Oh, how about some soothing sounds of some non-copyrighted podcast intro music for you, everybody? It's Don from Don's Pinball Podcast, episode number 170. And while the one 15-second sample will fade into the next one, we'll go ahead and get started for this episode with an awesome preview. We're talking Dream themes today, man. The five games that I want to see made are going to get into that. I also got an interview at the end with Jason Kreczar from the Epilepsy Fundraising Tournament that will be happening in March. Just one month and a half hence from now. We're going to get into that with all the details, some other pinball tidbits and everything. It's Don's Pinball Podcast, episode 170, coming to you for your face. I hope you enjoy, and let's get this started. Oh, man. All right, so I thought something that would be fun to do, and this is pinball podcasting. I mean, if we're not talking about rumors and who's getting fired from pinball companies and doing everything we can except talk about just having fun playing pinball, it's talking about those dream themes that we have. So I thought this would be fun to just discuss five that I have kicking around in my head, and these aren't like my personal passions that I really want to see done that nobody else wants to play. We're not going to talk about Insane Clown Posse's Journey Through the Dark Carnival pinball adventure machine, which I would totally play, or my Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, or none of that. These, I think, are some, number one, bang-on themes guaranteed to move at least 2,000 units from the jump. And I also get into, layout-wise, what I would like to see in these. So it's not just, I want you to make these five games from movies from my childhood, but like how these would actually work in the pinball space. I think it's going to be fun. I think it'll be fun. So we'll get into that and then some more pinball tidbits to come. And then we're going to talk to Jason here at the end and talk all about his cool event that he's doing in March. I can't wait to get started there. So I'm going to start off not at any, any kind of like order where like the banger is number five, I'm going to start off with probably the strongest license that exists on earth and has consistently been something that whenever it has been touched by pinball because it has before it has sold very well even despite uh you know lackluster shots and layout and all that stuff i'll play a little audio clip and then we'll get into it you found something yes that's it the rebels are there my lord there are so many uncharted settlements Oh, snap. That is the system. And I'm sure Skywalker is with me. Set your course for the Hoth system. General Veers, prepare your men. Oh, my God. I want to go with James Earl Jones down to Hoth. And I want to blow the ever-loving hell out of some rebel bases. But I also want to blow up AT-AT, Imperial Walkers, probe droids, Wampas, all that. I'm talking about not just Star Wars, because we know that sells, right? So what, Don? Empire Strikes Back, as a standalone machine, come on, Star Wars is the most iconic film trilogy of our lifetime, and Empire is arguably the best film from that original trilogy. It's got everything you would need. You know, the story has been laid out in A New Hope, Episode 4. Episode 5, Empire Strikes Back, is really where we already know these characters, we know what they're capable of, now let's see what the retribution from the Empire is. And so many key plot points in the Star Wars canon came from this. I'll just hit the major plot points here. I made myself a little list. So it starts off on the Hoth system, right? If you think about a Star Wars battle, a terrestrial battle, this is the one, man. Every kid wanted that play set, that AT-AT Imperial Walker, full of action figures from Kenner, blowing the crap out of the snowscape, right? You got probe droids. You got the Wampa in the cave. You know, Luke is on his tauntaun. He's going out on patrol. He gets lost, doesn't come back. Han has to go and find him, takes his lightsaber, cuts open the tauntaun. I thought they smelled bad on the outside. And that's only in, like, the first ten minutes of this film, right? Anybody want some ice? Right, so you're going around the Hoth base and everything, and then the Imperial troops find them. They land, I don't know, six miles away instead of landing at the base. And they've got to take out that shield generator. Or, no, that's later in Return of the Jedi. They've got to blow up that defensive generator so they can land is what happens. So you have that whole snow scene that we know from the film. But there's more than just that. I mean, after the battle, we've blown up Imperial Walkers. Luke's off to Dagobah to go train with Yoda. This is where we meet Yoda. This is where Luke does his Jedi training. And we get to follow along with him. So he battles Vader's ghost in the cave. And then he gets a premonition that his friends are in trouble. And then he's off to Bespin. Meanwhile, Han and Leia, they're being eaten by space slugs going through the asteroid field. they escape from that everybody meets on Bespin right you got Lando there double crossing Marauder Han gets frozen in carbonite Luke faces off against Vader loses his hand find us Darth Vader's his dad right and then everybody gets in the remaining characters get aboard the Millennium Falcon and sail off into the atmosphere and then it ends on like this foreboding tone right it's just like it's just such a complete adventure right there like we don't know what's going to happen after that, but we get to follow the whole adventure through. So, what do you put in this game? Probably everything that wasn't in Stern's most recent Star Wars release, which plays kind of like a space battle. It seems like it's taking place aboard the Death Star, aboard a Star Destroyer, battling with the Emperor and everything. So here's what I would do. You've got to have at least two major locations. You have to have the ice planet of Hoth. It wasn't a moon. You've got to have Hoth there for the battle. You also have to have Dagobah. You have to have Bespin in there at least a little bit so you can have Han, Frozen, and Carbonite. And so how do you approach that? You've got to have an AT-AT mech. You have to have the Imperial Walker. It's got to be in there. I see two ways of doing this, one of which is kind of my favorite. All right, so the gun turret of the Imperial Walker. That could be the main mechanism in the back right corner of the game. Maybe you can lock balls up in there. You can have some motorized turrets with lights that are shooting out periodically. you could have a ramp that goes up to just bash this thing as you're playing the game and hitting orbits maybe that's wrapping the tow cables around the legs to take it down and then you could bash into this thing off like a jump ramp that maybe pops up and then there's an exploding effect in it that's up in the upper corner and then you can have a dagobah area with some swamp stuff lock balls over there kind of like how lord of the rings has the path of the dead up on the one side and you got that Elliot Eismin garden the towers are in the back i'm thinking something similar there. So things are segregated a bit, just like your mashed potatoes on your lunch tray, you know, back in grade school. Or here's how I like to incorporate the AT-AT. I like this one. This is my favorite. All right. So Imperial Walker, back of the playfield where there's most of the room between the playfield and the glass, you have that room to work with. Against the back, a full-size Walker, four legs standing up there. You have it on an articulated assembly that will allow it to collapse