Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 15th. This is episode 26. And I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. And we're currently living through the ice apocalypse, apparently. I mean, it's nice outside. There's no ice anywhere. But based on the Carl Weathers, man, we're in it pretty bad. Ice magetan 2017. They pushed back my Chiefs game. Yeah. 7 p.m. So, well, at least we didn't have to rush to get this recorded. Yeah. It's terrible out there. So. It's biting. The cold is biting. I'm glad I have lots of leftover pizza to survive on. That definitely helps. It does. So anyway, we have a jammed pack episode to go through today So, this is a lot It's like we had next to nothing to talk about the last podcast And then as soon as we were done recording, everything just started to hit And it has just snowballed since then Oh yeah, I know When all the news things started to hit, I was just like Okay, something happened like the day after the podcast That's pretty normal And then another And then another And then another yeah it just piled on so now whenever I listen to the pinball podcast with Don and Jeff and they're complaining about the news coming out after they record is like yeah it it really felt like it this time around for us at least so let's go ahead and get cracking with these intros and then we will just snowball this just like the new snowball into an icepocalypse worthy of listening to. So what's been going on with you, Tony? Well, not a whole lot. Same stuff I normally have been doing. We've got a new hire, so my podcast backlog has massively grown because I've been doing training, so I haven't gotten to listen to anything lately. And I have, in addition to my normal Doom and Overwatch play, I picked up a, or I should say I was gifted a platformer called Shantae Half-Genie Hero, and I've been playing that as well. and that's kind of a fun, cute little game. I've heard very good things about the genie. Yeah, it's been enjoyable. So what have you been up to? Oh, gosh. Well, legislative session started at work, so that means research time gets to be increased as is typical. But since we don't have a contract we use to service, it's actually been pretty calm for me, which is good. I've been doing a lot of transitionary stuff there. On the more enjoyable side of things, I've been playing a little bit of Doom. I finished up the last achievement I wanted in Gems of War, so I finally uninstalled that Puzzle Quest clone made by the same makers as Puzzle Quest that I've been working on off and on for months. And this last week, I have primarily been watching Awesome Games Done Quick and Pinball Done Quick. So I haven't actually done a lot of gaming over the last seven days or so because those are kind of biannual events where they try and raise money for charity. So the Prevent Cancer Foundation was this charity in January that they were both serving. So usually in the evenings, it's Awesome Games Done Quick. If there's time at work, I'll at least listen to Pinball Done Quick. And the Pinball Done Quick is actually still going on right now. They go a little bit after Awesome Games. So I've been catching some of that. And that's really it in those regards. But what I thought I would go ahead and do before we actually move into the pile of news, Bear in mind, I did all this before I knew there was going to be a pile of news. We noted in the last episode that this episode, number 26, marks our one year. So the anniversary would actually be the following, episode 27, because we started at the very end of January last year. But since we've now gone essentially through a full year, I thought it might be fun to quickly just sort of go over some analytics. Because sometimes people ask, especially in person, they bring up podcast stuff. They'll ask, like, well, how are we doing? And it's like, well, I don't know. We're a really small podcast that people need to understand. I mean, compared to some of the big ones that we reference, we're way little. But I thought it would be fun to throw together some of the basic analytics that might be interesting. And I just went through calendar year 2016 because it's just easier to capture analytics by year, and we're so close to being on a calendar year based off of when we started that I thought it would be convenient. so let's see uh i basically i'd carve it up into into two things there's the website that we have and then there are the episodes that we have so just going over the the website really quick which is the only constant that we have the entire year uh we don't really have a lot of content on the website it really is just the primary way people who don't subscribe to the podcast can listen to it, at least until we move to SoundCloud. So for 2016, we had over 1,500 visits from over 900 visitors. And the top 10 referral sources in order would be Pinside, which is a pinball forum for those that don't know, followed by Facebook, followed by various search engines, almost all of which are Google. Google and Google. Yeah. There was like one Yahoo in there. So someone messed up. But other than that, they're all clumped together by WordPress. So it's just various search engine results where people actually went to the website. The fourth largest source for our website visitors is Reddit, which I know you've used, Tony, to promote a lot of our contests when we do votes and such. Yeah. Tilt Forums is next. That's another pinball forum. Followed by VP Universe. That's a virtual pinball forum site. followed by Pinball Supernova, which aggregates pinball news, followed by True Achievements, which is an Xbox-oriented site, then VP Forums, which is another virtual pinball site, and then Links from FeedBurner, which is the RSS feed. So as you can see from that list, like over half of it is pinball stuff. So I think we're pretty safe in the assumption that most of the people who at least initially come and seek us out for whatever reason are coming because of the pinball talk. And we really appreciate it. That's part of the reason why we do Load It Up so heavy on pinball. In terms of where people are coming from that visit the website, just run through the top ten countries again in order. USA, no shock, number one. Canada's two. Australia, three. The UK is four, followed by Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, France, and Austria. Most of those I know are pinball countries. Some I'm not sure about. Like, I don't know on Poland if they have a big pinball presence or not. But by the time you got to the end of those top ten, you were getting under 20 visits. So it wasn't a big deal. And finally, on the website side of things, the top five sites that people visited from our website. Number one, not surprising, I think, was our Google Drive folder with the American pinball research. That was a few episodes back. Followed by YouTube. I looked at the breakout, and most of the YouTube visits were regarding that joke application I made for Batman 66 Pin. But some of it was checking out some of the other content, followed by our iTunes page, followed by our Stitcher page, and followed by VP Caps, which was one of the interviews we did after they were on Shark Tank. So those were the top five sites people go to from our website. And that's really it in terms of what I thought was interesting on the web. I thought I'd try to pull some info on the episodes, and that's a little more challenging. For those that don't know, and most probably don't because it was pretty transparent, we did not host with SoundCloud originally. We hosted with Google Drive because it was free until they changed their hosting system. The problem with Google Drive, though, is there were absolutely no analytics. So we have no idea how any of our episodes performed while they were over at Google Drive. We don't know downloads or anything. We had no counts. So for those that want to know, we transitioned for episode 16, which was the one where Jack Danger guest hosted. So his was the first episode where it was only on SoundCloud and we didn't have any stint of it being on Google Drive. So bearing all that in mind, looking back essentially at half of our year of 2016, our most popular episode was actually the year end review that we did at the end of 2016. So two episodes back. and that was closely followed by Jack Danger and his guest hosting gig. Our least popular episode, again, discounting anything that happened on Google Drive because I have no idea, was actually our 19th episode, the one that we titled Winging It, where Tony and I had absolutely no notes. I have to say, objectively speaking, that episode really sucks. Yeah, it was bad. That was a low point. You missed nothing. The only thing I can say in our defense is we were completely transparent at the beginning that it was going to be bad. So at least the listeners agreed. That one was our worst when I pulled these numbers. The only other thing I bothered looking at were the top ten countries of listening through SoundCloud's numbers. The first four are the same as our website visits. So USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK in that same order. But then it changes to New Zealand, Norway, France, the Netherlands, and then a tie with Germany, Switzerland, and Japan at 10th. So primarily the same sort of groupings up front. Obviously, the big four are the vast bulk of the actual listens. And I know all four of those countries are really big into pinball. So anyway, we appreciate everyone listening. We thought we'd just quickly run through some analytics. We're just a little bit past our 10-minute mark, according to my trackers. So I think we're good to go to go ahead and move into pinball. What do you think? All right. I think that's a pretty good idea. I did want to say that we're going to be putting up some more content on, like, the YouTube and stuff here before too long, hopefully, if things work out. It won't necessarily be great content, but it'll be more. Yeah, we're diversifying, primarily due to the hard work that Tony's doing, into a lot of other sort of media categories for just supplying content. things that we can do where we don't have to both be together and put together the podcast. The podcast will still be obviously our primary activity because that's what we created to do, to chat about these fun games. But, yeah, we've been trying to figure out what works and what we can grow out and do well. Like the voting contest, we get really good responses on those. And so, obviously, some of the stuff on the video side can be a lot of fun. It's just I don't do a video weekly. I probably should just think about it a little more because it's stuff I like to – those are nice because you can consume them so quick. Whereas, I mean, I'm always impressed. Even with episode 19 where we probably – I think we still had at least 50 people listen to it. It's like, wow, 50 of you sat there for 90 minutes and listened to that? I mean, it's a mix of gratitude and pity. But anyway, this stuff should be fun. And we'll give you more information as we get it put together. Well, to start with, and for those of you who came here for the pinball, you're going to love it because we've got a whole ton of it to talk about. Unfortunately, you're going to get stuck listening to me talk even more now because the first thing that we have on the agenda is to go ahead and launch our 2017 Solid State Widebody Tournament. I should rephrase that. It's the Modern Era Widebody Tournament. I played with the names a couple of times, but I want to make it clear that it's not pre-DMD. It's post-EM by pinball. Let me try to think of it the best way. I'll go ahead and describe what sort of the rules are, how this one's going to go. So what we've done is we've taken the top 32 wide-body machines that are from the solid state era or later. We determined if they were wide-body based off of if the Internet pinball database said they're wide-body. So if it said that, then they were in contention. Then we went to Pinside, and the rankings as of December 16th of 2016, so I know the rankings, they move around, so that's the date if you need to go back to the archive if you want to test it and see if I'm telling the truth or anything. We went and we looked at those ranks, and that's how we seeded the games. So the only other thing we did in terms of a limiting factor initially was if IPDB said that there was a number of units produced, we only went with a game if it had at least 100. So I didn't look to see what the rank of Goin' Nuts is because it had like 10 machines. And that would probably be the only one that would have even had a hope of being ranked because it's in the pinball arcade with that few of the number of units. So anyway, the number of games out of IPDB, even after we only went with top 100, was still over 50. But Pennside only gives a ranking to solid state and beyond era machines if there were at least 15 votes. So that shaved us down, I believe, to 37 machines. And then for standardized seeding to make it easy, not have a bunch of buys and stuff, we dropped it to 32. So if you want to know the games that got dropped, I will tell you. They were Caveman. It's a Gottlieb 1982. Panthera, Gottlieb 1980. Rocky, Gottlieb 1982. Orbiter One, CERN 1982. Sorry, Orbiter. You're going to be revolving out in space alone. Well, not alone. You're going to be joined by Hercules, Atari 1979. Those are in order from best to worst in the rankings, the ones that were dropped because I wanted to use 32. So they had enough votes to be in the contest, but I wasn't doing the 37-seat contest. Not going to be 37 with your immense love of wide bodies. Well, you know, we're going to see what I'm supposed to love. That's what the people are going to tell us. And this one, I finally got ahead, and it's going to be Google verification to control on any potential vote stuffing. Looking at the past votes, I don't really think there was, but we'll go ahead and do it that way so people feel a little more secure. We're not taking that information and using it for our purposes or anyone else's. It's just you have to sign into Google to do the vote this time. But it's still going to be a Google form vote like we've always done. And the seedings will follow the standardized seeding matchups. And we'll see which ones are the best. Will Twilight Zone end up taking it all? Like, I would just assume. Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I had someone ask about this because there are some really good solid state era games, and that would probably be interesting to see how they would fare, but they're probably going to lose against DMD era machines, and that's unfortunate. But it was just the way I wanted to carve this up. I mean, truthfully, the right answer is there is no winner. There is no great wide body. But some people don't seem to know that like I do. So we'll let this decide. I'm being fair, Tony. You're being fair, I guess. So anyway, here will be the round one matchups. I'll just tear through them real quick. Number one seed, Twilight Zone, as we noted. That's a Bally 1993. We'll go against the 32 seed, Laser Ball Williams, 1979. The 16 seed, Paragon, Bally 1979, against the 17 seed, Spirit, Gottlieb 82. Nine seed, Batman Forever, Sega 95 game, against the Bally 1979 game, Future Spa, which is the 24th seed. The number eight seed is Williams' 1994 game Roadshow. That will go against the 25 seed. Roadshow! The 25 seed I have played, Gottlieb 1981's Volcano. I've played that one, too. That's actually not a bad game. No, actually, that one is tolerable. I dropped some quarters in that, trying to win the box of quarters. I did not, so I'm a little bitter. The four seed is Wizard of Oz, Jersey Jack, 2013, against the 29 seed, Scorpion, Williams' 1980. The 13th seed is WWF Royal Rumble, Data East 1994. I've heard some love for that game. Against a very famous game, which is the 20th seed, Gottlieb 1979's Genie. And the 12th seed is Black Hole, Gottlieb 81, very famous. Against the 21th seed, Mars God of War, which is also a 1981 Gottlieb. The 5th seed, Hobbit, which is a 2016 game from Jersey Jack, is against Bally 1994's Popeye Saves the Earth, which comes in at the 28th seed. How is that higher than Rocky? I don't know. I haven't played Rocky, so I can't say. The number two seed is Indiana Jones, The Pinball Adventure, Williams, 1993. That's against the 31 seed, Pink Panther, which is another 81, Gottlieb. Gottlieb loved their wide body, so you're going to hear their name a lot here. 15th seed is Hot Doggin, Bally, 1980 game, and that'll be against the 18th seed, which is Gottlieb, 1982's Devils there. The 10th seed is Demolition Man, Williams, 94. That'll be against Stern 1980s Game Big Game, which was a 23 seed in the rankings. Then there's the 7th seed is Judge Dredd, Bally, 93, against the 26th seed, which is Superman, Atari, 79. Then there is the 3rd seed, Star Trek The Next Generation, Williams, 93, against the 30th seed, Stellar Wars, which is a Williams, 1979 title. then Haunted House 14th seed Gottlieb 1982 also very famous against The Amazing Spider-Man which is the 19th seed Gottlieb 1980 title then Embryon 11th seed Bally 81 against Space Invaders the 22nd seed which is a Bally as well but from 1980 and the last matchup will be Data East's 1994 Guns N' Roses at the 6th seed slot this is the 27th seed famous fight not fight, flight, flight 2000. You may fight with it because it takes up so much space. Fight 2000. And that was 1980 from Sturm. So those are going to be the initial 16 matchups. And we'll do the vote like we normally do, run it for just under two weeks. I'll probably close it out the Friday before we record, get them tallied up, and we'll cover those on the podcast. And we've chimed in a little bit there. We probably weigh in on some of these others that we know about, but I'll wait for the herd to get thinned because we've got so much more we need to talk about anyway. So, anyway, we'll get the vote announced, and thanks in advance to everyone who participates. It helps out a lot. Okay, Tony, I was thinking about moving into Zidware next, but I was going to a different subject first. I'm fine with that if you want to shift into that, or we can jump to something else to give your voice a break. Yeah, let's give me a break, actually. Let's talk Aerosmith. Okay, that works. At CES, Aerosmith, the worst kept secret in pinball, was finally shown. And as should be expected from Dirty Donnie, the artwork on Aerosmith is amazing. I'm a big fan of it. The gameplay that I watched on video and stuff looked interesting. I'm not as sold on the upper play field, but frankly I haven't been sold on any upper playfields that I've played in recent years. So we'll see how that works out. I do like the treasure chest little setup thing. That's got a cool visual to it with the ball locks and everything. That's looked pretty cool from the videos. But I think it's one of those things that they're just showing how well they do with their LCDs since they've finally decided to embrace them. I like their sizing of LCDs. I like how they're still maintaining a decent trans light, which is something that I've missed on some of the other systems where you're going with huge LCDs and the trans light's pretty much gone at that point. It's just an LCD and a backbox. What do you think about it? Well, I agree with you. I'm skeptical about the upper playfield. It reminds me of like a mirrored. I'm trying to think how I want to say it's got Yeah, it's like a mirrored smaller version of one of the upper playfields from Wizard of Oz. That's kind of what it reminds me of. I'm not a huge fan of upper playfields in general. I'm really not a fan when they're only one flipper. I just, I, so it looks like the Pro might play better kind of like how I feel Game of Thrones Pro plays better than the Premium but everyone's mileage may vary on that I did want to ask you, I do, like you, I love the art do you think the art that Dirty Donnie did on Aerosmith is better, worse, or on par with Metallica? Hmm, I would have to say it's on par with Metallica I really enjoyed the Metallica artwork a lot And I think it works pretty well here, and his style's working pretty well in Aerosmith. Actually, when I first heard about it, I wasn't sure how well it would translate. But it works pretty well, and I'm pretty happy with it. I think it's definitely one of the better art packages in existence lately. I like this whole change away from clip art, art packages, back into actual hand-drawn art that we're starting to see with Stern, at the very least. and it makes me real happy. Yeah, I think they have. Really, ever since moving past Game of Thrones, it seems like they've really been listening on art, and obviously Metallica predates Game of Thrones, but that was almost a one-off in the fact that they went with a highly accomplished artist who wasn't just pasting out of Photoshop. I personally like the art package on Aerosmith better than Metallica, but I think it's just I like the style that fits this band better than the style that fits Metallica, not that the art itself is actually better. Because I think Metallica works really well for the band that it is. And that could be part of it for me because I am a large Metallica fan, and for me Aerosmith is just another band. Right, and I'm probably a bit more familiar with Aerosmith songs than I am with Metallica songs. I don't own any albums from either of these bands, though. I get why they've done it, And as I think, I don't remember which episode number it was, but when we were speculating on possible bands to do, I thought Aerosmith was the only low-hanging fruit, old-timey classic rock band with mass recognition in the public eye that they hadn't yet done, and so it was the obvious pick for Stern. I don't know what they do after this, actually. It would be nice if they moved kind of past classic rock. I don't know if it's possible, though. I would agree with you. I would like to see them move on from Classic Rock, but I don't know if they will. I don't know if that makes sense. I don't know if the eras of people who are beyond Classic Rock are big enough or old enough to be primary buyers yet. I mean, that's going to be the big question. if most of their people purchasing these machines are, you know, 45 or 50, and why would they move on to something from the 90s where most of those people are going to be in their upper 30s, low 40s? Yeah, I don't think they do unless they see in demographics that the sales are there now, that the people in their 30s, you either wait until the people who are in their 30s get into their 40s or you see that there are enough people that are willing to spend that, have the access to and are able to and willing to spend that type of capital to acquire machines for home purpose. So we'll just have to see. I saw a little bit in their announcement footage of gameplay. I saw a little bit of gameplay on the CES floor. Don't really want to comment much on it yet because code really makes a big difference. I do like you. I like the little box that the jester's on. I think it's a neat little throwback in a way to, it reminds me of Scared Sith, Crate. I think it's hard not to be reminded of that, given how it kind of gobbles things. Borg designs, I like Borg designs in general. He's not my favorite designer, but I really appreciate how they can turn out. And I think Walking Dead's a good example of a game where it was sort of seen as a dog initially, but how the code developed really made that into a challenging yet ostensibly still fair table. And so I'll just have to hold out a little bit on that. And later on, I know we're going to get into Batman and be able to talk a bit more about the gameplay. So I don't want to really comment too much on the gameplay, but we have seen, we've both seen at least a little bit of footage on it. And we both obviously lean towards the pro looks like it might play a bit better. But we'll wait until we see some dead flip footage or something and form a better opinion at that time. Well, that's really all I think I'm going to say on Aerosmith for now. Do you want us to go ahead now and tackle the Zidware? Then we can bounce back and hit Batman 66 for some joy. Yeah, that works. All right. Well, Zidware. Okay. I know we mentioned them and John Papadiuk a number of times, but not anything really extensive, mostly in the context of what we've looked into for American Pinball. So I don't want to give a whole lowdown. I just thought I'd give a little bit of an update because there's been some activity on our top source of visitors, which is to the website, which is Pennside, and the Pennside user, C508, so shout out to C508, he mentioned in a thread that's been tracking the sort of saga of Zidware and the Magic Girls and the Razzas and the Alice in Wonderland machines. He'd been tracking kind of where the case has been proceeding because there is actually litigation that's been ongoing involving that. And it's been moving, but it's been moving slower than the Predator debacle. And part of the issue I think there is, and we haven't spent a ton of time with Predator and Skit B other than mentioning them as well in the past, but that has moved differently because there's bankruptcy going on there. and Zidware is not involved in bankruptcy, at least last that I heard it's not. So anyway, C508 was tracking this sort of information and he noticed that at the end of the year, end of 2016, there had been some activity including J-POP having a response to a complaint that had been filed in regards to this litigation. So he really wanted to get a look at that and I, not thinking about doing any research on anything after doing the American Pinball thing, saw that and thought, oh, that's a really great idea. So I thought he was going through some channels to try and figure out how much it would cost, and I always get annoyed with public records costing money, but I thought, let me see if I can get a free copy, and that didn't work. But I went through a different mechanism to try and get it. I was trying to be a little sneaky, because sometimes it's just easier for them to, If they have it electronically already, why bother to make you pay? The cost was really low. It was only like $13. So I checked in with C508 to make sure that he hadn't already ordered it or anything, and he hadn't. So I went ahead and I bought that response, and it was five pages, and I provided it. But the problem was that the answer to complaint just references sections of the complaint. So with just the answer, you don't, it's like you're missing the legend. You need your Rosetta Stone. You can't translate it. So I gave that to him, and he indicated he was going to go and get the complaint, which was about twice as much money. It was just under 50 pages of content. And so he did. And so he gave that to me and posted it as well on Pinside. And I've created a research folder for Zidware now so that people can just download these things. We'll have a link to it in the show notes. So it got the complaint