I'm pretty surprised. It was really the band logo, wasn't it? Yeah. The crest. Yeah. Yes. So, oh well, then moving on to Cardona Pimble who are actually building