and stand back up again. Probably use a stepper motor and some kind of lever arm, have hinged legs that are bolted to the play field, and then a couple of stand-up targets in front of the legs, the front legs and the back legs. And the gameplay will be such that when activated for this battle against this Imperial Walker, you have to hit the left target on the front leg, you hit the one on the back leg, you hit the one on the front leg again to simulate the tow cable wrapping around the legs of the beast. And then this whole articulation will rotate forward on a stepper motor. could use a servo, but I think you would want something a little stronger than that. And this whole thing would articulate the knees and go down on its belly, just like when the toe cable takes it down, right? It goes face down, ass up. Then it becomes a bash toy. Then you can bash your shot right up in the middle of it, smack it, the thing blows up, and then you can slowly then reset itself. But, like, that's how you take out the walker. Take out three walkers, get a multiball. Take out two maybe if you want to adjust it so it's a little bit easier to play. I have the Hoth battle right up at the back of the play field. So when you walk up, like your eyes go right to that. And then up, I guess, house left, stage right. You have Dagobah kind of over there. Maybe Bespin off to the right. You have to have some kind of gobble hole. A ball goes into and that's Hong getting frozen in carbonite. And then the rest of it is just playing out the scenes, man. Playing out the scenes with what's in there. I think that's kind of a template to how I could see this working. Put some interesting wire forms up in there But man, think about it A fully articulated Imperial Walker That's Star Wars, man And I don't think Hoth has been done well yet Look at the last Star Wars game that came out Essentially it was just a blue insert that would light up And you would hit the back of a horseshoe That's all we got That's all we got from Empire That's all we got from Hoth You got a ball save animation if you were playing Was it Han or Luke where he jumps out of the Carbonite? That's it, man So I think Empire Strikes Back would work as my one pick of a dream theme. Killer theme. Let's go to the next one. What is it? It's your new pet. Number one, you've got to keep him out of bright light. Number two, keep him away from water. It's incredible. And probably the most important thing, don't ever feed him after midnight. Yum, yum. Mogwai. Billy, what are these things? Gremlins. I mean, honestly, I'm not reaching here, right? You know, we're solidly in 1984, 1995 when we're looking for themes and everything. But I'm telling you, man, I think Gremlins would work, right? You got the cuteness of Gizmo, the Mogwai, the character that's bought from Chinatown in New York City and brought to Billy and given to him as an early Christmas present because it's alive, with the stipulation that he not get these wet, don't feed it after midnight, and keep it out of bright lights. And what do they do to the course of the film? The first 20 minutes, they break all three of those rules, man, and then what happens? Chaos ensues. Ensues? Chaos ensues in that little town, that northeastern town, during Christmas, right? This is a Christmas movie. So, all right, Gremlins is a movie about a cute mogwai and a kid named Billy that works at a bank, dates this girl named Kate, and they go off on an adventure. But really, it is set dressing for a chance for these crazy puppet gremlins to do insane things. Wacky, slapstick, incredible, creepy, weird. I love it. It's like, you know, Critters is a little bit dark, but Gremlins, it's like, balances everything. Humor, danger, intrigue, adventure, Christmas, true love. It's all in there, right? The movie theater scene. All right, so Gremlins is a play field. I don't know if you really necessarily need an upper play field take it in, leave it out, whatever don't do a lower play field throw some ramps in there, throw some cool wire forms throw some locks, put a mogwai in there kind of like Baby Yoda was a Mandalorian have it move at least have it articulate, gizmo there in the back so at least when you walk up you're like oh, right, gremlins I got it, you have to have the house at the back there with one of the neatest mechs that I could think of I'm going to get to in just a second And then you have to have this game loaded with gremlins. It's got to be loaded top to the bottom with gremlins. I want Stripe, Spike, the one, the flasher guy in his trench coat. I need all the gremlins in there. The lady gremlin, or like the male gremlin that was dressed up like a lady, that's all got to be in there. And they can be hidden. They can pop up, you know. So when you come up to the game, and maybe you don't see much going on. In attract mode, I would like it if the game looks like it's on the fritz occasionally, where lights spark and go dark, and then a little gremlin will pop up and laugh and then go back away, and then everything goes normal again. This is a game with gremlins in it. Gremlins are little creatures we blame for problems with machinery and technology. So bring that in as kind of a fourth-wall-breaking aspect. You've got to have the movie theater scene in there. They're creeping through town trying to find out where all these gremlins went. They all went into the movie theater. They're watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and they love it. It's hilarious. but when you walk in there's a gremlin like popping out of the popcorn machine just like scarfing popcorn being crazy you know they go in there and peek and like they're all watching the movie the projector ends up getting gremlins in it and then chaos ensues when the movie goes away they're crawling through the screen clawing at it like it's mayhem it's bedlam that i want that i want a game that looks like um you kind of a traditional run-of-the-mill um pinball machine with again maybe some upper play field some wire forms and everything but as you're playing things are changing right um either in the in the matter of diverters or in the matter of uh you know the movie theater popcorn area will just like explode and a little gremlin will pop up through there like for a gremlin mode lights can change music can change um but like as you're playing i want you to be playing a mode and like you need to hit you know three shots to qualify the final shot and after you make two everything will randomly just like go dark on the fridge your ball will drain only one flipper's working and you're like the hell's going on with this game right and like a little gremlin guy pops up and then you know you'll get like an unlimited ball save for like 20 seconds it'll just keep kicking balls out you only have one flipper that works but you have to take out that gremlin chewing on a wire and then like the game comes back and you can continue on with whatever mode you were in like fun stuff like that right you know because you're expecting to play a 1980s themed gremlin game and then the game like literally has gremlins in it and like things are breaking and it's all done through code and in a fun like interactive way that's very on point with the theme. Also, remember when the gremlins went into that old lady's house and she's got her cat in her lap and she's got that electric stair climbing, you know, old person escalator-y thing, you know, that she's on? And, like, the gremlins have obviously messed with it. And, like, it goes into overdrive and sends her, like, screaming up the stairs and flying out through a window. So what if there was a point where your ball could, like, magnetically lock on her little chair and then get activated and go zipping up, you