the third amended complaint to be more precise and the answer to the complaint from J Because there are a couple other parties also named and their answers are probably identical So I'm also linking to the Pennside thread on this because it's a massive thread, and we can't cover it all in audio. It's just too difficult and too boring, quite frankly. Yeah, it is a massive, massive thread. And I'm not linking it to the beginning. I'm linking it basically to the, I believe exactly to the post where C508 postulates about trying to get this information. There's a bit of off-topic stuff that's happened since then in the thread, but it's nothing particularly significant. I think it's all within four pages to catch up all the way to date. So if you want more information, you can go ahead and look at that. But what I just thought I would do here is note what, it's like, I did a crosswalk. crosswalk. So I took the answers and I took the complaint and I translated them so we knew what J-Pop was admitting to and what he was still denying legally. So I can run through that part really quick because there's really not all that much to it. Once you realize that most of the stuff is just cross-referencing, your 48 pages becomes less than one page of bullet points. So the stuff that he admits to is pretty basic. Where he's residing, where the company's residing, that he had purchase agreements in place. He admits that the plaintiffs paid him and that they demanded their money back and that he had created a blog with various posts giving status updates. That's stuff in the complaint that he says is all true. Nothing particularly, I think, surprising about any of that. And what he's formally denying is that he failed to perform under the purchase agreements and that that failure resulted in damage to everyone who's suing him. I understand why he would deny that, but doesn't that seem kind of weird? No, no, no, no. There was no damage just because nothing shipped and nobody made money. There was no damage. I agree with you. It does seem weird. And one, I'm sure it's what his attorneys are obviously telling him to say. I think what I'm not clear on, because again, this is not in bankruptcy. This is not a bankruptcy proceeding. if he, through Zidware, Zidware, I thought, is listed as being no longer a valid corporation in Illinois. So I had initially thought his stance might be that he's still technically trying to build these. So he hasn't failed. He just hasn't finished. But I don't know if that's true. That's not really addressed specifically. That's what came to mind. That just seems like a weird little legalese argument. It's like, oh, I haven't finished them yet, but that doesn't mean I'm not currently working on them. because that seems like an argument that you could go on with forever. Well, I know I promised you this 43 years ago, but I'm still working on it. So it's not, I haven't failed yet. It's just taking me longer to thought. Right, right. Yeah, it's sort of a question of cutoff. So in terms of the rest of the claims that the plaintiffs are making, he denies that they're entitled to the return of the deposit. He denies that he took the deposit and then converted it for his own personal use. He denies that he refused to refund the deposit as demanded immediately. Now, I think that was an interesting one. I have to be careful there. It's not that he's refusing. He's not saying that he gave them the money back. I think he's saying that when they demanded an immediate refund, which he admits that they did, that it's not that he refused to. It's probably that he couldn't is sort of how I'm interpreting that. he said that or he denied that the refusal of the deposit refund was willful and malicious and thus that because the plaintiffs are claiming that it was and if that's the case if that were to be determined by the court they would not only be entitled to a refund they would be entitled to punitive damages designed to punish him for being bad so there was that he denies that he was unjustly enriched by refusing to do the refunds. And then there were three blog posts that he made, and he admits that he made all of them. And these were, there were three very short statements. One of them was saying that he, this was in October of 2014, mid-October, he said that he was working with Mission Pinball and Fast Pinball on an arrangement to have a working relationship in place. Then at the end of October, he had another blog post where he said they had a date to show Magic Girl, in mid-December, and that he was working on a schedule for the zombie one, and that he would report back after that. And then in mid-January of 2015, he said he was still on track to show a fully built zombie Adventureland game in February. So he admits that he said all of those things. The plaintiffs are claiming that all of those statements were false, and he knew they were false when he wrote them. And so he did it to deceive them, and that they relied on that information to stick with the project, you know, to invest money, and that he did all this with malice, an intent of malice, and he denies all of that. So that's what's in the complaint itself. So anyway, one can read through it. If one's a lawyer in particular, they might be able to glean more than what I have from all these references, but I tried to convert it into layman's speak. And I guess if more stuff crops up, I'm more than happy. to have the podcast continue to host it on our Google Drive in the Zidware folder, which now gets to accompany the American Pinball Research folder. And I start to fear that we are becoming the research storage podcast instead of a commentary podcast. But I couldn't help it. When C508 brought it up, I got curious. I just couldn't help it. I wanted to know more. That's always just how it – that's why I do what I do, and the job I took initially was. So it's always interesting to figure out these things, It's not something things go bad. It's like the train wreck. But I want to know why the train wrecked. I can see some of these arguments about denying that this stuff was made with fraud and malice in mind. Because even at this point, I'm not willing to say that J-Pop was necessarily going full malice just attempting to defraud people. I just think he's not a good businessman. And I think he might have believed that it was something they could do even long after the point of obvious failure. And he just continued to blind himself to the realities and force himself through to create this thing that was in his head, no matter how badly it was going. Well, it's an interesting point. I mean, just on the surface of it all, looking at this, I would say, in my opinion, he would not – I don't think a court would say that every single one of these claims of damage would be upheld. But there are some that do stand out as a little, I guess, murky. So, like the blog post stuff. All right. I could see someone saying, no, no, he really does think that they're going to solidify a working relationship with Mission Pinball. and Fast Pinball. Like, when that happened, if they had talks ongoing, I could, you know, I could see him thinking, oh, yeah, we're real close on that. But, you know, posting on January 17th that you're on track to build, fully built, have Zombie Adventureland ready in February, and then not have it ready even by February 2017, you know, in that case, it's sort of like, what in the world? I wonder what he'll be able to point to to show that he ever thought it was remotely on track. Zombie Adventureland, I don't even know if people saw an empty cabinet of that. I don't know. That one is definitely. That one's definitely still not done. Well, yeah, and that's a whole other can of worms. Yeah, we're going to get into them worms. Those juicy worms are coming. So many worms. It's delicious. Yeah, I can definitely see where that one is almost more like just trying to say anything to stretch the truth out, to stretch the survival of Zidware out a little bit. but I think it'll be interesting to see how this stuff goes forward since it's not as tied up in proceedings as the Predator stuff is with due to the bankruptcy and everything but it's definitely going to be something that combined with you know the buyouts and who has the actual rights and stuff now and everything else it's so murky right yeah the Zidware one is complicated, more complicated, and it's for a variety of reasons that you've pointed out. And part of that, it has to do with the complication of how the purchasers or prospective purchasers can be made whole or be made satisfied. Because out in the community, there still seems to be this sense, and this is where the American Pinball stuff crops up, obviously, that somehow the games will still be made. Now, my own personal opinion on that is that is a pointless hope, and that shouldn't even be what people are after anymore. They need to let that go and just try and get what money they can. That's my opinion. But whereas with Skit-B, it's really clear he didn't have the right to do what he was doing. He didn't refund the money. Some people got refunds way early. Pretty much everyone else got money by basically claiming they didn't get their product through their credit cards and got refunded almost through a fraud channel, that sort of response. And he kept all of the rest of it. And what's going on with him in a nutshell is he's trying to shield himself under bankruptcy, but there is an attorney trying to point out that bankruptcy can absolve you of a lot of debt, but if there's money that was obtained inappropriately, you're not supposed to be able to be shielded on that. So what they're trying to do is say, no, no, this debt, the predator debt, people who bought these machines that he didn't have the right to make, he still has to refund that. That doesn't get to be forgiven under bankruptcy. That's what's going on on that legal side. So it's really, really clear. If the lawyer is successful against him, then even though he gets to be bankrupt and get to pay the reduced rate to whatever creditors he has, these predator creditors still are entitled to their full refunds. That's the idea. Sorry, I find Predator, Creditor funny Yeah, I worked real hard on that one But anyway, so, as it were, I know we don't bring them up directly very much But there has been some happenings, though Feel free to look at the show notes if you want any more info Before we get to any juicy worms, let's go to a more fun, pleasant topic Let's talk a little bit about Batman 66 gameplay Yes, Batman 66 gameplay We had the Deadflips big stream that I didn't get to watch, and you watched a little bit of. But then he's also had several streams lately from Logan Arcade, where he's been playing Batman 66. And I kind of like it. I mean, I like Dark Knight, so I'm still going to play Batman 66. It's basically the playfields. A big chunk of the same. But I kind of like the interplay with the LCD and the little rotary phone toy thing in the back left. It looks pretty cool. Yeah, I've seen most of it with the on-site Logan Arcade play, and I've seen a good chunk of it now. The game looks great. I like the LCD integration. I think it looks really fun. I'm not surprised at how similar it is to Dark Knight given they indicated that the right half was essentially going to be the same I'm a little disappointed that it's so obvious I can't say, I'm almost like, what was I hoping for? I don't think I was hoping for anything maybe I wanted to be surprised and I'm not I don't mind the Dark Knight I think it's an okay player I think it's a decent pin if I see it on location and I've seen it quite a bit I will put money in it and I'll play it but it's never been a game I really wished I had and so this falls in that same boat it's not different enough but I do think it looks superior to the Dark Knight I think getting rid of that Joker toy and making it be this more interactive thing with the phone and it rotates to a couple other stages I think that's a better use of that space and it does look like with the changes on the They got rid of the little pinbot, drainy-down thing on the right, I think. They've increased the flow on it, and I think that'll make it a better player. So I would say Batman 66 looks to be a superior game to Batman and the Dark Knight. I just wouldn't put it up there in the same realm as, say, a Ghostbusters or a Walking Dead or a Star Trek or a Spider-Man or those sort of games. Yeah, it's not to the same threshold of awesome as it would were. It's nice. It's probably, based upon what I've seen, I think it looks more fun than Dark Knight. But at the same time, it's still pretty much just the same game with the same overall issues. But it's got a much nicer wrapping, and the LCD is good. Yeah, the only thing that I don't like, and I'm really hoping it gets addressed with code, I know I was seeing very preliminary code on the Logan's Arcade Machine, is the phone. I think it's a great toy. That incessant beeping, though, has to stop. It was like being at a dentist. I don't know if that's just a real easy mode to get in, or when I was watching it, people just didn't go and finish the mode off. But the phone just keeps beeping. It's annoying. Really annoying. I mean, it was like I muted the stream. It wasn't so annoying. And I thought, oh, gosh, that's the one thing. I just like having the phone beep for a little bit and maybe just flash. That'd be what I would do. That beep is just grating. So it's just going and going and going. It didn't seem like it would ever