It's all, you know. It's all subjective, you know. It's all subjective, I suppose. but i think it looks good i thought paul ferris did the stupid american vacation home he did but that's like not a real game yeah this is last real it's like this is the last real game that makes sense that makes sense because i was like that has a really weirdly good translate on it yeah yep okay next game independence day in 1996 sold sells a thousand units uh this is rob hurtado on design he seemed uh to mainly be a mechanical engineer but he had a design credit i thought this was interesting on capcom's pinball magic before this yeah so this is his second game a lot of ramps it's a very flowy game with lackluster rules in my opinion really lack it's it feels like nothing's going on like there's not really a fucking bummer because it looks cool it shoots cool and then there's like not much to do yeah i played this recently for the first time in i played it maybe in passing like a next level or something but they had one at a bar here in town and me and megan were there and i was like whoa independence day like that's a weird one to see on location and so we just played like four games in a row and i think i did literally everything in the game and i was like i don't know what else to do yeah you know rob wasn't holding back when he got his shot on this game for design it's it's looking they put like three sick ramps in there dude he was snapping dude these ramps are buttery these sega ramps this is when we start getting And then to GoldenEye has that too, where it's like real smooth, fast ramps. Yeah. And these are like even more so. These really feel good. I really like the ramps in this game. And it's got Jeff Bush again on art. Yep. I don't love the overall package on Independence Day, but I do appreciate that the back glass and a lot of these other ones have. This is what I'm saying. My critique of modern art is a lot of these back glasses, even these Sega's here, they have good hierarchy they're legible from like 30 feet away yeah so like a lot of the new games are so clustered a lot of the new games you can't they just look like a blob from like 10 feet away from 10 feet away you you can't tell until you're right there this but it's like a lot of the games are designed because people they're like well it needs to be visually interesting to look at for like years you're gonna have this in your house and you want to really be like studying this fucking thing like it's like a rembrandt and you're like it's a billboard first and foremost yeah it's supposed to sell someone the i mean the way we look at pinball is commercial first and it's supposed to sell the game when you're sitting at the bar 30 feet from it and so if it can't do that it's lost you're like what the fuck is going on there when we interviewed greg freres he told us that basically pinball basics of doing art packages was its point of sales advertising yeah so it needs to from across a room draw somebody's attention and immediately the impact needs to be like oh yeah it's this thing and as someone who has a graphic design background and does graphic design work for wedgehead the new stuff sometimes sticks out as horribly failing at good graphic design in my opinion like some of the art is really detailed really colorful really technically good it's like really cool in a vacuum but i don't know if it's necessarily serving its main purpose it's kind of the difference between like being a super talented illustrator and the importance of graphic design in general yeah for a long time in pinball's history you were combining great illustration with great graphic design or just design ethos and hierarchy and legibility and communicating information and i think we're losing that part even if arguably some games look really great now but they don't they don't look clean they don't communicate that well nobody fucks up like anatomy on a modern game you never see someone where you're like oh like if you go play old games you go play old games even when they have like you know realistic likenesses and you'll be like laughing because you're like oh wow they really messed up the proportions of this person's body yes you know you never see that on a new game they never will mess that up unless you're looking at the uncanny x-men animations on the screen but outside of like animations and stuff like the glasses they never would mess that up now but those old games with goofy issues like that sometimes still kind of just work better for what their actual purpose is my opinion again it's all subjective we just have to start adding that disclaimer like when i'm being like center ramp suck because i people do we start talking and it's like is this all everyone listening needs to remember this is all just our opinions none of it matters we're not like like when i say a game center ramp sucks it's not like that game's gonna stop existing yeah all i want is for you to think about it yeah exactly this is so all of this don't ever take any of it too seriously anyway moving on from Independence Day. We're going to follow this up with two poor sellers. Space Jam from Kamikawa. I don't know why I put that note in here. It's just that's what I'm laughing about. Yeah. They were only selling a thousand, but I must have started paying attention when I saw these numbers because Space Jam from Joe Kamikawa, Lonnie Ropp and Oren Day in 1996 moves 800 units. I guess I thought this was notable because this is a huge license. Very huge license. Massive. You'd think this would be one. Michael Jordan. Especially at this point. It's like, okay, we've kind of lost pinball as like a cultural like in every bar and laundromat but like kiddie arcades are going pretty strong in the 90s somewhat you'd think they'd sell a million space jams just to like every fucking chucky cheese but they don't they sell 800 it's a really important game though said this is very important because it's the first game with what is known