What's up everybody and friends welcome to Sunday and Don's Pinball Podcast episode 30. This week I'm coming to you from the road not from Texas like you would suspect but floating on a ship in the Caribbean. I'm going to cover all the information I've been seeing from the live streams of Texas Pinball Festival which ends today. Sunday is the day if you bought a game pack it up get in the road and get it home. Otherwise, I'm looking at all the reviews and the live streams that I've had I've got some perspectives, as always, for all of you Cut them now Friends, welcome to the Mobile Podcast Studio Trying this again, from the road, floating in the middle of the ocean Can you believe it? But I still got some hot takes and news to cover in the world of pinball Via this podcast It's episode 30, everybody What do you think so far? Keep kicking them comments to me Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com I'm going to run through the big four, the big five companies and the impressions that I've been getting and what I've been hearing back from the Texas Pinball Festival. And I want to start with our boys from Wisconsin at Spooky. These nutbags threw a bunch of their Scooby-Doo machines in a van and had a trailered mystery machine themselves that they brought down there. Did John Youssi this? What is that, like an Econoline van made over for the mystery machine? They set it up and they were running for the most creative booth at the expo. And so here to date, I still haven't heard on who has won that. So let's go spooky. I may have been throwing some votes your way. So what I did hear, though, which was great, is they had six machines that were set up, and all of them sold in about the first two hours of, I think, Friday, like the setup day. Like, they went quick. I know they did sell, I think, three to four of their Scooby machines at the Louisville Expo. But this one, they went quick right off the floor. Now, what I noticed, typically at shows, you can get a discount of around maybe $500 or so off the price of the game if you take that floor game home with you, just because it's not brand new in the box shipped to your home, but you can have it at the end of the show. I didn't get to see yet from the live streams that I was seeing what prices they were going for. I know initially in Louisville they were going for sticker, and then the price did come down as time went on. But yeah, those sold in two hours, so fantastic, guys. I'm hearing still a lot of great feedback from people that have played this game. I've played two or three of them now in different locations, including over there at Ace6061. Did you hear that from the Twippies? Ace Goge? I wonder if that was a joke that they snuck in. But that's out in, there's two locations in Los Angeles. I played it there. Also played it more locally near home. I think it's a fun game. Those are my impressions. And from what I'm hearing, other people are agreeing. Like, this isn't a game that's got a huge barrier to entry as far as complexity. If you're playing it on location, your dollars are going to go farther than it did in Rick and Morty. It's not just a massive drain machine. The music is great. The callouts are good. I'm waiting to hear about new code updates and new modes that are coming. There's still some character modes that haven't even been programmed in the game yet. So all we've been able to play so far are those villain modes. But I spent all my time playing with that bookcase flipper. And everybody that plays it seems to enjoy it. So it was fun watching the live streams now that more people have gotten to play it. I'm waiting to hear their impressions. A lot of the other podcasters, I'm sure they'll be hitting with new episodes coming up soon with their initial impressions. And I'll see how they jive with mine. Now, I do have a Scooby on order. I was sold on the theme, the layout when I saw it, as was my wife. So that just put it over the top. Seems to be a great game for families. And that's what I'm hearing back from people that have played it. Now, that mystery machine that they had at their booth, did John Youssi that? I did see the price tag on that. 19.5 and I didn't hear if they had sold it or if they had any offers or they're trailering that thing and bringing it back with them. But man, I think that's cheaper than some games you can get, you know, new in box. Am I right? And you can have a whole mystery machine that you can drive around. So that's fantastic. What I didn't see is if it came with the machine itself, that would have made it an excellent value. If you could get them, maybe that could have been the signature level of Scooby-Doo. Spooky put together a signature package of Scooby-Doo, charged $25,000 for it, and it comes with a Scooby pinball machine in the back of an actual mystery machine that you can drive around Take that Galactic Tank Force You can drive your pinball machine around the show floor but you could do that in a mystery machine with Scooby 25 grand I think it a steal I think I would go on that signature edition. And you guys, you could even sign the inside of the hood or something. All right. The Scooby-Doo signature version. Heard it here first from Don's Pinball Podcast. Man, I've been having a great time with these streams. Let's move on to Chicago Gaming Company. This is like, Was this game of the show? Was Pulp Fiction game of the show? From what I was seeing, this was a game with the longest lines consistently. I think I saw somebody shared a picture or video. There were about 10 people deep waiting to play these four Pulp Fiction games. Looks like they had two Bad Mother Flipper editions and two of the standard editions. And yeah, I didn't hear any problems with the gameplay at all. From what I was able to see from people's live streams, it looks to play like a classic System 11 game. And for sub $10,000 in this market with that killer theme and that limited availability of that limited edition, I think this guy's a queen of the ball, I would say. People seem to enjoy it. The feedback I was hearing was great. The shots seem to just be fun. This doesn't have the LCD screen that a lot of the other games come with. It doesn't have a rapid fire knocker. But you know what it does appear to have is good gameplay and fantastic callouts. That was the part that I was