stop. Yeah, that seems like a code thing, right? There's something that would be easy to adjust or change. Or it might even be something that's programmable. I don't know. I can see where it would definitely cause issues in a larger venue going for an extended period of time with a lot of other customers on other games and sitting around enjoying their adult beverages or eating their pizza or whatever being annoyed because of it yeah I mean I guess what I'd most compare it to would be like on Terminator 2 if it's time for someone to actually fire the ball for the skill shot and it's just doing that beeping which it just keeps beeping except that stops when someone shoots so that's only a problem you're like in a tournament or something and someone isn't stepping up because they're in a conversation and they've decided that they want to make you wait and that happens to me and it's annoying and it's like but it's really annoying if it's Terminator 2 because like you know what we're playing here please just pause your conversation and stop the beeping we don't want the beeping so So, yes. Launch the ball, catch it, and finish your conversation. Something. Just stop the beeping. Yeah, just stop the beeping. Except this was beeping after the plunge. I just can't beep in the case. Bop it. So, anyway, in the grand scheme of things, it's a minor nitpick. I don't normally bag on sound too much in these pens. I know some people are more obsessive. But, you know, bad call-outs and stuff can be kind of frustrating. But anything that's incessant and grating, you just have to be really, really cautious on. so but other than that uh yeah no i i i think we'll probably get one in the area um i'd like to give it a try from everything i've seen it's not if you if you have my sense is if you have a strong opinion on the dark knight i highly doubt this game is going to change change from that base opinion unless whatever your problem was was specific to something they pulled out I think that's probably a fair assessment. The shot's layout is just too similar. So if you had a problem with the layout, it's just not different enough to stand out. But if you hated just a really particular thing like the Joker toy that just took up a bunch of space that you couldn't interact with, you might be pleasantly surprised by how this one is now, would be my thought. Yeah, I can see that. Let's do another fun topic. Another Stern fun topic. Keith Elwin, the Keith Elwin, arguably, probably not really so much arguably, he's just generally accepted by everyone as the greatest pinball player competitively that has ever lived, will be working for CERN as a pinball designer. Apparently he announced that, I believe, on his LinkedIn. And so I thought, you know what, let's talk a little bit about that. Tony, what do you think? Keith Elwin, competitive player. That's what he's known throughout all of pinball for. He's just won tons and tons of stuff. He's mentioned in the past, recent past, actually, I think it was around the end of 2015, that he was going to kind of go semi-retired from competitive pinball, and he still kept coming and winning stuff, so I don't know what that meant. He's just playing less tournaments. He's not winning less. He's just playing less. Yeah, I think, I believe, I've never confirmed this myself, but I believe if you go to IFPA and click on Keith Elwin and look at the player comparison statistics, he is the only person in the system whose name is green against everyone who he's faced multiple times. So he is the greatest. He is the greatest player. Doesn't always win, but he's just consistency-wise, no one else has matched him. But, all right, pinball design. He had been known to have been working on a homebrew, an archer table. I'd seen a little bit on it But I personally never looked all that much I don't actually watch Archer You're missing out That's what I hear But you know I got so much stuff I gotta do I gotta juggle so many things I got Zidware's to research It's a hard life I am a big fan of Archer It's a fun show But I think Keith Elwin coming into The designer stage Is going to be a wonderful thing For the hobby as a whole because, A, there's a dearth of designers. We're still using the grand old designers for the most part, and with no new blood, it's worrying for what we're going to see in the future as the designers start retiring. And having somebody who is big into the hobby, plays well, knows what he likes, knows what he's looking for, helping to design the next generation of games, I think, is a very big step forward and something that we've been desperately in need of for the last few years. Yeah, I think it's pretty exciting news overall. I know there have been a few people that kind of have expressed a preference, and I don't know Keith's background in terms of what he's done occupationally prior to this, but that desire to see him on the software side, I think a lot of that's sort of driven by the fact that Lyman Sheets with Stern and Keith, the other Keith over with JJP, they are really good players, and that kind of translates into their code packages, and that's why people get really excited with when they find out those are the coders on a particular project. I think it'd be interesting to see a really, really strong player do the playfield design, though. So I think this is a really good hope. I like that it's a major developer of pinball machines, Stern, that's doing this, that's taking someone who's significantly younger than the average age of a pinball designer and bringing them in. A good opportunity to learn under some masters. And based off of what we saw with the Archer table, he's got some unique design ideas, which are influenced based off of his experiences at the high-end competitive play level. So I think it translates really well. I know Jersey Jack's got some new blood helping or designing their next pin, is my understanding. So it's good to see the two biggest entities going in that direction. I know we've seen a mix of things out of the other boutiques, but they're quite frankly too small to make a major impact on what's going to happen on pinball, at least unless they get bigger. So, yeah, I think it's pretty cool. He did take down all his Archer stuff, which I don't think was surprising. He was probably asked to. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all. Do you think that Stern is going to make the Archer table? Do you think that Stern is going to make the layout, but it not be Archer? Or do you think it's just taken down because now he's working for an actual real pinball company, and he'll just do something wholly unique and that design is essentially not going to see the light of day. I think, I mean, I can dream that there would be an Archer table. I think it wouldn't surprise me to see with everything, with him taking down everything, since he's actually working for a full-up company now, just makes sense from a legal standpoint, but I can see him reusing the shots and the layouts in a table. I see no reason that that might not happen, even if it's some totally other table, or at least using sections of it. It just gives you, I mean, it's already a large section of pre-designed, built-out stuff to use as a jumping-off point for something else. Yeah, my guess would be that we'll probably see a design that's reminiscent or, I don't know if it would be 100% identical, for only the fact that working for a manufacturer like that, he's going to have a bill of materials that he's going to have to respect. And that might mean that some of the ideas he had for Archer are just not going to be feasible for a mass-produced table. But I think we'll probably see something similar. My guess will be it won't be Archer. I'm having trouble imagining that. I don't see it. I would like it, but I don't see it. I think it's too niche. I don't think Archer's popular enough with the segment of the pinball community that buys machines to warrant being a major run. I'm guessing on that, but I just don't think it's big enough. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Like I said, it's just something that small. Even with a big fan base, I mean, we're not talking Ghostbusters fan base. We're not talking Lord of the Rings or Hobbit fan base. We're not talking Star Wars fan base. It makes perfect sense. When you look at the TV shows that have gotten their own pins, they have been things like Family Guy or Walking Dead, which is AMC's top-rated show, or Game of Thrones, which I think is the most-watched show on HBO. These are major, major things, not something that's – Archer's not obscure. I think most people have heard of Archer, but it's just, it's not a cultural behemoth like these other things have been that were done on the TV side. Yeah, no, I agree completely. On the flip side, I could see them, like, pulling a Batman 66 and, you know, not doing a pro model and trying to see about if there was interest in something that was basically premium only and kind of limiting it. But I just, you know, Batman 66, though, that's got that, oh, yeah, everyone who's retired remembers Batman 66 and they've got money. So I just, you know, that's where the demographics come into play. But anyway, I think overall it's exciting even when we don't see Archer. Yeah, no, it's definitely going to be exciting for the community as a whole to get some new blood in there, new blood that is so, has shown their interest and has shown how much they are part of the community and how they like their, what's the phrase I'm looking for, knowledge of what works and doesn't work. Yeah. So, great news, I think, for pinball as a whole. Very exciting. So, let's talk about some not as exciting. Or maybe, I guess it just depends. Depends on what you're hoping for. But let's hit the final pinball segment now, American Pinball. I just, I'm starting to feel like we have them every single week, and I'm not sure it's really worth it, but we kind of need to, because there was a lot of stuff that happened after we recorded, because we had noted in the last episode that American Pinball had been basically radio silent on social media. and that was when we were talking about the flyer that I had received when I'd ordered some pinball parts. And it turns out that day, the day we recorded, they had a Facebook post and they'd had a couple of Facebook posts since then. So I just wanted to hit those really quick and then we'll have a brief discussion about this. But on January 1st, American Pinball had a Facebook post that basically said Magic Girls delayed due to legal and administrative challenges but there's good news for coming soon, very soon, quote, very soon, unquote, coming for Magic Girl customers. So that's what they said on the 1st. Then January 3rd, they had another update where they said that, on Facebook again, announcing that they had great progress on Houdini and that they had, in fact, started fresh with the theme and they redid the game from the ground up. So no talk about Magic Girl. It was all about Houdini on the 3rd. Then January 10th, they had a Facebook post announcing Josh Kugler, being brought in as the director of software engineering. And Josh is going to be the one who's handling Houdini's code. I'm somewhat familiar with Josh. I know he's worked on some custom pinball projects that have been pretty well received by people, like homebrew things, where he's done a lot of the coding, though, and that they've been pretty elaborate. it. So he's seen as someone who, at the very least, has hands-on experience doing code. Anyway, that's, as of last I looked, that's the latest on the social media stuff about American Pinball. So a minor or a brief statement about Magic Girl and then two updates since then about Houdini and just Houdini. Tony, what are your thoughts? They sharted over. They flat out said they sharted over. They dug themselves a giant hole, they coated the walls with KOI, tossed in a pack of starving wolves, jumped in, and it was like, you know what? We made a mistake. Let's start over. I can see where they might have had to have. I know we've heard plenty of things, like rumor-wise, that maybe some of the layouts and shots wouldn't even work and wasn't even feasible, and it was just a messed-up play field. We've heard all sorts of things, but this going from just fixing it to a complete start over just seems, I mean, well, A, it means to me that they're actually going to make a go of this. And at the same time, it almost makes me wonder, did they not do any research at all? I mean, I know we've mentioned this in the past, but did they not see any issues coming out? Did they seriously not know about the Zidware or J-Pop issue? Did they just go, hey, I've played this game that was made by this guy, and I like that game, and hey, he's available right now, and we've been wanting to start a pinball thing. Let's see if we can get him to hire on and make us a table. And then when everything crashed and blew up their faces, they're like, oh, you know what? Head down. We'll plow through it, and we'll be awesome. And then when reality fully caught up to them, they were just like, um, um, we messed up we gotta start over it just it weird I don even understand at this point Yeah confused would be the one word I would use to describe myself about basically every decision that American Pinball has made. This actually is the most logical one, I guess, that I've seen so far. I shouldn't just say this one, but what they've been doing recently. Bringing in Joe, I mean, it makes sense. You have