know, like a wire form rail or something, go up to the window, and then your ball just shoots out across the play field as the old lady's scream plays out on the screen. Like, I think that would be a fun, on-point, interactive mech that's interesting, and it could be there on, you know, a coil that, like, launches this thing up, and then your ball goes flying off or something. You know, something simple, but, like, the little vehicle on a track I think would be funny, especially if it comes up and there a you know like either the the townscape is there or at least like a house facade so you can see it like go up the stairs turn a corner it disappears for a second and then the ball comes spitting out the window with like the sound of glass crashing And then that could be a start of a multiball. So that way you could watch the screen. And if your ball drained, you know, the balls are kicking out and coming. So I think that'd be fun. I think a game loaded with gremlins, you know, take the fun that we had with Attack from Mars and the Martians and everything and just put more gremlins in there doing gremlin-y things. Like, that's what I would like to see. That's what I would like to see. This next one I've already talked about. But let's get into it again. Remember that sound. Remember that sound. Alright, did you figure it out? I'm talking about Indiana Jones, man. This is the scene where he's running into Jock Lennon as he's playing. From the movie that I want the game based on. The first one of the Indiana Jones trilogy. Ah, I love this music. That is the same fanfare that plays at the culmination of the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland and Adventureland. If you haven't ridden it before, you need to go and ride this ride. It's not in Florida. It's not at Disney World yet. They're putting it in Animal Kingdom. But the Indiana Jones Adventure, through the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, right away from Mara, the goddess that's in there. Don't look into the eye, or your path will lead to a destination of doom. I love this ride. This ride's also at Tokyo DisneySea, if you want to go check it out there, before it hopefully opens in two to three years at Disney's Animal Kingdom. But I've mentioned before that I think Raiders of the Lost Ark is such a complete story full of fun and exciting things to design a pinball machine around that I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. We saw the Indiana Jones trilogy, which of course borrowed bits and beats and notes from the other trilogy films. but I think now in the modern era is the time to do this one right. We saw Stern, they did that Indiana Jones trilogy or quadrilogy game that came out. It was okay. It was passable, but like I really want something focused strictly on this movie. Look at all the beats and the points in it. That sound, by the way, of the engine on Jocelyn's UC plane that's struggling to start was the same sound sampled from Star Wars when they go to hit the hyperdrive in the Millennium Falcon and like it sputters and doesn't turn on. That's the same sound. They used it again for Indiana Jones or vice versa. I forget which one was first. I think it was in Star Wars first and they reused it for Indiana Jones. Regardless, fun little point there. Also, the call letters, the registration letters for Jock Lindsay's plane were C-3PO. So check that out, little fun tidbits that are in there. Anyway, with this film, you start off in the jungle, in the temple with the idol. Why is he there? We don't know. He's there to be an archaeologist, adventurer. but you know then what do you have you have booby traps punji sticks pits you know throw me the idol like the whip no time doors are closing he reaches in he grabs his hat like iconic stuff and then you get that giant boulder rolling and he has to escape from that this game has to have a giant boulder rolling mechanism how do you do that well if you look at how they did it in the film and I think this is even like I don't think this was an error at all that's not just a round boulder rolling on its own. It has a spindle through the middle of it, and that's how this boulder would at least get its speed up or anything. You can see it in the film. I think you could use that as well. So you have a spheroid that's on an axle, right? And this axle can be geared, or it can just kind of travel along a slot or something on the side of a playfield. This isn't something you put in the middle of the playfield. This has to go over on the side. And so basically, you can have almost It's like a puppet or macat stick rolling down on a belt or something as this ball is tumbling. And then it can be utilized as a timed escape mode. The ball is coming. You have to hit these shots or hit these series of obstacles before the ball makes it all the way down to escape it. Or maybe as you're playing, you can keep pushing this ball back farther and farther to give yourself some more time. The timed mode ends when the ball comes all the way forward. It's got to be in there. but not only that you also have the journey to Cairo you also have the pit of snakes you have the Ark of the Covenant you got Nazis you got all this business in there so there's so much to draw from but the major mechanism has to be that rolling ball Don why hasn't this game been made yet I don't know word around the punch bowl is that a major pinball company was working on this very title up until just recently and something happened I don't have confirmation that that's what they were working on I don't have confirmation that's the company that was doing it but it makes sense to me why wouldn't this game get made um talked about this a little bit in my rumor episode is over the patreon patreon.com backslash non-spinball podcast y'all have already heard this um but like let's say somebody somewhere in the world was working on a raiders of the lost dark pinball machine and then come to find out that they couldn't get a crucial part uh or an asset for that game we've had games come out that have been lacking movie assets before um they've upset us we've lamented you know this game is great but only if it had the movie code oh you know some fans have made some movie code for jurassic park and put it in there now it's so much better uh avengers infinity quest has some custom code that puts movie scenes in there and it like does make it better so did they really want to come out with a game that was lacking in movie scenes or john williams music or harrison ford's likeness like how could you make the game without that um hopefully it was it was a situation where there's a really impressive rolling ball mech let's say and they couldn't find a way to make it work in a commercially appropriate way yet and it had to be backburnered so hopefully this game is out there somewhere on a backburner uh it's getting slow cooked just like some birra yeah from a food truck or something and it'll see the light of day at some point because i think this theme is just amazing this is everything I want in Indiana Jones yes I would love Temple of Doom yes I love Last Crusade yes I don't talk about anything after that but Raiders of the Lost Ark just has just has so much in it to just be just amazing amazing game especially with LCD effects and you know fire and explosion lighting effects from say expression lights or something like that there's so much you could do with this man I want to see it done and I think I'll keep harping on it until it happens I got two more for you I got two more for you This next one, we're getting out of the 1980s. We're getting out of movies, and we're getting into another form of media. I'm just going to go ahead and play this. I will say, trying to find a clip that I