Oh, what's up WAP Nation and happy holidays to everybody celebrating something this holiday winter season, especially if you're trying to stay warm like me. So welcome to episode 50 of the We Are Pinball celebration, a bicontinental celebration of pinball between myself and Cengiz, and as always, podcasting is a work in progress. So, grumbles to Spotify who reported our prior recording of this episode due to an ancient version of Let It Snow that we had found to use for an intro. So that is gone now. So, use this and celebrate it in lieu of our prior, former, Sinatra-laden intro. And now with that out of the way, we will rejoin episode 50 of WAP already in progress. Take care. WAP, the spooky dead house. I'm in the spooky castle. Yeah, man. You have been working. You have been moving. You have been not sleeping. People have been knocking, knock, knock, knocking on our doors. They needed WAP. They need more WAP craziness. Because we said this show was once a month. Right, Donnie? Essentially, yeah. But then we've been overexerting ourselves and bringing even more content more frequently than that. But, yeah, it was rough this last month. I mean, I was on the road, off and on. It was three weeks straight of work, a week of moving. I just spent the first weekend, like, just at the house. Like, unpacking, of course. But it was just so cool to look out of those sunsets over the fallen corn, all the snow, snowmobiles ripping around everywhere. We're hanging out. All of a sudden, it's Christmas time. And I'm like, how long has it been since we whopped? Exactly one month ago. I think today, one month ago, we were at the launch party with the Beetlejuice game, man. That feels like a year ago. Oh, my God. A year ago. It was such a cool launch. It was such a big chaos, everything, for us also. It was just so good. We're going to talk about that. We need to catch up on everything because this is show number what? 50, right? Number 50. Hell yes. No. Hell yes, baby. It's number 50. Can you believe it? So I think we should just rewind to one month ago and take it from there. What came out? What happened? Everything. About this time, one month ago, we helped launching the BJ. You know what's special about 50? I think that's exactly how many Walking Dead LEs got sold. There's some whores in this house. There's some whores in this house. Whoa, we're back. It's WAP time, baby. WAP team just woke up. We'll be here to fuck shit up. Oh, Lord. Did we even talk about Beetlejuice? I know it came out, then I had to bounce out of town. You saw it, right? you got the trailer what do you think oh man it was so cool these guys they contacted us they were like yeah let's go live let's see your first impression of the game and we recorded it was beautiful and and donnie we made the show you know sometime before the launch and and we agreed when the game should launch and and you should make the midnight lunch and everything and i think it was 10 o'clock or something the next day that the official lunch time was right i was out i was just having fun midday for me 10 o'clock for you in the u.s so like eight o'clock or something for me spooky luke hits me up and he's like oh we moved the lunch to nine o'clock be ready with the video with the audio everything i was like what the hell i'm outside what's going on that That was fun. That was fun. I won't do that again. It was so fun. So you launched the WAP podcast. I launched the video. And the way the response was like, oh, my God, these guys had a lot of shows. But they just telling up. I mean, the response with our show, people were like, it just seems like you guys, you four, you are just having fun. You are not there to sell products, no nothing. Everything was sold out anyway. We were just having fun, you know. The response was awesome. Oh, man. So how's the last month been for you then? I mean, so much stuff has happened. So much stuff has come out. X-Men accessories are here. People are losing their minds. Walking Dead, we hate the art. The game's good. Wait, what's this cabinet bullshit? What's a butt joint? Who made the bracket? Gomez damage control. Everything is crazy. And I'm just, like, trying to follow along on the periphery of all this. geez man i've been where to start donnie right yeah first of all um especially our people on patreon they have been writing almost daily we need more wop in our lives wop wop wop and i wrote there very gently you know donnie is working donnie is not home donnie is there here now donnie's moving but i just want to make clear guys this is not 100 donnie's fault no it's not It's also my fault because in between everything, like 14 years ago, 14 days ago, Don hits me up and he's like, bro, let's do a WAP show. And I'm like, okay, let's do it. And he says, I haven't slept in two days. I'm so tired. Let's do a show. And I'm like, no, no, Donnie. No, no, no, no, no, no. Wait. You haven't slept, man. Go to sleep, brother. I will take the shots. I will take the bullets. It's my fault. Sleep. And this happened. And, you know, last week you were like, let's do a show. I have 30 minutes. I have to move. I have to trailer. It's snowing. I'm like, no, no show. Move, buddy. Move. Right, Donnie? It would have been – I would actually like to have listened to it because I have no idea. I don't even remember having that conversation. So it would have been completely insane. Yeah. But I respect that you still, without sleep, with no time, with nothing, you still hook me up to make more shows, man. Thank you, Donnie, because you're just – Oh, wait, we have got something from Pinsound. Oh, what do we got? Pinsound just released a new display, and they will ship me a promotion display. Wow, cool. Nice. Thank you, Pinsound. What is it like for a DMV or something? I don't know. It's a new display. It must be some – I haven't read it. It's just a new display. I will get it in a couple of days. It's cool. Perfect. Yeah, let me know what you think. Should we run the companies just so we can cover everything? I think, okay. So we just, a month ago it was all about Spooky. You did the midnight, you helped with the midnight release. You shared a one-minute clip where the guys were sitting at the phones, taking in orders. You just, you know, showed the room, showed the atmosphere. everybody in the pinball hobby wanted to be there. It was so cool, Donnie. Snacks on the table. How many minutes did it take to sell those games with the phone call there? About 15 minutes, maybe a little bit less than that. And that's with eight phones going. And all they were doing was saying, hi, Spooky Pinball. Yes, you got one. Give me your name. Give me your phone number. Give me your email address. I'll call you back. Click. Hello, Spooky Pinball. How many games? I don't know. Like less than 100. 