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Episode 189 - Royale With An Offer You Can't Refuse

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·held·Mar 19, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

JJP Godfather announcement: $12k-$15k pricing, unique layout, video game-inspired rules, art/music concerns.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers discusses Jersey Jack Pinball's Godfather game announcement ahead of Texas Pinball Festival 2023, covering design, pricing, art direction, and rules mechanics. The hosts also allocate significant time to community engagement around Steam code giveaways and reflect on their personal gaming history.

Key Claims

  • Godfather will have 5,000 limited edition models at $12,000 and 1,000 collector's edition models at $15,000

    high confidence · Dennis citing official JJP pricing structure from Napp Arcade article

  • The game features 29 different ball paths through use of diverters

    high confidence · Dennis referencing JJP's official emphasis on ball path variety

  • Keith Johnson designed rules for Godfather similar to his previous JJP work on Guns N' Roses

    high confidence · Dennis identifying Keith Johnson as rules designer from JJP announcement materials

  • The game uses two coils firing at 10 hits per second each to simulate a Tommy gun firing 20 rounds per second

    high confidence · Dennis quoting Eric Menier's design explanation from Straight Down the Middle featurette

  • JJP has 'doubled down' on home environment gaming and abandoned operator-focused standard editions

    medium confidence · Dennis's interpretation of JJP's pricing and edition strategy

  • The call-outs are custom-written (not from film audio) and feature over-the-top stereotypical New York mobster impressions

    medium confidence · Dennis citing Ron Hallett's analysis from Slam Tilt podcast

  • Godfather uses red and gold color scheme matching current Blu-ray box set branding

    medium confidence · Dennis noting feedback from someone who compared to Blu-ray packaging after his Flipping Out video

  • JJP successfully secured audio clips from the Godfather films for call-outs and scene integration

    high confidence · Dennis citing JJP's promotional materials and featurettes

Notable Quotes

  • “There are 29 different ball paths so because their use of diverters and stuff the way they're they didn't count the number of shots they're counting the number of different ways the ball might return based off of a shot”

    Dennis @ ~00:45:00 — Explains JJP's emphasis on mechanical complexity through diverter usage rather than traditional shot counting

  • “I'm like, that's going to be so loud. That is my biggest concern is that it's going to be so loud and so rapid and so jarring.”

    Dennis @ ~00:57:00 — Expresses concern about the rapid-fire Tommy gun knocker implementation potentially creating unbearable noise levels

  • “These prices, these are home environment games, obviously. I think that Jersey Jacks clearly doubled down and said, like, we're done with standard editions. This is my interpretation. We're done with operators.”

    Dennis @ ~00:54:00 — Interprets JJP's pricing strategy as deliberately targeting collectors/home players rather than commercial operators

  • “I'm not a big fan of the red and gold look because I don't really associate it with Godfather.”

    Dennis @ ~00:49:00 — Expresses aesthetic criticism about color scheme choices, though acknowledges they may be licensing-driven

  • “The rules in a way that the approach of it kind of reminds me of Stern Star Trek. In this case, there's like a stained glass window above the flippers instead of the little quadrant of different missions.”

    Dennis @ ~00:42:00 — Draws mechanical comparison between Godfather's territory control rules and Star Trek's mission structure

  • “I'm not sold on the idea of Godfather as a game theme. But from what it sounds like they've done with the rules, I'm actually way more interested in it than I ever thought I would be.”

    Tony @ ~00:44:00 — Shows shift in perspective on Godfather as theme based on rules implementation details

  • “The electric guitar rendition is like nails on a chalkboard to me”

    Dennis — Expresses strong negative reaction to the electric guitar arrangement of the Godfather theme on the game

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyEric MenierpersonKeith JohnsonpersonChristopher FranchipersonJesper AbelspersonJohn Paul DeWinpersonJack DangerpersonRon HallettpersonTexas Pinball Festival 2023eventNapp Arcadecompany

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2023 expected to feature Godfather playable for first time; hosts anticipate significant queue lengths due to game popularity

    high · Dennis: 'I can't wait to see what the lines at TPF are like. It's going to be so bad.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Rapid-fire Tommy gun knocker (two coils at 10 Hz each = 20 Hz total) raises mechanical noise and potentially operator-unfriendly concerns based on historical Roadshow shaker motor complaints

    high · Dennis: 'I'm like, that's going to be so loud. That is my biggest concern is that it's going to be so loud and so rapid and so jarring' with parallel to Roadshow complaints

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Electric guitar arrangement of Godfather theme score viewed as anachronistic and tonally inappropriate; hosts prefer orchestral version if available

    medium · Dennis: 'The electric guitar rendition is like nails on a chalkboard to me' and 'it just doesn't fit the era'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: JJP incorporating territory control mechanic from video games (Mafia series inspiration) into pinball rules structure using stained glass mission progression similar to Star Trek

    high · Dennis explaining rules approach: 'The rules of this are very video game inspired...territory control concept is something that's actually really common in Mafia-style video games'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: JJP secured audio clips from Godfather films for call-outs but appears to have custom-written dialogue for pinball-specific callouts due to lack of original film content matching pinball actions

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.267

0:00
welcome to the collective gamers podcast today is sunday march 19th this is episode 189 i am tony And I'm Dennis, and we're on the precipice of Texas Pinball Festival 2023.
0:30
As we noted from the last episode, there have been a lot of games that have been dropping, and we're expected to continue dropping, and we've got more to talk about. In fact, there's still not everything known yet. Like, Galactic Tank Force still hasn't had its gameplay reveal yet, but we've had two games that have had that since we did the last episode, and on the last episode, we talked about two games. We talked about Foo Fires, and we talked about the new P3 game, Final Resistance. So, holy cow, it has been a lot. So, before we get into the intros, I want to note, we didn't have any new patrons from the last episode. So, we're still at 51. So, no update necessary there. And now I will say, Tony, what's been going on?
1:14
I have started playing through Jedi Fallen Order. Didn't you play that before? I did, but I didn't complete it. Now I'm playing through it with the goal of completing it. So we'll see how it goes. But it was just easier to start it over because it's one of those where you start playing and it's like, I don't remember any of the controls and I don't remember where I am and I don't remember what I'm doing. So I just started over.
1:38
But on the Discord, we had a question from Joel Bob asking why we, as in you and I, stopped playing Magic the Gathering. because I know we've talked about it in the past multiple times about playing it a lot back in the day.
1:55
@ ~00:59:00

  • “The family approach, again, very – you don't get that feel from the movie so much. I mean, you know there are rival families fighting each other, but giving them sort of more of an identity, that's a very video game style thing, and I think it makes a lot of sense.”

    Dennis @ ~00:51:00 — Analyzes how game design adapts film themes through video game mechanics (territory control)

    • Straight Down the Middleorganization
    Dennisperson
    Tonyperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Foo Fightersgame
    The Godfatherproduct
    Slam Tilt podcastorganization

    medium · Dennis noting 'they probably won't be, won't be like they have, you know, you got Brando parts, you got Pacino parts' and 'custom stuff...over the top new york like'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Red/gold color scheme potentially mandated by modern Godfather Blu-ray licensing rather than period-accurate design choice; creates disconnect from original 1940s-70s film aesthetic

    medium · Dennis receiving message from viewer showing current Blu-ray uses red/gold; concludes 'That was probably a dictate' from licensor

  • $

    market_signal: JJP pricing ($12k-$15k range) with no standard/operator editions suggests deliberate pivot to home collectors/enthusiasts away from location-based operators

    medium · Dennis: 'I think that Jersey Jacks clearly doubled down and said, like, we're done with standard editions...We're done with operators. These are for the home.'

  • ?

    announcement: Jersey Jack Pinball officially announced Godfather with two edition models (LE $12k, CE $15k), design team, and detailed mechanical/rules implementation

    high · Dennis citing official JJP specs and Napp Arcade coverage; detailed designer credits provided

  • ?

    product_strategy: Godfather CE and LE differentiated by playfield art (Brando vs Pacino) and gold trim, maintaining identical shot layouts and core gameplay

    high · Dennis noting 'The one with Marlon Brando on it is the collector's edition. The one with Al Pacino is the limited edition' with identical layouts

  • ?

    product_concern: Alley pass/shat targets on Godfather appear mechanically safer than previous JJP implementations; wire form design routes ball consistently rather than relying on random passes

    medium · Dennis comparing to Foo Fighters concerns: 'These look a little safer...they've got it set up so that the wire form that feeds that right side actually bounces the ball up to hit it'