could play here for this next theme was a little bit difficult, partially because I just got lost into watching it, partially because I'm trying to keep it somewhat family-ish friendly. But let's go ahead with choice number four of Don's Dream Themes. Who is it you think you see? do you know how much i make a year i mean even if i told you you wouldn't believe it do you know what would happen if i suddenly decided to stop going into work a business big enough that it could be listed on the nasdaq goes belly up disappears it ceases to exist without me no you clearly don't know who you're talking to so let me clue you in i am not in danger skyler i am the danger a guy opens his door and gets shot you think that of me no i am the one who knocks brian cranston man brian cranston breaking bad have you seen it have you only seen it five times go watch that again i never get tired of watching this through um this came out at a time when you know tv had gone to streaming amc was kind of blowing up there were all these huge shows game of thrones was getting kicked off whatever and i felt like i was missing all these things everybody's consuming all of these seasons of television and like where do you find the time you know between you know college courses and working and driving all over the country but i did force myself i'm like you know what i'm gonna watch one of these things and I loved the premise of breaking bad. This is a chemistry teacher, gets diagnosed with a terminal illness. He's barely scraping by anyway. He's kind of not so much a disappointment, but in his own mind, he hasn't lived up to what he feels his potential is. He has a son that's disabled. He's got a wife, a new baby on the way, and just wants to find a way to leave them with something better when he's gone, which his hand is kind of forced. So what does he do? He relies on his chemical background, his chemistry knowledge, and embarks on a trip to try to find a way to produce the highest quality methamphetamine and distribute it out the greater New Mexico area. Get some quick cash. Get it to his family so that when he dies, at least they're taken care of. His heart was in the right place. His brain was in some other universe, man. But that's the premise of Breaking Bad. Not going to ruin anything for you. But there's so many beats and points in this whole series that are just iconic and unsettling, and I want to play through them. And it's modes galore with this thing. I made myself a list, and there's so much. There's so much you can do over, like, what, six, seven, eight seasons of this, the Expanded Universe, the El Camino movie, Better Call Saul that came later, and all that business. So many great characters that are in this and storylines. But here's what you need to have in there. First off, a set of four stand-up targets, right? S-A-U-L for Saul Goodman, the criminal lawyer character in the film who goes on to star in Better Call Saul, which is probably a better series than Breaking Bad even was. But how about this? During gameplay, right, and the play field, we're in Albuquerque. We're in a desert, and the little locations represented throughout the film are kind of distributed all throughout there. I don't think you need an upper play field. I think you keep it open and just put tons of stuff in there. But the Saul stand-up targets, imagine this. You hit all four of those, and that triggers a ball save, right? Saul Goodman, he gives you a shout-out, I got your back, brother, or whatever. You hit the four stand-up targets, you get ball saves, you hit the out lane. Saul's right there to get you out of trouble, right there to bail you out of jail and put you right back into work. You know, I think that would be a fun mechanism, a way to incorporate that. You have to have the house, the Albuquerque house with the pizza that's up on the garage roof. Of course that has to be in there. Maybe tucked away in a side alley or something is your home, your safe home. That may be where you start modes. That's where money was stored in the game. So much happens in that house, in the backyard, with the pool. Remember the jet airplane? God, we got teased for an entire season about the plane crash, man. That all happened around there. Prominently, you cannot have this game and not have Dos Pollos Hermanos, the chicken restaurant chain that was the front for the methamphetamine importation. remember they were taking the meth and they were putting it in the five gallon buckets of the breading for the chicken and that's how they were bringing it in for Mexico and then they're distributing it throughout the dos pobres hermanos empire in Albuquerque man you got to have that back in there going there to go meet with Janos Kiss Fring right Gustavo the Chilean you know the the the up-and-comer in the drug market in that region you got to have the RV somewhere Now, it could just be the size of the Foo Fighters van, right? Up on a ramp on the side or something. Maybe have a physical ball lock in there. Maybe put an exploding mechanism in there on the premium if you want to do that. But, you know, when it's time to cook, you know, maybe you go in there and, like, you know, that's where you select which mission you're going to go on next, who you're going to try to partner with, you know, which scene you're going to play out. I think that could play in there. You'd have to have a shot with a car wash at some point. I know there's a lot of locations throughout Breaking Bad, but remember the car wash was purchased once Walter White was successful. He had all of this money, like pallets of cash, right? He was well-known. He was just working hard, churning through, and he had all this money, but he didn't think it through, right? He's not a criminal, right? He's new to this. So what do you do with a pallet of cash, right? You can't just go down to the bank and put that in there. That money's got to be laundered. So how about this as a thematic gameplay mechanism, which as you're playing a game, maybe it's in a mode, maybe once you build up your jackpots, you're hitting shots and you're getting loot. You're getting cash, right? But that cash is not safe. If you drain, you lose that cash. So as you're playing modes or even between modes and you're hitting bonuses, your cash is going up exponentially, right? The longer you play, the more you're risking, the more your reward is. You got that risk-reward thing. And then shooting into the car wash, you can dump it off there. That was the front that they ended up buying that his wife Skylar was managing, and that was how they were laundering this money back into their bank account through the guise of having an incredibly successful car wash. I think that would be an interesting gameplay mechanism that's in there. Maybe just like a little subplot as you're playing modes, as you're playing the game, your cash on hand is building up, but you've got to put that somewhere safe, and it's useless to you. If it's not laundered, where do you launder it? at the car wash shot or scoop or saucer or spinner or whatever the hell. You can put it in there somewhere. You got to have Don Hector, man, Don Hector at the nursing home. I don't know if you need a nursing home location, but you have to have that character in there, man. He's got to have a way to battle against Janos Kiss Fring at some point. Maybe he's incorporated into a mode, right? He's losing his mind. You have to stay one step ahead of him. That's a trope that recurs through Breaking Bad. These guys are always like the bad guy, the enemy, the DEA agent, somebody, even if it's their own drug use catching up with them, it's always right on their heels. You have to stay one step ahead. So as you're playing games, Tuco is about to lose his