80-something. I don't know. But they went fast, man. And it was cool. Like, I rolled up that morning. Like, I went to bed at 3 a.m. after the party. Like, you just finally, like, the last stragglers got out of there. I straightened things up, and they just completely crashed. And then I got up, and I'm like, there's a Beetlejuice launch going on up the street. So I drug my ass up there. Carrie was already up there filming. I think there was a couple of guys that were already at the door with cash in hand, just, like, trying their luck. They got in. Other people were playing Beetlejuice, and I was just like, I'm going to watch what happens here. And, you know, you saw that moment with, like, you know, Corwin and his dad there. And, like, all the team was all together. Like, the core team at Spooky just, like, let's sell these games, do what we can. It was just, like, a neat moment. And I felt like I was watching it on the television, like, just, like, watching this, like, Hallmark episode play out in front of me. But, like, I was there. And I was eating their donuts, too, because nobody else seemed interested. They were probably nervous. I'm scarfing donuts from the quick trip, getting my cherry dunkers on. So I feel like I helped. I helped. yeah wow yeah absolutely you're you you're a part of spooky man and i'm at at the end of the show we're gonna play a game and i'm gonna ask you not to be a part of spooky not to be spooky shield but that will happen in like 20 minutes from now i love the game i have a game i want to play with you okay so the game's hold out i just want to ask you what happened after the first 15 minutes minute number 16 a guy calls and says hello this is john i want to buy a spooky machine what happened it went from it went from being a hallmark movie to a lifetime movie and i don't know if you get that reference but like the tone got somber because as soon as they were sold out they called it they're like that's it they're gone and then the phones didn't stop for hours like people called for hours after that and it was just like oh my hi spooky no i'm so sorry we It was so much demand. And it was like they're having 15-minute conversations with people, talking them down. They're just gone. There are no more. Beetlejuice has Beetle left. That's what we got for you. We have Scooby-Doo's. We have TCM's for you. You want a Looney Tunes? We can hook you up today. But, yeah, it was just like, oh, gosh. You feel so bad for these people calling because you want them to be more. But, like, if they added 200 more games, then we would be out into 2027 building Beetlejuice, and the next game would get pushed back. And nobody wants that. I don't know what the right thing is, but I know to turn around and make 1,000 great games and make 1,000 people happy every year from Spooky, like two years ago, we wouldn't have expected this. And we're here in it, and looking at the future, it's not going to stop. So what a process. I don't know. This will be fun to look back on in five years, just like this journey and what happens, because I have no idea what's going to happen next, but it's probably going to be awesome. Yeah. But do you know what the worst part is? I am Win Schilling for Spooky Pinball because they put so much in their games and they keep the prices for under 10K. After this madness with price increase on Evil Dead and this kind of madness on this game and this kind of madness on the upcoming game next year, these guys are going to sit down and say, Okay, Cengiz says keep it under 10K, but should we keep it under 10K? I mean I think if you just adjust for inflation, keep it at that level. So it's like it's the same value level. Even though the physical price may go up with inflation, at least you're keeping that same value. That's probably what you're going to have to look at. I want it to be magical under 10K. Or I mean – You want to keep it there, but they're not idiots. They can see. I saw on Secondary Market, Beetlejuice, $20,000, man. Did they sell their stocks for $10,000? What the heck? Wow. I saw Evil Dead with Topper come up the other day for $15,500, and then today it says sold. Wow. That's wild. Still, please, I know this sounds crazy, but keep it under $10,000. So just give it the magical number onto 10K. You know, so what do you do? Do you look at eight mechanisms and say we have to lose four of these? And it's like nobody wants to do that. Do you look at the nine sculpts that are in the game and be like, let's do three sculpts, rustly plastics, and then we can keep that price point? Like is that what the people want? Do you want a pro version that's under 10 and then a loaded version? Or you just want like a great game? And, you know, even if they did that, even if they said we're going to make 1,000 games, right, and you can order the pro version or the the collector's version everybody's going to order the collector's version anyway yeah so yeah what's yeah so i think you look at what's reasonable you read the room and you still make sure that that value is baked in there but you have to look at what you can realistically make this for and still like have a business it's all it's also more to do if they make two different versions it's just more work you know yeah different especially when nobody wants that like jjp like hardly anybody's buying wizards and arcades like the majority of people are buying this collector's edition which still isn't even cut off cut off sales yet that means it's still selling crazy every week like why would you why would you limit the sales when you're still getting these big numbers um man i feel awesome for jjp now oh yeah absolutely i played harry potter for a couple of days ago wow but all that being said if spooky made a pro version for six thousand eight hundred dollars with some things taken off the game oh my god i'm just saying yeah they made a pro version oh my god can you imagine sub seven thousand yeah you know what i mean well i'm looking at what that game would look like and it would not be as impressive because you you wouldn't have plastic they could move the topper okay they It comes with a topper for 10K, right? They could lose that. They could lose that on the speaker grill effects. They could lose the powder coating, powder on the ramps, right? They could just flat pack the cabinet of MDF and you put it together like Ikea. Yeah. You ship the brackets to hold the cabinet together. They could do that. They could remove the worm. they could change their name to like spurn pinball and then that's what they could do just call it ooky we already we already have a company like that we don't need yeah they have their space this is this space you know this is it yeah yeah okay so great success with spooky and i think having you in that company just it was all the way salty now you get that pepper included in it that company is just yeah pepper baby pepper baby i'm not following the spice analogy but go with it man it's awesome yeah somebody does so it's beautiful so what came after that was it the awesome walking dead remastered that came out or was it the awesome star wars that came what came out after it was about yeah star wars was before um because we were definitely joking about that uh so this was walking dead uh which was rumored for a year and then what we didn't hear was what was going to be done. Everybody knew that the art wasn't great, although it was grotesque before. If you could keep that grotesque look, but make it more visually pleasing, I think that's what we were looking for. We weren't expecting to see large swaths of color It looked like what Kong