no choice but to ask, why didn't they do it earlier? bringing in Josh. That makes sense to me. Why didn't they do that earlier? Here are the things that arise for me. Because as you've noted, the walls are slick with the KY, the wolves are after them, and they put themselves in this pit. And it's like the Thunderdome. And there ain't no wheel that they can spin for breaking the deal. But that's the question that's going to come up, is the deal. Because What in the world is this solution going to be, this good news they referenced on the first for Magic Girl customers? Because here's how I see it. I thought, and again, this is not confirmed, but this is the running assumption everyone had, that American Pinball was like doing an in-kind trade with J-Pop. he was giving them a Houdini design and they were going to, in trade, pay him by making the Magic Girl customers whole. This is what I have assumed. And they could have clarified this at any time by actually spelling out what in the world was going on. But it seemed to make sense in the context of they're not saying anything about Raza, they're not saying anything about Alice in Wonderland other than, you know, things will have to wait. It would fit then if they thought, okay, well, you know, we'll pay J-Pop in product, basically, you know, over time. You could sort of see it. I mean, it seemed really steep and difficult, and I didn't understand why in the world they'd ever want to do that. But, you know, top-tier designer, who knows? Heady dreams of wealth, I don't know. But now, if they've redesigned Houdini from the ground up, what in the world did he give them other than an idea of doing a pin called Houdini? I don't know. I mean, it makes no sense. I mean, if they went for a ground-up redesign, it has to be something that was just a box of parts. Maybe this is all J-Pop really does. It makes you wonder about his older games and these classics, how much reworking was done back in there, or has he just lost it? Does he not have the touch he used to have? I don't, you know, my, and this is so speculation, but my thought on Houdini was that was one of his ideas he'd been doodling around with for a while. They didn't put as much time into that as he did into his vidware titles, and he dug it out of the box. And when this discussion was going on with American Pinball to say, hey, I've got this and I'm trying to accomplish that. Can we do something? and they not being pinball people, because to my knowledge, everyone who I initially saw in the startup of American Pinball doesn't seem to have a history of being in this industry at all, which I think is part of the reason why the community is not quick to embrace them. And they, you know, they kind of bought into it. But, you know, if they're wanting to start fresh also, I can't help but wonder, why in the world are you even keeping the idea of doing Houdini? I mean, what are they out changing it other than I believe they have submitted for a trademark on the font for Houdini that they're doing, like the title. There's a thing, trademark pending or patent pending, or something like that regarding Houdini, which just seems to be the name and how it's fonted, because it's essentially a public domain thing. So, I mean, I could see them sticking with Houdini because it's like a non-license license. You don't have to pay a license fee to access Houdini, is my understanding, because of how long ago that he lived. But people know who he is, so he's got recognition. But, I mean, if you don't, if you're like, oh, my God, what happened to us at Pinball Expo? If that's your reaction when you got back from Chicago, why do you not say, we're dropping Houdini, we're doing, even if it's another magic theme, we're doing Copperfield, we're completely changing, you know, David Blaine, we're bringing him in. You know, it's just, I don't, it's like, you're doing it from the ground up, but you didn't start totally clean, did you? You just couldn't let it all go. And they had that opportunity. Yet again, I think it's a blunder. You had this opportunity to have a clean break, a true clean break. You just couldn't bring yourself to drop the name, could you? You just couldn't do it. I don't know if they thought they had enough PR based off of the idea, Houdini, that they were afraid of losing that. I don't know. I don't care why they kept it. But if they're having to get rid of every little Z's and wear logo on all the ramps and parts that they got and have to reconstruct everything and Joe's got to make it actually shootable, you know, it's, I mean, for all intents and purposes, it's brand spanking new, like they're saying. So, you know, I'll give them a pass on their whatever hang up it was that they decided to keep the name. But if all they kept was the name, I don't, why would they give the Magic Girl people anything? J-Pop didn't do anything for them then. So he has to pay them to build the machines would be my thought. But where's the money? He didn't have any money to finish. I thought that's what he told Nate on Coast to Coast Pinball in the interview in 2015. He didn't have any money. He couldn't finish it. Does he have enough money to contract finish it where they make money? I don't understand how that works. I don't understand how it works. I don't get it. I mean, they may be getting close to getting the deal with Pentasia sorted out so that what they cited on the first, that legal slash administrative hurdle, maybe that's almost resolved. I could see that. But then I still don't see what J-Pop does that they are like, oh, yeah, that's worth 23 magic girls. No problem. Yeah, at that point, I mean, if they've completely started over, there shouldn't be anything that's worth anything for them from him. And I agree with you. changing, why did if you're starting completely over from scratch, why not find a new theme other than the fact that it lets them save art assets and save on what bits of PR that might not be bad have already been put in place. I mean, because I don't really know what great PR they've had, other than the fact that everybody's talking about them, but nobody's talking about them in a good way. So, we'll see what happens. It just seems, it still seems sketchy. Like they're, I'm not saying they're not trying and they're not trying to do the right thing. I'm not saying they haven't gotten trapped into something that they maybe didn't completely understand. But it does seem like it's, they are flailing to pull something out of it. And who knows, this could be completely wrong. I mean, 10 years from now, we might be talking about American Pinball as one of the great pinball manufacturers. I just, I can't see the path from here to there at this time. No, there's still a lot about it that I don't fully understand. I mean, from their website, from their write-ups, from their own description, they describe themselves to me in how I'm interpreting it, that they want to be an entity where you come to them with designs and they build it for you. that they're just the manufacturing arm, not development. So why are they investing all this effort into developing their own in-house pen? I've always just assumed that they need to do one. The goal is just one, so that they can prove they can actually build a working pinball machine that they'll sell on their own. And then that will be the confidence builder that everyone will have so that, let's say Keith didn't go to work for Stern. He could have gone and said, here's my arch of design. How much will it cost for you to make these? And they'll be like, okay, we'll be able to sell them to you for $8,500 a piece. And then he can buy them and sell them for $10,000 or something. You know, that's what I thought they wanted to do. Because they also said that they want to be arcade manufacturers. So it's all about the – I thought it was all about the manufacturing. And I just assumed Houdini was a gimmick. A gimmick so they had a product to prove that they actually could do what they said, which is build pinball. Because, as we all know, building pinball is hard. But I don't know. It seems like they went about it in such a weird way. So I don't know. You're right. Flailing. My word would be floundering. We both like F-words. We're not going to use the true F-words because we're a clean podcast. But that's what we're thinking is they're probably F-worded. Yeah, most likely. Now, I can see a use for a group like you were talking about, somebody who has the ability to build games from somebody else's design. They don't have an in-house design studio. They are like there are designers for hire. They are a manufacturer for hire. I can see where that could do interesting things for the hobby as a whole. If you can get outside designers making custom stuff and doing even small runs where they don't have to worry about hand-building the whole thing, but at the same time they don't have to worry about setting up a factory and building and running all that stuff. So you can run small, you know, four or five guy, four or five man teams, but companies that are just, you know, a designer and a programmer and some art guys putting stuff together. I can see where something like that could do some really interesting stuff to the pinball, for the pinball community as a whole. I'm just not seeing it where, unless something magically turns up, that American Pembal digs themselves far enough out to become that guy. Yeah, it's just, I, the whole approach, I, you know, they've not spelled it out. So I'm trying to draw a line that follows some sort of logical path, and it's really difficult without having the inside scoop. I'm very skeptical that, I mean, they're not hopelessly tarnished. I just don't know that – I just don't see how it's worth it. I still don't. I don't know. I mean, unless it's like a big dream, a passion project to get this going, and that will, you know, with enough true grit, maybe they can do it. So, anyway, there was news, so we've reported on it. But I think it's time that we break free of this pinball section. We got other needs. We got other things to talk about. And in the video game section, we have a massive one, which would be – Oh, yeah, we do. So Nintendo finally unveiled a ton of information about the Nintendo Switch. So I guess what I'll – let me go ahead and just hit what we – some of the stuff was announced, and then we'll have our discussion so we can kind of get through the specification points as quickly as possible. So here's what we know. This is the truth. This is the truth straight out of the snapping fingers of the Nintendo executives because they snapped a lot in their presentation. A lot, people. a lot. Nintendo Switch is going to release March 3rd, 2017. It will be for $299.99, so a $300 unit. It will support an online system, so it will have online multiplayer. It indicated that the online is supported via smart devices, which I'm assuming are phones and tablets. And that online multiplayer will start as a free trial for everyone, but it will be transitioned to a paid service sometime in the fall of 2017. They also noted that they were dropping region locking on at least most stuff, unlike what they've done on past systems. Battery life, they did discuss that. They didn't indicate what exactly, what you can do within the range, but that the battery life, depending on use, will vary from 2.5 hours to 6.5 hours, and that you can play the system while it is actually being charged, that you will be able to link up to eight Nintendo Switches together for a local multiplayer. They're introducing a new controller scheme. It's called the Joy-Con Controllers. Basically, it's two controllers that kind of combine into one. So there's a left and a right, but they are actually separate. Each one of those Joy-Cons has an analog stick. You dock them together in a variety of ways, depending on how you want to play. For home play, it will affix to sort of a mounting plate. You can attach it to the screen of the Nintendo Switch for mobile play, or you can split them apart into two-play. And then they announced a few games, which we can get on in a little bit. But those are the basics about the specifications that we know about for the Nintendo Switch. So, Tony, let's start discussing. What do you think? The 3DS is dead. It hasn't been announced yet, but it should be obvious to anybody at this point that Nintendo is completely exiting the 3DS platform. I don't see any way they could not. The Switch is priced under the prices of some of the special edition 3DSs out there. I mean, some of these special edition 3DSs are going for $320, $330. and even the standard edition 3DS's are still hitting for you know between $150 and $250 depending upon if it's the XL or not so I think they're done with the 3DS which makes sense because they've been having some serious issues with security with the 3DS with people hacking the 3DS's and jailbreaking them and doing all sorts of insane stuff that they've been trying to fight for the last couple years. And I think that they've decided to surrender that fight. I think moving into this service, they're moving away from a two-platform thing, and they're using just the Switch to be their handheld market, which is where they've been king forever, and to do their console work. And I think it's probably actually a pretty good choice for them. The battery life is That's a huge swing. I mean, two and a half hours to six and a half hours of battery life, I mean, that's really going to depend upon what you're playing. Yeah, six and a half is