as the sega showcase back box from the flyer says featuring the all steel sega showcase that gives space jam a fresh new look that will attract players back to pinball so they know that players are leaving pinball people are leaving and it did not work this thing looks like shit dude this is by far and large my biggest complaint all you can all make fun of like the the lack like the shallow rules or the bad play field artwork or whatever but the worst part about this run of segas is this goddamn back box it's an eyesore it's the convex if you don't know what we mean it's the convex bulges out towards the player it's curved you know how like you see if you go to costco or you might have them in your house you see the big tv screens that are curved inwards it's like the reverse of that but for the back box for anyone that hasn't seen it like bulges out kind of like an old crt tv but like way exaggerated yeah and with like no framing around it so it's just kind of like leering at you and the they really they're very tall too and they really just jut out in an aggressive manner when you put them in a lineup with other standard good-looking games the idea was to be a market differentiator to be like this is a new thing this is a cool thing players want to see also was no more fucking art on the side of the on the side of the head yeah when they went to this they quit doing art on the side which is just cracks me up because they're always they always cost cut something they're like new feature and then you're like wait a second this is cheaper for you isn't it and they're like maybe it's cheaper for us and sometimes i'm you know i love them trying to save money to stay in business is always great that's business but this thing looks like shit dude do you think that the bulbous back box do you think it hurt sales i have to think it did i mean space jam's not like an incredible game i do think space jam's pretty fun yeah but operators that were buying this they're not buying it knowing that the game's good or not i know so it's like buying things off a theme i think really it was just the market's in a downturn market was in a downturn and then this comes out and then they're like huh i have to move that thing is that going to be a pain in the ass and operators are like yeah it is a pain it's now that i'm thinking about that how do these do these fold down nice they do fold down and they got like a fucking bar in the set it jesus not Jesus Christ, man. Dude, this is what you're like. Anytime people fuck with the pinball cabinet, it's always the wrong move. It's always a bad move. American literally thought they were going to do the same shit when they started making their fucking Houdinis. Otley perfected the pinball cabinet with the wedgehead shape. Wedgeheads are the coolest looking one. I understand the need to move to, well, actually, there's not really a need, but just to have more real estate for the DMD and the square proportions. Yeah, all mistakes. May as well. But I think as long as you have, it needs to be like, I don't know. I've gone off at length about this because it's a big part of why I dislike massive toppers because they ruin the classic lines of what a pinball machine is. And from like an industrial design perspective, it's too top heavy, which is ironic because wedge heads are top heavy. They put the biggest part at the top, but it's in like a natural, nice looking way. dude wet sheds are gorgeous anytime you fuck with the pinball cabinet too much though like this it's a mistake and like you can blame the market you could blame an act of god but they were punished for this with really poor sales and i just want to say for the listeners if you want to hear more about space jam we had an early episode episode 26 of our show was a die on this hill for space jam with john dozier who is an operator in the midwest and go back and listen to that episode it's a good time space jam is a fun game though i actually like this thing it's one that i despite that back box i've considered picking them up when i see them come up for a good price because i'm just like it's a fun game you never get to fucking play it you never see these things because they only sold 800 and it's a cool theme so nowadays people just hang on to them after that though we get the first game in 1997 and it's star wars that's right star wars the original trilogy that had come out 14 years prior and Data East had already done a game of just five years earlier. They sold the shit out of that one five years ago. They did. And that's what you can see is this the sales. They came off a string of big licenses with horrible sales. They selling a thousand units and shit buying like big modern licenses Some would say this is still happening today Perhaps Perhaps going back to the well again Star Wars well dude never runs dry And they managed to sell, with this fucking Sega Showcase back box, they managed to sell 2,250 units. This was designed by the Joes. That's just a given. If I don't list the designers, it's by the Joes. So what do you think of this game, Alan? I think it's like it's got kind of some cool mechs. I wrote cool mechs, sort of. Because they are kind of like sort of like they don't really sort of they don't matter. The big turrets like yeah, they don't matter. But it's kind of cool when you hit them and they go kind of looks like a big toy box. Yeah, it looks like a toy box. Like all Star Wars games. I think this game wasn't designed for us. It was designed for like kids and casuals. Yeah, but I think this is the worst of all the Star Wars pins. I do think it's the worst of all the Star Wars pins too. I've played it so little though. I can't really tell you anything. I just dislike it. it's not for me yeah that's a nice way to say it after that jurassic park jurassic park that's right jurassic park but not a repeat of the data east game that had just come out fucking back it's this is it based off of the second movie this time they hit second