welcome to the great british pinball podcast and here are your hosts scott rundell and neil mccray welcome welcome welcome pinball fans first of all apologies it's been a while entirely my fault. Scott and I tried to record a podcast. My computer or network or something was not working right. And we kind of had to give up. And then I was in a whole load of UK Open stuff. Anyway, welcome finally to episode four of the Great British Pinball Podcast. I am Neil McRae. And I'm Scott Rundle. How are you doing? I'm doing good, my friend. it's been a crazy pinball month an absolutely insane pinball month we've got venom we've got david bowie we've got elton john we've got alien we've got ripley we've got just so much stuff and and actually labyrinth that's what that's i'm trying to just around my head there i'm trying to think of a pinball month where so much has come out that no one's a lot not not but also knew, very little few people knew some of the things that were coming out. I know you had a bit of insight to one of them, but a fantastic month given only in March we had Texas Pinball Festival, where we had the Bonanza release I thought six games were released, and I was thinking, that's it for this year but hell no, there's more to come. I mean, I think it's super exciting. So, you know, we're going to talk a bit about Venom because I've actually played it now. We'll talk about Labyrinth, talk about Ripley and Alien, Elton John. And, you know, we're just going to kind of kick the tires through that. And then we'll do a bit on some events that have been going on and some events that are coming up. and hopefully we'll be funny, entertaining and if not, interesting so yeah let's a mega month and there's other stuff going on I've forgotten, Stranger Things re-release yeah it did let's talk a little bit about that but let's start with Venom we were going to try and talk about that when we did the podcast earlier in the month So I played the pro and the premium now of Venom. Oh, so you've experienced basically the full package and the cut-down package then? Yeah. Or rather the cut-down package and the kind of poor man's I-can't-afford-anything package is how I might call it. But look, let me tell you, right, I think people are going to like Venom when they play it. It's a very straightforward game. more straightforward than the hype would give you to view first of all you can't miss a shot i mean honestly wide shots then are they the shots are wide they're easy to hit um and and the actual thing that you have to do in the game um and some of you might might be aware of this because it's been around for a bit now is you're literally hitting two or three shot combos so you hit yellow you hit flashing yellow you hit blue you hit flashing blue and that kind of builds up your your xp and your character and then you you know you get into a few big boss fights with um at the end of it so walk me through those boss fights though is there anything unique in the code that says to you hey not just shoot the flashing arrow is there an element that says hey you've got to run this combination or you've got to hit this like right ramp followed by a left ramp followed by, I don't know, a pot or something like that. You're basically following the lights, so it starts... Oh, right, so it's just hit whatever lights. Yeah, so if you hit yellow, you've got to hit flashing yellow. If you hit blue... Are there any, like, penalty elements? Because what I was trying to figure out in a boss fight, and they've done this in a couple of other games in the past, where, not particularly Stern, but other companies, I should say, is, like, you know, you hit certain other shots and it acts as a devaluer, like it works against you. Have they done anything like that? No, there's not. I wouldn't say that there's that. But you kind of have to read. If you hit blue, then don't hit the flashing blue. Then you've got to hit blue again. Okay, so there's a build-up in some places. There's a build-up, but you're not. You build up your character, and as your character gets stronger, the boss fights become a little bit easier. Do you think that's going to be a problem in the long term? I don't think so, because here's the thing I absolutely guarantee. Anyone who owns a Venom will get to the wizard mode. Okay. Absolutely no question about it. And I think... Is that like Bally-style wizard mode? Is it easy and quick to get to in 15 minutes or is it something you have to still do in 30 minutes? No, I think it will take... Well, there's kind of two angles to it. So you're building up your character and that's going to take you months, maybe weeks, right? depend on how often you play it. And then when your character gets so strong, it makes it easier for you to get through the game. You have to do fewer shots or, you know, there's certain things that you have to get through. There's still some big, there's still a couple of real challenging fights in it. No matter how strong your character is, the fights get a bit stronger. But this game was made for people who aren't great at pinball. so our good buddy Gonzo, our good friend V Monroe eat your heart out you're going to love Venom because it's aimed at people who really I think they've designed the entire game around low skill people who love pinball but for whatever reason aren't as good does it do something different though in that respect is it one of those games that's easy to learn and hard to master, or is it just literally, hey, here's a zero-depth game that you can just pick up and play, and you're done in 15 minutes, and you can come back to it any time you want? No, no, no, no. I mean, look, despite the shots being easy and wide, to get anywhere in the game is not easy, right? So it has got some element of, how can I put it, an easy-to-learn curve, but then it's got depth behind it. Exactly. So you kind of go along, and then it starts to get harder, right? Or rather, actually, that's the wrong way of looking at it, actually. It's got longevity is maybe what you mean. Yeah, the key thing is you're not going to lose the ball that often, right? You'll have a long ball time. Actually, it reminded me, bizarrely, it kind of reminded me of Scooby-Doo, because it's got a lot of shots like Scooby-Doo that come back to the flipper. It's harder than Scooby-Doo, no question about it, at least in my view it is. There's some other things in it, carnage shot, I mean, And I haven't played the latest code I played the one before the current code The Carnage Shot It's a cool mech But they haven't really tied it into the game As much as I think they need to And I suspect that will come with code And you know that actually the XP system You know everyone's thinking I mean I was I remember in the previous podcast I was a bit nervous Actually it doesn't affect the way you play the game at all. It's pretty, and I think this is the key thing about it. Whilst they've added this system, they've kept the system relatively simple. And I can actually see Stern putting this system into other games for sure. This is like the early prototype of what it might be to come then. Yeah, I think, and you know, actually the thing that makes me sad to some extent, and I'm talking more for the whole kind of hobby if you like but you know Venom isn't selling well in fact it's the worst game Stern have had since I've seen articles about that is the rumour I don't know if necessarily that's down to the title if I'm honest with you I honestly have seen a downturn in every aspect of the hobby at the moment I think this is death by a thousand cuts I think the title is not great I think if this had released a year ago or two years ago even if it's the license that it is it probably still would have sold quite well I agree I don't think there's one thing that's hurt this game but it's a fun game I enjoy playing it reminds me, I mean, in terms of Sterling, it kind of reminds me of Elvira. If you like the shots on Elvira and the kind of hardness of it, I think you'll go well with this. Right. The extra mechs on the Premium, again, I didn't play it too much. I was going to say, did you feel like you missed it? Because obviously the whole motto of that game was change the character, change the game sort of thing. You don't miss it. You don't miss it. Interesting. The great thing is, you know, you can walk up and, hey, I want to play Spider-Man today and I want to beat this guy or I want to play this guy and I want to beat that guy. And that is actually quite a cool feature. I kind of like that. Again, I haven't had a huge amount of time on the game, but this was it. Because to me, that felt like when you take that element out, how are they fulfilling it in the pro then? Because how do you... It's all in software, basically. Right. Are shots easier or what? the shots are the shots are practically the same a little bit a little bit there's a little bit more and i don't mean physical layout shots i mean like is it like oh if i choose to work as i don't know i'm trying to remember the character's name i'm terrible now um but if i choose like i don't know the the the venom that's from gwen i think it's gwen gwen venom is it like oh okay you know you've got easier like uh combination shots to do to finish a certain mode or something like that or is it something else they've tried to do i'll be honest i don't know the answer to that i think i've played it i haven't played it in depth but but my understanding is is that different characters have different attributes that help you on your bonuses or multipliers or something like that yeah i think so i don't know but um but genuinely i mean i you know i i got a huge score on it i didn't really know what i was doing but i figured out I mean, this is the thing, I was able to figure out what to do pretty simply by just looking at what was going on. I mean, there's loads of inserts, which, again, has scared a lot of people off. But actually, once you figure them out, it's second nature. It's not, you know, my fear was that this was a kind of Game of Thrones slash Simpsons slash, what's that other crazy complex game? Godfather type complicated you know 10 menus to select shit it's not like that at all it looks like a Monopoly board yeah sort of thing yeah I mean I forgot what you're doing yeah it's just it plays and again it plays really nice Brian Eddy you know he's the master of fan layouts and this one's no different do I think it's a game if I'm so I've got an early in order I was based on some of the early feedback I was a bit nervous about that but I'm quite looking forward to playing it but do you think is maybe the code is just still early and that they're going to develop it? Because I've heard, obviously, James Bond has gone in leaps and bounds now. Yeah, I mean, first of all, yeah, if you haven't played a James Bond since the first release, you need to go play it because it's a million times better game. It's absolutely one of the best Stern games ever, in my view. I'm not just saying that because I'm a Bond fan. It is genuinely... You are a Bond fan, so I have to take a pinch of salt. But, no, I mean, genuinely go play it and make your own mind up, but it is super. But, yeah, look, they've got tons to add to this code, there's no question about it and you know I just look at what they've