    • And I have to say, for me, a lot of it was money. Okay. Money and time. Once college got over, it was money and time. Yeah. My issue was more that when we were in college, which is I started playing in high school because we had a friend And that was really into magic and kind of got us started or at least got me started. And then I played a lot in college. And the reason was we lived off campus.
    2:26
    Tony and I lived in the same apartment one year. And then we lived in the same complex but in a different apartment for – I was there for three years. So for me, for two more years.
    2:35
    And we knew other people, though, in that complex that played magic. And so we would get together at people's apartments and we'd just play. I think I only ever entered into one tournament, and that was pre-college. I think the person we knew in high school hosted one somewhere at one point, and I went and played in that. So I wasn't ever in the quote-unquote competitive scene in any meaningful way. It was always just local gatherings, local games, and playing against roommates, playing against former roommates, playing against friends or other people we knew in the complex. And we kind of did what we call a type zero. so people could, we weren't always having to build new decks. We could play with our older cards because one of the things that, I was new to Magic, so I wasn't, I started to understand that they would release new card sets. And at this time, I understand it's like the mid to late 90s, so the Internet for personal use is fairly young. So we were just now learning how to, you know, you'd find out about these sort of things and then you could go to the card shop. We would still get magazines. We'd still get the, what was the magazine for Magic? Was it Wizard? It'd be in Wizard or something like that? Yeah. And there was – we were living in Lawrence, Kansas, which is where the University of Kansas is, and there was a comic book shop that also dealt in magic cards. So we could go there when there was a new edition or new release, a new pack, a new expansion, whatever you want to call it, and get cards. So the main thing is after college, I no longer was around where people could just walk over, knock on your apartment door, and say, hey, let's play some magic. So that's really the main reason for me. I still have my cards from the old days, and I've thought about selling some of those cards, especially the colors I didn't play as much because I was mostly a black and white deck. I do black decks, white decks, or merged decks were my preferred formats. And the thing is if I were to go and want to compete, then as you noted, it's the financial commitment because – and I wouldn't be too perturbed by that except the cards are going to go in the box. And it's just like, okay, well, now they kept introducing new abilities and stuff like, oh, look, this thing can planeswalk or whatever. And it's like, oh, wait, if you don't have any of the new cards, even if you're saying, okay, well, I can still play because I'm going to do like type zero games or whatever. I don't have anything that can block the new moves. So you have to buy the new cards to counter the other new cards. Otherwise, you're going to lose. And so it's really just sort of that. But it was more logistic for me. It's just I was no longer around other people who were readily accessible to play Magic. I was working, and after doing eight hours of that and getting home, playing Magic, trying to get together and do something like that versus firing up a video game, video game was easier. That is very valid. but yeah between that and the the sheer cost of magic at a point in time when money was less disposable was uh a rough go of it i mean like you i still have all my magic i still have all of it i've and i have bought new decks and i've bought boosters and stuff off and on and like i i tried to teach the kids to play but they had either no interest or they just wanted to go play the Pokemon card game because of their love of Pokemon and stuff like that. So I've never really slid back into it.
    6:06
    Yeah. So anyway, interesting question. I hadn't thought about that one in a while. I did. Are they doing a Lord of the Rings version now? Who knows? I don't know if I could bring myself to get into a different card game at this point. But it's like – I had some of the video game versions of Magic and played a number of those. I have too, but they're also collectible, so you have to pay money to get cards. Yeah, they got that way. It used to not be. Right. It would be a download, and as you did better, you'd unlock certain cards, and you'd go and you'd play through the campaign. I wouldn't play them competitively like online. I would just go through the AI campaigns, and then I'd be done. Until the last one I got, I didn't finish, and so I quit buying any new ones because, like, okay, I got tired of the formula. Right. With that video game approach. I can see that. Well, I have finished my video game that I was playing, the Plague Tale Innocence. I did finish that. Okay. I started the last episode, and so I've now wrapped that up. There is a sequel. I don't own that sequel yet, though. Anyway, I did enjoy it. The stealthy parts didn't get excessively uber stealthy, where it's just like, oh my gosh, I just can't deal with it. They really mixed up the mechanics all the way through to the end. So it was nice. It actually felt very well proportioned in terms of the length of a campaign. So I enjoyed that. And I only have one other thing before we kick into the news section, and that is we, on the last episode, mentioned that someone had emailed us a whole bunch of mystery steam codes. Yes. And so we have put out a proposal for people to give us suggestions on ways we could give out these Steam codes and that we would give a Steam code to the first person who provided such a suggestion. Well, Stephen H. was the first person who did reply with a suggestion. So he has been given a code, and he did write back, and he said he got the indie game Hue, H-U-E. Oh, I've heard of that one. It's a puzzle platformer, I think. I've not played it. I am not a platformer guy. I still remember we in local co-op played through Splosion Man. We did. And we won. And I wasn't a completely useless, terrible drag anchor on you guys. I'm sure you guys could have completed it twice as fast without me. I think deep down you probably are a platformer. No, I'm just a Splosion Man. Splode again. Loose meat sandwiches.
    8:34
    That's such a funny game. Weird, weird game. So here's a list of the ideas. I'm not going to list who submitted what because we had something like eight different people email in, I think, and some gave more than one suggestion. So just here are some ideas that were thrown out to us. One was for us to post the name of a video game pinball game, and the audience needs to name what console the game released on and what year it came out. And the first person to get that right could win a code, so that was one idea. another one was just suggested just do the the usual you know share post uh comment on the episode like on facebook or whatnot for a chance to win could do that another uh listener had suggested that uh listeners should submit their best galactic take force go without losing their recently consumed taco bell into their astronaut suit i believe this was a direct reference to one of the teaser trailers of American Pinballs to Galactic Tank Force and some of the antics of said astronaut. So they wanted an impression challenge that we would pick the winner on.
    9:42
    Here's another one. Someone suggested that we should pick an online Java game and tell people they have to send us a screenshot of their high scores and the highest score. Oh, there's an interesting one. I used to do that with a friend of mine, Alan, you might remember, who we played Warcraft with, World of Warcraft. He and I used to play online Java, like tower defense games, and send each other the high scores to see who could do better at those. Fun.
    10:08
    Another one is give the Steam keys, just give the Steam keys away to people who write in to us who say that they are willing to play the mystery game. And in exchange, they'll provide us a short review of the game. Either they could email us the review or they could record a brief audio snippet of just their impressions of the game. ideally with them ultimately saying whether they recommend or don't recommend people get the game that's a good idea yeah i like i like that one uh another suggestion was uh do some sort of guessing games and they suggested like one could be have people write in where they need to try and pick one of dennis's five favorite pinball machines that he has never owned or uh one of tony's five favorite video games on say the nintendo console ruling out ones that you've talked ruling out games you've talked about like battle tech and final fantasy and stuff Man, Battletech on Nintendo, that would be wicked.
    11:02
    Here's a very creative one. Someone had suggested we should create Poetry Corner, where people need to submit poetry to us, and we'll read them out loud on the episode and then pick the winner based off whoever had the best slam.
    11:16
    I actually really like that one. It's very different. Here's another game one. do a Price is Right pinball game where, oh gosh, this one will require a lot of work. So the idea would be for me, for example, to fire up my streaming rig and record and stream a game of pinball, but I've covered up the score. So people can see the gameplay, but they can't see the score. And then over the course of, say, a week, people need to write in and guess what my score was. Closest score without going over wins a code.
    11:50
    Oh. I love the idea. I hate the idea of putting the stream rig back together because I've disassembled half of it in order to help further my YouTube channel. Right. But still, that's not a bad idea. No, it's a good one. That's very clever. Another one was someone just saying give and get a key so people could send us a Steam code, and in exchange we give them a mystery Steam code. That doesn't really deplete our arsenal of Steam codes, though, so I'm not sure about that one. another idea was to do a registration form and then randomize and pick members off of that who want the codes and the last idea this is a deep cut too was have everyone go online and post a picture of a rubber band on social media tagging straight down the middle of pinball show asking them where the video review with the rubber band collector is and then we select a winner out of those randomly for those that don't know if you don't watch straight down the middle uh which has a lot of pinball content on youtube once upon a time oh gosh this feels like it was two years ago now zach and greg were talking about uh the direction of straight down the middle and zach had mentioned the plan to kind of broaden it beyond pinball and talk to like collectors in other areas and the example of a rubber band collector was named i have off and on since then constantly including when we went out there for the pinball awards to the flipping out theater brought up when are we going to see the video with a riverbank collector i continue to be met with a non-answer so perhaps this would finally force that would finally force it to happen i don't i won't count on it i still also remember the time zach promised that cosmic carnival would be streamed on the flipping out youtube channel and it never happened maybe because the game was broken all the time and He got rid of it. I don't care. I don't buy excuses. I expect results. That's how we do it at Eclectic Gamers Podcast. So those were the suggestions we got. We got a lot of ideas. Yeah, there are some really solid suggestions in there too. That's great. Well, yeah, we'll have to pair through and maybe use a couple of them. Yeah, we could do a few of these. I really like the idea. If we get a chance, I'd really like us to explore maybe the idea of the Java game one to announce on that. We obviously have to pick a game. So, but doing that, I think that one could be a lot of fun to start. Are Java games still a thing even?