looked like Just all these rainbow colors and everything everywhere That kind of what we saw We reacted to that But that all we had to go on We didn know about all this new cabinet build stuff You know, they didn't do a video about all that stuff. We didn't know about what was going to be on the screen. Of course, in my head we're thinking, you know, this is a great show. That's why it became a pinball machine. I want to see the clips of the show while I'm playing the game. And then we're getting not even no show clips, not even no full screen animations. we're getting the dmd just redrawn and put letterboxed on the on the lcd this huge lcd screen with like true black colors and like all this better resolution and we're getting a little letterbox of the dmd with like like a static stern logo there and a static walking dead logo why why what are we remastering we're just redressing we're not remastering metallica remastered was a complete re-imagineering of the entire art package, the visual, the band members had aged on there, and the animations, and it's like, yes, dude, this is like current Metallica, I love this, I love this so much. If they do this to Walking Dead, hell yeah! You know, and then we get the letterbox, you know, pending license or approval. No reassurances that, don't worry, as soon as this is approved, you're going to see all of this stuff. No, we got none of that. I think that's what we're getting. Why? Oh, we should get the gameplay video at spooky launch day. And then it just got called back, no video. We just got a video recently. Oh, that's right. That's right. That's right. Remember, before Beetlejuice launched, they're like, there's going to be Walking Dead gameplay video on the 14th, like the same day Beetlejuice is launching. Like, okay, fine, competition. Like a week before about the 14th with Beetlejuice. And then nothing happened. And then the first gameplay video I saw, Retro Ralph did with his, you know, Game that he purchased. Give him a horn, man. Retro Ralph. Hell yeah. So, yeah, which was phenomenal. Like, I got to see the actual game. That was the first time we all actually saw the gameplay. Like, Retro Ralph was, like, the first person to actually get to play this thing, unless you were at, were they at CES or something in Vegas or a Comic-Con or something that this thing debuted at. It's just, like. Is Ralph the official Stern guy now? I don't think he's officially. He's just, you know, he's a fan like we all are. Is Ralph the new Jack Danger? Because what? I mean, Jack Danger should be the media guy, right? Here's what's funny. Here's what's funny. We were all talking, like other shows were talking even, like, you know, Jack Danger, you know, he's off design, I guess, and now he's going to be the media head. Like, that's fine. We should be seeing him everywhere. And then he's nowhere. Where is he? Where's his content? We're not seeing anything. He should be leading the charge on this. And then all of a sudden the next week, boom, Jack Danger video. Ask Jack video. It's like, okay, good. It's happening now, whether that was always the plan or whether it was because we were asking for it. Like all of a sudden he showed up, and now we're happy because I need some more Jack. I need some more Jack. I need some more Ralph. I love me some Jack. I love me some Jack. But, yeah, we have Rachel Ralph videos. Oh, and Joel Engelberth, which is bro. Jared. Jared, yeah. I love those guys. They had the video, and we have the Jack Danger video with the designer, John Borg. One thing I just want to say, I really liked Walking Dead, but it was just so fun on one of those videos. They were saying, like, yeah, the geometry has been redesigned. You don't get the off-the-pop-bombers straight down the middle. And while he's saying that, just off-the-pop-bombers and bam, straight down the middle. I was laughing my ass off. That's funny. But the hard part, and Stern doesn't have this perspective because they're on the inside, but I'm sitting at home. I already am preconditioned to love pinball, and I want the new pinball machine. When they release it, I'm trying to think of reasons not to buy it because I am already preconditioned to want it. And I've got this money. I've got, obviously, the space. And so it comes out, but I'm lacking information. I don't know about the new cabinet design or any of that. I had to find out about that later by somebody that opened it up, and they're like, what is this? I don't know about the gameplay. I don't know what's happening on the screen. I'm seeing the game losing value, and the company's not sharing anything with me. I need just a little bit more information. Not much. I just need permission from Stern that I should go and buy this, and I wasn't seeing it. And that's what was strange. And so I'm like, well, maybe I'll just keep the money in my pocket. And as the days go on and the hype is waning, I'm like, okay, I didn't get it. I probably would have, but now we're here. Let's see what happens. So it's just strange to me. You had some love for Walking Dead, right? Absolutely. I liked this game, right? I don't have a ton. I've only played it on location. This is a game that I would love to have in the house that I can play 500 times and really get to know. Remastered. And now it's remastered, so I've been holding off on buying it. And then it just kind of lands like a wet sock, like a wet, cold sock on the floor. It feels like a missed opportunity. First of all, you never release a game with the writing on the display where it says license approval thing waiting. Never release nothing like that. That's the first thing. And the second thing, they talk right about new code updating stuff, but it's not in there yet. They're just saying all these things will come, but they're not there. So why did they release this game? If you're going to have a game two months from now, if you and the plan may have been the licensure said, yep, you're good to go on that day. And then the night before they could have said you're not good to go. And then they were stuck like that could happen. But what they should do is come out and say, well, here's the storyboards for what you can expect as soon as this embargo gets lifted. And like that wasn't there. So I'm left thinking, like, am I going to purchase this thing? And then this may be the best I get. Maybe I don't. Maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to be so evil right now. Just rotten evil, okay? I'm so tired of Stern saying it's license's fault. This topper, license's fault. The price, license's fault. This is just a flat plastic, license's fault. License's approval. Does any other company, does Jersey Jack says this game is like this because of the license? I think Stern uses the licensor thing too much. I know I sound like a dick right now, but it's the truth, man. Too much. It's a licensor thing. You know, Kerry did that great talk with George. I'm so glad they both attended that. That was fine. And, you know, George directly addressed the high price of toppers, 1,500, 1,600 toppers. And he's saying, look, we have to have a business. We have to have a margin. The distributors have to have a margin. the licensor