done with Bond, even with Stranger Things that we'll talk about shortly with the latest Jurassic Park code update which has made the game so much more playable and they added co-op play as well didn't they? Yeah they added co-op play That's pretty nice for people with families and stuff I think or even just a house setting time again it's another way of of giving yourself more balls you know playing with your buddy or your your mom or whatever but um yeah it's it's it's i think in terms of code stern are firing all cylinders right now in my view except for one thing one thing i've always found that's good with stern is the code you know most people will say wait for the code it will come it is weird i got a mitt in this hobby it threw me off a little bit that you get a game and it's unfinished it takes ages for them to release it i suppose it's a bit different for us because in the uk just to give people in the us a bit of a window into how we get games it can take months after even up to a year plus to sometimes get a a product into the european shores so when we see it and the product's not finished it's a bit weird because it's like it's been out for ages why is it still not finished on the flip side we're actually quite lucky because by the time the games sometimes yeah sometimes it usually got better i mean when when the game's currently in the u.s the code it's stripped yeah it's barely even functional yeah yeah i remember um guardians of the galaxy when it first came out had no music in it that's crazy that's crazy guardians of the galaxy it's a it's a it's you know people don't realize it but it is a music movie it's about the music is the movie right 100 when he's got like literally he's walking around with walkman that's his memory from his mother it's the whole mixtape is about that even the third film has the evolution around that yeah i was it i was in actually guardians was launched in florida iapa i was there uh just happened to be out here with with uh with work and i went to iapa and i thought because i went to it was on it was actually my last day i went to the i mean i'll tell you what you iapa is like the US version of EAG, which is like a massive arcade show. This place in Florida, you could land four jumbo jets in it, and it was full to the brim with kind of carnival arcade stuff. It was insane. And I was there with my wife, Mandy, and they launched Guardians, and there was no music, and there was literally a riot. How can you launch Guardians with no music? and he still, I'll be honest with you I don't think they did enough on that and of course Cleland and others fixed the game basically. Yeah, which is obviously a bit of a grey area, right, because I always wonder if Stern one day is going to do what they do with JJP as an example where they encrypt the drives by the way Stern, please don't ever do that it's just, for me it's like, I get it, they've got to protect an IP and they've got to show to the license holder that they're respecting that, but the fact that there's an avenue for modders to turn around and add custom code in, like Jurassic Park having the movie code. It's a good example. I mean, decrypting that JGP stuff, I don't think would be the hardest thing in the world. Potentially not, yeah. My take on, so I mean, Stern have kind of done that with Insider Connected. If you modify the code, Insider can't start working. But actually, one thing, I mean, as much as I love the gameplay that's coming out of Stern's coders, one thing that is a total effort required, the reliability of the code since they put Insider Connected on it is nosedive so UK Open we have machines constantly rebooting and even I didn't know so Guardians of the Galaxy but what's causing that reboot do you think is it that the Insider Connected is losing connection and it's causing a restart or is it actually just a bug in the code I just think networking code's not where it needs to be to cope with Wi-Fi issues or packet loss, stuff like that. And I think they've got more work to do on that. I mean, it's definitely got... On some games, it's got better. On other games, it's got worse. But my take is... I'll give you an example. Guardians of the Galaxy has a big game in the semifinals, finishes on it. I walk up to record the scores and just as I get to the game, it reboots and we lose the scores. Wow. Yeah, luckily Mark had it on stream, so We were able to pull the scores off. Oh, the recording back, yeah. But, you know, and actually over the weekend, we had quite a few games. In fact, I don't think there was a – so we had all the games on Insider. I don't think there was a single game that didn't reboot over the weekend. Luckily, though, none of them rebooted at a bad time, like mid-game or anything like that. Right. Yeah, that's one area where I think Stern have got to do better. And then, you know, we didn't cover this because we didn't release the podcast, the podcast but the jurassic park who just very quickly touch on that they have they have made that game so much more accessible and playable there's so many more i had an le but i've got to admit i found it incredibly frustrating to play like the game is hard it is a hard game no question about it the shots are still as hard as they are yeah they've made they've made certain parts of it like the the control room is is much more balanced right you can collect certain things and that gives you a bonus. Actually, Esher moaned. The UK Open, Esher moaned at me because any games that we didn't have code that was kind of a couple of weeks old, I didn't upgrade them because I didn't want to risk it. You didn't want to risk the stability. So on a couple of games, we were running older code because it worked. And he was a bit narked that he went and did all this work and didn't get a bonus for it because it was running older code. But we fixed it by sticking a post-it note on saying not running new code. It's pretty insightful, though, to see that. Because I've got to admit, I don't think I've even heard people report on that. So do you think it's just purely down to having that many machines running on a Wi-Fi network where it's all high contention? No, because I think if I plug them all – and I'm actually going to test this. Will you try and do an Ethernet adapter on it and then try and hardwire them in? Basically all my games at home are moving to Ethernet So we'll see if that makes a difference But I personally don't think it will But we'll see I mean the other issue is I get a lot of shit from Stern on Well Neil it crashes because you're running the score bit Actually half the games didn't have the score bit on them And they were still rebooted So it's That might be a factor But it's not Even if you take that out You've still got an issue I'm sure Stern will fix it and they'll get through it But, you know, if you're running an event or, you know. A tournament, yeah. Talk to me about it because that's the thing, right? In the last podcast, again, you know, you touched on this before. We did do a recording, but unfortunately it was like a PowerPoint show because of your packet loss. I mentioned, I saw actually mentioned in there, you had a lot of top players show up. So how many top players did you have actually show up for the UK Open? Yeah, I mean, look, we had someone, I actually haven't counted it personally, but some of them were like kind of more than 60% of the top 20. So we had Kishore there, we had Keith Elwin there, we had Kaylee George, we had Daniel Acciari, Roberto Pedrosa, I think that's his name, Carlos de la Serla, Ray Day was there. He won it. He won it in style, actually. I was really pleased. I mean, that's great, though, to have such a turnout, though, in the UK. I mean, for those people to travel that far as well, credit to doing it. I think that I always feel that it's, you know, I'm here in New York and right now at the New York Pinball Championships. And, you know, actually doing an event here in New York is 100 times harder than London because you can't park, you can't, venues are like 10 times the price. I mean, it's actually Comic-Con weekend in New York. and this hotel that I'm in, it's literally my shed is four times the size of it and it's costing me 600 bucks a freaking night Wow Look, it's got wifi, it's got a bed, it's got a shower that's all I really need but compared to, for 600 bucks a night in London, I'd be staying at the Savoy, right? Sure You know and you've got so many regulations here in New York about moving stuff and unions and it's just, I've helped helped the guys here in New York the past three years, four years one, two, yeah, four years to break for COVID and it's really hard for them and also they don't have it, like we're very lucky at the UK Open, we've got Pinball Republic we've got 60 games that are immediately usable for this event whereas they don't have them so it's harder for them to have as many games. What do they do then to organise it? Do they just pull from clubs in the area and stuff like that or bars? Well they pull games off location Right so from location Some people have got a few games at home but again New York apartments aren't really designed To have dozens of pinball machines in them Square footage is at a premium let's face it 100% so But they put on a great show Levy who's at the UK Open He's a great buddy of mine He puts on a really fun event Fun games and actually I was there this morning Having a Quick once over and And Mark from Backhand Pinball, who did the stream at UK Open, I met him through this. He does the stream here. So there's actually a couple of Europeans over this year as well, which is good. But unfortunately, there's a Slash with District A too. We've got a big, what they call the Super Series on. So turnout for both of those events is a bit split because some people have come here, some people have gone out. I would like to have gone to both, and I would have gone to both, but same weekend. So I hope next year they figure that out. But so far I mean the UK Open I can't Every event we had the Classics, Classics 2 I actually was the top qualifier for Classics 2 Which I was really pleased about Although I completely flunked it In the finals The main was great Was that stress getting to you then? I think a little bit But I was also knackered I was so freaking tired I got almost 9 hours sleep Through the whole weekend oh wow so you know first friday i was at three in the morning working on system stuff wife there's wife we had a wi-fi issue i was trying to fix yeah sorry so i went i got to bed at three i was up at um i think six uh 20 minute breakfast and then i was getting stuff ready and then you're not as young as you used to be now so let's face it you're pushing yourself a bit hard there yeah look i don't mind that you kind of live off the adrenaline. It's the passion, isn't it? Absolutely. And also, I want to see a big game. We had a couple of really massive games. The Guardians of the Galaxy one I mentioned was great. Did someone put lightning flippers on those, I heard? Was that not in the tournament? No, no. Actually, that Guardians of the Galaxy had lightning flippers on it literally since 10 minutes after I bought it. because I played it and thought, this is too easy. That must be pretty hard, though, because that's like, for those