    14:14
    I think it's Flash that went away. So maybe Java games can still be used. I don't know. We just have to find something free that anyone could fairly easily access. Right. So anyway, yeah, I like a number of these ideas. So thank you everyone who emailed in and congratulations to all one of you who got a Steam code. Yeah. Now, if somebody runs up to Dennis at TPF and says, code me, daddy, code me, we'll get your email and we'll send you a steam code randomly too.
    14:41
    I don't know about that. That's kind of creepy. Where's my fursona? It's still being worked on. Okay. The creative process, I don't want to rush. Yes. speaking of rushing i don't want to rush through the pinball section but holy crap do we have a lot do we have a lot of content to get through and i even felt like i've paired some of it back because we just have to be a little judicious with some of this and i paired i paired video games down yes i saw that i thank you very small because the pinball section is loaded i sat uh i was working on this section for quite a while yesterday evening um i I actually did that and then went in and did the other stuff later, all those results on ideas on how to give out the Steam codes. I had to take a break between doing the pinball content and doing that because there's so much stuff to list. So let's start with Jersey Jack Pinball.
    15:41
    As we noted on the last episode, we knew Godfather was coming, but there wasn't going to be any real gameplay known at the time. So we held off till this episode. So we do have more information now. So let's go ahead and give a little bit of a discussion on it. I do have a link in the show notes to a Knapp Arcade article about a lot about Godfather, including where you can access a lot of photos. So feel free to go and look at that because obviously I can't paint you a very good picture with words because it takes a thousand words to paint one picture and we only have so much time.
    16:13
    This pricing is just like Toy Story. So 5,000 limited edition models are being made, or up to that many, will be made at $12,000 a machine. There are 1,000 collector's edition models at $15,000 a machine. The team on this, the game design itself is Eric Menier, who did Guns N' Roses last with JJP. Rules are done by Keith Johnson, who also did rules for Guns N' Roses. Art is Christopher Franchi and Jesper Abels. And the animation, as is, I believe, always the case, or at least often the case with JJP, is John Paul DeWin.
    16:51
    Gameplay-wise, very, very similar between the two models. The collector's edition model on the play field, and I've given Tony a couple of images in our show notes so we don't have to bounce to a lot of web stuff to see the layouts. The layouts are basically identical. The one with Marlon Brando on it is the collector's edition. The one with Al Pacino is the limited edition. you can kind of tell by the gold trim as well um so uh there's been a lot said uh about this game uh one of the things that was emphasized is i believe there are 29 uh different i think that's the amount they said 29 different ball paths so because their use of diverters and stuff the way they're they didn't count the number of shots they're counting the number of different ways the ball might return based off of a shot because one shot will have multiple different things that might happen with it so they've really highlighted that i also think keith johnson in a featurette that uh straight down the middle put together and you can go to their youtube if you want to check that out it's about that one i think it's about 30 minutes long it goes into a lot of details it's a good video the um i think he said there's something like on the order of two dozen different skill shots as well in the game obviously this is jjp they do a lot with lighting a lot of leds a lot of color changing stuff they have this sort of fancy uh single pop bumper a fountain going on uh interesting little coincidence uh that i also noticed on this game and compared to foo fighters which we talked about on the last episode is uh alley pass targets or shats targets um i see some here as well uh these actually look less concerning to me in the sense that i don't think these look like they're going to get bent whereas i'm not like when i saw the riders ones my concern was are those gonna on on impacts going to start to bend out and deform these look a little safer.
    18:37
    At least it's on the right. The right in lane has one, I should say. And they've also got it set up so that the wire form that feeds that right side actually bounces the ball up to hit it. So it's not just rally passing. It'll actually be hit consistently because of that ramp shot.
    18:55
    So that's really all I want to say on it. I did watch some of the gameplay. The rules of this are very video game inspired. I think they credited board games like Risk. I heard a lot of people say when they first saw the teaser information, because it's about gathering territory and dealing with all these multiple families and stuff. But the territory control concept is something that's actually really common in Mafia-style video games. It works really well for that. Have you ever played the games called Mafia? There's a whole series of them. I've played two of them. And that's sort of the concept is you try and gain more control of territory and, you know, get recruit, you know, build up your build up your empire, so to speak.
    19:38
    The the rules in a way that the approach of it kind of reminds me of Stern Star Trek. In this case, there's like a stained glass window above the flippers instead of the little quadrant of different missions. But you do little chunks, and those open up access to a multi-ball and other things as you go around and fill out the stained glass. So I think it's – conceptually, it seems very approachable to me. But what are your thoughts? Art, layout, design? We're just going to be kind of freeform here. People can go read the specs in the articles. Yeah. No.
    20:13
    I'm still not sold on the idea of Godfather as a game theme. But from what it sounds like they've done with the rules, I'm actually way more interested in it than I ever thought I would be. I think the art's beautiful. I like the stained glass motif in the straight down the middle thing. When they talked about it, they talked about that stained glass motif as hell is carried over in a couple places. It's in some of the video back glass stuff as well. I think the machine looks amazing. I think the shots look interesting.
    20:51
    The question is, how does it actually play? Yes, and I've heard some people who have had initial reaction to it mention that it does seem to play faster than some other JJP games. That's always a concern with JJP. Yes, and so I will say this is an incredibly, to me, unique-looking layout. I thought Foo Fighters looked pretty unique, kind of like a little weird, which I knew Jack Danger was often talking about how he wanted to make pinball a little more weird. This actually looks to me more intriguing than Foo Fighters, but I'm not confident that it will play as well as Foo Fighters looks like it will play. Again, we've not played either of them. Correct. And we're hoping to get a chance here at TPF. I can't wait to see what the lines at TPF are like. It's going to be so bad. I do think the art is well done. And I mentioned this on a live stream I did, that I'm not a big fan of the red and gold look because I don't really associate it with Godfather. I won't name who it is because I'm not sure they wanted to be named. I did have someone email me or message me after that flipping out a video that I did with Joel Engelberth and a couple of others who showed me the current Blu-ray box set is using that red and gold scheme. So that was probably a dictate. But I think what Franchi did with it looks good. I just like my box set is black and gold and when I think about the movies I don associate gold with like it was one of the things that I thought was interesting in the featurette The designer Eric Menier he dressed up like in this almost like I don know if it was a full zoot suit but it kind of reminded me of that with the red tie and the hat But one of the things I thought was odd was he put on all these gold rings and stuff, and it's like – this is a Dennis nitpick. That's not Godfather's Mafia. That's like Sopranos Mafia or something. Right. It's different. They weren't dripping in gold in those films. They might have a gold cross in recognition of the Catholicism or something, but they weren't going around with all this bling. Right. Just dripping in gold. So I just thought there was a little disconnect in terms of what type of – I get it. The look was to be a stereotypical mobster. But what's funny is that stereotype isn't the same as what's portrayed in The Godfather because The Godfather is like taking place in the 40s and 50s up through the 60s and maybe the 70s. We stay away from Godfather 3, and I didn't see any stuff in here from Godfather Part 3. So kudos to them on that. Good thing for – I'm glad that they dodged the Toy Story 4 problem.
    23:19
    So yeah, overall, I like how the art is integrated in this. I think it's an attractive game to look at. I think that they've segmented things out fairly well in terms of like you have the stained glasses, very unique looking style to it. Then you've got the stuff with like the weapons above it as inserts. And then you've got the little map. And they do those little tiny like Christmas tree LEDs. That's how they can do the little lights on the map. Little lights on the map to light little sections up. Little lights on the map. The family approach, again, very – you don't get that feel from the movie so much. I mean, you know there are rival families fighting each other, but giving them sort of more of an identity, that's a very video game style thing, and I think it makes a lot of sense. One thing I do want to mention is the CE topper looks really cool. It looks cool. These prices, these are home environment games, obviously. I think that Jersey Jacks clearly doubled down and said, like, we're done with standard editions. This is my interpretation. We're done with operators. These are for the home. I got, and I understand how excited Eric was to have figured out, it's like a Tommy gun fires 20 rounds a second. And so I've got two different coils and coils can be fired at 10 fires a second. So I've got two different ones. So it goes, I'm like, that's going to be so loud. That is my biggest concern is that it's going to be so loud and so rapid and so jarring. uh my very first thought when i when i heard that was uh at one of our local tournament places at one time there was a road show that was i remember that was pressed up against the wall and the shaker motor was so powerful that when it when the shaker motor on that road show fired off and with how that was pressed up against the wall the entire place shook people in the other dining area because it was because it was a split the pinball was in a split off separate area could hear it going and that was my very first thought when i heard about these knockers going that fast it's like oh no that's gonna hurt yeah the uh the operator in that instance i remember he mentioned yeah the the owners of the pizza place asked him to pull it pull the game there were too many complaints it's like yeah i understand and i i mean i it should have been pulled because it was roadshow in the first place and thus i win no matter what