mind, right? And you've got to stay one step ahead of him. You have to hit shots in a certain order or a certain time, or he's going to blow up and the mode ends, right? Same with Don Hector. Same with Don Eladio, right? The dons of the Mexican drug cartel that you're trying to navigate through. Hank, his own brother-in-law, the DEA agent. What a great story this is, right? You've got a chemistry teacher that's got a foray into criminality. You watch his metamorphosis over all the seasons of the series. You have his wife there. A former student of his is the one that's coaching him into the drug world to begin with, who is also his own F and has his own flawed problems And then his brother is a drug enforcement agent And so he got to like the whole time has to be making nice with him and you know keeping him off the track And it's just like it goes hilariously sideways in so many points. And there's so many points during the show where like all hope is lost and there's no way they're getting out of it. And like somehow they find a through way to do that. And I think you can represent that in the game. The Salamanca brothers, right? Remember those two twins that come up from Mexico, the Santeria guys crawling on their bellies like snakes. They got skulls on their boots. They're assassins. They're the most like badass people, characters, assassins. They don't say a line of dialogue throughout like the whole show, and they're so intimidating and terrifying. Like represent that. Give me Albuquerque. No, give me this alternate reality, methamphetamine, Albuquerque, Mexican drug gangs and lords in a box, under glass, in my room, and I will buy the premium collector's version of that with the topper, and I'll probably butter-cab it too, man. I think that could really work. I've got one more, and this is a departure from everything else we've talked about so far. But, again, I feel strongly about each one of these, right? This isn't like I want to see Pee-wee's Big Adventure, I want to see Spaceballs. I do, but, you know, commercially do I expect to? No, but this is one I really think has legs. this is tied to a license to a theme that has worked well in the past hasn't been redone in recent modern terms and I think really this is like a pivotal take on it I'm going to play you the intro music it's another television program but tell me that this wouldn't work did you get it yet? Mark Dick Hamill's in this. Alright. Should be good. Saturday morning? After school and syndication? That's right there. That's right there. Familiar. Good music, good art, good characters. Well done. I just want to sit in front of my TV and watch this. I'm talking about the dark one. The Dark Knight. Batman. The animated series. Remember this? Remember this cartoon show? This was a cartoon take on Batman, but it was done in such a great noir style. And it's been replicated with, you know, Batman The Adventure Continues or Killing Joke and all these other cartoons and things that have happened. But this one specifically is my favorite. It's bought Super Nintendo games, the Sega Genesis game, comic books. But, like, the comic art was iconic for the time, and it's been reiterated upon since then. But nothing matches just the hard-hitting of, like, Batman The Animated Series. in between watching Tiny Toons, in between watching other cartoon shows. Like this was something that was set apart. This felt mature. This felt bold. This felt different. The voice acting in Batman the Animated Series, phenomenal. Mark Dick Hamill himself, Luke Skywalker, was the voice of the Joker throughout the series. Phenomenal. What else iconic came out of this? I'm going to go ahead and play you a little scene. Ah, the wind in my hair and the Batman at my heels. It's the kind of night that makes you glad to be alive Right, Harley girl? She should be, Mr. J Oh, that's right You guys know Harley Quinn, right? Harleen Quinzel The psychiatrist from Arkham Asylum That gets Stockholm Syndrome from the Joker I said turn Gets her mind scrambled And becomes like his loyal servant Which is fun movies and things. Margot Robbie represented the character. Harley Quinn started from Batman the Animated Series. Wasn't a comic book. Wasn't a movie. Wasn't a comic strip. No. It was a character developed for Batman the Animated Series that was so popular that became not only a recurring character in the show, but went on to spawn all these other characters, like, do a movie franchise on her own, man. And to the point that in the recent, like, Birds of Prey and in Suicide Squad and such, like, the Joker himself, the clown prince of crime, was outshined by Harley Quinn herself. This has just become iconic. You'll see Joker costumes when you go to Spirit Halloween. You'll see a hell of a lot more Harley Quinn than you will there. Came from that, man. So imagine, and Spooky Pinball's got to be the guys to do this, because the way that they translate their art styles to their cabinets, to their butter cabinets, to their playfields, the way they play with lights, the way they bring in the music, the way they support the theme, the way they go overboard with mechanisms and sculpts and everything. I want them to do this. You know, you got Franchi there, man. Have him crank this out, dude. He can do cartoon art. He's done Batman before, too, so he's got, like, a lineage to it. I think it could work. I think Brad Duke could do an awesome job. Brad Brad Albright could do an awesome job. You know, I just want to see this world represented there. So you do a Batman game, right? You have a Batcave, you have Gotham City, you have Dark, you've got light-lit inserts, a whole vibe that's going on there, which is handed to you on a platter from the art direction from this show, right? I mean, you know, Gargoyles kind of borrowed on the same kind of theme, but Batman is like the pinnacle of superheroes. The best thing DC's got, by far. I know you want Wonder Woman. I know you want Superman. Forget it, dude. Batman's number one in the DC world. Batman, Harley Quinn, Joker and then you start adding in the other villains that occurred during the show build in their modes and everything I don't want to see Scarecrow on a damn crane again, it's been done twice and it wasn't fun either time let's not do that but let's use some destructible environments some interesting modes, some heists some capers, all in that brooding Batman, Gotham City man, tell me, what do you think? Mark Dick Hamill's Joker, Arkham Asylum, all the crazy villains you can put in there from the show. I want to see all that represented in there. Give me a Gotham City cityscape in the back with shots underneath and then careening wire forms that are representing Batman being launched on his various Batman flying apparati. A game that plays moderately fast with some wide-open shots, some fast orbits and some sky ramps. I want to see those. And I want to see Arkham Asylum utilized as a place to lock balls. Something's going on at Arkham. You've got to get there, put the balls inside, doors slam shut. You've got to bash the doors to open them up, and then that's the release of the multiball. Maybe there's a bunch of criminals, and Arkham gets taken over, and there's balls locked inside. And then the doors or the gates of the asylum break open, and just the balls just spill out from inside as if the maniacs are running out of the asylum and now you're in a multiball to try to hit all the doors and hit all the shots to lock all the exits and put all these guys back where they need to be. How fun would that be with Batman, like a fresh take on Batman, an animated version, Harley Quinn's Inception, and with Mark Dick Hamill screaming call-outs like, I want all that, I want all of that. And I think that would work. And I think a little hot tear would roll down Kevin Smith's eye duct if that were to happen. So guys, tell me what you think. There's me sitting down just spitballing five themes that I think would be commercial successes that I would want to play, and I'd probably buy all five of them, even if I'd have to sell some of my games behind me. Holy crap, I would love to see that happen. What else is going on in pinball, man? It's Saturday. I'm just hanging out. I did a live stream this morning. I went ahead and did the Patreon Translate giveaway for this month. Anthony Mura, you won, sir. He contacted you. He's going to be the proud owner of a Metallica LE Translate going on out to you, courtesy of yourself for being so cool, man. So the Patreon, patreon.