wants what they want or we can't even do the thing and so that's why it costs what it does but what he didn't address was like you know can you lean a bit more into creativity and a little bit more of building materials rather than just the flat plastics all the time you know and i i know what they've gone and and taken sculpts that have already been approved with like godzilla they put it up there you know but there should be some sort of focal point and there's a good track record of toppers that we love the black knight sort of rage topper it's got two degrees of motion in that head and it's got leds and like the rest of the flat plastics and we love it and yes it was 500 back in the day now when they re-ran it you know maybe because they did a shorter run their margins were less they had to raise the price or who knows what happened you know but if you're gonna have it at that price and you want your margins you know bring in the creativity i want something that looks better than something i could have come up with that's what i want You make great toppers, man. If I can come up with it, I can make it. Make something I can't make. That's what I want. Donnie, how does it make you feel when George Gomez says, yeah, I would top a cost like this because of licensors need to get some money, because of distros need to get some money. How I feel is like, I just want to say, if I go out on a date, I don't want to listen to, I did put on this makeup this way. I should do this for 10 minutes. I don't care about that. I just want to see the finished product, how she presents herself out the door. Lovely, lovely lady. That's what I'm interested in. I don't care about all that stuff. How does it make you feel? I'm going to buy this $2,000 topper, but I'm going to think about distros need 500 of them. Licenser needs 500. How does it make you feel? Come on. I don't know. I get it from the business aspect. As a customer, though, if I'm just buying this for my game, that's all I want to think about is what's the price, what am I getting, and how easy is it to install, and does it do cool stuff? I don't want to think about any of the business stuff. Now, the enthusiast part of me loves all that, the nuance of what's going on and everything. But I get they've got to cover licensor costs for this. The licensor has full approval of it. I totally get that part. And there's aspects of that that I'm sure they would want to change if they could, and they absolutely can't talk about it. So that's got to be frustrating for them because they're like, Don, we have these same great ideas that you have. We couldn't do it. They wouldn't let us, and we can't say that. But I understand the frustration. Here is the issue, Don. Here is the issue, okay? Here it comes. Hate me all you want. Bring it. when you take another company like spooky that comes out with a topper that's like what the fuck is going on for the same price it they need to pay for to distros they need to pay for licensors blah blah blah blah but everybody's it's an eye opener the issue is you can get this collector's edition for $9,999. You can get this amazing topper for $1,500. Something in people has just woken up. They're like, somebody's lying. For under $10,000, you can get all this from a company that's in a barn, like Chris says. That's the funny thing. They only build thousands of them. I don't know how you say it in English, but when you buy components for 5,000 games, it will be cheaper than 1,000 games. Quantity discounts, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Economies of scale. Yeah, Stern, when they sell 5, 6, 8, 10,000 of these games, they should be able to do it so much cheaper. So one thing in the consumer's mind is, how greedy are they? How much money are they making? what the heck is going on here this is why i know stern is not in financial trouble because they keep they keep doing this because they keep selling they keep hitting their numbers i think i think their sales are perfectly fine i think there's a whole shadow community of people out there that just they just keep buying and don't complain or if they complain it's online but they still do it anyway so as a company if they're seeing like yeah okay the loud mouths on the internet are criticizing us for this. But look, we're out of stock. So we probably should have charged more. You know, that's what they're saying. Us content creators, us, you know, that are very deep in the hobby, we think this is only us. It's not. I know a lot of people that I'm friends with, they don't know I have a YouTube channel. They just buy pinball. I see people just coming and buy pinball machines. They don't know who George Gomez is. Yeah. They're just like, oh, Star Wars themed. They just buy that game. So Stern is making a lot of money. We know. This is with panic and stuff like that. I'm not talking about that. It's just us. Yeah. We're really deep in the hobby, you know? Oh, yeah. I angry cry about it. I rock myself to sleep in a corner stressing about it. But we know distributors, and distributors have their customers that say, look, whatever Stern released, give me the good one. When the accessories come out, just send them to me. You have my credit card number. Just invoice me. and it just shows up. They don't see the pre-release. They don't see the sizzle reel. They don't listen to hours of people complaining about the flat plastic design. There's a box that shows up one day and they're like, oh, cool. I'm going to go put this on my toy and then life goes on. So there's margins of this and we happen to be a very vocal, enthusiastic bunch and I think we got some reach and some pull with a demo. I don't know what my thesis here is. I want to be that guy that can afford to just have everything, just a subscription, just show up. But I'm not there. I'm not there. There are like two kind of people right now. It's like, Stern is going under. They're not selling no games. And the other camp is saying like, okay, you're just in, let's say, Spooky or Winchester hype right now. It's like 1,000 games or 500 games. Spooky says that in a week. They don't care. So we have got these two camps now. The issue is if we only take the limited edition of the Walking Dead, how many games? Was that 700? Was it 500? 500. 