movie that everybody loves the lost world lost world yeah and they sell 600 units of this of this john borg baby very rare game i think it's a very fun game with actually very cool mechs on this yeah i think it's got like a tiny like that cracks open there's like a little baby dinosaur in it it's got that cool little like that little thing that folds out that captures the dinosaurs in the movie and it folds out and it captures a ball and then brings it back yeah the whole like a magnet is in the mech in that magnet the whole thing fucking comes out of there like the what was in the space shuttle the little little claw in the space shuttle that they used to like grab stuff yeah you know i'm talking about yeah i don't know the name though there's like a name and it was designed it was canada's contribution to the space shuttle which is why all canadians should know it i'm only half canadian so i apologize so you know that it exists you just don't know about it right that's because that is my responsibility but uh it's got a center ramp a true center ramp oh yeah and it has a back glass without the game's name on it back glass cool as hell back glass That's like, whoa, what's going on there? Because why would they choose to not put the, it has the Jurassic Park logo on it, doesn't it? I don't believe it does. I think it just has it on the speakers or something. It has the T-Rex and there's like, it's very cool conceptually because again, from far away, it's attention grabbing and it's got good hierarchy again, like I said. And the fact that it doesn't have text over it is also very interesting in a row of games that all have that prominently featured. this doesn't so again it kind of stands out i really like this game a lot it's kind of a basic game it is but i think it's fun and i like playing it and i like seeing it around uh you don't see it much but i love playing it when i do see it yeah it's actually kind of a cool one it's one that i considered buying when i first got into the hobby i really wanted one for some reason i don't know why i had just played one and really liked it i liked it a lot more than the data east game actually yeah well because it shoots better than the data east game yeah like most of these sagas dude these sagas shoot like butter yeah they are buttery they're big plastic ramps in the flippers they've got i mean the data east games already had i mean they have all very powerful flippers and they're all very similar but they this is an upgraded version and then stern has upgraded this version again so there's like a lineage of their flippers and why they're so good now next up after that we got a little game called x files this is rob her tad or her rob hurtado designed but joe kamikau had to make sure to get his name on the credits too yeah i imagine joe just suggested they put a filing cabinet in the game that's what i like to nailed it when you see when you see how many credits that joe kamikau is on you're like what was he doing like i really feel like he's like sitting there and he's like a filing cabinet in x files game they're like oh joe we hadn't thought of that okay you got your name on there i don't know maybe he was like no man like i was fucking drawing up ramps i was he has said that he did lots of napkin sketches for games that makes sense so i think there's value in that but i think a lot of like that kind of shit if you let the other guy do it probably would come to you know well i think i think though that that happens in all companies where people bring yeah i'm sure even to this day george Gomez interacts on every Stern game in a way that's not credited directly to him. I meant to talk on that earlier when we were talking about GoldenEye, but these games have tons of people listed on the credits and they don't do that now. And I think they don't do that now because they want the names to sell the games. So they want people to strongly associate a game. They're like, oh, it's a Keith Elwin game. Oh, this is, you know, they want that. And so even though there are probably other people contributing at all levels, I mean, like how can you have you can't fucking sit there with a straight face and be like oh no there's one programmer for a pinball machine no there's probably fucking 40 people that should be listed but that's not how the credits work that's not how the credits work absolutely anyway though this game has some buttery orbits this has like the coolest orbits it's got two orbits right it's got the inner orbit and the big orbit and it's just like they're fast and smooth they feel really good you really can see the ball on them which is the older i get the more i realize pinball is only good when you can see the ball the ball could be doing this is why everybody's always like i would be so cool if you make a sonic game it's got to have a loop in it so everybody always wants loops you make a hot wheels game it's got to have a loop in it all this shit if you make an actual straight like a vertical loop not like a you're not like a not like a pigtail on a ramp like if you make an actual loop that you shoot into the ball goes around that so fucking fast and you can't see it because the loop will be blocking it doesn't matter you know it's cool because you know in your brain oh the ball went around that but you're not getting any satisfaction out of that shots are only satisfying when you can see them it's the reason harry potter's not particularly satisfying to shoot even though it's kind of a marvel of design i would say the way it works is very interesting to me and it does shoot well but you can't see what it's doing so it doesn't feel good to me anyway that's my that's my opinion again just my opinion but these orbits you can see the ball for a lot of them and it's just good orbits hurtado made some he didn't make a lot of games but you know he's proving that he had a feel for shots feeling smooth he had like some steve richie like just kind of like he got it naturally like this