um but i will so that so i mean audibly that's a concern now that might be great for like at tpf where it'll stand out but i'm trying like if i had it down in my little room where the walls are so close together i'm like i i would be able to take it hopefully hopefully it can be shut off yeah it can be i heard it can be shut off just like hopefully i i can shut off the electric guitar version of the theme because okay so you want to talk a little bit about the music oh no one wrote in and complimented my rendition that last time i mean so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna give you any more of it right now because now i just remembered and i got sad you got sad that nobody nobody complained but nobody said you said good stuff so how could you complain it was exactly the same if anything it was better than the actual you that's why i understand it's like i mean i like the godfather theme in its original format the electric guitar rendition is like nails on a chalkboard to me did you get the kind of impression of hey we know slash so let's That's exactly what it felt like. That's what it kind of feels like. And it hurt because in the – watching the Straight Down the Middle video, like the entire first section of it is like the entire song. Yes. Now, purportedly, they have like an orchestral version that they did as well, including one where someone – I've not heard it yet – where some guy sang it. Well, that'd be – I mean, that sounds amazing. An orchestral version of it sounds great, but that just – it was just so jarring. jarring it was i had to power through the opening of that video because by halfway through the opening i was ready to turn it off because it hurt my ears so bad i just for me it's just a little anachronistic like it just doesn't again that's not it just doesn't fit the era right but i get it i also get it it's pinball and doing things like it depends what we'll forgive like for example in Stern Godzilla. You can choose, like I have it on the kind of the blended version, but you can go back and listen to the original like 54 version. You can also go and do like the full metal version. Yeah. Which I tried and I was like, it's a little much for me, but yeah, no. Also, the music aspect reminds me of the call-outs. I've heard that the scene integration and clips from the film, like the audio from the film, excellent. And they've done a very good job with it and they have a lot. from the film. So like, they probably won't be, won't be like they have, you know, you got Brando parts, you got Pacino parts. They got, they really bragged on that in the future. This isn't going to be Halloween. Right. And JJP by and large, I think has done pretty good on license acquisition with what I don't always agree with the licenses that they pick, but they've been like, like full bore. Like, like you don't get, uh,
    28:47
    what? Willy Wonka without Gene Wilder. Right. They, they have that. So, So I'm not surprised at that, that they were successful, and they're understandably proud of that. I have heard, though, because obviously a lot of these people – I don't think they got anyone from the films to do call-outs, though. And obviously you have to have call-outs, and the Godfather movies don't have things you can just repurpose as call-outs for a lot of the pinball stuff. I mean the part where Mario Roberto, I'm going to make him a jackpot. He can't refuse. Multiball. don't you ever betray the family or the hurry up again so uh what i've heard is the custom stuff um i heard this on slam tilt podcast i think this was uh ron hallett uh ron hallett's reaction i respect ron hallett's opinion a lot we align on a lot of our thoughts on pinball so uh it's very over the top new york like it's like shoot the wamps would be my impression of it it's like shoot the wamps i'm walking here i'm walking here hey boy yeah hey you're gonna sleep with the fishes bibbidi-bobbidi-boo are you a wise guy am i a clown to you do i amuse you that would be good forget that so so anyway so i'm like uh gosh i don't know it kind of reminds me of um again i have not sat there and listened to a bunch of those to make my own judgment on that yet but that description very much reminds me of my reaction to stern's jurassic park call-outs which i hate yeah it's just like it's like we have to nedry has sabotaged the system oh has he has he really sorry tell me more ah fun times uh so anyway uh only other thing i want to mention about jjp before we go ahead move on um and i'm hoping we'll have more feedback once we get a chance to play it uh for for obvious reasons is they dropped scorebit apparently that came up on a on a live stream maybe it was announced elsewhere beforehand uh i didn't see this this stream where it was brought up but the jjp team was on uh on a like a twitch stream to talk about the game and it just got casually mentioned yeah that the and scorebits put out some more information so the way it sounds and Apologies, this might not be 100% accurate because I did not go and build this out in my notes ahead of time. But as I understand it, the person who was at JJP that Scorebit worked with for Scorebit integration has left JJP. I don't know the reason.
    31:29
    And then Scorebit reached out to JJP after that because they were pushing some new update stuff that they were working on, and they wanted to get that updated into the JJP systems. And JJP was basically nonresponsive. and then score bit kind of followed up again later and and i i guess offered to do the programming for jjp and then i guess they finally heard back from jjp and jjp said nah just forget about it
    31:53
    forget about it so i i mean what that means what does it mean they're making their own version that is a a common suspicion um it's working out so well for stern a lot of people do like i mean it's fun getting blukes as i call blukes from the old 360 days i love achievements and uh it's fun i've got my i've got my thing saved to my phone so i can yep i have a picture of my uh my on my phone of my qr code and then i've got even got you on the home team here so you don't have to use the phone when you want to play deadpool or godzilla here because you're just holding the flipper button and uh i in fact because i forgot uh tony went and played a pinball tournament yesterday. I forgot it was the third Saturday. I completely forgot. And he messaged me. And when I saw the message, it was about eight minutes until start time. And I was like, I can't make it. I'm over 15 minutes away. So I actually went downstairs though and played pinball. Cause I'm like, you know what? I haven't played in a long time. I really need to. So I played all of my, I played about 15 to 20 games, I'd say, but I played all seven of my games. And that had been my thought is I hadn't played. It's like, we're going to TPF. I haven't played pinball since we were in Indiana. and I just kind of wanted to get out of that. Because my whole family was sick last weekend, so I was like, I just want to get out of the house and go do something. And I completely meant to send a message earlier in the day, and I forgot about it. And then when I was there, everyone was like, is Dennis coming? I'm like, I forgot to send him out. I don't know. Yeah, I played some Overwatch 2.
    33:34
    Actually, what I was doing when I got your message was I just wrapped up my games for that. And then earlier in the day, I did some more, well, another watch live stream because watches and wonders, their, their big conventions coming up and I wanted to do some prediction stuff. And that took a, you know, an hour or something and all that. And so I, I have my excuses, but anyway, um, and I got an achievement last night on, uh, for beating Ebera without, uh, I swear I'd beaten, I must not have been signed in or something. I swear I had beaten Ebera before without losing a ball. But anyway, uh, I don't know. So I did. So I was like, yes, I mean, I don't always pick fighting the crab as my first option, but you know what? Crab people. So, yes, a lot of people are thinking JJP is wanting to develop their own system. The other thought is they don't need it, so why have anything?
    34:24
    Those are both valid thoughts. Like, Scorbit's not getting – like, dealing and having to maintain the Scorbit thing doesn't get them anything. Like, it's not getting them more sales.
    34:33
    I do want to ask, what do you think about the future of Scorbit? Obviously, originally they weren't partnered with anything. I do believe they are partnered with American Pinball. I'm not positive on that, but I do believe they're with them to provide integrated service. And I guess there wasn't any cost with JJP.
    34:51
    Per score bit, I believe, if someone described it, and I'm remembering correctly, that they weren't charging JJP to have score bit integrated into the JJP games.
    35:01
    So I'm assuming the same arrangement exists for American Pinball, but that's the only one I know of. Now, you can put Scorebit in anything, because the whole thing with Scorebit, the main thing that I remember when it got announced is you can integrate it into basically any game, and it will be able to electronically capture the score. So it's really good for tournament software, but it also, in those instances, has monthly fees. So what are your thoughts on the future of Scorebit? I forgot they existed. I've never used it.
    35:33
    Until I saw this note. I had to think about it when I saw this note. I'm like, Scorbit? What the crap is Scorbit? Isn't that that Stern-like thing? Yeah, it's not an achievement. Well, I guess they do have achievements. I apologize. They do have achievements. I've heard that, and again, this is like one or two people's impression, that the achievements aren't particularly well integrated, like well thought out, versus how Stern clearly has their rules people putting some thought into. We remember that in the old days. The achievements were first new to Xbox and Steam. like some of the achievements were just like really dumb like no one knew how to do it you jumped four times yeah yeah or or you'll you know you'll have uh like block that like do something that you don't normally do but a ridiculous number of times so it's almost impossible to get and later on they started to be like doing clever things like hey if you accomplish this fairly challenging thing you get this yeah and then you and then you and then you get the achievements that are the ones that make you cry because they're they're like you've run the equivalent I'll end up 1,000 miles in the game. And you're like, how many hours have I spent playing this game? Yeah, so it's very judging. Yeah, it's very stupid. Storn has a few of those, too. Congratulations, you've destroyed 50 Godzilla buildings. Yeah, but I don't destroy the building every game. So it's scary. All right. Yeah, I don't know.
    36:54