great, but if most uses are going to be two and a half, that's like, okay, it's okay for like a lunch break. Right, but there is another thing here that you didn't put in the notes that I did find when I was watching some videos of people at the unveilings and this and that. They have left the proprietary connectors. They have gone to a USB-C standard, which means that if you are like most people anymore and you have an external battery for recharging your phones or tablets or this or that, I mean, I've got one sitting on the desk right next to me that will charge my phone 12 times. but that means you can plug that in using a USB-C standard hookup and you can charge on the go. And since they said you can play while charging, that means everybody who's already carrying a battery backup around can recharge their switch while they're out and about and while they're on the go. Okay, that will probably resolve a lot of the concerns some may have with the battery. The issue, I agree with you that I think that this is a sign that they're exiting the 3DS market. My question on this is, the Switch is so much bigger than a 3DS. This doesn't fit in a pocket. So I'm curious. A 3DS doesn't fit in a pocket. It fits in a cargo pocket. Yeah, this might fit in a cargo pocket. I've got some big cargo pockets. But you're right. It doesn't have the same pocket carryability that some of the other stuff does. At the same time, I don't see a lot of 3DSs in the wild normally day-to-day because most people don't carry them around. Because the normal 3DSs, the non-XL versions, are so small, they're uncomfortable for me to play. That's why I've got an XL version to have a bigger one. And I think this will just be the next obvious step up, even if it's too big. Because even now, I carry my 3DS in a carrying case, and I carry it separately. It sits in my messenger bag, not in a pocket. So you don't worry that this is too big to attract people who want a portable gaming device? No, because most of those people who want portable gaming devices just use phones or tablets anymore. And that's the thing. While it's big, it's not like it's something like it's not stupid enormous. Most people carry tablets with them anymore. or I mean look how popular the what I think are kind of the standard phones but used to be the oversized phones like the notes and the extra large iPhones and the Pixel XLs and all that stuff have become lots of people are carrying huge phones now so I don't think any they're going to think that much more of this and it's not like it used to be at least I don't think it's like it used to be where everybody was always you know walking around with no extra space. You see people all the time, if they're anywhere for any length of time, they're carrying backpacks or messenger bags or something, not just like in the old days where guys had cargo pockets and nothing else. I mean, I've got a messenger bag that I carry with me not all the time because, remember, I'm just going to work and I just leave stuff in my van. But any time I'm doing anything big, like when you see me at a convention or something, I've always got a messenger bag with me. any time that I'm going anywhere where it's going to be out for an extended period of time, or definitely if it's going to be out for like an overnight or something, I've got a messenger bag with me. I mean, that's just how things roll anymore. Okay. Well, what did you think of the announced game lineup? It's starting week, but that doesn't surprise me. I do think not having a Mario game as a launch title is going to hurt them. Zelda is a launch that Mario was announced but it's going to be holiday of 2017 right so it's going to be a six months out Zelda's launch title is important I mean Zelda's when you think of a Nintendo product you think Zelda you think Mario you think Pokemon which this is going to be huge for Pokemon because if the 3DS is going away which I don't see how it could and that means that Pokemon is finally going to get the old-school, normal Pokemon-type games that are going to be console-playable, which is something people have wanted for years. And every Pokemon game that's been put on the console hasn't been nearly, it hasn't been the type and it hasn't been the kind of fun you have with a normal Pokemon game. So I think that'll be a huge thing once it's announced, but Pokemon just dropped in November. So unless they, well, I don't even see where they could do that. It'd have to be a whole new game because the complete differences in the layout and the lack of two screens. So probably the next generation Pokemon game in one to two years will almost definitely be a Switch title. Now, since Zelda is going to be a launch title, however, Nintendo has made the decision that Zelda will not just come out on the Nintendo Switch, but it will come out on the Wii U. Do you think that was a smart move, or do you think that it was bad because it means it doesn't have to be a system seller since it's available on the current generation? I think it'll work for them. As I recall, they did that with another Zelda game. Twilight Princess did that. It came out on the GameCube and the Wii. Now, the difference there was, from everything I've heard, I never played Twilight Princess, so this is just secondary. From everything I heard, most people preferred the GameCube version of Twilight Princess, and that was purely because of the controller, because we have the nunchucks and stuff, and it was a little bit less good control-wise, and none of the motion control stuff there was really well-liked. I mean, some people probably did, but I haven't talked to anybody who really did. So it's something they've done before. I think it will have a better, I think it gives a real good reason for people to grab a Switch, because it's going to look better. There's no way it can't not look better. And I think it's very obvious that the step with the Switch is they're not even attempting to fight the Xboxes and the PlayStations. They're still maintaining themselves. and they seem to be having at least a decent plan with the GPU and the Switch, you know, changing between quality if it's docked or if it's not docked. Yeah, the announcement that Nintendo did, they did emphasize quite a bit about the development happening from outside studios. They stressed that over 80 games were currently in development from outside groups and they showed some footage from a number of them. they also in terms of some launch titles they did spend a bit of time on a game I guess it'll be packaged in called 1-2-Switch which seemed more in the motion control gimmicky realm that you kind of expect from Nintendo there's another game I know they spent a lot of time on a Nintendo Prime property called Arms which was also motion control fighting game arena but more traditional I played games like that with Kinect ostensibly the controls looked better for this than they ever were Of course, time has evolved that tech, so I would expect so. Another major title besides Super Mario Odyssey, which we already specified was going to be in the holiday period, is Splatoon 2, which I know Splatoon was a pretty big deal on the Wii U. Yeah, Splatoon was like a runaway hit that nobody really expected on the Wii U. Yes, I'm sure people are excited about that, but that's also not launch, that's summer. So it's not a long wait, but they couldn't get it out in time to actually be a launch title. Yeah. And I know also that with their online thing, they're doing some stuff where you're going to get accessibility to, like, SNES games and NES games, and you're going to be able to do that. My big thing is I'm hoping their online service is halfway decent and lets you purchase and download your games from your NES or SNES games and stuff and easier to transfer and handle than the current Nintendo digital store, which is kind of a mess. I've only used it on the 3DS, but I'm not a big fan of it. There is running up to the problem that there is a limited amount of storage space. I've heard that pretty much anything you download, you're only going to be able to download a few games because of the limited amount of storage space on the Switch. Right. I want to think I heard 32 gig. Is that right? I think that's what it was. That's what it sounded like. sounds, I mean, especially, a lot of these games really looked good, so I'm just, I'm having trouble imagining that you could fit much of anything at this point. I mean, I get that it's not going to be like downloading Battlefield 1, which would wipe that thing out alone, but 3.2 is so, I mean, so limited, so I guess, are people mostly going to be playing via SD cards and they're just going to, and they're not moving to a digital architecture where you're actually downloading virtual copies, but actually still relying on some sort of physical media? Yeah I don't I think you're going to keep relying on the physical meaning Now I have seen, I believe that they That it's got an SD card slot So you can upgrade yourself With SD cards, but even then I mean, what's the biggest SD card you're going to drop into it? A 128? Yeah, probably And that's not going to give you a whole bunch Yeah, 32 gig of internal memory Expandable with an SD card So, that's only going to use so much Now, the nice thing is that since they are, the games that you're using are on cartridges instead of disks, that they'll have better load times and such. And I don't know if the cartridges will be designed in such a way that if, like, a game gets patched and you put it in, it'll patch onto the cartridge, or will it just patch onto what little bit of space you have on the thing. But, I mean, I don't know. I mean, SD cards are cheap, but still, 128 is about the biggest you can find. I mean, I know there's supposed to be bigger ones coming, but they're not well supported by other people yet. I don't know if they'd be supported by this at all. Yeah. Yeah, the cartridge, how the games and storage are going to work, I think probably the big question that's still sort of outstanding at this point, Aside from the online multiplayer, which I think, again, they're still working on that. I know Nintendo's sort of got a reputation for having some pretty poor multiplayer support when it came to non-local multiplayer. I'm not too surprised to see that they're planning to move to a paid service, because obviously Microsoft, your Xbox platform, went to that a long time ago, and they have been known to have the strongest online multiplayer network because of that. I think that's a big reason why Sony started to shift and went from their free and their free slash paid to doing their paid model as well so that their network could catch up. But, yeah, I think those are the two questions. Yeah, I've heard some people complaining about it being a paid service. But, frankly, I think that's to be expected. anything like that that's going to require the kind of back end to have decent online support like you would expect from a system like this will need to be a paid system I mean that's why the back end on Xbox is so good I mean that's why you don't have other things that are just like oh yeah here now you can just have all this for free and we'll just eat the cost of the back end I mean the only other way they could do that is if they work that pricing into the hardware and that wouldn't last out over time. I mean, that'd just be a single hit. I think that's a requirement nowadays. Yeah, they'll be grousing. I remember going from PC gaming to Xbox, it was really difficult for me to accept the idea of having to pay for multiplayer. I have that issue. Yeah, I think it will. They'll help themselves if when the time that they launch wanting to be paid, that they actually have some features that they have not had before that they can point to, like making it easier to have friend lists and things like that, and party chat stuff that they have been lacking. They go to something where it feels like, okay, this is a big step up for the network. I think that'll probably help alleviate some of that complaining, but it's always a painful transition when you move anything from free to paid. Anyway, pretty exciting news. I didn't really have anything else to talk about on the Switch. Were there any other items you wanted to hit on about it? No, not really. I do think it is interesting that they have kept the motion control and the haptic feedback stuff in the Joy-Con controllers, like what was had in the Wiimote and all the motion control stuff there that was so popular. I don't know how much that's going to take off I think the whole motion control thing is something that worked really well with Nintendo for the Wii And it's something that they're playing on Like the ARMS game being motion based and this and that It's going to be interesting to see how many games that come out actually utilize motion controls And perhaps more importantly how many games that come out that utilize motion controls have a way to go to not requiring them. Because some of the stuff they did like with the Star Fox game that required you to use the Wii U tablet that did not work so well and some of the other stuff is going to be very telling as third games come out It's going to be interesting to see how they do that and how they play with it compared to how Nintendo plays with stuff. Yeah, my thought, it's hard to say. As long as I don't try and cram it down people's throats, It'll either have a niche where it will sort of sustain itself, possibly thrive if there's anything that's as successful, like