is smooth yeah there's something about his games that i'm like i really do like how his games shoot and this is a pretty good game all around except for i'd say the playfield art is horrible it's like very empty yeah i i wrote this is a terrible art package i can't really i'm blanking on the translate right now but i feel like to me i don't i'm not it's just like little heads again this is one of the ones where i don't think the hierarchy is great it actually looks pretty modern like just kind of like little heads around none are really that much bigger than the others it has the logo but the contrast between the logo and the red it just it's just kind of very blah like lobby to me but i love this theme and it is another kitchen sink design and programming team so it kind of feels like that too it doesn't feel like super focused yeah uh it's unfortunate because this was a super hot license this is a show that i absolutely love i wish you know which was better i think it's okay it's okay i was playing it recently it's not a game i'd like want to own forever but i think it's as a location game especially this whole thing is pretty fun we'll say absolutely hilarious flyer for it they got a dude dressed up as like a little alien on there it's very funny if you if you look at it and it's got an interesting tagline i thought which is the ultimate x-mas gift obviously they just wanted to put the x pun but i do wonder if at this point they were like hey you could buy this for like a gift you know you could put in your house because that seems really interesting no one no i've never i don't look at the flyers we should do a better job of that maybe when we do these kind of episodes i should pull up flyers when i can find them but a lot of the time the operate like in this era they're they're marketing to operators so it's really interesting to be like oh it's the ultimate xmas gift you're like an operator would be like what the fuck like i don't care totally does it earn and so anyway i just thought that was interesting they follow this up with starship troopers from the joes It's just Cam and Cam Pulser. In 1997, this is 1,500 units sold of this thing. That's a nice step up. Dude, that's a big step up in sales. I didn't write down the sales for X-Files. I don't know why, but that's like fucking three times what Jurassic Park sold. The monster-licensed Jurassic Park in a good game, I think. Space Jam is almost double what Space Jam did. Yeah, 1,500 units of Starship Troopers featuring the tri-flipper action. Well, there's the reason, of course. It is fucking awesome. on. The tri-flipper, if anyone doesn't know, it's got like two normal flippers and then it has a little flipper above the right flipper and that little flipper is controlled with its own button. Very cool. You can cradle on the right flipper and then usually with the flippers aligned in the most of the ones I've played, if you cradle and then hit the little flipper, it shoots it right into that. There's like a hole or a scoop on the left and it shoots it right in there. So it's like a little freebie shot, which I think everybody gets a kick out of when you teach them that. I really like this game. It's got really clear objectives with the play. It's got displays in the play field and it's color coded and kind of like a babyish way. That's my biggest complaint. It's like red, green, blue, yellow. And you're just shooting. It's like, okay, it shows that you need nine of them and you have to shoot nine yellows and you just kind of follow the yellow targets around until you do that. I like it. It's really, when I started playing pinball, there was one of these and it was like one of those games where I'm like, hey, I actually know what to do for once. Like I know how to score points. Thank God. Because a lot of games aren't like that. I just have fond memories of this game. I still enjoy playing it. It's definitely one that I would consider buying. You know? Yeah. One of the Segas. Dude, I love this movie. It's a fantastic film. It's actually like a... That does help. Is that the movie's fucking great. The movie's great. It's an all-time favorite movie of mine. I think it's a Verhoeven masterpiece. He's the director. Did he do RoboCop? Did RoboCop. He did Total Recall. He did Total Recall? Yeah. I mean, the guys... I just watched that for the first time recently. Yeah, he's the best. He's really good, too. You know, this is just a masterpiece kind of fascist military satire, and it's actually based on the Robert Heinlein novel, the same name, which I also really like. Heinlein's my favorite sci-fi writer, classic sci-fi writer of that golden era. The game doesn't feature such nuance. Oh, you think the people that brought you Mary Shelley's Frankenstein were going to be like, oh, this is a little bit of like a tongue in cheek. Like, you know, it's like they missed it again, like they are keen to do. But I still think it's fun, even if the layout. I don't think the layout's one of the best of the Sega. This game could exist in the Starship Troopers universe. Yeah, totally. But I just don't like the layout is a little bit not as buttery or as a Vera target. It's been a while since I played this thing. And it's got this brain bug that's legitimately upsetting to look at, although it almost never works. on location and the location when i started playing it worked beautifully it's like it's like for anyone that hasn't played this game it's like the trolls from medieval madness but three times the size it's fucking huge the whole game the the legs of the game lift off the floor when this thing slams up because it's like a five pound mech boom it's so good yeah and it's the sculpt of it is legitimately upset grotesque and they ripped it off from medieval which i think had come out like six months before this game it's actually pretty impressive for them to see that and be able to implement their own ripoff in such a quick turnaround that is interesting that they were able to do