    I'm not sure about the longevity of Scorbitt would be my take. I think that their longevity for the fact that nobody really – I mean, maybe I'm wrong. I didn't remember they existed. You have never used it. I don't think I've ever talked to anybody where in our conversations we've talked about Scorbit in any way, shape, or form. I think the issue is the biggest attraction about Scorebit, in my view, as an outsider, is its ability to integrate with essentially any solid state era game and take those scores and simplify score recording. How many people need that? Not very many. How many people are using it? I think Carl D'Angelo uses it for his big pinball show out in what never drains in Southern California in disc. Yeah, I think it's used there. I don't know about anyone else bothering using it. Most people just get scorekeepers and just have them go and record it. Because do you want to pay monthly fees for your vast collection? I mean, it's monthly fees. And at least right now, Stern isn't charging monthly fees. And Insider Connect is coming with all the new Stern games now. and you can put it into any of the Spike games that had already come out, at least any of the Spike 2 games, I should say. So given all of that, when most of the commercially operated games are Sterns already and they have their own solution that, okay, so it doesn't integrate to your little scorekeeper app, but it's just not worth the money to most people. I remember seeing the fees and I was like, I'd have to use it all the time, otherwise I'd feel like I was being ripped off. like just me like me i and i have to do this assessment with all sorts of stuff like streaming like a stream yard the streaming software i use for youtube i use a free version i thought about not using the free version so i could get more than six people in but the free version lets you do 20 hours a month and the non-free version would probably cost me like six hundred dollars a year so it's like uh you don't do enough no i i don't make i don't make six hundred dollars doing the streams so it's not worth it so it's the same sort of thing it's not going to like get you out of like if you were paying scorekeepers and it was cheaper to pay for a year's worth of score bit it's but it just that's where i think that their model i always wondered if their model would be viable um having companies adopt it and not costing people could help get people addicted to it but right with jjp dropping it and let's be frank jjp is a far bigger producer of games than american pinball is. We'll have to see. Scorpbit may pivot in some way to do something, but this isn't a good sign for them. No, I wouldn't think so. But, you know, I don't know. They're very smart people that work on Scorpbit, so we'll see what they decide. So speaking about American pinball, because we did bring that up a little bit with Scorpbit, I do want to note that there is more information, there have been more reveal trailers since our last episode about Galactic Tank Force. I don't want to talk about the they haven't done the official gameplay reveal yet that's this week and because we've got so much other stuff right i don't want to spend a bunch of time talking about galactic tank force the dennis norman design game right now that being said uh i did figure we could maybe spend a little bit of time about the the upper end model uh folding down into a tank uh so i've i've put a little image so tony could remember what it looked like uh no i didn't It's burned into my soul. It's what are your thoughts about this? For those that don't know, we're looking at the picture of the snap. This was from Nap Arcade has this on one of his articles. It's out of the video of the teaser they did where you see Dennis Norman like lifting up the flap, the hood, the hood of the tank. Well, he's got the ice cream cone in the other hand. You'll remember because he's really hamming it up in the video. Yes. So what are your thoughts about just the idea of the cabinet turning into a tank? it's unique is that is that a good way that's an accurate description i don't i have a hard time seeing very many people actually using this functionality how many people fold down their cabinet heads all the time uh well i guess people who buy and sell games a Yeah, I mean, maybe just for the look, but then you have to go through the hassle of setting everything back up to play. So, I don't know. I think it's one of those, somebody had an idea that they thought was cute. And it's not horrible, terrible, but I just don't know how useful it really is. It is the most adorable tank I've ever seen. It is. It looks like – okay, I'm going to put on my geek hat. It looks like some of the late World War I French tanks. That's right. Like the Renault 17. I wasn't that specific. But this reminds me of a World War I tank. Yeah, it's got that kind of feel like the little cute French tanks. It does. That is very true. I mean yeah I think if someone had the space where like in the video it's all by itself kind of stand like I could see it if you're like I'm not going to play it all that much but I've got a space where it could really like if you've got like a little sci-fi shrine in your house and you just have this floor space that I could see that where you want a little adorable space tank I could see that's about it that's about it because otherwise I mean they did emphasize how there's going to be a model that's going to look like all the others in terms of the you know if you want your lineup to look identical. That's the appeal to the Zach minis of the world. I don't care. My lineup is whatever games they are. I don't mind that it looks weird. I just, like you, I'm like, but how often am I going to go to the trouble? I turn off the games when I'm done. I don't want to fold them up when I'm done. I'm very lazy. Well, and looking at it with the way the turret sticks up out the back of the back box, I mean how annoying is that going to be because you have to push it farther away from the wall than normal where your other back boxes might be almost in contact with the wall so you'd have this one machine that's stuck out farther than the rest of your room yeah there are a few things about it that could be a little challenging I think Dennis Nordman way back when he was getting into the industry I think he had designed a cabinet was one of the things like before he was working in the pinball field so I'm assuming this is probably something where it goes back to how he's thought about cabinet design for a while this is all speculation i haven't heard him confirm this but that's my my take on it my actual suggestion would be to develop a plushie of this uh tank oh that would yeah uh this cabinet and have them as like little plushies because uh my my biggest concern with this isn't that i'm fine that it exists the only thing i wonder is was it really worth the production cost to do all of this like it's a The Jurassic Park, you wanted to see if you could, not if you should. That's the question. The little plushy, like keychain-sized plushy, one of the little ones they make for backpack hangers, so you can put the key for the on it. Yeah, the coin door key. The coin door key. Yeah, that's a good idea. I did hear though I believe a year or two ago David Fix had already mentioned this though maybe not specific to this game but I guess it was confirmed by Christopher Franchi who also did the art for Galactic Tank Force in addition to Godfather that there will be lunchboxes
    44:33
    I'm assuming maybe at TPF. So think about if you want a lunchbox. Oh, man. I am. Because I probably – I mean I haven't played it yet. I'm chomping at the bit. I'm not currently thinking I'm in the market for a Galactic Tank Force pinball. I'll have to see how it plays if it's at TPF. It might win me over because, again, I don't really care about the theme. If the game is fun, I'll be like, you know what? But you know what? They might get some money out of me for – I don't know if I'm going to buy a lunchbox because I don't really pack my lunch much. You don't want to walk up into the Senate and get your little galactic tank force? You know what? As bad as they sometimes treat me, they can look at my little cute galactic tank force lunchbox, and I can sit there while they pass their nonsense in front of me. They're sitting there berating everybody, and you're just sitting there eating a little ham salad sandwich out of your toolbox.
    45:24
    Do you know one of the – oh, gosh, this is such a misstep. This is such a misstep. You know one of the things that tilts me the most about the Kansas legislature? You go into those hearing rooms, and there are signs that say in the audience, you aren't allowed to have food or drink, and they sit up there, and they eat, and they drink. You know what? No. How about no? They're better than you. with hubris but uh maybe maybe you know i don't know um so chicago gaming company i want to jump to them now tony because they had a reveal this was the surprise we've been hearing about this on our very own rumor corner yes we had for for a while now but uh pulp fiction has been revealed they have uh i have a link in the show notes to a nap arcade article about this so people can go and look at photos uh they highlighted uh two editions there's the special edition which is an eight thousand dollar game and then the limited edition which is called the bad mother flipper limited edition at uh ninety five hundred dollars that one is limited to a thousand units my understanding is there's also what they would consider a standard edition but i think it's basically the special edition with a different coin door one that can like accept a dollar bill acceptor so something a little more operator oriented um this is actually a mark ritchie design this is the first game he has done and i believe over 20 years uh david thiel did sound uh david thiel is who did stern star trek sound and uh and if he does good work yes yes very good work uh josh sharp who is working with lyman sheets on the new revised rule set for cactus Canyon remake for CGC. He's responsible for the rules on this. And the art is by someone named Scott Pitluski. I apologize if I'm not pronouncing that correctly. So I've included a couple of images in our internal notes. But there was also a straight down the middle featurette that if you want to go to the straight down the middle of YouTube, this one's long. This one's almost an hour. Yeah, it's super long. I've watched about half of it. I watched all of it. Okay.
    48:06
    So we've seen shots made. We've seen some explanation of the rules. I skipped through some of the back. I actually skipped through a lot of the explanation on the sound.
    48:15
    So this is a very, very throwback-looking game. And that was what the rumor was. Though initially when I heard about the throwback style, I thought it was going to be like EM. This is actually like System 11 era, like alphanumeric displays going on in the back box. There is no LCD anywhere. There's not going to be movie clips. There's a lot of movie quotes, audio from the films. And the art style is very 90s throwback, that hand-drawn 90s style like we'd see with the old screen printing. That was the, I believe, I don't remember if I read it somewhere, but someone else's comment was that it feels like a 70s-era machine with 90s-era art.
    49:00
    So I think it looks good. And, yeah, I do too. I actually really like the art. Apparently, from what I've been hearing, this game on pre-sales is doing really good. Yeah. Really good. So and I was surprised at this because. All right. It's basically it's not. It's is the game single level and not really. It looks it on first glance. They got some stuff, though, that's actually working up a little like there's a little ramping in the back and there's a subway. Yeah, they got some other stuff going on. So it's more than meets the eye. And one of the things that was really emphasized in that featurette, which I thought was fascinating, I think it's part of the reason why there's so much interest in this, is they've done some other things that are very modern. Like, we wouldn't expect a System 11 game to have that briefcase open up and glow yellow and turn around. And they've got that stuff going on. But it feels to me like the rules are approachable like a 90s game or a late 80s game would be. And I got to admit, that alone is extremely attractive. It is very attractive. I don't know if my mind is just rotting with age, decaying, and the ability to remember things. But I feel like I'm getting more and more sensitive to convoluted rules. And I know when you own a game, it's a lot easier to dive in and understand rules. But part of the reason why I like Godzilla and Deadpool is I think their rules are relatively approachable for modern era games. uh whereas games like sinbad and hoops are extremely easy to explain and understand and this kind of feels like it's maybe in between those spaces um and then just relying on this immersion in in the film but also immersing you in this late 80s early 90s pinball experience when you look at first glance but it's got other little modern uh contrivances that we like to see that's elevates it. That's my sense. I'm actually really excited to try this one. I'm super excited. This looks pretty good.