the Wii Sports style stuff that comes out for Switch. You know, I could see that. Or it might die a quiet death, and people will mostly, when they go to buy more controllers, will just buy the Pro version controllers, which are shaped more like Xbox or Steam controllers. But you don't feel hampered. I think the smart thing, though, for Nintendo Switch is the built-in price. It's not like the Xbox One where you were having to pay $100 more than the PlayStation 4 because you were mandated initially to have a Kinect, and then the Kinect didn't get used because they moved away from it. So people aren't going to – that's not going to – at a $300 price point, people aren't going to feel that way about this. So it's not overly – you don't feel like you're being charged too much because they got cute with the controllers. Now, if you want to buy extra controllers, you might, because I think another Joy-Con set is $80. and they're charging, what, $60 for the Pros? $50, $60, something like that? I haven't seen the prices. Not yet. But what do you think of the $300 price point? I mean, like I said earlier, I know how it compares to the 3DS and stuff. I think it's about where I would sort of have expected them, I guess, to price. The thing for me is, I think their gamble here is primarily on the portability. You've got a couple segments. They're the people who want to play the Nintendo franchises. They're going to buy this no matter what. So they're the adopters that you would have had if it was portable or if it wasn't portable. You have workarounds to sustain battery life and such to make this viable from certain perspectives on the portable side. but it's so big that it's not something that people are just going to be able to pick up and take with them like a phone. Now, maybe that has been the case with the 3DSs as well, but this is even bigger. So I don't – to me, it's mobile, but it's not portable in the sense that I thought they were implying it was. It's just – it's so big. So you could take it, though. It's definitely something you can toss in the backpack and take with you. So some people are going to like that. some people might just be like, that's not worth it. I'd rather just play with it hooked to the TV. And that's where you get into the weird stuff. Because, yeah, $300 is a great initial launch price for a console, but you still have a console that is less powerful than what Sony and Microsoft already have out, and they've already dropped their prices to those levels. And Nintendo's trying to respond to that, but pointing out that you'll have Skyrim, a game that is years old, you know I just don't know if people are going to be convinced that there's really going to be the third party support in the way that they want it. That they want all those Call of Duties to come out on Nintendo at the same time as they come out for everyone else like it used to be back before the Wii. I just don't that's the question. If it's powerful enough that they can have a version like that where people could say this can be my part. For me Nintendo's problem has been they have for a long time, ever since going Wii, they have not been in the market where they're having people say, the Nintendo's my primary console. Everyone, when it comes to primary gaming, I shouldn't even say primary consoles, primary gaming, it's like, it's not competing with the PC, and it wasn't competing with what Microsoft and Sony are doing with the graphics. And I don't, with the portability, you have an excuse for it not to be as good. but if the portability is not a strong enough selling point, then you still just have a weaker console. And it's not priced competitively against those more powerful consoles because they're already that cheap. So I don't know. I think it just, I don't know that it can do the number. Given the pricing that you've mentioned with the 3DS, whether or not people are going to, I mean, if they kill off the 3DS and say this is your only real portable option anymore because you either get your touchscreen stuff on your phones and tablets or you can have a thing with buttons and stuff. I think people will migrate to it because there's really no other game in town that I don't. It's hard for me to say. I think this is going to be more successful than the Wii U. The too long didn't read, I think this is way better positioned than the Wii U. I think they're going to see stronger sales. I think they're going to have more people playing it. So I think for Nintendo it's going to be a success, but I don't think it's going to be a runaway success like the Wii was or a number of their DS models had been when they were just sort of monopolizing that market and that was what everyone did because phones just quite weren't there yet. So I don't think they're going to be seeing Wii-level numbers but this won't be seen as the failure that Wii U was. That's my guess. I think it's going to be successful but it's going to be modest. I think this is going to be something that will work out for them. I think they will be successful I think it will be Again, like you I don't think this is going to be The kind of blowout Insanity that would be expected Of, you know, an Xbox release Or a Playstation release But I think it's going to put Nintendo Back into a good position And if they can keep the third party Games coming And they're good games Combined with Nintendo's flagship, I think they're going to be in a good place this time next year. I agree. I like a lot about what I saw in the presentation. The third parties are what, because long term what they need, what they want, is people to be buying games on the Switch. And so you need to, you know, you're still basically in a position where people are not going to, I don't think, have the option to buy Call of Duty Infinite Warfare on the Switch. But if you've got the ability to like have FIFA, like they advertised, you know, maybe some people will be like, you know what, the graphical differences aren't enough there. I'd rather have it on the Nintendo and be able to play it on that with my group of friends and such. That's what they need. And so, but overall, I think technologically, I think they've made a lot of smart decisions here. Even, you know, I'm not excited about the Joy-Con's capabilities personally, but I thought it looked pretty intuitive. I thought it looked comfortable, and I wouldn't be bothered by how they showed how it worked. I think it was really well engineered. So I think they've got a winner. I just don't think – obviously, the Wii was lightning in a bottle with how great it sold, and I don't think they'll ever recapture that. But I think, especially compared to the Wii U, this will be a system that they can put some years on and not feel like they're just limping along Dreamcast style. Yeah, it's definitely, I said, well, I wasn't that interested in the Switch with all the leaks and the this's and the that's and everything that's been coming up. But after seeing this stuff and looking into it more, I kind of want one. And the problem is, is if I get one, I know I'm probably going to need more than one, which I wonder if that's not half of their plan to end up with a system where you end up, you know, you might have an Xbox in your house and you might have a PlayStation in your house, but you might have two or three Switches in your house, depending upon your family. Hmm, clever girls. Well, I think we've given Nintendo enough of our time today. I think it's time to step away from the joy con that was Nintendo and talk about something that could conceivably be a little bit sadder, depending upon your view. yeah um this is a microsoft exclusive uh scale bound was announced it was canceled this is a game that i believe had been mentioned for at least three e3s it definitely had footage prominent in the last two i remember distinctly 2016 and 2015 and it'd been one i've been kind of keeping an eye on because it looked so different for those that haven't seen any of it i would describe it as a guy who's into Beats by Dre teams up with Dragon to fight bad guys. That was my description. Yeah, that's a pretty solid description. I remember we talked about it some in our Big E3 episode this year. Yeah, I was probably the one most enthused about it. I wasn't enthused about the Beats by Dre protagonist. It was that cool guy, Japanese stereotype RPG character that we see so often, but the gameplay I thought looked kind of interesting. and I had a really hard time making any sense of the multiplayer gameplay they had showed at E3. Well, it just kept getting kind of delayed and delayed and they weren't really talking about it. And so all of a sudden they finally came out and indicated that the game was not going to be made. It sounds like Platinum, which is the development studio, has actually already moved on. The way it was phrased, actually, it sounds like they've already been working on other projects. So it's not entirely clear what was going wrong with this. A lot of people, like myself, thought it was actually pretty close, but I'm guessing it wasn't close enough or there was some problems that couldn't be resolved, and Microsoft said this is too messy. This isn't the first time, even in recent memory, that Microsoft has taken something that has been known or thought to be fairly well along and pulled the plug. they did that with the online Fable game a few months ago as well, which was in beta and people were testing and they pulled the plug and closed Lighting Gate and said, no, this isn't working so, anyway, before we had the Nintendo Switch news, this was the one video game item I don't think any of us, either of us I should say, are particularly heartbroken that we won't get to play Scalebound, I just, I don't know if you had any thoughts, Tony, about kind of how they went about it? Or do you, I mean, when companies, when you have a publisher like Microsoft, basically, I mean, this wasn't exclusive of theirs and say, we're killing the exclusive off because it's not up to our standard. Are you, do you think that's a good thing? Because they spare people from playing a game that might be conceivably bad. Is it a bad thing? Because they, there wasn't enough time given to the developers. It's the fault on the developers for not making a competent game as they went along. I don't know. It just kind of raised a few questions, I thought. I figured we could talk for a couple minutes. I think that is an interesting thing to look at. Because, A, Platinum Games, they're kind of known for doing games that are like fun beat-em-ups. Like they did that Transformers Devastation, which is a really good game. They're very much known for Bayonetta. And Bayonetta. And they did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Which was a really bad game from the sounds of it I have not played that one Um but It's weird to me how They just Cancelled With something that was supposed to have been released Like last month And then got pushed and Then it's cancelled Coming into 2017 Um and How bad if it was cancelled because it wasn't up to Microsoft's soft standards. That makes you wonder how bad it was. But also, you just kind of have to wonder why these games are going so far along and then getting canceled, like the cancellation of the Fable that was in beta. It makes no sense to have something that is so close to finish. You'd think they'd do something to at least try to recoup some of the money, or is it just so bad that releasing it wouldn't recoup anything? That's the big question for me. Well, I would think that release would recoup something, that you'd be relying on, at least in the case of something like Fable, where it's actually a franchise, just because there'd be some people that probably buy Fable anything. But I could see a longer-term position being concerned that it damages the franchise and it's not worth doing, or not wanting to be, in the case of Scalebound, maybe not wanting to be known for having released the dog of a title and instead just saying, let's cut our losses and not worry about, you know, it's probably a write-off. I mean, the one thing that I find real easy to lose track of, especially when you talk in the console wars, the dreaded console wars, and how Microsoft is obviously in a much weaker position on console sales than Sony is this go-around because of how they initially launched their Xbox One. Corporately, they're very, very different entities. Microsoft is flush with money. They are in such a powerful position as a corporation because of their other divisions that if they want to carry Xbox, it's not a problem for them. They're in a better position to carry Xbox than Sony is to carry the PlayStation. It's just how it is financially. I was talking with someone a couple of weeks ago about Microsoft because they had brought up something that I had specifically wondered about a lot. And this sort of cancellation makes me wonder as well with the concern that Microsoft doesn't have enough exclusives. And exclusives are the way that you get people to adopt your architecture. Because ideally, you know, where I think Nintendo wants to be going back, you know, where they highlight that they're going to have FIFA. Well, it's great if you can play FIFA on your PlayStation or on your PC or on your Xbox or on your Switch. Then, I mean, that way you feel like if you, you know, 80% of the stuff you want to play, it's on everything. So you're not forced to make that choice. It's that other 20% where you're, it's like, oh, I want to play Halo, so I'm going