that aren aware by the way that like if you think of games like Fishtails as an example where they got a shorter flipper so basically the bat is one eighth shorter i think from memory that creates a wider gap yeah i be honest yeah i think it a i think it more mentally impacting than actually skill impacting you think yeah for sure because look i see the way they so you know guardians is in the club pinball republic if you want to go play it um and the people have adapted to it so all the locals have adapted to it and then you see the scores that folks were getting. I think there was a post on the forum you probably haven't seen it because someone said oh I thought it came with them because obviously they'd seen it at the club and they just assumed that they came with them. I was like no no Stern don't ever do lightning flippers That's the other thing there's not a lot of guardians around in the UK because of the lack of music it was panned and people thought would be terrible and it was just another metallic It's not a bad game in all fairness though I think it's a great game, it's fun it's challenging, I like mode based games See I'm different to you, I just like bash toys and I like the fact that you can shoot the Groot I like the Groot and Groot is awesome I mean I think I really want to thank all the folks that helped obviously the PBR guys It's a core team. Well, you mentioned a lot of these people are just doing this pro bono, right? Yeah. I mean, this is basically – we're not – we don't make any money out of this, in fact. It's the opposite. But we want to put on a big event. We've put UK firmly on the map. I think it actually turns out that – It's great. UK Open was the top eighth tournament in value in terms of world championship points. So I'm super pleased about that. But honestly all the guys and girls That were involved in running it And actually the players We talk about pinball moments Players make the pinball moments in my view All the players that were there You had the sense from them That they wanted this event to be successful And it was quite inspiring To see that And we had some great feedback Ray Day said he's coming back Keith said he's going to come back That's good although he did sign a few translates oh did he? that's nice somebody who shall remain nameless comes up to me and says do you think Keith would sign my translate and I'm thinking oh my god right because Keith's quite a quiet guy he's not you know he's a great guy he's not a Canada type definitely not 100% not he's he's not... I get the sense he's an introvert. Sure. But then again, I think a lot of people who aren't pinball probably are, if I'm honest. I'm just worried that he's coming at a play and he gets distracted. But I guess that's part and parcel of making good games. But anyway, he signed them. I mean, I kind of said, look, there's a couple of folks wanting to sign Translates, are you alright with that? He's like, yeah, yeah, it's fine. Do you think it's a bit surreal for them where they feel like, hey, I've become a bit of a celebrity, even if it's a small obviously community i'm still i imagine in america it's fairly large but probably a bit surreal for him to get people going i need your autograph i mean you know i'm talking to craig coolan who's you know one of the uk players like so i know it's just great to play with some of the best pinball players and then you've got you know people who you know love iron maiden love jurassic park love godzilla and here's the guy who made the game here um yeah it's great yeah we're ray day who's written the code for led zeppelin rush um foo fighters and he's here um you know it's hard it's hard you know not to kind of ignore that we've you know that these people around and they're really accessible i mean i you know i know ray and keith reasonably well and you know they'll always have a chat with them and see what's going on but yeah it was good it's great great they came off the thing i'm happy about is they all enjoyed it so hopefully next year they'll come back and we're going to find a different venue I think the Hilton is a venue the room is brilliant the hotel is really difficult to work with and actually I don't mind being difficult to work with if it's cheap if I'm paying a lot they should be kissing my ass frankly how does it work in terms of obviously we're touching into stuff that's very British elements here but well how do you handle like the ulez and stuff like that is it because like the vans must not be able to they have to all those added fees then to get all the equipment all the vans we were using were compliant but there's some people okay there's some people who drove there like um kevlar he said i just have to pay for the ulez i was like yeah nothing i can do about it mate some people you know some of the people who came along ulez is a pointless tax created by a mayor that basically if you pay tax you will save the planet and of course we all know that's bullshit so it's going to someone's coffers the tax on the poor frankly because they're trying to take old cars off the road and most people who've got old cars can't afford to buy a new one because if they could so anyway bit of a local rant there but that's our Great British Pinball Podcast but it was a great event and honestly from bottom of my heart everyone that was involved in helping run it thank you it's credit to you Neil and the people behind it for putting I would say Robert Englunds on the map in terms of the international stage because although we've had other people building I would say you know events around the UK art for the UK community this one puts us on the map internationally so I like that and to be honest there's part of that that's great there's part of it that's maybe not so great So next year, we're probably going to extend it by one day and have the Great British Pinball Tournament sponsored by the Great British Pinball Podcast. But we're going to do something that's aimed at the British players. Oh, definitely always want to try and help promote the hobby within our shores, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, anything to grow it here is a positive thing in my book because we are much smaller than I would say much of Europe. Germany, Italy and that I feel to be honest if you have a much bigger footprint on players than we do No doubt about it we've got to figure out it's always at the end of it, I'm never doing it again but then you kind of relax and you realise how good it was we've got to get the right volunteers we've got to get the right help we genuinely have to find a venue and actually Pimmo Republic it's no secret we're looking for a venue right now as well that's number one priority anyway let's move on but so we talked a bit about Venom let's jump into Stranger Things very briefly so I've got Stranger Things LE I love the game I love the vibe of it the environment the music the license is spot on for me I've actually got a macro in my house so that the light above Stranger Things doesn't come on quite as bright so it's a bit darker it's a great game but it sold really badly and let me I think honestly that was a victim of Covid though personally no I don't think so I don't know because they couldn't get out and try it so therefore it was hard for it to produce a sale maybe I'm wrong, that's my opinion at least so Luke, Stranger Things was actually launched pretty much here in the UK so well they launched it at CES which is the big consumer electronics show in Vegas at the start of the year but the first time you could play it as a punter was EAG which was the week after and the launch at CES they basically launched it in the brightest room possible so the projector looked terrible and it was a bit clunky The game, I don't think the game was set up well It just wasn't Again, Stan, they just seem to have real bad luck When it comes to game launches Especially when you do them outside of their environment Don't mention James Bond then Yeah That's another great example of it Where they just A shit show from start to finish frankly But it's not like they wake up And say hey we're going to do a bad job Just certain things happen The game came to the UK Very early so in fact it's one of the prototypes you can play it in shit what's the name of that place in London Funland Funland it's there it's the same game it came here very early Stern actually had it in a room where you could experience the projector the code was still very early and everyone thought it looks like Attack from Mars and you know you could make those similarities hardly anyone got ordered and I ordered an LE because one I like Attack from Mars so a modern Attack from Mars is great, I like Brian Eddy I own every single game that Brian Eddy's put out he's a great designer and basically it's the same with there's a lot of other games like this, Guardian's got a shit billing at the start Deadpool Elvira to something extent, probably less so, more about the cost of it. Games come out from Stern in the UK, they get panned very early. No one orders them. People then wonder why they're so expensive to get a hold of. It's because no one orders. If Phil doesn't fill a truckload of Stranger Things in the first or second wave, then they're not coming over. You know, you'll buy them to order, but the challenge of Stranger Things is they killed the game very early because generically it didn't sell well. At the end of the day, what we're seeing at the moment with Stern, every time a title doesn't sell well, they start doing another run of something else, a rerun of something else. This is one of the things, you know, if Pinball Info ran Stern, it would have gone bust 10 years ago. They're not a business of clowns that pop up there and say, well, Stern should do this. Yeah, right, mate. Good luck with that. Why don't you sell... Some license choices that people come up with, I must admit, and I'm like going, maybe for your age of demographic, but not for the general populace. It's just some weird choices. There's never in a million years that would sell. Even the decision, I'll start to put more in the games and charge less. I'm like, honestly, have you any idea how much the cost of wood, just fucking wood, excuse my language, just wood, how much the cost... Well, the bill of materials has gone up, let's face it, but I mean, looking at Stranger Things right and I had one as well it was actually probably the third or fourth game I got when I got into this hobby and I got lucky I got one that was it was used but it had everything in it it had like uh the uv kit which is to me a must I don't care what anyone says if you ain't got the uv kit you haven't got the whole game yeah um and then okay you know it was a pro but argument wise to be honest with you okay you lose the projector but you pretty much the game is there like you you lose the the ball lock in the top left corner but in all essences it's the same game and i really enjoyed it and i i got hounded by someone they they just i he kept upping the money and at the end i just thought i can't say no i i'm just gonna say yes and i still regret it to this day getting rid of that game because i to me at least stern don't really make games like they used to and they certainly don't make games like they like what was done back