enjoying. hearing the music hearing the call outs um when i haven't played this myself but when i get a chance to that's i think what i'm most looking forward to um otherwise a lot of the sounds the bells and whistles sounded like you know old school kind of 1980s 1990s uh bells and whistles so congratulations to the guys that is a chicago gaming company claiming credit for this is raw thrills claiming credit is play mechanics is it all of them um but this mark ritchie game seems to be pretty pretty well received. And also I'm not seeing flippers on this. I've been looking through Pinside, just kind of trying to keep abreast on if we're seeing limited edition deposits go up for sale yet. I did see a few wanted ads. People are offering up to like $1,500, $2,000 over the price of the game just to get in on the limited editions. The limited editions I'm forecasting is probably going to keep some value given how limited they are and how popular this is and how quickly it's sold out and the lack of flippers. My hope is that there's some distros that have maybe squirreled away some supply that'll be available later at maybe just a slight markup and I can go in on one. Otherwise, the standard edition seems to have the same gameplay. So if you want to play the game, that unlimited version is always available. Location play is always available. I think for myself, I'd like to have a limited edition, but there's a value on that. I don't want to pay $4,000 over sticker. Forget it. I probably would pay $1,000. So I'm somewhere in that zone trying to decide, you know, first off, do I want to get this into my game room? If so, when? And when is also a very good question because what I'm hearing back from some distributors that I've emailed is that all they know is that production is stated to go into, well, production, Q4, Q3, 2023. so sometime in the fall that vague you know fall number is it the le's that are going to be made first are the se's going to be made first so they can go out in location for location players are there going to be parts holdups in the supply chain for the topper and that's going to hold up the bad mother flipper edition and other folks that have got the se's make it there earlier no idea at all will we see this game in boxes in people's homes in 2023 or will it be 2024 that we still don't know. So that uncertainty is also factoring into my personal decision. As far as the gameplay itself goes, it looks fun. It looks fantastic. It looks like everything I would expect from a System 11 type game for Pulp Fiction. So yeah, I can't wait to play it at some point. I'm really bummed I missed out, but I'm hopeful that by Southern Fried Gaming Expo, it'll be there and I can get in on it. The SEs are still available. $7,999 sticker price. I'm seeing $500 dollar deposits. And then you know, state tax if you if that's applicable to you, and then shipping costs, whatever you guys want to come out with. So, you know, still, you know, not not a totally expensive game in this market that we have now I want to take a moment before I get to the next company And I gonna talk about the ads that I put on this podcast This was an opportunity I had from Spotify they gave me some ad copy to read they were paying out about No for every 1000 listeners. And so far, I've made just shy of $5 in the last few weeks that I've had the ads on the episodes. And just a just a little bit ago, I got finally got my email from listener john sent me $5 just want some stickers. And so I made more on sending john some stickers that I've made torturing everybody with my voice and my ad copy. So I went ahead and took those off. I don't have a Patreon or anything. I'm open to the idea at some point. But what I don't want to do is just annoy people with ads. You don't want to listen to me and hear me segue into you. You know what's really scary? Your internet privacy being uncovered. So be sure to order HelloFresh and get NordVPN thrown in for free. I don't want to do that. You can listen to YouTube and do that stuff. When I listen to podcasts, I appreciate when I can turn them on and they start. I pay extra for YouTube so I can skip the YouTube ads. So I'm doing that as a free benefit to all of you listeners. You don't have to listen to my podcast Spotify ad anymore. I took that off. If you want to kick me a couple dollars, email me for the Venmo link. At some point, I'll throw a Patreon on there. Maybe I can do giveaways through that as a way to incentivize it. I'd rather give people a reason to give cash. I think of it as like a virtual tip jar. Throw a couple dollars or a couple of $5 my way. And then maybe every month or so you get a free t-shirt. I think that is a much better way to interact than you having to sit through an ad just to get to my voice and my content on your drive to work. Moving on Jersey Jack, they were at the show floor. They had all their games out. A lot of Godfathers, a lot of good impressions from Godfather. It shoots well. The code is deep, deep, like a murky stew. Okay. For how deep you want to get into it. it is fun to flip around it does have some sculpts you know it's tangentially related to the movie i think it is integrated i see the way that they were going and i appreciate the work that eric did on it um it also comes down to a value decision is this game for a limited edition limited to 5 000 which is that even limited anymore at 12 000 is that worth it to you would you take a game off the show floor right now that's been played for two to three days for $11,500 because that's what they're going for. They are still available. I didn't see exactly how many games they had brought. Maybe they brought 15 and that having a few available still isn't a harbinger of anything sales-wise for them. What I am seeing is that some distributors are sold out of their collector's edition spots and that was limited to 1,000. However, the budget wasn't limited. It was going for $15,000. Is that a value that you can put on it? I would consider 11.5 for that collector's edition. If I had this game at home, I would really only want to have that collector's edition with those gold emblems and all the art blades and that topper with the Tommy gun, the double knocker. I mean, I would go on that, but at 15, I'm sitting here with my money in my pocket. You feel me? So we'll see what the future brings. This