    51:04
    That old school three color cabinet art. Yes. We've seen so many fancy cabinets. It's literally three colors. It's black, red, yellow.
    51:19
    It is amazing looking. It just screams nostalgia. It looks great. I love the cabinet. And I like the story about how the original plan on the back glass was to do the famous movie poster, but that Tarantino was like, no, we didn't want it like that. And so then they did, okay, well, let's do something kind of like we would do in the 80s. It looks cool. It does. It looks super cool. The dance scene. They're not the hyper-realistic or photo-realistic that we've started to see as very common even in the drawing. it still has that old for the desire to punch the buttons of the nostalgia they did a great job in the video they talked about how the old school score they don't even make that type of display they don't do the plasma ones anymore they don't do that but they were able to come up with a way to make LEDs look like it. And it does look like it. Yeah. At least in the pictures. And I remember that part in the featurette. I'm not too surprised because my firepower I used to have, I replaced because one of the displays went out, those high-voltage plasma gas displays. So I replaced that with an LED Wolfpack kit. It just looks authentic. To me, it did. It just looked like they were fresh, like they were brighter because they were fresh. But it looks good. But yeah, and also without the super loud clicky clacky, pretty nice topper too. Yeah. They rotate. It's Travolta and Thurman dancing, so that famous scene. And they move around at certain points. And otherwise, it's just got like the Slim's neon sign in the back. So yeah, I'm almost afraid that I'll like it too much. well and and and you are you are a uh tarantino fan i am i actually did not like pulp fiction the first time i saw it because it's non-linear yes yep but it grew on me it's a it's not my favorite film uh but it's extremely quotable as most of his movies are right yeah no it's uh i just i'm actually it's less that it's pulp fiction and just more that it looks like this It's kind of got that nostalgia play while still being a modern game without going to the over-the-top like some of the other nostalgia-y type games we've seen in the last decade.
    54:00
    What I think it might fundamentally be for me is – and I've talked about it on the show a few times – is especially pre-pandemic. I really argued that I thought there was a space in this market for something that was kind of like – and this is different, but this is where I'm going with it – kind of like the old street levels that Gottlieb did. Now, in those instances, I was thinking things more throwback, more basic rules, cheaper also because of that, and seeing it wasn't done all the time that that might have success. Now, this is not a street-level game. No. The price is not a street-level price, but it's not a ridiculously high price. No, it's not. I mean, what's the MSRP on a Stern Pro now? I think it's around $7,000. And so this is at $8,000. So it's $1,000 more, and you might look at it on first glance and be like, well, it doesn't have the LCD. So it's not going to have movie clips and stuff in it. But there's a lot of stuff on the play field. Yeah. So just like with something I probably should have brought back up when we were talking about Godfather. But one of the biggest issues I thought with Toy Story 4 is at $12,000 and $15,000, when you look at that play field, it doesn't feel like you see $12,000. You might not see $12,000 with Godfather, but it feels like you see more than you do with Toy Story. And that visual perception is a big deal. That was one of the complaints I think that was commonplace with a lot of Steve Ritchie's Stern games. People look at the play field and like, I don't see the bill of materials on the play field. And you look at an Elwynn game and it's like, you do. You see the moving building. You see the rotating shield bank. You see the spinners. And you're like, I see it's like it's above the play field so you feel it. Right. And in this case, I think they've got it in a way where it feels like it's there. Like you're not feeling like a stretch. And to be fair, CGC has not been the most gougy on pricing in the first place. No. So given all of that, yes, I'm very intrigued about this, mostly because the throwback style is something I've sort of argued that I thought had a place in the hobby. I approached it a very different way, though, so I don't want to – this isn't exactly what I was thinking of. But I'm kind of excited that I'm hearing that the sales on it are strong because when I heard about it and then even saw it, I thought, I don't know how many people are going to say, no. I'm not paying $8,000 for an alphanumeric. Are you kidding me? Of all of the games that have been announced, this is the one I'm most excited to see at TPF. If it's there. Yes. Yeah. I have more interest in this than all the others put together. I see. I've got to admit, I'm still very intrigued because I haven't really explored looking at it. I've seen images a bit of the play field, but there's still a lot about GTF that I'm curious about. Oh, yeah. No, I'm curious. But this has made the best impression of it. And part of that is this is where theme can make a difference. I love the Godfather theme, but I don't like it for pinball. I don't know the Foo Fighters, so that theme does nothing for me.
    57:05
    Yeah, it's very interesting. Moving on, Turner Pinball. I don't know if we've ever – maybe one time we talked about Turner Pinball. All right. Turner is the company and guy that was responsible for a lot of the software that work that was going on for Deep Root Pinball. OK. Yeah. So during the liquidation bankruptcy stuff that's been happening, Turner actually acquired a lot of the Deep Root assets. the first thing that was he got the life insurance policies I believe that were in the portfolio of the Deep Root Fund and then he also bought a number of the pinball items and he did announce months ago that he had established Turner Pinball and that he was going to do something based out of Texas so TPF is a close show he put out a little video and has noted that he's going to be at TPF and he's going to have a prototype of something. A food truck. I don't know if it's going to be a license that Deep Root was working on. I would actually advise that it not be. Yes. But, you know, given what assets he did acquire, it could very well be that he wants to just finish bringing some of the stuff to fruition.
    58:28
    I don't know. There was a picture of him with a prototype. I didn't spend any time, like, trying to determine if it was something I'd already seen before because we saw a lot out of the auction sale. Right. So just FYI, that will be there. I'm not going to commit to playing a prototype. I normally honestly do not care about prototypes. It's just not – I might go and play in the homebrew section, but – Right.
    58:54
    I just – it's just – I mean, there's so much other stuff. This is – I'm assuming he's doing this because it's relatively local because otherwise this is not the show to bring something to. I mean, if we see all of this stuff there, you've got to think about it. Final Resistance, Foo Fighters, Scooby-Doo, which I think is going to be the second show Scooby-Doo's been at.
    59:15
    Pulp Fiction, Godfather, and Galactic Tank Force. This deck is stacked. This is not the time to be bringing your white wood. Oh, no. In my opinion. But we'll see what happens. I'm curious to see. I have my little fold-up chair already picked up because of the way these lines are going to be. Oh, I'm not looking forward to that part. In fact, what I'm thinking TPF might be for me in terms of the show space is probably standing in line for these games throughout the day. And I don't even know if I'm really going to play all that much else. It's gotten to the point, of course. That's not a criticism. This is part of the reason why we like to go to TPF. But as we've done the show year after year and the audience has grown, we get a lot more people that come up and want to talk to us about pinball. And so we don't actually play a lot of pinball at TPF, whereas the first couple of years we played a lot. Yeah, it was continuous. We would play from open to close. And while we've always done the show ever since we had the show started before we had gone to TPF, it's bigger than it was. And we like that part of it. I don't want people to think, oh, I can't go up to Tennessee once I play a game. Yeah, no, please feel free to come up to us. So, yeah. That's the part we enjoy the most. That's why we try and get to one big show a year. Right. Because we know we don't get to a lot of the stuff. I have a collapsible chair now because I know I'm going to need it. Yeah, and I realized I was going to say it in my intro last episode, and then I didn't. and so I edited out the part where I was going to reference it because we were talking about, we picked up a few more Patreon people there and I'd mentioned the, oh don't worry we're still far away from the 60 to have to do another 5k I have not been able to run for two weeks Is it still bothering you? It's not as bad, but yeah, I think I have piriformis syndrome is my guess because it the listener's like, why is he dropping this I gotta drop the heavy stuff in here now so yeah, I'd gone out running and my sciatic nerve, I think is what it is, uh, started to hurt a different spot than it used to. And, but I thought it was a tendon originally. And I, I did about a mile and a half and it just, it really hurt. I had to stop. I had to stop because I was doing about, I was doing five Ks at that point. Right. And I had to stop and I could barely walk up the stairs, uh, that calmed down after a couple of days, but it's still, it's still is irritated. So I'm doing stretches and strengthening exercises on the piriformis because normally that sort of pain as narrow as it could tell is one of two things one would be a disc but it doesn't hurt for me to sit right and i wasn't sitting well yeah i wasn't sitting well it to injure it or anything i was actually doing activity other is if you go if you run too far past your proper range your piriformis could swell up and that will pinch the nerve so my piriformis is probably just not strong enough on that side so I'm doing more exercises and it feels better but it's not all the way better. Are we going to be able to walk to dinner on Thursday night? I've been walking again. I can walk. That's fine. You don't have to walk fast. I don't walk fast. I've even tried to walk at a faster speed and it'll be like my only concern is I have to make sure I don't make the piriformis swell again. That's why I've not run but I'm worried because I'm going to lose all my distance. I don't know how badly. Normally if you do your distance one time a week I think you can maintain is from what I read. I've only gone a week without. I might start trying to do a mile or a mile and a half again and see if I'm okay. If it starts to feel a little bad, just walk.
    62:51
    Anyway, no, walking is fine. In fact, I'm supposed to walk. I need to keep using it. You don't have to walk fast because I don't move fast.
    63:00