in the bally and williams era and i feel like this game or at least because it's brian eddy it's definitely got a 90s feel to it no question about simplistic code although it's hard to get to the the final showdown which is like the end wizard mode it's fairly easy to get to the halfway mini wizard mode and that was enough for me i i had fun with it and i still did and i i felt what really irritated me and i'm going to say this right now is that that rerun to me was a complete misstep by stern what they should have done is delayed it to when the next season of stranger things is released yeah they should have added a vechna edition and done the whole thing with a new skin and that and update the code and for anyone who says to me right now ah you don't need to update the code we'll talk about it shortly but there is a thing called the ellen ripley version of alien which does exactly that it is possible stern can revisit code and i honestly think they could have done it on this one yeah i mean i think so i mean look um updating the code for the new season or at least at least from the same things you could do but what they can do is change the inserts right they're baked in so you can't do anything about the demogorgon right but that's part of season one it's still an iconic piece and i think having vechner there instead would be a bit weird I suppose you could stick him there thinking about it but it would be a bit strange, I think stranger things to me at least they could have done something with the code still yeah the same is true with Game of Thrones actually they did put out a very updated Game of Thrones code but it didn't update the TV it didn't update beyond season 3 I think so I think I'll be honest here, in this one they could do it but I think they're damned if they do and damned if they don't maybe I don't know about you, but if someone's going to do a vault edition of something, I expect it to add value. I don't expect it to be a rerun. And I think maybe I've got been spoiled by the ideas of what happened with Spider-Man and they did the vault edition of that. And I have these connotations in my head that says, hey, yeah, I expect it to go new art package or maybe look at the music or the call outs. I mean, you know as well as I do that the voice actor, forget his name, because he's one of the main, he's the sheriff in Stranger Things. Forget his name. Me and my wife always make the same call out. Whenever we get an extra ball in the game, we say it in the exact same way he says it from Stranger Things. Yes, extra ball. It's just so, it's so bad and it's so cheesy, but we say it every time we get an extra ball in any game. But that's Pavlov, man. That's what they want, right? pinball designers want that in your head they want the cheese factor is that what they were saying they want you to be thinking about that for me when I first got Walking Dead I used to wander around the house doing what Walking Dead call it like a cat would be sleeping I'd go he's dead you know it's just that means it reminds me of the other one with Star Trek when you have the bones guy and he goes can't really badly it's so cheesy yeah i mean the the look i think it's good that stern are doing for those that want them you know oh yeah don't get me wrong it's great to have them back but they should have included the uv kit i should have had it by default 100 especially given the price difference between you're paying more and you're getting the same i'm just like stern i know you can make money on this you you the production the r&d is already spent 50 would have done it yeah they've already written it off because they they stopped building them right so yeah exactly also there's an awful lot of people actually brad uh he's got stranger things he's been trying to get a uv kit for like two years now and he just can't get one so hopefully those people who want the accessories will be able to get hopefully now yeah is the rumor true about the fact that there's an improved projector or is that just a rumor so i don't know look here's what i can tell you the current projector they're using is unobtainium so right but I had heard that Stern had managed to get more of them and actually if you order one now you'll get it delivered but then I also heard also heard that they're using you know Brian Eddy said in a interview that they're using an updated projector and apparently they've worked on the TK lock so that's better somehow reliable basically okay yeah i mean so look my take on that is is look if there's things if i have to go and buy a new tk lock mech to make it work better i'm happy to do that right i'd rather not have done that but if if there's a way you know i i believe that anything that they've done to make the game better is retrofittable you know the projector is hdmi projector right so all you need to do is find the mount for it and bang it in i've actually bought a spare projector because when i saw the projector that was in the game. You thought that isn't going to last. I wonder, do you think it overheats? Is that what it is? Because there isn't really much ventilation, obviously, going into that unit. Well, I think it, well, I don't know if it overheats. There's not a lot of ventilation, but that area of the playfield isn't actually that warm. My take on this is you get people that turn the game off and on quickly, which just cooks the bulb. Yeah, of course. Is it an incandescent style? Well, it works in a similar a vein to incandescent i think it's i think it's an i think it's led but i honestly don't know but my take is it's got a heating element in it of some sort but it's not something like that if you flip it on and off and it's been on you know it's been on for you know these games are on all day in arcades yeah yeah that makes sense actually when you think about it because i i got a sony projector and it has like a a really uh slow uh shutdown period because it needs to cool cool before you yeah the fan will keep running for ages but obviously if people are just flicking off at the source it could be literally cooking it yeah i mean i don't know if that's specific i mean actually my projector has been fine i haven't had an issue with it but i just when i saw i just thought that's an aliexpress special and straight from timu yeah lo and behold and then so look either way i think it's good news for existing owners i think it's good news for people want to buy it. Yeah, but here's the good question for you then. Will it sell? Yeah, but will it sell? What's different now to what was different two years ago when it didn't sell? Well, there wasn't COVID. But look how crazy the market went for pinball machines. Yeah, well, yeah, to be fair, I'll give you that. On the COVID thing, right, they announced Stranger Things December 2019. the first wave of orders was delivered March I got my Stranger Things the week before lockdown and that was the LB so in the US you say that but I managed to get Avengers and other games so Covid didn't affect at least for me it wasn't something I couldn't get I got Avengers I got Turtles I got What was the other game that came out at that time? Elvira? No, Elvira was earlier And actually Or was it later? Hold on It was earlier But Phil had won I need to tell you The Elvira story another time COVID did not stop Games getting delivered Basically what happened is A member of Avengers He phoned me and said I'm delivering your pinball machine I'm going to leave it in the middle of your driveway. Don't come out until I've gone. So I was like, I've got a video of this. This guy delivers it, walks away, and then as soon as he's gone, I'm able to go out and get it and wheel it in. It's like a bomb. It's like some sort of weird hostage exchange, basically. I was going to say, yeah. But, look, and fair play to the guys who delivered them. I forget the name of them. had feels for doing that because we were desperate for stuff to do back then right it was like oh yes and you know yeah of course um but look i don't think covid affected it oh well here's a better question for you because i'm i'm speaking from experience here of recently being stung pretty damn hard to be honest by having a rerun of an elvira house of horrors so i lost a fair chunk of money on that more than i ever was prepared to if i'm honest i i think at least in my head, people have a mentality of what the game was worth when it originally came out, and they market it, thinking, well, if I'm going to buy a second-hand one, I don't want to pay more, and certainly don't want to pay more than when it was first released. This is kind of some of my thoughts about some of the I'm going to call them bozos on the forum where... Always been politically correct there, Neil, but yeah, okay. No, look, there was people trying to sell an Iron Maiden that they'd paid the original Iron Maiden price for close to the current price of Iron Maiden. Sure. Right? And I'm sorry, that's just bullshit. Anyone who buys that game like that, I think, is mental. And, you know, if you want to get rich in life and have the great things, giving your money away to people who are effectively, in my view, ripping you off, I'm sorry. It's just not. I just don't, if you're sold out. You're coming from the perspective then of somebody, I would say, trying to buy a machine that was built in the original run and now being sold at the current price. Flip it the other way around, though, for people who are now, who have bought the rerun at the inflated new price, which is a hell of a lot more. So as an example, in the UK here, you could get, I think, an Elvira for nine and a half when it first came out as a premium. And I paid 13. so I get people saying to me I'm going to pay you more than 9.5 yeah that's a 4 that's literally 4 grand straight off the value, that's a pin I remember that's a problem to me that to me is the biggest issue of reruns at the moment I agree, it's like this thing with cars if you bought an M3 in 2014 it costs twice as much to tax if you bought one in 2015 because they changed the laws, right? You get this in these sort of things. And, Luke, you can see where on both sides where the reality is. Unfortunately, COVID also drove this kind of madness about game value, right? Yeah, of course. It's accelerating prices tenfold. But even Stern, though, you've probably seen the price chart, right, that got released where someone tracked all the price increases. Over the last three or four years, it's grown exponentially. Well, look, I think the last price updates, I mean, we're talking about Stern, but let's not forget about Jersey Jack. We were living in cloud cuckoo land as far as I'm concerned. Well, Toy Story especially, but yeah. I mean, look, I think we've absolutely found a price ceiling. I think we finally have, you know. I think mobile machines could, you know, I'm one of, the way I approach business is how do I generate demand? And one way you don't generate demand is by having something too expensive. That just turns demand away, right? So and the trade is do I sell more games at a slightly less price or do I sell less games at a higher price And my take is you invested probably a million bucks worth of effort in IP and design and construction and engineering you've effectively got a sunk cost to some extent of how do I maximize return. But that goes on to new titles, though. Bear in mind what we're discussing here is reruns. 