to do the Xbox. Or I want to play Uncharted, so I'm going to do Sony. It's like that. So Microsoft has the money to buy their way into better exclusive opportunities. And so the person I was speaking with, they noted, I don't remember what it was. Microsoft was going to have to pay a lot in taxes. And so they had a lot of money, though. But if they'd reinvested it doing purchases of other entities, they wouldn't have to pay that. It's like you either pay it to the government or you pay it to expand your business. So they bought some, you know, think tanky development type stuff for longer term projects. And I remember this person had told me or asked me, you know, I just I don't understand. Why didn't they just buy Capcom? And I thought, you know, Capcom is always the one that I run to mentally. It's like, Microsoft, why don't you just buy it? Why don't you buy Capcom? You're in a better position to buy it than Sony is or Nintendo. And they've got IPs that people love. And Capcom's floundering. They're making just disastrous choices, and they're not doing well as a company. I mean, when people get excited because Capcom, I think back in December, announced that they were actually going to focus on making new titles in their existing franchises, This is a change from their prior corporate Ryan Policky, which was just to remaster the same old games over and over again. That was their formal Ryan Policky on console. And it's like, you're at that point where all you can do is release Resident Evil 4 yet again. It's just really sad. So what I'm thinking in the case of, as a long roundabout way to kind of address your question, what I'm thinking is in the case of Microsoft, they don't really care if they recoup the money or not. To them, to their shareholders, it's not a big deal. This is all small fry to them. This is not Office 365 money here. So this is all a drop in the bucket. The Xbox is a tiny little division. That's why sometimes people thought when the new CEO took over that Xbox might get spun off as its own corporation. It makes money for them, but it makes so little money, and it's so different from a lot of what else they do on the software side, software development and enterprise solutions for businesses, that in a way it doesn't fit the corporate culture. So people thought maybe the new CEO would spend it off, which he is not, but it's just one of those things. So for me, the only real issue was it's yet another franchise. Phil Spencer, who is sort of the, he's the head of the Xbox group. He has talked a lot about wanting to diversify the type of games that are on Xbox. I think Xbox very much has a reputation for being a first-person shooter console and being weak on other things like JRPGs. And he's been trying to broaden that so there are other gaming genres that are well represented. And I think given the troubles they've had with some of these deals, what Microsoft needs to do is kind of go a Nintendo path or more of a Sony path and start acquiring some companies and actually basically owning them as subsidiaries and just having more direct control instead of just making exclusive deals and saying, all right, you're a Microsoft company now. you're going to be making this for us. And what you're going to be making for us is Resident Evil. So make it. Yeah, I wouldn't mind that at all. I mean, I remember Capcom's always been one of the grand old ladies of the video game industry. I've played lots of Capcom games over the years. I really wouldn't mind having them being back on form, which they're not. But it would be nice. And I can see where it would be a solid idea for the whole Xbox to have something that's a better tie-in, that they have some more control over like that instead of these developmental deals. I think it will be something we're going to see them doing some interesting things with here in the next year or two, especially as we're now, what, we're now less than a year from the planned release of Scorpio? isn't it December of 2017 yeah some holiday 2017 I think whatever that means that's what I would say what holiday there's a lot of holidays yeah I normally my interpretation is normally that means Christmas but they need to get the like they I assume they want it for sale before Black Friday and normally when I believe when they've done console launches it's been in November but I mean it's just an incremental upgrade of sorts. Obviously a very big one for them, but yeah. Yeah. Sometime around that. Sometime in fall of 2017, leaning more towards the December side of it would be my guess. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it goes and how it happens, because I didn't know how there were some issues with the PlayStation 4 rollout or the PlayStation 4 Pro rollout that they've been fixing. I'll be interested to see how well the Scorpio launch goes comparatively. yeah okay well should we go ahead and move to our third and final segment the tabletop we should move to our third and final segment well this one was sort of interesting and we're going to link to it for you guys out in the show notes but there is a new kickstarter going it's already funded called diane sours apologies if i'm mispronouncing the last name pinball showdown you know i've seen a number of tabletop projects that have been funded or have been requesting funding, several of which, of course, Tony, you have made me aware of, that are based off of video games. But this is the first time I have ever seen a tabletop game that's actually based off of pinball. Yeah, this was a new one for me, too. So, anyway, you can go and read up on it on the Kickstarter. I just wanted to make people aware that it's got a lot of cards. So you're playing from the perspective of the pinball. And I just, anyway, I must say it's incredibly unique as a concept and it didn't have a very large ask. I think it was the target Kickstarter amount was about 3,300 or so. And I mean, it made it by the time I knew about the draft Kickstarter is the creator did reach out to us. And by the time I followed up again, I'd seen that it had already gone live and it already met its first funding goal. And I know It's got some stretch goals. I don't have a review opinion of it. I've just read up on it. But I thought I'd note it because, you know, the tabletop world has some pretty unique interpretations on a lot of prior existing games that thrive in other media. And I'd never contemplated that pinball could see that, but apparently someone had. So it's out there for those of you who want to take a look. It'll be the last link in the show notes. And I want to make a note of that. I've watched some of the, I watched like some of the gameplay stuff. And New York's actually, like a lot of these board game Kickstarters, they have a print-and-play version that you can get for free. So you can try the game out before you back it. And it's interesting. It uses kind of a fun bid system where you start out and you've got a mass of tokens. And one side of the token is control, how much control you have. And the other side of control of the token is speed, how much speed you have. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to hit different toys on the playfield and playfield objects to gain points. And the way you do that is when you're playing with other people is the playfield objects are out there, and you bid on them, and you bid on them by putting control tokens on them. And some of them you have to have a certain amount of speed to hit, and some of them give you more speed. But as you put those control tokens on something as you bid for it, those control tokens are gone. They go away. You no longer have those control tokens, which means it limits your top speed and it limits how much you can bid. So it is very much a back and forth kind of a when you're bidding, it's like, well, that's big points. but will it cost so much to get those big points that it puts me so far behind that I'm going to be trailing and unable to grab other deals as the game goes forward type thing. So it really does, it seems to do a really good job of actually playing with the whole inertia of the ball and having your speed and having control of the ball is and everything, and the way you buy stuff out, it just kind of really covers, you know, how much you can do and how strategically you have to think as you play. Yeah, and it's getting talked about some. I've seen it on some of the pinball discussion forums on social media, which isn't particularly surprising, but I think I even saw some people talking about it. One of the times I looked in on the Twitch chat and pinball done quick last week, which did surprise me. Of course, if you watch Twitch chat on advanced games done quick, it's just uh it's that horrible dark underbelly side of twitch where where it's all uh like hive mind and and creepy in a way and you can't you can't even follow it it's just all people scouting stuff and uh on pinball side though they actually have discussions and talk about things it's very relaxed or chill as most of the people from the adgq side when they would come over they'd be like wow this shit's really chill so anyway when they were chilling they were talking about a variety of things, and apparently pinball-themed tabletop games come up. So, anyway, congratulations on the Kickstarter, and guys, go over and check it out if you want to learn more. Would you like to know more? Starship Troopers reference. Also a pinball machine, incidentally, people. Well, uh... It's not a bad pinball machine, actually. No, it's actually, it's got some, it's got a number of modes. I think it's pretty hard to light all the planets. I've only played it virtually, though. Oh, I caught it at TPF last year. I've played it several times. Maybe it'll be at TPF this year and we can try it. Yeah. Well, I didn't have anything else to cover. I do have a couple more things in the tabletop section, so we're just going to stretch this out. One is I recently, and by recently I mean in the last couple of days, came across a new app that's actually been out for like three years. I just found out about it. and it lets you... I've talked about these apps in the past that help you keep track of stuff in your tabletop gaming when you're doing tabletop gaming. This one is called ScorePal and what this one does is you can actually keep track not just of your stuff with some of your games, keeping track of what's going on in the game and stuff like that, but it also keeps track of you enter yourself and you can enter other people, and it will keep track of, you know, what games you've played, how many games you've played, what's your win-loss ratios, what was the last game you played. You can put in your locations where you play, your play durations, and stuff like that. So if you're one of those data people who likes to have all that information, It's a good quick way on your phone to keep track of all of that While also having the ability to help you out Keeping track of scores in games and stuff And I just find it's really interesting and neat I've only used it a little bit Because I haven't played very many games since I found it and started and grabbed it But it's definitely something that I am planning on giving a much bigger try this year because I think it will be interesting to see how my stuff turns out since I'm going to attempt to attend a lot more game nights this year, local board game nights and such. Analytics for the win. Yep. Analytics are so much fun until they take over your life completely. It is a risk. It is a risk. That's always a possibility. And the other thing is this year for January, I've been hoping to have a Board Game Night report out, but the Board Game Night got pushed this year, or this year, this month. It got pushed back an extra week so that'll be next week That I'm attending so hopefully I'll have some stuff to Talk about Next Podcast And hopefully that will be fun and Go really well and the other Thing is I managed To get A game we've talked about before I got it for Christmas Potion Explosion And I'm going to do some stuff With it here and get some games on in it. And I'm looking forward to going over it again and hopefully playing with you. Yeah. It's like science with potions. Oh, yeah, I guess I did get that. It had been a while. Actually, I ordered all the Christmas presents on November 30th. Yeah, that happens sometimes. At least that's better. I mean, you got everything where I had the issue of I ordered my stuff late, and a bunch of it hasn't shipped yet, so I still have a whole bunch of Christmas presents that are coming for me to give to people. Those are the latter year surprises. Yep. Your Christmas presents come in January or February or, you know, 2019. We'll see how it is. but those are the big things I wanted to add in here also and like I said I'll be giving some more reports on scorepal as I use it and how gaming is going excellent excellent well if people want to be excellent to us and ask us any questions or want anything for us to comment on feel free to write in to us eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or the predominant way people reach us facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast. We're also on Twitter and Instagram. In both cases, we're eclectic underscore gamers. The Instagram tends to be a bit more in use by me than Twitter, so that might be the easier place to get us. And I think that's about it. So until next time in a couple of weeks, I'll say goodbye, everyone. My name is Dennis. I'm Tony, and have fun.