500. Yeah. Now we can compare that with Winchester. Yeah. Winchester sold out in an instant. Look at Stern's game. I mean, people are waking up because something is wrong, Donnie. You can get so much for your money in one place. I mean, something is up. Here's who this is stressful for. So, you know, a lot of people, maybe one game is their purchase for the year, you know. And so imagine being in that spot like, I can get one of these. Which one do I get? And you don't really know other than rumors what's coming down the road. and you know if your one game that you purchased was Beetlejuice or Winchester or something you're like I won yes I'm going to have a game that's going to double in value we're going to have all this fun look at all these mechanisms in here Carl DeLangelo is a great designer whatever but like what if your one game was like X-Men you know and it's like I got my X-Men and like now it's like lost a ton of value the code really struggled and then the accessories come out and it's like it's a high price it's not that impressive but you're stuck with it like if you want to continue to participate and decking out your machine, and you made that choice, you know, because it seemed like the best choice to you at the time, you know, it was Jack Danger's follow-up game. You know, the code's going to be amazing, and they're going to keep releasing cool stuff, and he's going to push the boundaries with accessories, and then none of that happens, and, like, you're stuck with it. Like, that sucks, man. What a place to be in. And losing so much money. Yeah, yeah. And then what are your options? You, like, lose money and sell it, and then you don't have enough to buy something else, or you just kind of like try to get along with what you have. And, you know, the game's fun. I like the layout. It's innovative. I love the danger room that's there. The code's getting better. But, you know, the accessories didn't blow me away. And how do you feel? Like, hey, do you want to come over and play X-Men? It's like, no, man. We're at Winchester. We taking off over here man We going to be at Taylor house We not coming over to see you Kevin or whoever you know I mean this is an expensive hobby These are expensive toys Donnie And not everybody in this hobby are doctors like you. For some people, Donnie, but listen, for some people, they have to work a whole year to buy a brand-new pinball machine. And I respect that. There's nothing wrong with that. So people are checking out the market, where do I get most for my money? And we're just used to, you know, people are used to just buying from Big Daddy Stern, and I love Stern, don't get me wrong. But I just think in 2025, it's an eye-opening year, man. You can get so much more for the same or lesser money. Every time I discuss everything with my bro, I think, last time I said to him, Man, people can say whatever they want to say, but Stern Pro is the best bang for your buck. That's how I feel. And then he hits me back with, yeah, for $3,000 more, you can get a Harry Potter arcade edition. Have you seen that play feel? And I'm just standing there speechless because he's right. Yeah. That big screen, all that content, your mini, oh, man. Big screen also. Don't get me started. I love that screen. You know what that screen doesn't have? A little letterboxed area where all the animations are happening. Family. Letterboxed. There's Harry firing a spell at Voldemort. It's four inches by 12 inches. That's what you get. And you get a big Jersey Jack logo and then a Harry Potter logo. And every now and then a Pepsi ad will come in. at least put at least put the stock numbers on the bottom of the screen or something give me a give me a ticker donnie man hey i missed you man usually you hit me up every day this these last two three weeks you have just been off man oh god it's yeah it was it was nuts um i'm almost out of it yeah once we get once we get to february it's everything gonna be great i i respect that And next time you hit me up dead tired, let's do a Warp Show. I'm going to say, no, go to sleep, man. Go to sleep. Those will probably be the best shows, man. But I want to say I love, you know, crazy hours a day. You just hit me up with a video, a picture, or something cool, or something that's coming up. You do this. I get retro Ralph. Underneath everything, he's such a lovely, sweet guy. He can send you a message that will just make your heart melt. All of a sudden, 6 o'clock in the morning, my phone rang. I take it up. It's Chris Caloris. He's on fire. I need to cool him down. Or he's in great mood, talking about his kids. We're having some fun. Or he's like, man, industry news. I'm going to share this shit with you. And it just keeps on with all this great stuff. I love this hobby. I love you guys. But, Donnie, you have to write to me every day, man. Call me every day. or I miss you. I get unbalanced. It's funny. Cool stuff happens to me all the time, or just strange things, or terrible things. I don't know. I share a piece of that, but if you had any idea of the meaning I live in constantly, it's bonkers, man. The people I run into, the situations, they're crazy. Broke down on the side of the road the other day in the freezing cold snow. Met some lovely people. They live in a diesel shop. They offered me some deer chili strange stuff happens what did you have in the trailer when the fire sparks came out of that trailer i'm glad you asked i had eight pinball machines i had a a leather sectional sofa i had um yeah all my toolboxes like all the big pinball machines in there absolutely man oh my god so did the refrigerator what happened yeah i was just driving along okay for those who are just catching up i borrowed a trailer from my pinball friends and drove it three hours through the icy snow to get to the new house with everything that was too big to throw in my pickup truck. And at some point, you know, I got a flat tire in the trailer, didn't notice it at all. That tire went ahead and chewed itself to crap and jettisoned itself from the vehicle. And then, you know, Monica's sitting in passenger seat. She looks back there and she's like, people are flashing their lights and there's sparks coming from the back of the trailer. She's like, all right, great. Great. We're like 20 minutes away from the nearest town. It's free. It's 10 o'clock at night. It's dark. It's Friday afternoon. and everything's closed, let me pull over and let's just get stuck right here. So we do that. So, yeah, one rim was where one tire was completely gone. It was just the rim. And then the shrapnel from the tire explosion took out the tire next to it, so it's slowly deflating. So if we didn't pull over, we were going to be without two tires. And so I was on the side of the road for about three hours until, like, some local stopped and took me over to a tractor supply place, and we found some trailer tires ready to go, mounted and everything. We threw them on and we were able to get back on the road. So that was fun. So, moral of the story, carry a couple of spares in the trailer and a floor jack. That would be a great idea. It's a great idea, yeah. Wow, man, it's crazy. And between all of this, you still hit me up. You still sent me pictures. You were like, let's do a WAP show. I'm at the road. Roadside WAP. That's how Quimbal. You fire behind my car. Dom's roadside assistance, yeah. And, like, what do you do? We could have left the trailer there overnight, but it looks like it's got half my game collection in it. I don't want to just leave it here. What do you do, man? What do you do? What an adventure. I understand. Yeah. But they look good in the new house, man. I love it. So, yeah, we got some accessories. We got some X-Men stuff. Are you excited? Did you buy everything? No. I don't have the game anymore, man. I got rid of those. I mean, the topper looks fine. I usually always say this. I like the topper. I like the topper. It looks okay. They change it. Yeah. It's just for the price. I'm trying to think if I had an X-Men still, would I buy that? What's the price? Do you remember the price of the topper? It's $1,500 or $1,599 or something. There you go. Yeah. So it's the same price as the Beetlejuice topper. And so I guess it's not coded yet because there's UV effects in it, but it's not really taking advantage of that other than in attract mode. So waiting on some code updates for it. I'm sure they're going to come. The main thing, the main driving thing for the Stern toppers is the one-to-one interactivity you get with the game and so that's ultimately what you're buying yeah it's just a hundred dollars of plastic i get it but it's like you know the integration with the game with the modes extra modes that should be unlocked if you end up buying this damn thing i'm not mad about that dude if you pay fifteen hundred dollars you should get some dlc with it for cripes sakes you know you know i don't see like other people being upset about that they paid that much money give them something dude if they pay 13 000 for the limited edition they should have an extra mode absolutely extra call outs give an extra give an extra play field or something the pro or the premium yes it should it should be a special years back you could go into what's that loser page pins pin side yeah you could go in there and see say look at my new game i have got this this is special it's so hard to get i got it and everybody should right there you are so cool you got this kid that's it's it's dead and gone now you have nothing special nothing nothing as a pinball fan with a garage i should not be able to create an le on my own from a premium i shouldn't be able to take a premium and take 800 bucks and turn it into an le like there should be some new play field that's in there uh new art on something sparkles come on that should be a given um yeah yeah like like yeah interesting radcals an expensive powder coating process an awesome shooter rod some great topper that like i can't make like that's what they should be man i should be able to make modes modes that you cannot make yeah an extra insert on the play field that shows that mode i want to say oh i traveled and i found an le just so i could play that extra mode like i want to make it like a destiny oh there's one of those there's not that many this does this new thing that's what i want and yeah but it's not done because they're probably selling plenty of them and they don't they don't have to that's the only thing that makes sense to me if you give any Stern premium game to Donnie, Don's Mod Customs, and pay him the $3,200 different, trust me, he will make it better than the Stern Elite. Trust me. In an instant. That Jaws was so good. Metallica was great. I made a cool topper for Metallica. Yeah, it was a lot of work, but you know what I mean. Just the new powder card, the armor you're getting home from Europe, and then, oh, painting They look amazing. Cab custom. We got accessories for the Walking Dead also. Did you buy it? Do you love it? No, of course not. I'm not adverse to the Walking Dead. I think I'd like to get one at some point. There's just no rush for me right now to do that. And the longer I wait, the cheaper it'll be and the more decked out it'll be. I'll probably be able to find an LE with the topper here soon. And I saw, dude, there was like a Foo Fighters LE with the topper, that $1,600 topper and a shooter rod, and somebody was selling it for $9,000 or something. Like, what is going on, man? I would totally buy a $9,000 limited edition Walking Dead with topper right now. What, the topper included in that price? Yes, yes. Dude. Dude, yeah. So I'm good, man. I'll wait. The code will get better. Maybe they'll fix that letterbox issue, and then I could pick up a $9,000 LE with a topper. I would be happy. I'd go do that today. Wow. The same thing is going on with King Kong for 10K for the LE. I don't get it. That's an L-1, too. I like that game. That's L-1's new game. What the heck? What the heck? Something is up, man. Yeah. But, Donnie, you mentioned George Gomez was at Cary Harden's show. I actually watched that show a couple of days ago. and I must say Kerry has been very mean towards me but I think I want to be a man and say on that show Kerry was really cool I like how he did the show there the thing I have an issue with is I really from my heart didn't like George Gomez being at that show the whole aura behind the show it was like for me I go over 20 years back for me George Gomez has a rockstar status and this felt you can see his camera all the setup the color saturation everything is great where George Gomez camera was just too bright the audio wasn't good and every time he tried to show something we all know how flaky jakey USB cables are so he loves the camera connection it was just so i hated that this was george gomez i don't want to see george gomez like this a month ago george gomez had this panel with stern guys george sat there and five or six stern guys sat there and they were drinking beers they were holding the you couldn't see the name of the beer they don't want to advertise and they talked pinball for an hour it was stern and was professionally produced i loved it on that video i saw George Gomez watch and i wrote there man look at that watch it's so cool like 10 minutes later george gomez hits me up private the sweetest guy in the world he goes and takes pictures of his watch he sends me the pictures he sends me the info he sends me how he got the watch won it from who gave it to him we talked about james bond and i was like george please sell me that watch and he said no man do you know how i got it he explained they would think i've i love this guy and i just he's the best and seeing him like this in any it could be an hour show it has got nothing to do with carol hardy just that whole what's it called that the whole that aura around it I just didn't like it do you know what I mean yeah like the low quality camera and lighting and everything didn't elevate him to the status that this man deserves exactly if I could speak English I would say exactly that Tony and the man was trying and the camera was off I'm like oh no so people has been attacking Stern because of the new what are they calling ikea quality cabinet right with screws right yeah so he says he says no glue screws only right right well so um yeah the the panels are not glued together uh they're they're bolted with brackets so there can be more repeatability or whatever i who knows yeah so So from my insiders, and I don't know if this is true, when they buy these cabinets, they transport a lot of air and they pay for that and blah, blah, blah. So at the end of the day, this move makes the bill of material about $200 cheaper for Stern. That's what I have heard. So if that's true, that's a lot of money. So is this the way to make some more money? Because I have a feeling like every time you talk about price, it's like we haven't had a price increase for two years. In between the lines, we need some price increases. But they know, Donnie, what will happen if that $13,000 elite goes up to $14,200. Will you buy them? We're not buying them at $13,000 now. So no. Yeah, that's tough. Unless the value is there. I mean, people will spend $15,000 for a Jersey Jack CE because you get a topper, you get rad cows, the whole thing