100%. But right now, it's clear that the market is, I mean, the secondhand market is insanely affected by this. The secondhand market, I'm telling you right now, at least in the UK, is in the biggest spiral I've ever seen. I mean, I haven't been in it long, but I'm seeing people accept games well below what they paid for them. In the US, right, I imported a big game, right? This is a classic Stern game. Sure. To buy it like a year ago, you're probably looking at three and a half, four grand. I picked one up so cheap in the US compared to what I could get in Europe. I was actually able to air freight it to the UK for the UK Open. That's how crazy it's got in the US, right? So, and look, but still, you know, retail prices have a peg and there is a correlation between where other prices are. but in my mind I think if Stern knocked a couple of grand off games, especially and the one thing that really pissed me off, I buy LEs right, that's what I buy they really fucked over LE owners if you look at the price I'll tell you what makes and it kind of leads on to what we're about to talk about, which again is like Elvira's latest next incarnation which I think is called the Blood Kiss Red Edition or something like that it's again if stern keep releasing these limited runs of everything it no longer has the appeal of a limited collector's value to me i look at like jurassic park le the jurassic park le tanked because of what happened with the 30s of addition suddenly where people were charging you know 16 17 18 000 on pin side for like an le plus suddenly back down to 11 12 because it's lost its rarity or scarcity you never see people in the watch industry or or anyone else for that matter like choosing that going hey we're going to release another variation of the same thing because you will piss off those collectors and that's not a good idea but look this is a an industry that does not have the maturity to think about maybe it doesn't yeah maybe look at let's take Jersey Jack, right? My guns and roses, right? It literally fell apart and they didn't give a shit. I wrote to the CEO of the company, right? And there's like a golden rule for CEOs of companies, right? If you write to the CEO, he replies or she replies, right? It's a golden rule. I didn't even get a reply, right? Even if the reply was, sorry, Neil, we think you're on crack cocaine. You can piss off, right? You get a response is what you're getting at. That's cool. That's where you are, right? But to get zero response, just unacceptable. And to be fair to Stern, right, and a lot of people give me the Stern fanboy. Sometimes justly so. I don't know, but look. Who else gets a pre-populated play field? A few people get pre-populated playfields. Maybe, maybe. Look, that's the point, right? You know, if you, I mailed some of my Ghostbusters. I mailed Gary Starn and said, hey, Gary, my first ever pinball machine, and it's got this issue. And Gary's like, no worries, Neil, we'll sort it out for you. And six months later, a brand new play field turned up. Phil at Pinball Heaven fell off his chair. And I was like, well, you've just got to ask the right way, right? That definitely is a thing. Yeah, I'll give you that. Neil, you only get service like that from Stern because you've bought, like, 50 games from them. When I bought Ghostbusters, I bought one freaking game from them, right? so so maybe you're right though maybe he's reaching out to the right channels then and getting free to the right people i think i think it's about it's about your attitude it's about how you engage with them so oh yeah you certainly shouldn't phrase an email going this is crap and i really hate you it's more like hey i've bought this product and i'm not happy but let me tell you i've seen those emails where people have sent them because because i've seen them hey neil i know that you you know you've got a contact here or there and they sent me the email they've written And I was like, mate, if you sent me that email, I wouldn't fucking reply to you either. You know, you've got to be professional. Yeah. Polite. And, Luke, things go wrong, right? Does anyone at Jersey Jack or Stern or anyone get out of bed to do a bad job? You know, apart from maybe Home Pin because he doesn't care about the pinball community. Despite the fact he's coming to Expo next week, apparently. I can't wait to see him. but does anyone really think these guys deliberately I do think there's a lot of good customer service in the world, I mean I know you have your own opinions on Pimble Brothers I suppose that will bring us across them quite neatly in a second but my experience with them at least was good they were happy to provide me with another play field which is is it going to be in the camera it's hiding somewhere over there I can't find it but nonetheless right they were always willing to like basically bend over backwards to give me what i wanted to keep me happy and i didn't have 50 machines either so i think there are people who will like go i could live and die by the reputation of the business if people feel badly enough about a product they're going to vent and it's making sure that those people who have a bad experience are taken care of so i don't doubt stern do do um do the right thing most of the time 100% some people like with everything some people have not had what they expected and look guns and rosaries I didn't get what I expected but here's my reaction I'm never buying another JGP game ever well no you've got your principles right and I respect that to be honest with you because if you're stung by someone and they don't treat you well then 100% you should vote with your feet. Exactly, and not enough people do that in this space, partly because there's been less choice, but if I think if... Yeah, we should probably talk about the other upcoming stuff, yeah, but there's definitely going to be more choice in the future. 100%. If JGP brought an epic game, I would wait and buy a second hand one. I wouldn't buy one from them. I just couldn't. I would wait, I would make sure the second hand one I got worked, and boom, on you go and i think look this is the opportunity for folks the market is depressing by the dip right and and and effectively you know there are some reasonable bargains now the question is does it go down further i hope not because that's gonna have pretty big become a death spiral that's what i don't want to see i i say i definitely think it's a buyer's market at the moment 100 no question about it and and and look it's rare in this modern world that it is that you're in something where it is a seller's market these days it's very rare it doesn't happen for often because people people identify it you know businesses identify that there's a oh there's a seller's market here we need to launch something and take advantage of it right which is what stern have done you know people say oh you've done a cash grab no they've taken advantage of the fact that there's a demand for something right and and yeah again if you think that if you think doing a cash grab is a bad thing then set up your own business and see how you would think when you've got opportunities presented to you that you've got to take advantage of because you've got to pay bills you've got to pay wages and hopefully you've got to keep production runs going and i get that i feel like what i would like to see from stern personally is just a bit more empathy towards one the limited edition collectors so basically saying to them like look when you buy something from us you're smiling but you know it's true when you buy something with us that is limited and it's limited in that word so so luke that's great what about all the lb owners of alien whose machines are now worth junk basically because well you say that let's move on to that then so i spoke with with various people at pinball brothers right and very high up in the chain and i spoke to them very early on much much earlier than probably most people did around the fact that now that they own the license are they going to try and bring sigourney weaver into the picture and they told me ages ago that they were having conversations with with sigourney weaver and disney just about that and obviously at the time it was fox but yeah it's obviously disney now but anyway like basically um i was a bit taken back by that because i was like okay so you're going to redo the code and they were like yeah and i was like okay and i said like what are you going to do about you know um adding in like the the play field in the middle i said there's nothing we can do with that but we've got some ideas how we're going to expand upon it and we're thinking about the idea of expansions so i knew about all this stuff ages ago and i i said to them like you know how are you going to release it and i said it's definitely going to be given for free to everyone who owns a pinball machine now obviously what's changed between now and then is that they've released queen and queen tanked it's no great mystery uh mystery that i've seen machines sold less than 250 units worldwide so they've turned around i think and gone we need to make more money just like stern do they're releasing another title yeah you call it that but the standard edition and the lv will also have the ability to have the same code for free so the code update which you you know that's a major cost let's face it you get someone like sigourney weaver in she is not cheap yeah she is not cheap at all so to get her back in and do a free code update to everyone else i think that's great there's not dlc upgrade it's not chargeable not like cgc's would be essentially doing with with cactus canyon you've got to bear that in mind and they're going to be doing a brand new topper for the standard edition that will be available as well it's going to be fully interactive and they're going to be the same expansions that you get with the ripley edition are going to be available to anybody who had an lv or sv so they can bolt it all on yes okay you won't have the same art package but i don't know if you're potentially going to want to see the new art package if i'm honest with you because it it without giving too much of it away it may not to be everyone's tastes so in all fairness actually when you say lvs are going to tank i'm in the opposite camp i think anybody who has an lv now is going to find it's worth more because it's going to have the sigourney weaver elements in it where it didn't previously and like if that's the case fantastic but i look at jurassic Park, right? And the 30th edition of Jurassic Park. So again, Stern, they put a new machine, they updated the code, they made the code available to everybody for free, right? But it's firmly a cash grab from Stern, whereas this... This is a way for Pinball Brothers, I think, to keep revenue going, because unlike them, they don't have 50 million IPs to run from. That's exactly the point I'm making. They're not doing... People think this is just an... genuinely, if you saw the margins in pinball, right, people think this is genuinely a way of grabbing cash. It's how these companies are freaking surviving. It's sad that the margins are that thin, though, but