    Initially, after the first day, I'm like, oh my gosh. I will be so non-functional at TPF if it was as bad as it was the first day. it is no i can i'm okay to i even went well i walked uh i walked three miles this last week and it was like it was my leg was getting a little irritated at having to go the distance but the nerve was fine that's good so yeah all right so uh anyway uh back on topic on tpf that doesn't involve pain uh we did do a poll on our patreon asking our patreon members what did they think would steal the show at tpf now unfortunately i made this poll before we knew everything like pulp fiction we did not have uh pulp we actually had that on last episode's rumor corner that it was going to be at tpf right it dropped almost immediately afterwards but uh but but not but not before i made the poll so uh we got actually had 28 people vote in the poll okay and so here are the results the winner of which was going to steal the show was foo fighters with 36 percent of the vote but godfather was really close at 32 oh that is close yep and then galactic tank force took third at 25 final resistance from multimorphic tied uh at four percent with those who thought none of these are actually going to really stand out above the other and uh nobody chose scooby-doo and i also had an option to choose this one if you think it's a game i didn't put in the list which would have thus included pulp fiction no one picked that category either though so those were those initial thoughts and then the last pinball item is uh jake d asked us this question from our facebook page and i thought it best to answer it on the show rather than just reply on facebook and here's what he wrote dear dennis and tony i just listened to this episode and this was our last episode that's enough and on note and on note along with all the other podcasters as well commenting on it being such a bad idea for all the manufacturers revealing all these new games at the same time, I have a counter argument to make. This idea comes from the fact there's so many pinball tournaments at various locations here in Phoenix, and two of the big ones happen at the same time every Tuesday night, and they're right down the street from each other. It would seem as if they're in competition with each other, but it's quite the opposite. They're doing that intentionally because there's an average of 75 players at each location and neither have the ability to host 150 at once. And so what if it's a possibility that the manufacturers are actually working in conjunction with each other on this. We all know that some, especially Stern, can't keep up with production, so it is possible they're doing this on purpose to try and catch up on getting games out. It might not seem like a good long-term thing, but look how long Stern has been backed up, and they're still projected to be backlogged for at least another year. Your thoughts? It's the Illuma Penny. They're all sitting there above. They're sitting above with their secret cabal in the background. And, I mean, you know, it's not – oh, I don't think it's what it is, but I can see it as a possibility. I think it's just a matter of timing and how things worked out.
    66:13
    But I could see – I mean, I think it will have that effect whether they intentionally did it or not. But that just the question is how many are companies willing to talk to each other behind the scenes and lay something out like that for the specific purpose of reducing their own sales Yeah I agree with you about the coincidence I don agree with Jake I don't see this happening. One, you know, and I don't know all the rules on collusion.
    66:50
    It may be okay outside of price fixing where it's illegal. That doesn't mean it wouldn't happen, but, you know, there are rules about that.
    66:58
    Here's the thing. Like in terms of Stern and I agree with him about like Stern to be behind on production, expected to still be behind on production. Stern knows this. Stern's trying to address that by not releasing three cornerstones in a year, though. That's their strategy. We need to release fewer games so we can get caught up and not totally alienate people who've been sitting on orders with us for X number of months. so in in terms of that yeah i don't see why they would want to play ball with jersey jack and american pinball and all the rest uh on like they you don't need to artificially limit your sales you're right they can like if stern is struggling to keep up they just need to not release another game like that would be the approach right everyone else though i think is desperate in need of sales so that's also why i don't see the argument outside of stern who does this help spooky's got their fixed capacity like they've been on they've not really had a major bottleneck as near as right they've they didn't seem to have big problems turning out ultra men and halloween and they don't seem to be having trouble currently producing scooby-doos i think they've built about 100 of them already so that is an advantage spooky american pinball i assume these are assumptions i assume is desperate for sales because they've been limping along with only doing legends of valhalla which they haven't even shipped 500 of and i don't i hear that the build on those has not been going quickly but i also hear the demand is not great right so so they need something to move units and so if they need to move units do you want to try and move units in a crowded marketplace or would you like to move units when you're the only game in town it would be advantageous to them other than their desperation to bring in money in my view to have done this release at a different time uh cgc uh you know again i don't know uh they clearly have been uh hamstrung by the inability to get the cgc remake le's out because of all the topper stuff that was happening because they weren't having any problem getting standard editions out uh hearing from like josh sharp the rules designer for pulp fiction this game was done pre-pandemic that's just at least the bulk of it so so again it's like i think that well i get the idea uh like what jake has laid out in terms of the tournament thing and the ability those are entities that are operating at full capacity aside from stern who amongst these teams is working at full capacity I'm assuming the reason why we're on Godfather with JJP right now is Toy Story 4 sales are crap I know they want to do two games a year but we all heard about the Toy Story I know multiple, and it's not just Zach I know multiple distributors that I communicate with Toy Story 4 is not a good seller I'm not surprised it's just been forever since the last release CGC, it's been quite a while since their last release JJP, they have to go to a new release. Because we're looking at what? We saw Legends of Valhalla and Cactus Canyon Remake in Chicago in October of 21, and neither of those companies have put anything else out since. Right. So we're over a year for both of them.
    70:22
    So it's an interesting theory, but no, I don't think so. Now, why is it – about it being a bad idea to do it? It's all a level of context, and I may have, for my part, oversimplified a little bit. But if it comes down between – let's take American Pinball. Let's say that they're hurting for cash right now. Even though strategically it would have been a lot better in my view, and I think most people would probably agree with me, Had they been able to release GTF at 2022 Expo when it wasn't crowded, they would have potentially had more sales than they will here showing it off at TPF against Pulp Fiction, Godfather, Scooby-Doo, Foo Fighters, and Final Resistance. I mean, it's just a lot of competition. But if they need sales, it's still smarter to do that than to wait four more months. Right. Because it lets you get started. It lets you get more time, and there'll be other shows where they'll get in front of people, and they'll get maybe a few out. People will get some play time. Maybe they'll generate some more interest. But the thing that happens is I think for a lot of pinball collectors, at various dollar amounts even, they only have a budget. They can only put so much money into acquiring hardware at a time. all their like most of the time for me at this point it's like not only for space reasons but it's like if i want a new game i sell a game and that cash goes basically covers a portion of the new game that i want to get and of course i i do that to be able to free up the space so let's say you normally budget uh fifteen thousand dollars in a year for pinball machines which is that's a pretty hefty amount of money yeah so you depending on the game you basically are probably buying one to two machines. Like that's one CE. That would be two Stern Pros. Basically, you're going to get one to two games a year. So if you like to make a decision in the spring to buy, and last year, your one new thing to look at was Weird Al, and maybe that's what you buy. Let's say you come in this year and you're like, and let's assume you weren't the Weird Al buyer, because I want to assume you don't have a P3 yet. So you're like, oh, look, I could get this. I could get Final Resistance. And cool. I love it. I love Scott Denise. And then you look over at the Marco booth and you're like, oh, look, Foo Fighters. I grew up with Foo Fighters. Holy crap. I could get that one. Oh, wait, 15,000. I can't buy the P3 and buy the Pro. I got to make a choice here. Oh, God, Godfather. I love the Godfather. It's so awesome. It's almost as good as Sopranos. I want to get Godfather. I could just get, oh, I could even get the CE, except they're probably But may I get the LE version instead? Oh, my God, they're tanks and they fold up and they shoot ice cream cones. I want ice cream cones. Give me the ice cream cones. Oh, my God, Pulp Fiction, homothermic shooter in the heart with a shot. You understand. So that's the thing. Whereas if only if it had been like last year and you had one or maybe two of those, you see now come around in the fall. You have the scenario where someone could then say, oh, I remember all that excitement when my heart exploded at TPF. And I ended up buying Final Resistance. And so now I'm going to spend the rest of my money in the fall and get Foo Fighters. Maybe my dollar amounts back up to $15,000 at that point. But there are going to be more releases as well. And as we have seen in pinball repeatedly, once the announcement happens, like you have the announcement, all the teasers and stuff, up basically through the gameplay reveal. Usually after that, hype only goes downward. Right. Sometimes games recover based off a reputation and we see a resurgence. It's never like it initially was, but sometimes you do see a resurgence. Like Stranger Things had a resurgence. Guardians of the Galaxy had a resurgence because the rules got to a place where people are like, this is actually a really good game and we want to get it. Yep. And sometimes that resurgence is too late. JJP Pirates. People are like, they were really upset at the triple spinning disc and all that going out of the game. They said no to the game. They sell about a thousand units. and then all of a sudden people are like, you know what? Even with those changes, the game is really, really good. That's too late. They're done making them. So in response to Jake, that's kind of where I'm at. It's not like a tournament where you know your max capacity is under 150, so you're not really losing out on any money because there's no way you could ever bring in that many people.
    75:01