that so fast you wonder if they're working on it beforehand i think that they were working on the game and they were like we gotta put one of these in they're like what if we can make it what's funnier if they were like we got to make it bigger or if they're like like the russian approach like ussr and they're like we couldn't make it the small we couldn't make it smaller yeah yeah well and they also i'm sure had to they had to make it different enough that i'm sure williams had patents on those yeah so they had to be like it's different yep yep so i put the design credits in here because i thought this was a good representation of like these later segas have lost a lot of kind of like the earlier people and we're seeing neil falconer or in day Those names are on a lot of the software. Morgan Weisling is the artwork on this. He's doing a lot of this kind of, it's not really collage-y artwork. It feels like it's pulled from movie stuff. I don't know. I think the back glass is pretty solid. I'm blanking on this game, and I used to play it so much, and I just haven't seen it in a long time. The play field's weird looking, and the cabinet's weird looking, but it's also kind of thematically appropriate, kind of the time. I wish it didn't have like those bright colors, but that's also why it was so intuitive to me on location. So I can't really diss that. It's an interesting one. You're seeing less of, it's not like they've got 20 names on the credits here, though. Yeah. It's getting cut down a little bit. After this, they follow up Starship Troopers, one of my favorite sagas, with one of my least favorite sagas. It's 1998's Viper Night Driving. They sell 1,100 units, which is crazy because this is, to me, the most disappointing game of all time because I'm a big fan of the Dodge Viper. Of all time. It's like your Halloween where it's like they made a game that's the opposite. You really like the theme, and they made the opposite of what you wanted. Yeah. And that's what this is for me because I really like Dodge Vipers. For anyone that's been listening to the show, they know I like cars. Dodge Viper is one of those poster cars. My brother actually has. so this this car this game it has a cool translate if you ignore like the cruising usa kind of like bikini babes that kind of just shoehorn into one of the corners but it has a couple really nice renditions of vipers including a blue and white gts gen 2 viper on it my brother has like that exact car and so it's kind of upsetting to be like whoa there's this game that looks like it's like that car like you know you want it to be good if it was even like a three out of ten game i would probably own one because i like the translate enough and i like the car and stuff and then you see like the rest of the game the play field and it fucking it's it's just trash man the art is trash the play field is horrible in a uniquely it's like just covered in like bikini girls they're like really proud of the fact that they licensed this fucking like shitty knockoff Howard Stern shock jock of the time, Man Cow. Yeah. And they're like, oh, it's featuring Man Cow callouts. And it's just embarrassing. And then it's got like just vulgar like girls moaning over and over when you're hitting like jackpot shots. And it's just it's genuinely embarrassing for me to even talk about the fucking game, let alone play it in public. I had the absolute misfortune of playing this thing at next level next to a child. and it just starts like going off with like you know straight up like sexual like pornographic sounds and i just like i flipped the switch because i was like this is making me really uncomfortable like there's like a six-year-old next to me in my games like just going off and you're like nope done it's not in a cool way like bram stoker's dracula your favorite game of all time bram stoker's dracula has like a woman making a noise because she gets bit in the neck and it's not like it's not it is it's sexual it's sexual but it's not like it's like and if i try to try to you know that's me imitating the noise from bram stoker's dracula i'm not going to imitate the noise from viper knight driving it's fucking embarrassing dude it sucks and it's not even that even because i'm assuming there's a way to turn that off other than that it's just a shitty play field featuring a very prominent center ramp and it's got it came with glow balls which are like the weight roughly of power balls but they're made out of plastic they get dinged up and look like shit immediately and they glow they're called glow balls because they glow under black lights and so they put full length black lights running alongside like by the glass on this game that block like the corners of the play field yeah it's it looks like trash dude it looks like if you looks like a bad head shop it's like if you started fucking uh screwing in like home depot supplies into your cabinet this shit it's just gimmick on top of gimmick it was it's garbage it's genuine garbage it's probably the the longer i think about it i'm like this is one of the worst games that to me if i have to pick my least favorite game of all time viper nitride oh nice so well we got something out of this episode that's that's it interesting little side fucking And fun fact here is that Slash of Guns N' Roses wrote an original song, I think, for this. Wow. Or they licensed the song. I think he maybe did release a single. I don't know. And he, like, came to the premiere party where they had, like, actual Dodge Viper. It was like a really, like, they pushed this. And I was like, really? Good marketing campaign. Terrible game. Fucking dog shit. Dude, it's horrible. Yeah, there's a reason why you don't see this game. Yeah, man. Hopefully you never have to. It's a bummer. So anyway, that's my feelings. I just want to talk about that one a little bit. Next up, we got Lost in Space 98, John Borg, back to selling 600 units. Yeah, Alex likes the game, so it's going to sell like garbage.