considering how much the price of games have gone up. But let me tell you, so I work in... So down the manufacturing chain, someone's making money somewhere, because I'm telling you now. Let's face it, I'm building a cyberpunk game, right, and it ain't costing me millions. so it's one of those things but if you put your hourly rate in Scott's hourly rate which I know is not cheap right but no look and that's what's happened the guy who's making PCBs in China or Taiwan things got more expensive for him, he gets paid more and that's just like a domino effect through the whole industry, I work in the electronics industry big high end systems engineering and and you know i've i moved that moved to there from from a instead of being a buyer i'm now a builder and let me tell you i was amazed at some of the way the costs have moved you know and the most ridiculous things like um led lights for pcbs um certain certain types of power supply certain types of material thin metal material machine that's incredible the price change don't get me wrong tooling is expensive yeah tooling is always expensive but what you and i get your defense on it right but what i think you're failing to get at is a lot of the parts in stern are literally rinse repeats of another i i've also recently got my star trek back right now after all this time you've seen the post so i finally got my star trek premium after all this time. I thought, fuck it, I'm having another one back because I regret selling that game. And I looked at it and I got Lord of the Rings next to it and what do I see? The same Vux scoop in the Hobbit area that's in the exact same position as Star Trek. And let's face it, their games do have repeatable elements in it. There's a lot of mechs that are reused. Not a doubt about it, but look at the node boards, right? Here's an example, right? Four or five of the chips that were on a node board, you couldn't buy them anymore because no one was making chips yeah that yeah that density right so sure you have to design a new board if you know they have to change capacitors my attitude would be that is that's poor r&d from their part they should have made sure that their supply chain yes absolutely i'm not i'm i'm sorry to say but any electrical manufacturer should always sit there and look at and go right can we keep this part running for xyz number of years rather than going this it's gonna be a problem in half a decade nah but but so there was a time in my life where i would probably have agreed with you right but look at the car industry during covid as well you couldn't buy a car because they couldn't get the chips either but that wasn't down to no but that wasn't no okay you're arguing two different points there one is over shortage and the other one is over discontinuation of a product i think they've not it's not like their product set was discontinued It was just because suddenly chip manufacturers made the wrong call during COVID and said, actually, we're going to spin down all our production because we feel there won't be demand. And yet it was the exact opposite. Absolutely. But that affected pinball, it affected TV. It affected everything. It affected everything, right? Absolutely. you know to say that you know a nord board is any different to the control board and it does indicators in your car is freaking the same more or less the same technology yeah but you're saying that their product sets got discontinued and that now they're having to refab based on the chips it's not like car manufacturers face that issue though sorry i may be put the wrong way they couldn't get chips that they wanted they would love to have got them right but here's the other thing some of the chips were available they just tripled in price because oh that did happen 100 yeah but then but then you have to go okay right my manufacturing costs have increased by 20 percent okay that's fine yeah but look at that chart and you tell me that increase in manufacturing cost has spilled over to the same price i think the margins have increased i know you say they're running thin of margins but i definitely think margins have increased i agree with you look they took they thought there was an opportune moment to put a price rise and yeah who didn't everyone put price rise well they look at jjp and they go well jjp are doing it yeah exactly everyone's guilty what they didn't look at was how badly jjp was selling right and now now they've bitten that i must admit one thing i was going to ask you about this actually because this is always been interesting topic for me we always seem to have a lot of sales data back in the past of how many units were made of every game and everything like that but that seems to have gone by the wayside now it's a lot of guesstimates is that because the industry has just been a bit more closed door about it or is it just that that information became public knowledge when the business went bust i don't know i think i think at least i think at least for some of those companies so williams was a publicly listed company at one stage right so i kind of think they had to release some of that data but it does it is a bit bizarre that they don't release that data because um it is it would be useful data for the market to know really absolutely i want to know how successful that game was how many units it sold over what period because then that way i can turn around and say well is that game successful or not rather than going by what's in the top 100 on pin side yeah but that's the point though sales aren't like let me give you an example right i've got a game called quicksilver right it's it's easily in one of my top five best games they sold I think two or three thousand of them if even that and I got another one in fact this is a better example, Stargazer I think they sold less than fifteen hundred because they moved from one game to the next much more often and it's kind of frustrating for you know if say stranger things it sold the same number as stargazer does that make it as good a game as stargazer as a worse game than jurassic park oh no it shouldn't be a sole metric but i definitely think it helps you when you're buying a game to understand whether or not this was a good game or if it's just somebody on pinside saying this is a great game because i own it because there is a lot of people on pinside that definitely go this is a 10 out of 10 game and And it's like, yeah, it's because you own it. Yeah. And people are always going to say that. It's like, yeah, you know, I own Star Wars, but it's shit, right? So, you know, I kind of... There are a few people in this world that will turn around and say, this game's a complete dog. Can you buy it from me? That's just the way they do that. I don't know where I'm going wrong. But, Luke, I buy games for a variety of tournaments. And I think that's one of the wonderful things of pinball is, You can have games that you don't like, but for every game you don't like, there's 10 that you do, right? Oh, yeah, 100%. You know, that is, for me... I honestly thought I'd run out of games to get, which sounds weird because I've only owned 10. But I've owned about a total of, like, 28, 28, 30, I think. I'd have to check the list. I stopped counting at one point. So I've been through quite a lot. And I tapped out. I thought I tapped out my list, but actually there's still some more I want to get. I currently own 109 right now. Yeah, I know. I know. You and all the other rich boys sat in the UK with your massive supplies. I think it might be 111 because I think I forgot to count a few that turned up. It's funny when I speak to my friends outside the hobby and they're like, how the hell have you got 10? That's ridiculous. All that on toys. And I'm like, yeah, you wait until you see how many people I know that have got like 10 times that. But also it's about how you spend and how you buy. So, you know, there's probably 30 of them that I've bought new. they'll have 70 I've bought second hand well because you can't get more but if this is the thing I try and get over to people if you're foaming at the mouth to get something you're going to pay over the odds and then when you come to I've been told by so many people that the thing is I'm an impatient individual I always have been the word impulse buyer comes to mind that's one of the reasons why I buy LEs because I can't wait for the premium to turn up if the premium If the premium turned up at the same time as the pro, I would never buy an LE. I just wouldn't. Really? Now, that's interesting. I always thought, because you were a collector at heart, that you were buying an LE because they maintain their value, at least better than a premium would anyway. And that basically, obviously, it's got all the trimmings on it. But you're saying that that doesn't interest you then? No. Look, don't get me wrong. It does interest me. But value for money, you're getting ripped off on an LE. Let's be honest, right? I mean, I can put, look, and I'll give you an example, right? Our good friend Gonzo at Pinside, I was watching one of his videos, and he videos my Deadpool that was at the show. And he's going, oh, look, a Deadpool LE. It's not a Deadpool LE. It's a Deadpool premium with LE armor that I bought for 200 quid, right? Right. But to him, it looked like an LE. And to most people, they looked at it and thought, oh, it's an LE. No, it was a premium. So, look, don't get me wrong. There are certain aspects of LEs I love. Like, I love the mirror back glasses. They're definitely better, no question about it, right? Sure. But when you look at mirror back glass, when you look at the armor, when you look at the speakers, and you look at the signed picture from Gary, it does not add up to a 4,000 grand premium. Do you think they would do better then by just going down to two models? No, I don't. Because, look, as much as starting to find a business model that works for them, the LEs contribute significantly to kind of the bottom line cost of designing a machine. Must do, right? There's got to be a huge profit margin in that one. Well, look, we're going to evolve you. And then there is this middle segment that we're, you know, I mean, I used to buy premiums. What would you like to see in an LE then? Let's go back to that because you've already said that the stuff in it at the moment really doesn't tick all the boxes and a premium is like what you go for. I think what I'd like to see in an LE is kind of like what CGC do to some extent, right? So like exclusive topper? Well, to an extent. You've got topper armor, you've got different lighting, you've got, you know, a back glass. but also I look at Star Trek LE and Tron LE Those were good, right? I loved that armour, with the phases along the side of Star Trek, that was unique and the light up on the backbox as well I'd love to see some stuff like that, and it just hasn't happened since that game, and that game sold well, you know, it wasn't but again, Stern's take is as well, we can give them just the armor without the lights and people are still going to buy it and we can still charge the same price. So I would like to see something genuinely unique. Also, LEs, a thousand is not limited edition. It just isn't. That number went up too much. It was at 500, I think, was fine. 750 was pushing it and then