is going to be a game that's going to have some longevity, especially in the market. And so this is what I like doing, you know, following this game over the next year or two as people get it. And then the new game comes out, it goes to sell. What's the resale on Godfather going to be? What's the resale on the Godfather collector's edition? I'm excited to see what that is because definitely barometers were falling with Toy Story 4, especially right now. I saw someone trying to trade straight across a Elvira premium edition that they've had since launch for a Toy Story 4. So, you know, I haven't heard about any playfield issues, fortunately, from Toy Story 4. Some questionable videos, though, and photos coming of lifted inserts on Godfather, but I haven't seen that corroborated anywhere else. I only think I've seen that one or two places. So the ones that I've played so far were good, but then I played them straight out of the box. So it'll be fun to go back in a few weeks and see how these games are holding up against heavy play. Remember with Toy Story 4, a few weeks, a month after release, and then we started seeing that pop-up Becky character with all the dirt marks on her face from the greasy balls hitting her? Oh, the innuendo. So I'm curious to see how Godfather holds up because we're still in that early period where most locations have just taken this mintly fresh out of the box So we find that So is the CE sold out That I not sure When is the CE going into production with that topper I haven seen any unboxings of that We've seen them at the shows, but were those prototypes? Were those for sale? That I wasn't able to see. So I'll wait and hear back from other people that were actually at the show and see. I see a couple of pre-order spots on Pinside for the JJP Godfather Collector's Edition going for between $2,200 and $2,500 right now. And I think it's about the price of the deposit, so not a huge markup, not a big flipper opportunity there with Godfather. My impressions of Shoot's Good, I like it. It was fun. I'd like to play it some more. I think it's, I'll echo my wife's sentiments, it's a fun game to play on location. Throw a few dollars into it and then move on to Medieval Madness or Monster Bash or something. Not a game at that price that I'm looking for bringing into my basement. Moving on to the stars of the show, So American Pinball, I saw their review or reveal for Galactic Tank Force. They actually had this thing motorized. They had the legs on casters, and then there was a drive wheel underneath the machine. And they drove this tank up through the conference room there. And when they unveiled, this is such a weird unveiling. You know, I like it, you know, once we reach the point, they're like, hey, here's what we got. Here's what's in it. Here's how you put these legs together. Here's the box that comes in. Here's the price. Here's the story. Here's everything. thing. It's still been piecemeal coming out. We've now seen gameplay. We've seen the tanks. We've seen the LEDs on the tank treads, which I think, yeah, I mean, I kind of like it. I do like bells and whistles. I like lights and sirens. This thing definitely has it. It definitely looks like a tank. They were able to drive it across the floor. We know the prices for them. We know the availability. We don't know exactly production dates. I don't know if they were selling any of these off the show floor either or if these are still prototypes and i still have no idea what the story is i don't know where the code is at i don't know what ice cream has to do with this i was reading some uh some impressions people were getting um canada was there congratulations on that trippy buddy um and he was saying you know he's playing the game he's collecting truck nuts or something has no idea what they're for either do i i still don't know what the ice cream angle is but i know it factors in heavily to the modes at least looking at the inserts so um hopefully we'll hear more about that. So anybody that was there, give me your impressions, email them directly, or put them up on the Facebook page, Don's Pinball Podcast. Those are my major impressions from watching the live streams and interacting with the folks that were there. A lot of other companies were there. Pinball Brothers were there. They had Queen on site. I heard from people that were playing it that the shots actually shoot fairly well, but that the call-outs are a bit cringey. When I played it, this was back at Midwest Gaming Convention. No, this was at Pinball Expo way back in October. It was on a two ball mode. They only had two games. I played one game on it. I thought it shot like a pinball machine and I couldn't really hear the music or much anything. What I did notice is that they did go with the live version of the Queen songs. And I think that worked. That was okay. I didn't mind that. I know kind of Guns N' Roses is a little bit that way too, because it's supposed to take place at a more recent concert. So it wasn't album versions of the songs from Queen, but rather the live versions. That wasn't a turnoff for me. I was fine with that. But yeah, call-outs, I wasn't able to appreciate any at that time. And given that that was six, eight months ago, code, I'm sure, has evolved to a point. So now that more queens are on location, particularly in Europe, I'm going to hope we're going to get more in-depth streams and reviews of them where I can hear those call-outs. So I'm waiting to hear all about that. Otherwise, I'm floating on a boat in the ocean. If you guys would like some t-shirts, if you want some stickers, go ahead and hit me up. I've got the Wi-Fi going. I paid extra for that $30 a day, so I'm connected. Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com and I can get those to you. I'll send you the Venmo link. Kick me a few bucks, homies. Let me know if you appreciate what I'm doing here for you and giving you that content. I'm going to keep delivering. I'm going to keep watching live streams and I'm going to try to troll around Jamaica to find a pinball machine to play. If I do find one, you'll hear about it on my next episode. Now let me pack this episode into a bottle, throw it overboard, and hopefully I can catch the trade wins and get that somewhere where it can get uploaded. it. Have a great weekend. The rest of you guys later.