is decked out. It's got under cabinet lighting, back lighting. It's got all those things. Like there's a lot of value that's built in there versus the offering from Stern. And so Stern could raise prices if they tremendously stepped up the value part of it. Tremendously. Yeah. Because what we're seeing is value decreasing and the price is staying the same. So effectively, they are raising the price. It's like a month later, they go down, the Illies, go down to about $10K. It feels like you were there when Godzilla Illy came out, right? For $10,500. Yeah, because the game before Godzilla Illy was $9,500 for the Illy. I don't remember what it was for 2020. I'm trying to think. What was it before? Was it like Deadpool or something? No, I think that's earlier. Black Knight Sword of Rage was 2019. Batman 66 was earlier Aerosmith was earlier That 16 yeah Stranger Things Jurassic Park Jurassic was 19 right Yeah I think I was probably right before yeah Because that was the old one before. Stranger Things, they couldn't sell Stranger Things. I remember. I mean, we couldn't sell them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it was 9.5. Then we got, you know, then we got Godzilla, and it was 10.5. And people were like, why this $1,000? What the heck? And the saying was, it has a camera now. You can go into this insider connected. That's why you pay $1,000 more. Yeah. And we were like, oh, that's right. Cool. Okay, then. Three months later, they come up with, what's this band, one of the ladies sings, Rush. Yeah. They come up. Yeah, they wrote $13,000. People were like, what the heck? I remember the Rush topper coming out and being $1,700. I remember Mandalorian coming out and being that much. Oh, it may have been Mandalorian around that time too. Wow. Yeah. Amazing, man. Okay, okay. More medieval madnesses. Are you going to buy one? No. Still not. No? I like it, but it's not for the home. It's going to get boring. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Donnie. So I want to play a game with you. Oh, shit. Unless you want to talk more about pinball machines. Let's do a game. Let's do a game. Hey, cool. I want to play a game with you because this is end of the year. And I actually, I wrote to you and said, I really want to make a, you know, game of 2025. Let's rate them. And I talked to a couple of people about it on our Patreon. And all of a sudden, other content creators started writing to us, include me, include me, so we can make a whole show about this. But we just haven't had the time. So let's just do this together. The cool part is you are not prepared. So when I ask you the questions, you are not going to say spooky, spooky, spooky because you're a spooky guy. Because you're not prepared. And I love this. Now you will just answer me what you think in an instant. Now, the way we do this, earlier today I listened to Pinball Show from Zach Manning. What a great show he made. And I wrote down exactly the same things he said with his dear friend Dennis Creasel. And listen to this. They did it this way. Best sound and music. Best call-outs. Best animation. Light, art, toys, innovation, topper, theme, theme integration, rules, shots and layout, game launch. Best accessories. Best surprise. Best high-end product Most improved from last year Overall game of 2025 They did this and we're going to Copy this one to one Now on Zach and Dennis' show For Every category they mention Three games and then you have to Be on their Patreon To know which game that's number one We're not going to do them like that We are just going to say our pick you can pick one maximum three games so when i say based on the music you can say one two and maximum three games okay okay cool and the games do you think we should include evil dead because it came out last year and we have got beetlejuice this year i feel like we could included how do you feel yeah so you know evil dead was revealed last year but it wasn't made or shipped until this year so it seems like a 2025 game you know it was at it was at 2025's tpf uh that 2025 was the first time people got to play it you know and i wouldn't consider beetlejuice a 2025 game right now because it's not made yet why not why not i think the game is up winchester the game is out you can go online and you can ride winchester you can see all the art of winchester you can see gameplay videos i think that's why i think that's why when the twippies lights they didn't go january to january they went like december to november just because there were games that were released late in the year that you really weren't november it is i mean you can see you can see if you have played okay you and a lot of other guys has played beetlejuice i think we should include both Beetlejuice on this one, Winchester on this one, because... You cannot hide the art. You cannot hide it. Yeah, but you don't know yet where the call-outs are going to be. You don't know where the code is going to be, because it's still pre-release. So in those categories, it's hard to judge. You cannot see where the call-outs and the code is going to be on The Walking Dead either. They said they will do a lot of stuff. The game is out, but you don't know anything. That is true. But then do you include Evil Dead and Beetlejuice this year? Yes. Because Evil Dead was released. And next year I will do the same. All right. Well, if you want to just throw them all into the mix, yeah, sure. Yeah, let's do this. So Evil Dead, Dungeons & Dragons, and I'm not sure how you feel about it, but it's only one-third pinball machine, but Portal, I want to include it if you want to. Portal's game of the show. Yeah, of course. Cool. Portal, yeah. Merlin's Arcade, Dune, King Kong, Harry Potter, Predator, Jaws 50th, it's also, Medieval Madness, Star Wars, Fall of the Empire, Winchester, The Walking Dead, Remastered, and Beetlejuice. Can we just look at that list? How amazing is this list, man? Woo! Ooh, it's, I mean, 2025, thank you to all the pinball companies. This is so, we're so lucky. Look at the list. We got to send everybody an award just because this year was just bangers. There are no bad games in there. Look at the themes also. Wow. I love them. I love them. So, okay. Yeah. Don't be a spooky shield. Don't be a spooky shield. You're not prepared. Okay. The first question, best sound and music of these games. So just think fast, best sound and music. I'm trying to think of the, like, Evil Dead had great call-outs. The music was atmospheric but didn't really push any boundaries. Like, you don't have, like, the Evil Dead song in your head. Harry Potter is, like, phenomenal in every account. Jaws. Call-outs is another category. So we're just music. It's only music and sounds. All right, let's pick out a couple. Let's pick Harry Potter. Let's pick Jaws 50th because the Jaws music is great. Maximum three. Maximum three. For music, I'd throw Fall of the Empire in there because it's got Star Wars music. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. The only thing it gets. I love Star Wars music, but for me, best sound and music, number one in 2025 is when i press new game on predator that music is amazing so for me absolutely number one for best sound of music is predator but honorable mention winchester oh my god donnie music is just amazing on winchester i love the it reminds me of you know the old commodore 64 sit chip or yamaha chips or a32 chips on the old 90s pcs it reminds me of stuff like that and i love the music in winchester but for me sound and music predator is number one What's your number one they should fight? You would probably pick Star Wars, right? It's a hard one. Oh, no, no. I wouldn't pick Star Wars, even though it's incredible. I think I'd go with Jaws just because I love that movie. I love the sounds. Yeah. Yeah. John Williams. Yeah. Absolutely. Kill it. Kill it now. Yes. Fair, fair. All right. Let's jump down to best call-outs of the year. All right. Call-outs. I know exactly what I'm going to pick. Yeah. I mean, I love Michael Dorn in D&D, but I don't think I would pick that as a top three. Evil Dead is probably going to take it. I don't think. Evil Dead is my number one. Yeah, yeah. Like, I do love the call-outs in Harry Potter. I'll put that number two. If the call-outs were coming, like, from the characters themselves, or they had custom speech from a character, that would put it over the top. But I think on Evil Dead, for sure, everything they got from Bruce Campbell and more. And there's probably still stuff they haven't even put in there. I don't want to be Spooky Shield, but Evil Dead Callout. You've got a skill shot. Good for you. Like, fuck, dude. It's awesome. He said something fun all the time, all the time. It's so freaking good. Yeah, that's number one for me. Nothing's stopping that, man. If I should pick a number two on best callout. Predator. Get to the chopper. No, no. Predator has the worst callout. Best music, worst callout. But second best worst callout for me, Winchester. That dark voice. Seance multiple. Donnie, it's good, man. It's really good on Winchester. It is. I love it. Yeah. Okay, okay. By that, then you have to give number three to Medieval Madness because those callouts in Medieval Madness are awesome. We're talking about a game from the 90s. I love the drunk guy in Medieval Madness. I'm the king of pain. The king of bourbon. come in and let's go out and fight or something he's just drunk i love it okay next one i have a clear winner here best animation and display oh walking dead you almost got me you almost got me for a second i was ready to come back uh yeah how was how does harry potter not get this one uh i have harry potter down here dude harry potter's display is next level yeah i mean it's a custom animations the the movie clips are up there jiminio and having to just fill the screen with all those goblets and it's overlaying all the text and everything like it's it's phenomenal man yeah yeah that's and you know what and i can see what's going on on that screen now it's not like on the Hobbit when I'm confused. It's easy to understand. When you're locking balls and you've got the three kids there and their wands start glowing when their ball locks qualified and they kind of have a slow animation to them, all of that is appreciated. All of it is noticed. All of that was a lot of work to take those static images and then get them swinging and moving a little bit. Yeah, just perfect. Wow. So we agree on Harry Potter, both of us? Yeah, I think so. All right, that's fine. Okay. Whoa, this is interesting. I like this category. Best lighting on the play field on everything. What do you think? Let's call out – I'm just going to go down the list and call out Dune for lighting. Winchester for lighting if I'm counting all the displays and everything. Evil Dead is dark. Yeah. Beetlejuice for lighting. because yeah, starting with Beetlejuice, they really stepped up a lot of the lighting. There's even more lighting effects that are in there to the point that you're not even going to need expression type lights in the cabinet because of all the lights that are hidden everywhere. And I think they're even going to do a kit to upgrade Evil Dead to some of this new lighting effects just to help lighten things up. He said that on our show. Yeah, so Dune's got some cool lighting effects for sure. Winchester does and Beetlejuice does. So which one's the best? Which one's the best of those three? Well, of the three, I've played Beetlejuice the most. And I see with the modes how it all changes. Now, Dune may be better. I just haven't had that much time on it, especially with the newer code. So I'll put that as an asterisk. But yeah, all three of these games were great with lighting. And Harry Potter also. What the fuck am I talking about? Harry Potter. Yeah. Throw that in the mix too. I don't know who's best. yeah i have the harry potter ce to think about on the playfield behind the play that's true what about that topper the topper is animated have you seen thing is going on up at the topper let's not talk about that okay the little okay the quidditch on a on a piece of plastic yeah yeah it does have the dark mark projection okay and i don't think any of these games have projections other than the Pepper's Ghost effect on Winchester. So, yeah, I'd put it between Harry Potter and probably Winchester for lighting. Okay. For me, for me, the first thing I wrote down was Dune. The lighting on Dune, when it changes from blue to orange night and day, it's amazing. So Dune is there. Beetlejuice lighting. oh my god it's so well lit that people that watches the video says it's too bright that's right that's right like the cameras were picking up way too much saturation and i could say in person that's not a problem um that was camera thing i love it but the playfield and all the molded stuff it's so colorful and colorful lighting i love that builders playfield i love the light of Harry Potter Collector's Edition. All that spark, all that gold everywhere. It's just... There's not a dark area. There's not a dark area on that playfield anywhere. It's amazing everywhere. I mean, it's just so magical. But one more that I really like the lighting effect. I don't know how to explain, but King Kong. I love the light of the... It's so bright. I love it. Nobody will agree with me. But for me, King Kong is in there also. Really enjoy it. So if I should choose between Dune, Beetlejuice, Harry Potter, and King Kong? Just give it to Potter. Oh man, Potter is so amazing. Under cabinet, back cabinet lighting, the projected dark mark. You get points for projections for me. I love projections. I want a game to illuminate my entire game room with projected effects all over the place. like transform my room please you know i just want to say to the companies dune beetlejuice harry potter kate kong all four companies top marks thank you yeah yeah thank you in 2025 wow just all four of them amazing wow wop episode 50 is really kicking off and going amazing but we're only halfway done for now this will be the publicly available version the second half is available next week however if you're over on the patreon it is there right now click over and pick up if you haven't joined patreon.com backslash we are pinball is the way to get in there very low price to start and you could finish today otherwise look forward to that in the future we love you WAP family for life