a thousand is just way too much. Believe it or not, there are about 8,000. If you believe what Charity Jack's saying, I probably think they're speaking the truth here. you know there's about 7 000 limited edition guns and rosies how is 7 000 it's just but it sounds silly doesn't it yeah limited to me is it's supposed to be a a small number that doesn't feel like a small number when the total number of games sold is either probably the true limited edition was the standard version that they sold yeah absolutely like 250 or whatever it's like if you want the most limited edition game it's monsters pro it's just probably is They just didn't sell any of them, right? Yeah. And actually, for a time, Munster's prices went through the roof. But look, I think Stern are going to, I mean, I genuinely think that they've kind of done a bit of a hatchet job on early buyers. No one listening to this will be crying in their malt whiskey, but, you know, the price is ridiculous now. and actually I once upon a time said I'm never buying a pinball machine over 10 grand and that was a couple of people I've spoken to in the community have said that but obviously that become the norm for a premium it is I mean I just bought a Foo Fighters premium for the club That what it costs I getting a bit more savvy about it I wanted to put a James Bond premium in the club. Instead of buying a new, I bought one nearly new off the forum. A showroom. I had 40 plays on it. I had the original code, which made me laugh when I played it because it was so terrible. but yeah I mean I think it's it's difficult the business of pinball is such a labor intensive manual business it's and also fixed cost base having a factory the fixed cost in the factory is just horrendous well I get why Stern had to jack some prices up because that new factory ain't going to be cheap and you keep talking about earlier in the square footage of New York I imagine wherever they are, Square Foot is expensive. So I get why prices have to be high. I just wish, honestly, that they weren't. I would love it if we went back to the days of a six grand pro and an eight grand premium and a ten grand elite. You see, I think Stern would sell more or less quite, apart from certain titles like Keith Elwin, he's going to sell out everything, right? Sure. But let's look at the last non-Keith Elwin. If you take Keith Elwin out of Stern, I don't think there's a sellout game. I don't know, since Walking Dead maybe? Is that fair? Let me just think. Batman, actually Batman 66 was a sellout. I was going to say the Capow games do well, right? Yeah. But they're specific. I mean, they were pretty much quite well dressed up. Sure. I'm just trying to think, what game has sold out that you just couldn't get a hold of honestly there's very few I think Walking Dead was a big seller Star Trek was a big seller and then Ghostbusters is probably the other big seller yeah to be fair it's a good license I mean horrible geometry on the flippers but other than that honestly they haven't had a bang out crazy seller Metallica but again that's before Metallica was a big seller ACDC was a big seller for Stern but if you look at since Spike 2 came along I can't think of let us know internet if I'm just being brain dead on this but I can't think of a Spike 2 game that isn't a Keith Elwin game that sold out massively maybe Star Wars maybe Star Wars really that sold out I don't know I thought it was panned pretty harshly right because of what was in it lack of what was in it I mean it got completely panned for the Photoshop playfield etc I've got to admit I don't understand yeah I'm glad they moved away from that thank god they moved away from Photoshop playfields I genuinely think you know so if you part Keith Elwin games for a minute right I genuinely believe Stern would sell more games at a kind of 6, 8 and 10 price point I tell you what, let's move on quick because we've been doubling on that Labyrinth then Yes It's interesting we talk about numbers and sellouts it's a weird license the general feedback I get from most people is like it's not really what they'd go for if they were going to go for an 80s fantasy I liked it as a kid I still re-watched it with the wife a few times it's got a cult classic it's a cheesy film it's a cheesy cult classic it's not a mega movie it's not a back to the future no that's the thing maybe that's got something going for it we spoke a bit offline before about how maybe being a potentially cheaper license could allow it to have a higher bill of materials so it'd be interesting to see what this company comes up with and you've obviously mentioned a couple of like high profile people that are making this game so do you want to run through those names yeah i mean i'm excited about this game yeah the people who are involved in it so and these are not pinball bozos these are pinball royalty i would put them so you've got Eric Prepkey who wrote Cactus Canyon Continued and the code for Rick and Morty Scott Denisey I don't need to say anything about him because everybody knows who Scott Denisey is and you've got Eric Vanice, I can't remember I'm sure it's Eric Vanice but I might be wrong on that there's another pinball dignitary, I don't know him that well David Vanice sorry, Derivatives. And he's built a ton of pinball stuff. Sure. So that's my understanding of who's involved in it. So it's definitely got a good chance to succeed. Because, I mean, I've got Rick and Morty, and I love what he's done, Scott and the DC's done, with the lighting in that game. To me, it's up there with Guns N' Roses in terms of a light show. It's just so good the way each individual LED is lit and the way it animates. It must have taken them ages to do some of that work. I'm looking forward to how that might work in Labyrinth So David is A spooky employee He's been involved in TNA Ultraman, Rick and Morty Alice Cooper The Jetsons Rob Zombie which some of you Will never have played but it's actually Quite a fun game He goes back to Skit-B So these are the guys that did Predator He wasn't the crook there but I think he was kind of a little bit a little bit of a victim of some of the stupidity that happened there but the copyright attaining and stuff like that this is a serious kind of, so he's an animator right and if any of you look at the animations on those games we should have some good art assets then inside the video and stuff like that then absolutely and I think again this is a team that I don't know where the money's coming from or etc but and you know what I like about this right they're doing, they're talking on the pitch as I like to say it they're not putting out we're the greatest new pinball company and we're going to do this and we're going to do that they basically said here's our game take it or leave it right and you know it's apparently going to be at Expo next week which I'm going to be at so I'll see it Oh cool, that'd be great to hear your feedback on that and I like how they've kind of launched, there's some mumbling from Canada about the name of the company but you know No one cares, they could call themselves Big Bulls R Us and I wouldn't care I mean to me you shouldn't rate the business by it's name, you rate it by the quality of the product they're putting out Yeah exactly, I mean it's like I just just seems nuts to me but it gives chris a bone to chew on i guess but i think i i've i know eric i know scott really well these guys are they've got pim you cut through their body and they bleed pinball i mean they are genuine pinball folks i'm excited for them um and i and i i hope it's a massive success i have to say it's a brave freaking move putting out a pinball machine right We were saying this earlier, right? There's just so many damn titles coming out. I feel like... What is the advantage, actually, thinking about this, is that Stern, obviously, is putting out, at the moment, to be frank, clunkers. I mean, like, it's... Venom, let's face it, it hasn't sold well. Stranger Things, we've already had it. JPLE, 30th edition, blah, blah, blah. Elvira, same thing. You know, rerun, rerun, rerun. All we got is rerun, so... there's a gap anybody who's like looking for this year and saying hmm you know this is probably the opportune time prior to like something like jaws hitting they if they strike early enough they can get some early buy and a bit like pulp fiction did at the beginning of the year so maybe just maybe they'll they'll they'll ignite what i'm worried about because i was worried that the big lebowski guys i think was it dutch pinball was going to get um there's a rumor mill that they're going to get back to the future now if they do i i don't mind it they're a good company but they're so small and i just feel like with the wrong license as in like you know hot license like that it could crush them because they'll the demand will be so hard and the spotlight will be so bright that they won't be able to meet and they'll buckle and this could happen with labyrinth even though labyrinth is a very cult done right it will sell better like than Willy Wonka would have if in my book or and I feel like although there are other puppet movies from Jim Henson i.e Dark Crystal The Muppets Christmas Carol all that other stuff it's not a bad title there's enough in the fantasy around that and he remember if you watch the film back he's got a part with these three balls where he's these crystal balls and that I think they carry parts of her uh is it I forget it's her if it's part of who she is like like she loses elements of who she is each time one of those goes so she forgets who she is so that she'll become the bride of of the of the prince of darkness or whatever his name is i can't remember i'm not like i haven't watched it recently so forgive me anybody who's a massive fan but basically they could obviously tie that into how the game is you know you've got your three balls and every time you lose a ball you're losing an essence of who she is so i feel like there's definitely a way you can tie in the license it'll be exciting to see what they come up with i'm more interested to see what they pull up with the mechs yeah and as i said i'm just concerned about them meeting the demand as i'm honest as we've been recording 40 minutes ago they just dumped all the information about labyrinth so okay all right shame we didn't record a little bit later yeah but let me let me just run through a few highlights you're doing 1100 units and they're 10 grand a piece uh they got so many accessories it's got and just game features it's You've got four multiballs, two magnets, some waves. So there's one edition? There's one edition. Interesting. Barrels of Fun, they're called. And, yeah, so David Van Eese, he's an artist, but he's the CEO of this company. Is it a wide body, as I predicted, or have they mentioned the cabinet dimensions? It doesn't look like a wide body. Interesting. Okay. I mean, that might do it. To be honest with you, I'd prefer that. It's not a wide body, because typically wide bodies have got three lanes, and it's only got two an aisle aside. Okay. It looks very nice. They've got sculpt toys and proper back glasses. It looks loaded. It's got proper ramps. None of this 3D printed nonsense. So they're wireform ramps? Wireform ramps. The wireform habit rails are solid