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast. Get on there. Door opens at $5 at the $10 and $20 producer levels. You get additional entries into giveaways as well as all the bonus content that I'm, I'm sorry, I'm going to keep putting it up there, right? People have started to push back a bit, as people do. But it's fine. It's fine. You know what? You're going behind paywalls now. You know, I'll claim that when I started the Patreon, I was just using that as the tip jar. I wasn't going to put things, you know, from the main show behind a paywall. But look, I got over 100 people that are over there right now, thirsty, salivating for exclusive content. And what am I supposed to do but grab that red meat, grind it up good, grill it, sear it on both sides, slather it in mustard, and slide it on underneath the door into the asylum for the folks over there hanging out in the playground, man. So that's what we're doing. so as I hear things that may not quite be ready for the main show, maybe I heard them and I really don't want to be broadcasting it you know, if I'm under NDA I'm not going to break that, but if I let something slide, it tends to slide out over there, otherwise interesting things that are going on, I'm always putting stuff in there also if you want stickers, you get them for free if you're on the Patreon, so hey it's $5 to order a sticker pack, it's $5 to join over there, whatever, I don't have to sell it because you guys are already doing it I'm just making it known for everybody. All right. So, Anthony, congratulations. I got that going out Monday to you, so that'll be fun. I'm not the only one giving stuff away, though. Did you guys see Bug Screamin' Stream on Thursday this week? Bug and Luke were playing Evil Dead and, like, doing shots every time they found a ball trap that Luke had missed. It was so funny. These guys did a giveaway. Did a couple of them, actually. But one of them, these guys gave away an Evil Dead topper. a $1,400 Evil Dead topper went out to just a random viewer of the stream like kind of unannounced they just went in there and then you know I forgot what the hell I joined it just after they gave it away I still have to watch again to see exactly what they did but generally they say they come up with a question or something oh I know what it was they had written down a band name or something turns out it was Rammstein and if you just randomly guessed which band it was you won yourself a $1,400 topper for Evil Dead that is amazing you guys God, heart of gold, man. So well done there. So do not miss a bug stream and stream. Scream and stream. They do them on Thursdays, 7 p.m. Central Standard Time. Check them out on Twitch. They also simulcast over on YouTube. The chat is really fun. And also, like, you know, it's not just gameplay streaming. That's usually how it starts. But then it devolves into, like, okay, what do you guys want to know? What questions do you have about a pinball company? And if these guys are sauced enough, you can get some information out of them that is quite awesome. So go check out those. They're amazing. Also amazing is the Avatar CE has finally gone out. Jersey Jack has made the imports. We knew that, or the exports. They were going to send them to the European Union first. Now, that takes a couple of weeks on a boat to get a shipping container out there. Now, the shipping container might go and sit at the port for a little bit too, or it needs to travel to a port, get ready, get on the ship, and whatever to get over there. So some people will jump the line, like Retro Jango, our buddy Zinguez that I do the We Are Pinball podcast with. He went ahead and paid the extra cash to air freight himself his Avatar Collector's Edition. Now, I've ordered one of these things. Based on my experience I had when I was at Jersey Jack and I got to play the game. Based on my experience at Interium playing the Avatar Ellie. And looking at all the different differences between that Collector's Edition and the Limited Edition. when it comes to the limited edition i'm not impressed enough to go ahead and get myself one of those the collector's edition with the topper the backlight the under lighting um the the extra uv glow modes that were included with the uv inks and that all kind of got me more excited for this i i don't want the game unless i have the good one for this one particularly and uh that's kind of where i was at um so i went ahead and put my deposit down because i was able to go to the and I was able to see that prototype play field they had, and, like, the depth of the colors that were on there were so impressive to me that I was like, I couldn't stop thinking about it, man. And so the idea of having this game, again, it reminds me heavily of being at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida, one of my favorite places, especially Pandora, especially Pandora at night. I love it there, the Satouli Canteen, all the cool foods they have there, even, like, the age theming of the restrooms I dig. But at night, the bioluminescence that's embedded in the concrete and just walking around there, magical waterfalls. I love it. I want to bring that home. And this machine looked like a good way to do that. Now, Jenkins put up his video reviewing the CE and everything. And so I'm sitting through watching there. And it's just it's hard to tell on camera, you know, how that's all coming through. So I'll be doing another show. We are pinball here coming up probably in the next day or two. will be heavily leaning into what his experiences are seeing that because next up is going to be me. And I've heard from Jeff at MadPimple.com that people that have ordered their CEs, of which I think he has only one left, I think they're already paying in full and getting ready to ship those. So they might be coming home here soon. And I'm hoping, I'm really hoping that that play field represented by the prototype is shown in the actual production version. I want to see it, man. I want to see it. I need to have those reds. I know they're there on the art blades, so I'm a little bit more relaxed about it. But getting that game in the home with the topper, with the blue lights, and playing in that world of deep, complicated code and kung fu action grip battle robot, I'm in. I'm sold. I want to go there. I want to hang out in Pandora in my corner by my bar for at least a year. And that's what I'm looking at doing. I'm bolstered by the fact that I'm seeing Avatar Limited Editions, which is the subpar edition, selling for about $10.5 right now. It was $12 new, $11.5 if your dealer really likes you. So that's not a terrible price drop to see. So if I can anticipate an anticipatory drop of about $2,500 to $3,000, I think that would be reasonable on the used secondhand market. But regardless, I'm going to be playing the hell out of this game and basically recreating my own Rainforest Cafe in Pandora colors in my bar. So earlier this week I was joined well I joined Jason Kratzar over in