    Stern might be at max. The switch is at 100. Princess Bride reference, they've thrown it to 50. and they're going at full bore. And that's why probably in part that they're moving into yet another bigger space. Right. But that's not the case for any of these other manufacturers. So aside from Stern, I don't see how this would advantage anyone strategically. And I don't think that Stern plays ball with these other companies and coordinates with them. I think Stern does what Stern wants because Stern's over 80% of the market and they just don't care what anyone else does. Nor do they need to, quite frankly. Because all of these other manufacturers, It's going to sound a little mean, and I don't want it to sound overly mean, but I want to make my point clear. They're not major manufacturers. They just aren't. And I would love to see one of them get themselves to that point, but it's just not happened yet. They talk a good game. They can build. I don't want to imply that they are not manufacturing. They are manufacturing. They are manufacturing at a scale. It is not the industrial operation that Stern is. It's all so second tier. And the reason I stress that is because I think sometimes people will think – like you think Stern and then you think maybe JJP or CGC or even possibly Spooky because in a lot of ways, I think Spooky has done a better job about selling and making games than JJP has, not on the quality front but on the quantity front.
    76:21
    But it's such a step down. It ain't even funny. It's not like how it was with Williams versus Sega where Williams, WMS was like 75% of the market and then at the end, Sega was still 25%. It's not like that. Yeah, it is completely different. They're all single digit after Stern in percentage of the market. It's just not close. When everybody else in the hobby, total number of built machines does not equal what Stern does by itself. I mean, period.
    76:58
    It's just an ongoing problem. so anyway but thank you uh jake for the question i hope that i answered it and uh no rumor corner i don't i have a rumor you do i do all right let me drop in the rumor corner music All right, Tony, what is your rumor? My rumor is that American Pinball is regretting the slow roll on Galactic Tank Force, the teaser, then the teaser, and then a teaser, and then a teaser, because they just got slapped around the head with Godfather and Foo Fighters and Pulp Fiction. Okay. You know what? I'm rumored by that. And I think you're right. It's interesting in terms of rollout.
    78:03
    Yeah, it feels a little too – And that kind of gets back to Jake's question. I don't think they would have done this in this rollout fashion had they known all this other stuff was going to happen to them because no one else is rolling slow like this. So what is this getting you? This is the kind of like slow roll rollouts you get towards the end of the summer building up for stuff to drop a month or so before Chicago. We've seen that type of roll in the past. That's what this roll is. If there was nothing else coming out, I could kind of see – like I get the idea. I'm not a marketing person. But like as a consumer, I kind of get the idea of going, oh, yeah, I get it. You're going to be like, here, this week we're going to show you a little bit about the animation and the voice work and who the cast is. And now we're going to show you a little bit more that this is not just going to be about tanks. It's also going to be about ice cream. And we're going to show you a little bit more about like the weird tank shape and how it folds up. It's like, yeah, drip, drip, drip, drip. meanwhile you know stern does its usual like three day you know 72 hour reveal process jjp does something really really similar uh you know we get the we get the game we already got the gameplay we had the featurettes with godfather and pulp fiction so you get to dive in deep and figure out like what their logic was on the rules and what it was like to work on the license and it's and it's gonna be and you're gonna get to try it all and then it's like we know galactic tank force is coming the very first trailer we had to like a little six point font of galactic tank force in the name it's yeah uh i'm not gonna say in the comic book guy worst rollout ever but of these games coming out it is the worst right and it's not necessarily that it was a bad plan reality just means it's because they should have pivoted they should have pivoted because the first it's like oh here's my teaser foo fighter smacked him upside the head okay well here's the second teaser that shows a little bit more godfather well here's my third teaser and we'll have our big reveal next week pope fiction it's like what are you doing you're like you're like rocky walking into every punch from creed you just take every single one i gotta you got you what is this strategy i'm wearing him out i think that was a little actually i think that was the strategy on clubber lang but anyway um just trying to get him to break his fist that's my job Yes. Okay. Very rumor-taney. Thank you for that one. Video games, Tony. Video games. Short snippet because pinball went very long. Yeah. So the big things in video games is continuing the saga of the Microsoft Activision buyout. The EU regulators have pushed back their decision date from the end of April to the 22nd of May based upon some new stuff from the concessions Microsoft has given out.
    80:51
    Sony is claiming that, in their opinion, Microsoft could intentionally put bugs into the PS4 and PS5 versions of Call of Duty and be slow to fix them intentionally to hurt PlayStation sales, and that they are going to raise the price only on the PlayStation versions. even though Microsoft has pledged that they'll have Call of Duty for 10 years and they're going to release everything at parity between the Xbox and the PlayStation versions identically at all times. I remember reading about this and I was like, how desperate are you at this point? You're actually going to go and accuse them of deliberately sabotaging? It will make their brand look bad to do that. The U.K. regulators have been releasing some of the information from their deliberations and talking stuff. And Sony has told the U.K. regulators that Sony cannot protect against the loss of Call of Duty. They can't survive not having Call of Duty. I can't believe it, though. They're the largest market share. They say they have nothing first person that can even come close to competing with the kind of money Call of Duty. Even their big games like God of War. And the Hide in the Tall Grass game. What's that one where you're the girl and the robot dinosaurs?
    82:23
    What's that? I remember it, but I don't remember what it is. Event Horizon? No, Event Horizon Zero Dawn. That's a big one. They say that the largest amount of money that they have ever spent, PlayStation, for a first-party game for development was God of War, and it was less than half of what gets spent every year for development of Call of Duty. They claim that they have nothing in the first-person shooter genre that can even compete with Call of Duty. their discussion with the UK makes it basically clear that if Call of Duty is pulled from PlayStation goes away which I think is crap yeah it's especially but with the pledge of 10 years they would be able to off ramp to something in theory if they wanted to and that's assuming Microsoft wouldn't want to let them have it after 10 years again Minecraft they put on that everything it's it's a cash cow why would you why would you dry up your milk on your cow why would you stop making money why would you stop exactly why would you stop making why would you stop having your competitors do tons of the work and then still pay you for it makes no sense but i mean if they're going around also saying that they think microsoft's going to stick in bugs on purpose and stuff i mean this is like full-fledged like sabotage yeah no it is logic it is it is crazy i think they're saying that because that's what they do but Ouch. But Microsoft has inked more deals.
    84:05
    They have finalized a 10-year deal with Nintendo and NVIDIA, plus they've finalized a 10-year deal with two other cloud streaming services based in Europe that they have 10-year deals with.
    84:23
    So they're still making concessions. are doing this that microsoft has come out and said uh which i have a hard time believing but they've said they see no issues with getting call of duty playable at good quality on the switch so that's interesting that that's their goal is to put call of duty out on the switch probably a buggy version yeah intentionally buggy so people don't buy switches that's right and then the whole goal will be to make it so nintendo is dependent on call of duty and then when it's taken away, they'll go out of business. Yes, because that's what's going to happen to Nintendo. That's what happens.
    85:01
    Star Citizen. Now, I saw this comment in our Discord that something was going on with Star Citizen, and I haven't read anything about it. They put out a major update moving towards full game release. It's only been several years. Yes.
    85:19
    I mean, they're still in alpha, but what they've done is they've added a persistence engine, so that the universe is now persistent. So if I walked into a room and I picked up a cup and then I got in my ship and I flew to another planet and I landed on that planet and I walked into a cave and set that cup down on a rock and flew away, that cup will stay there. And if somebody comes into that cave six months from now, that cup will still be sitting there. Okay. I don't know why you did that with that cup, but I get the concept. That's the basic concept. So they haven't been doing that currently? No, they've been doing stuff when it's out of draw long enough it'll cease to exist unless it's certain types of special. This is for everything. Everything that is player-interactable and movable, as opposed to, like, before the only things that would be kept would be, like, very certain specialty inventory-type items.
    86:14
    They also added salvaging as a profession, but there's been some bugs. they had an unexpectedly large number of players who've not logged in in a long time come back so they've been having major server issues uh and and in addition to like game breaking bugs and everything got to the point where it was so bad they actually had to take the servers offline for a while to do emergency maintenance wow uh the servers are back up but people are still having the issues logging on and they're still fighting with a variety of issues there. So they're working on it. So I don't know how much of it was because this was such a major, large rollout patch and how much of it was that they DDoSed themselves basically by having so many people come back to the full.
    87:09
    But we'll see. It's a major upgrade for a game that will never be released. And I haven't played since before it was actually you could even fly ships, even though I am an original backer. You're a backer.
    87:26
    And for the final thing, E3, Microsoft has confirmed they will have no presence at E3. They are going to do a digital event that is co-streamed and E3 branded, but they won't be at E3 proper. Oh, okay. and Nintendo has stated with the new Legend of Zelda launching at $70 but that's not standard pricing for all future titles they are going to price games on a title by title basis so all the good ones will be $70 the ones everybody wants will be $70 all the major first party ones and that's it awesome Okay, well, we will be back in a couple of weeks to do our TPF recap. Yes, we will. That's the plan, at least as it stands. So until then, if you want to reach out to us, you can email us at CollecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com. You can visit us at Facebook.com slash CollecticGamersPodcast. And you can also support the show with as little as a dollar a month at Patreon.com slash Eclectic underscore Gamers. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram. and this is the time of year when I actually actively use Instagram pretty decently for TPF when I don't forget at eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll talk to you all in a couple weeks or at the show. So until then, I am Dennis. I am Tony. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.