metal ramps. ramps. I mean, at £10,000? Again, do you know what, Neil? I'm going to bring you back to this. There's a company there with a licence, with a stacked playfield at £10,000. £10,000? No, look, I'm not saying that Stern have got, or JGP have got the price right. They definitely haven't. It's too much. But this is good, right? This is what we were on about earlier. I think competition is good. We definitely need more selection. We definitely need more choice but actually there's a guy just i mean just so you know he's involved so david van eese is the designer and ceo he's they got an actual art director john Johnny Fraser-Allen i don't know the name marketing graphics Robert Blakeman uh domino so don't know him but game rules phil grimaldi so i know phil he's a friend of mine um he's a great pinball player he will do fantastic rules. Animation, Trent Armstrong, again, not someone I'm aware of. And have they talked about production schedule, like when the game is likely to start release and when they're going to take deposits? I'm just skimming through it as we... There's videos, so you can watch the videos in your own time. By the time you listen to this, you've probably watched the video, so it's kind of keen to see... From your own opinion, yeah. We definitely would like to hear what people think about it. So, Bart, what's... What I would say is that it looks like they've done a proper job. This does not look like a, you know, dare I say it, a home pin or a... You're trying to tell me it's not a spinal tap. What's wrong with spinal tap, Neil? Or a haggis. This looks like a proper... We're giving this our full go. They're probably a fan of the license, right? They have to be. They must be a fan of the film to choose something like that. It doesn't say what shipping when, or at least if it does, I haven't been able to skim it. But I think, again, look, it's more pinball, what's not to like, right? Absolutely. It looks like a flowy shooter just looking at the play field. And it looks like there's lots of little touches. A lot of little worlds under the glass sort of thing. Yeah, it definitely looks more like a world under glass than some other games. But it's got two LCD screens, not sure why. It's got colour-changing speakers. it's got magnets in the game yeah two magnets see this is a rare thing it could be that you know again I like the fact that there are people willing to take a risk in this industry still and put out something as big as that because that as it says it doesn't sound like it's cheap to make if you look at the game it looks very much like a Stern LE just the shape of the cabinet yeah like 10 grand that's a good deal yeah I can't tell where are they manufacturing it does it say if it's in the US or is it Europe? It doesn't say anything about manufacturing at least it doesn't so I'm reading this off Nap Arcade our good friend Jason there basically the distributor is a kingpin coin taker flipping out Mr Pinball joysticks classic and fun so I don't know who's I suspect Phil will be the distributor in the UK but it might be that he has to reach out again being in the UK he knows these people well so look that's that's labyrinth I'm conscious of time you know we'll probably hear more about this and hopefully this is a doesn't say it's I read somewhere that it was going to be at Pinball Expo so hopefully anticipated shipping January 2024. Wow. That means they're starting production already and they're ready to be hopefully shipping out the first set of units in Jan. They're probably going after the supply chain making sure that... The real question would be how quickly they're going to fulfill that 1,000. That's more interesting. Is it going to be like 10 units a month? It is. You've got the Blood Red Kiss, sorry, Elvira Kiss Edition, which, I mean, there's no doubt that's a cash grab. Yeah. But, you know, that's what these guys need to do. And then rumors of Spooky doing another dual-themed pinball machine, which... I don't know about that. After what happened with Ultraman and Halloween, and Ultraman was terrible. I just don't think you can give both themes, enough attention to then say, hey, you know, this playfield's going to work for both. It's really hard. No one else does it, so why are they making their work harder for themselves? Focus on one theme and smack out the park. I can see Spooky are capable of doing it. They show enough talent, I think, in order to make a good game. I feel like they've got the passion. They just need to land the right bit of code and build the right set of geometry and that's it. The Russian take care of itself. I'll quote my favourite Steve Jobs line, focus is about saying no, not saying yes right? And doing one thing well rather than two things half-heartedly. You just don't want to split your attention. And I think, you know, I mean after they did Ultraman and Halloween, which are both still not really finished games, let's be honest in terms of code. you know, they said they would never do that. I mean, I had code updates for my Rick and Moy in 2023. It just goes to show they still have code updated, and they are passionate about their games, but it just needs focus. The other big news that will come out next week is Jersey Jack's new game, which is strongly believed to be Elton. No, it's Elton John. Let me tell you, I know, I can't say how I know, but I do know that the Elton John IP has been signed to a pinball company recently. So if this isn't Elton John, someone else is working on it. If you look at the clues, like they said the countdown has begun. I don't know. And you've got all the stars in the background. It has to be Elton John. I'd say I'm a big Elton John fan, music-wise. Without sounding incredibly ageist, it's only appealing to a certain demographic of people, Neil. and I feel like El and John is a bit like, okay, you're going to apply to the nearly-deads rather than the newly-weds. I absolutely don't disagree with you, right? But, you know, I think his music... His music is good. I'm not going to lie, but it's another music pin, and you know what I'm like with music pins. The guy is a musical prodigy, and if you, you know, someone like Rocketman on a pinball machine, I have to say I think that could be pretty compelling. Unfortunately, it's made by JGP, which means I ain't... It would just be multiball, multiball, multiball. Sorry, I checked out when it said JGP. That is the danger, although this is Mr. Steve Ritchie's first game with JGP. I love Steve Ritchie. Just put it out there. Classic guy. Love his games. Love the flow. If he can build flow back in, I know he said he was going to address the flippers as well, because he hated that as soon as he started working at JJP. Maybe, just maybe, he can rescue this. I don't know. But I would rather they worked on a better license. I'm not going to lie. No, I tend to agree. Look, I think we've done the big week in pinball. Yeah. Nearly, anyway. Yeah, at least this month. Who knows what will come out next week at Expo? I think we probably have to do another episode shortly, I definitely want to hear your feedback on Labyrinth it would be very exciting to hear that and we may have a special guest for the next great British Pinball Podcast next time as well someone who you'll love I mean this is a great thing, we try and keep this to an hour and a half we're at an hour and a half now and it still feels like we've got so much to talk about. There's probably another 20, 30 minutes that we could talk about. And our hobby is, you know, despite a lot of naysayers and doomsayers and do me wrong, there's things that aren't right with the pinball industry and market and hobby, but there's an awful lot that is right. And, you know, again, I said this, I think the last... I'm not leaving this hobby anytime soon. I love it. No, exactly. I said this in the last podcast, I think, or maybe it was on another thing I was talking on, but the golden era of pinball isn't the 90s. It's right here and now. True. And get on the bandwagon and enjoy it whilst it lasts, because, you know, it may not last forever. Hopefully it does. Look how many pinball companies we've got coming out of the woods. Like, literally, there's no way you can say this is like the down spiral. I feel like, obviously, there are pressures in the economy and the world that are forcing people to consider their purchases carefully. but there's still an interest without a doubt there's still an interest there's one other thing we have to leave the world with and that is the news that both Scott and I Cactus Canyon is finally on the freaking wagon and it's coming finally have you had a call yet because I think I had a call earlier but I was at work so I had to cancel it all I know is I've paid for it which is always a big sign yeah true it looks like they're coming there's a load of Scooby Do's put on a boat for those in the UK that have ordered Scooby Do's so it's going to be an exciting next couple of months at least for me I've got two games coming and I've got no space in fact I've got three games coming because I've got a Theatre of Magic coming from Scott you do, finally I've got nowhere to put any of them we'll do a video on Theatre of Magic once it's in place we'll whisk around it did you manage to sort your back glass for it? it looks stunning, I have not sorted out the back glass I'll figure that out at some point in time we'll just stick what's there back in everyone just bear in mind what I'm putting out right now I didn't choose this 3D translight thing that he's got in there that's it, I'm out I didn't do that bit you can look at the other bit that looks much nicer Luke, you'll find us all on the regular podcast places If you want to have a chat with us We're on Facebook Look for the Great British Pinball Podcast Or on YouTube You can leave comments We'll try and get something more We'll try and get an email address set up or something You can email us But Luke, it's exciting times in pinball Live it and breathe it And enjoy it whilst it's there I'm here at New York Pinball Championship Levy and the guys run a great gig And then next week Chicago Expo Which When I get back Scott and I will hook up And we'll do a quick update On everything that we saw With that in mind Scott I'm going to Let's just answer a question If there was a theme that you could have tomorrow What would it be? The thing John Carpenter's The Thing Yeah and I can see spooky doing that. For me, the Blues Brothers. Really? I'm a massive Blues Brothers fan. I love the music. I love that whole era of blues and music. And also, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, they're very intelligent, talented people. If John Belushi was still alive, he'd be like Steven Spielberg's sort of character. I just think he would be huge. I'd love to see them do that because I love the music if you go on YouTube there's tons some folks say what's the Blues Brothers go on YouTube watch the movie it's hilarious watch some of the Saturday Night Live stuff that they used to do it's absolutely fantastic but with that we will bid you all farewell and we'll be back in a couple of weeks to do an update on all the shenanigans that have been going on and with that thank you very much, I'm Neil McRae and I'm Scott, catch you guys later cheers guys, bye bye