we were in Toledo I was doing a little gamey swap and hanging out with some homies Now Jason runs a charity tournament raising money for the Michigan Association of Epilepsy or an epilepsy group for kids. One of the things that they do is awesome. They do a summer camp for kids that are plagued with epilepsy by camp counselors that are trained to be able to respond to epileptic seizure incidents. So these kids can go and have fun in an area where people know how to manage these things if they come up. And so he's raising money and doing a charity tournament. And let's get into my conversation with Jason right now. Super excited to bring a friend to the show here. Now, epilepsy is a seizure disorder affecting millions of Americans and a lot of children. But luckily, there's a fundraising effort going on in the form of a pinball tournament. And shepherding that here is Jason Kreitzer, my good buddy. How are you doing, Jason? Great. Glad you're here. Yeah, I heard about this last year. Yeah, this fundraising tournament in the Toledo area called? Flip for the Cure. Flip for the Cure with proceeds going towards epilepsy research and stuff? The Epilepsy Foundation. So I heard you're doing it again. Yep, fourth year. Yeah, so I'm in the Toledo area, so I've got to get Jason on. so we can talk about it. Let's hype this up for this year. Awesome. Yeah. All right. So give us the details here. Where is this taking place at? It will be March 8th in Toledo, Ohio, downtown Toledo at Wildside Downtown. It's our second year that Nick has been gracious enough to host the event for us. He also includes part of the proceeds of all the food and drink that goes on down there. He gives to the foundation for us, too. So it's been great. And also, it's great because we do it at the wild side, and you don't have to actually come and play. You just come out and support by eating and drinking. But we do do an awesome pin golf tournament put on by my friends at Toledo Pinball. Yeah, who doesn't like a pinball tournament, right? Yeah. Now, tell me about, like, where are the funds going? Is this for a charity? Is it a local thing, a national thing? It actually goes to the we've partnered with the Michigan Epilepsy Foundation. We live in Michigan, but they do a great job of helping promote event. And then all the proceeds go to them and they use it for they do summer camps for the kids, which is great because a lot of kids with epilepsy don't get a chance to go to camps. And these camps are run by epilepsy professionals so that the kids can be a kid at the camp. My daughter's gone to one and it was great, but they also use it for research and and and, you know, whatever they might need to help the community, you know. Yeah. And tell me why this is personal to you. Like why epilepsy? This is ultra personal to us because when my daughter was five, she was diagnosed with epilepsy. And you don't really know how much something like this is going to change your life, but it is life-altering, shattering, especially for those families that have children who you can't control the seizures or adults that can't control the seizures. Luckily with my daughter, we were able to control hers with medicine. But it just changes your life. her seizures happen in her sleep and uh so all of a sudden night time's your worst enemy you know so you have you just go to bed and you pray you hope and you hope the medication does its job and it was that that spurred my family to like we gotta try to help stop you know seizures from happening not just for us but for everybody and how do we do this how do we help with the family you know yeah i mean it's terrifying when it happens you know especially a parent especially like the first time you don't know what's happening your kid just all of a sudden unresponsive and it's like panic right oh super ultra panic we ended up in the ER because we didn't know what was going on and they kind of knew and they kind of just direct us away they don't want to break the news to us and then we met with the neurologist and bam it's epilepsy and how old was she when it first started when you first noticed at five and it started slow just kind of like she said her her mouth felt numb. But then it kind of progressed to, you know, full facial tick and tightening type seizures to where for years, I slept in another room with a camera on my wife and daughter in their room, you know, and so she was near her all the time, you know, because just never knew when it was going to happen. Yeah. And a seizure disorder is not just one thing where, you know, there's a trigger and you have a seizure. I mean, seizures come in different types. Sometimes, You think of the classic full convulsions, but they can be just a staring spell. Correct. Just like you're talking to somebody. And you can have, because we see this in the emergency department, you may have one seizure and never have another one again. Correct. And everyone's kind of entitled to that. Other people are plagued with them. And it can function as there's a threshold for whatever trigger that triggers it. There's a threshold you reach, and then the trigger is a seizure. So a lot of medications and things, the therapy is targeted towards raising that threshold so you can have a functional life and, you know, have less instances of it. But, you know, there's folks that even on all the appropriate treatments, their threshold is still low enough that they're still plagued and they're treatment resistant. And so that's where, you know, research is looking into every modality and what else can we do for this. Ketogenic diet is something that grew out of that. They found that for some kids where they're treatment resistant, if they can put their body into a slightly acidotic state by avoiding every type of sugar, you can control them better. But it's so difficult to actually do that. Especially with a kid because they see everybody else having ice cream. And it's like my daughter didn't have soda or pop here in the Midwest until she was like 10 or 11. And she doesn't even really care for it now because the fact that we're starting to walk down that diet change, you know, because we ended up on our third medicine before we found a medicine that worked. Wow. So it wasn't just a simple, you know, give her like a tablet every day and she's good. No, we started on like the catch-all, which most people have, which is Capra. And it worked for years. And then we started having breakthroughs. Yeah. And then we moved to another one, and that one had some very bad side effects. So we moved to the third one, and that was the winner. And it was as great as it can be for medication. Yeah. Because you know that you can tell that they're a little bit different when they're on the medication. You know, it's just, like you said, it's raising that threshold, but it's also changing other things about their personality and stuff like that, that you've got to kind of outweigh the good with the bad. Right, yeah, this benefit versus risk that we're all looking at. So how old is she now? She's 15. And does she like going to camp? She loved that camp. We're hoping Michigan brings the camp back again this year. She just was a kid, man. It's tough. You don't send her to a regular camp because they're not really trained. Right, right. Stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, if – you know, a seizure looks a lot different to someone that's trained and knows what to expect and how to guide a kid through it. Otherwise, it's just sheer panic. How do you coordinate that? So I like these camps. I had a colleague in my residency training who went to a camp for kids with special diseases, like these really rare things, and that was their chance to go and be kids again. So I guess I'll just cut to the chase. How much money do we have to give to Michigan to start this camp back up this year? I don't think it was we want all the money to go to this camp. I'm about to start selling stuff out of my garage now. Yeah, they, you know, with COVID, they moved it around and it ended up the camp we sent her to, Michigan partnered with the camp just outside of Chicago. So that was the one we sent her to, but they're bringing it back to Michigan. So I think everything's good. We're going to have that camp again this year. Last year they had a camp, but it was kind of like a family camp, which is great. but my daughter was like 14 and parents aren't that cool. Parents aren't that cool. She's like, I can hang out with you any weekend, but you know, that's exactly what a 14 year old wants. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, I get to spend another weekend with you guys. So we didn't attend that one. And, they're talking about possibly bringing backwards the kid only camp, which would be outstanding. And she loved to do that. How fun. All right. So this tournament. Yeah. Wild sides of the place. Wild sides of the place. All right. I haven't been there yet. Describe, you know, how many games we're talking here? We've got eight currently. I'm trying to count Dave and Logan in to bring it down to ninth. So we have a ninth hole. But we had 40 last year. It's a great tournament. We had like a waiting list. And what's great is he moves the stage up front. So we have four games up front, and we've got games in the back because it got so tight. So you can kind of – and with pin golf, you can go at your own speed. Sure. So you kind of meander back and forth, maybe grab a cocktail as you're going through, or a pizza because they do Detroit-style pizza, and it's outstanding. I play either better with pizza or worse. But either way, if there's pizza there, I'm going to be consuming it, yeah, for sure. And then we have Silent Auctions, and Mad Pinball is – Jeff's been outstanding. Shout-out to Jeff, madpinball.com. And he is – yes, if you need pinball, you can see Jeff at pinball.com. But he donates so many great items. We get Stern and Zach and Stern and Ken at JJP and Spooky. Everybody donates a lot of great things. And Emoto with Marcos. And so you get a chance to bid on a lot of great items. So it's not just the prizes for the tournament, but these are like auction items too? Yeah, auction items. This year we've got Barrels of Fun on board, and we're going to have some great stuff from them. I think we've got like Costco, you know, because there's the normal people stuff. So like Costco and then we do a lot of like blenders. The hot one was blenders with mixers and stuff like that. But a lot of great items that all help contribute to if they go to the foundations. First year we didn't have a pinball machine, but the last years we've had pinball machines that we've auctioned off. We had Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man last year. The year before was Gottlieb's Joker Poker. Joker. Oh, I like me some Joker poker. And then the year before that we had Slugfest. Oh, all right. Well, I don't know if a stack of translates can compete with a blender. I'm not going to like your donation last year. Those translate. Yeah. Big money. Perfect. All right. Well, we're going bigger this year then. All right. I expect the package because I got until March 8th, 2025, 2025. What? 6 p.m. No, actually doors will open at 11. Oh, a door buster tournament. So for some practice and then uh you hit the holes at noon and is this on a saturday it's on a saturday saturday no excuses no all right toledo wild side i'll put a link to the uh address and everything do you have to pre-register for this uh it helps just because we want to make sure that uh we don't overbook i mean i would love to overbook but you can only fit so many people but i'll also get you the link too for uh the epilepsy foundation has set up a link for us uh for people that can't make it who would like to donate to this event. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I'll link that down below, too. So look at the show notes for that. Fantastic, dude. I hope this event keeps growing, man. You can make it a whole weekend thing eventually. Deep down, my goal would be to have this spread where somebody in another state contacts me and says, hey, we want to do epilepsy benefit for our state or something like that. and I can just kind of guide them in a way that eventually we can just crush epilepsy and get a control of it because I swear, like you talked about, you don't know what you see until you see it. But, like, I got PTSD. Like, I know, like, when I close my eyes at night, I see what she's like in a seizure, and there's nothing really that you can do to stop it. Nothing. And then that's why we started this because we want to stop it so nobody sees that or has to experience that. Perfect. So, all right, we're going to get some prizes. Also, let's get donations from anybody. If you want to email me at donspinballpodcastgmail.com, I'll get you the address. Send some stuff or throw in stuff to go in my care package, and it'll be shipping out over soon. So we can auction things off, have prizes and such. I'll also get you a link to my friend at ULIC Store. Johnny Crap has done the artwork again this year. I love me some Johnny Crap. And it's another great T-shirt design. I can get you the link, proceeds. Johnny Crap did that T-shirt? Johnny Carap, this is last year's, and then I'll make sure to get you this year's. JC, perfect. And all proceeds of all the t-shirt sales. They're doing towels this year, pin towels. All the proceeds, a portion of those proceeds will go to the foundation. Perfect, yeah. JC's a good guy, too. Yeah, he's awesome. I love the little Mad Professor logo that's on there, too. Yeah, this is the first one was the Mad Professor. We like that one. This year's, my wife said, kind of reminded me of a Rocky and Bullwinkle theme. Love it. with that and uh i i love it he's he's so great he's he was the first reply quick didn't ask for anything yeah here how can i help yeah shout out to you like store too i've been by their uh that mall in the arcade the mall yeah it was awesome so many games that spills out into the midway like why couldn't i have a mall like that when i was growing up i know and then uh he's uh the slow remodel will be next door and he'll move the games in there and have even more games dude amazing amazing all right man so uh yeah uh march 8th 2025 wild side downtown toledo ohio uh don's pimple podcast gmail.com to email me if you want to send anything his way otherwise follow the links donate directly man let's get this camp going awesome awesome i'm so glad you came to town yeah buddy anytime yeah i was out driving around anyway why not bounce on over to toledo i heard you had some games over there all right cool brother thank you sir yeah thanks Jason, thanks so much for spending some time with me and letting me help you get the word out about how awesome this event is. So go check that out. All that and more will be coming forth hence from Don's Pinball Podcast. You know how I like to drop information as soon as I hear it. Anything else? How about this? How about a way for you guys to get in contact with the Donster? Well, you can do that by emailing donspinballpodcast at gmail.com. 170 free episodes in the can so many other ones on the patreon go check it out check me out on the facebook go on the discord page man it's blowing the heck up i think we have the most robust pinball fan discord page on earth so go check that out link will be in the description otherwise be cool to yourself and each other man let's party it's pinball season all right later